It is a sobering exercise to let your eyes glance over the recently released list of students waiting to get into many of D.C.’s charter schools.

Basis DC, 553.  Capital City lower, 608.  Creative Minds International, 1,217.

We go to work, come home, have dinner, and perhaps watch some television. We do not give one thought to the families whose future is being determined by whether their children can get into one of these schools.

DC Bilingual, 832.  E.L. Haynes elementary, 585.  Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom French language school, 583.

The DC Public Charter School Board states that there are “8,640 individual students on waitlists to attend one or more participating public charter schools in the 2016-17 school year, a 1.3% increase over last year’s 8,526 students.”

Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom Spanish language school, 894.  Inspired Teaching Demonstration, 892.  KIPP DC Promise Academy, 284.

In the nation’s capital, once you include DCPS, there are 21,000 kids trying to get into the school of their choice.  Parents of 21,000 individuals who desperately want to make better lives for their offspring.  If you have money there is an easy solution to this problem.  You move to a locality where there is a good neighborhood school or you pay tuition at a private institution.  This is not so simple for those living in the vicinity of the White House, Washington Monument, and Lincoln Memorial.  Many of these people are poor, and just keeping a home is their main concern.

Latin American Montessori, 835.  Lee Montessori, 482.  Mundo Verde Bilingual 1, 295.

Almost defensively, the PCSB states that over the last three years 11 new schools have been approved and over a dozen Performance Management Framework Tier 1 facilities have grown their enrollment.  But for the vast majority of the scholars on these waiting lists their admission to a high performing school will never come.

Shinning Stars Montessori Academy, 367.  Two Rivers 4th Street, 1,388.  Two Rivers Young, 474.

I am mentioning only those with the greatest numbers.  Other charters have waiting lists of 50, 100, or 150.  However, it feels like there is no urgency to do anything by anyone.  We wake up in the morning, have our breakfasts, perhaps kiss our loved ones, and head out for another day.

Washington Latin middle, 787.  Washington Latin upper, 256.  Washington Yu Ying, 944.

It is not uncommon to hear leaders involved in school reform talk about this issue as a civil right.  Nevertheless, today, there are no rights for people on these rolls.  There is only waiting.

Ryan Tauriainen, leader of the AppleTree Institute Early Learning Public Charter School’s Columbia Heights Campus, has won the Washington Post’s 2016 Principal of the Year Award.  It appears that Mr. Taurianen is an outstanding choice.  From the Post article by Perry Stein:

“When Tauriainen started as the principal at the Columbia Heights campus in the 2013-2014 school year, 66 percent of students were meeting the school’s target goals for language and literacy, and 82 percent were meeting math goals, according to Anne Zummo Malone, AppleTree’s chief of schools.

In his second year as principal, 95 percent of students hit their language and literacy goals, and 91 percent reached their math targets.”

Ms. Stein describes Mr. Tauriainen as a teacher’s principal meaning that he especially enjoys getting into the classroom and participating in instruction directly with the children.  He is also apparently extremely supportive of his staff, helping others to improve their pedagogical skills, and even paying for pedicures for educators that are having a bad day.

The 2016 Washington Post Teacher of the Year received some excellent training here in the nation’s capital.  He started out at KIPP DC and did a principal fellowship at one of the Friendship Public Charter Schools.  He then realized that he could have his biggest impact focusing on early childhood education.

The award is only the first step in Mr. Tauriainen’s future plans.   Ms. Stein quotes the AppleTree principal as asserting, “I just want to keep moving.  I wanted to run a building. Then I want to run a school system. And then after that, I want to work at the Department of Education so I can have an impact nationally.”

I have been a tremendous fan of AppleTree PCS for years and the institution’s effort to close the academic achievement gap.  I interviewed its founder and CEO Jack McCarthy back in 2014.  In addition, and not to take away from Mr. Tauriainen ‘s outstanding achievement, gratitude should be offered to  Fight for Children for the group’s strong support of improving the lives of low income kids.  Fight for Children was an early financial backer of Appletree, and Friendship PCS is a participant in the non-profit’s Joe’s Champs program for training teachers in early childhood education.

Congratulations Mr. Tauriainen on your award.

The D.C. charter school movement is leading the nation in transparency and accountability regarding our alternative schools.  The DC Public Charter School Board’s Performance Management Framework has been recognized as a best practice regarding data around academics.  Equity Reports provide almost any piece of demographic information about a school that the public would want to know.  Finally, the Financial Audit Review includes metrics on the health of schools regarding its use of money.  But after 20 years of public school reform there is still one important piece missing.

When the PMF was first envisioned it was being designed to provide a grade on governance.  Of course, how a school is governed by its board of directors is crucial.  The failure of individual charter schools has been directly linked to how that school is governed.

The subject never made it into the PMF but that doesn’t mean that metrics on quantitative measures in this area are unavailable.  Both the PCSB and Charter Board Partners have tons of knowledge about how our 62 Local Education Agency non-profit boards are operating.  They receive feedback on membership, turnover, self-evaluations, and whether they have in place the documents and procedures necessary to perform at a high level.  All of these factors could be assembled into some type of report card that could be made available to anyone seeking this kind of understanding.

The nation’s capital has led this country in the area of school choice.  It has been estimated that only 25 percent of our children attend our neighborhood schools.  Our charters now educate 44 percent of public school students with an enrollment of almost 39,000 pupils.  Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars each year are spent on this sector.  A natural question with this much invested is why can’t we at this point evaluate each school’s board of directors?

As more and more young families move into the District of Columbia the focus on the quality of the public schools will sharpen even greater than in the past.  Couples will find the inability to gain seats for their children in high performing charters so frustrating that it may drive them to relocate to the suburbs.  Even more disappointing to these residents may be the fact that even if an excellent charter school is located near their homes their kids may not get admitted because these are institutions of choice.

Simultaneously, Chancellor Kaya Henderson has been working nonstop on enhancing her brand.  All of these factors: the lack of availability of quality seats, the fact that charters are choice schools, and the significant improvement in the traditional schools, may shift public opinion and then public policy away from the alternative sector that now educates almost 39,000 pupils in 62 schools on 102 campuses.

Add to these pressures the severe lack of permanent facilities, the $100 million a year that the DCPS gets to which charters do not have access, and a regulatory body that only approves new  charters that will be Tier 1 on Day 1, and we have a situation in which our locality may decide that the whole charter experiment is just not worth all the effort.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I am not calling for the Public Charter School Board to turn their attention away from superior academic performance of their portfolio.  But at the 20 year mark of school reform I would have expected to be much further ahead.

By now the facility issue should have been solved, the revenue equity issue fixed, and a sufficient number of charters in operation so that their student bodies approximate those of neighborhood schools.

It is time to kick-start our local movement.

I recently caught up with Mary Shaffner, the executive director of the District of Columbia International School which is now in its second year of operation.  Ms. Shaffner explained to me that 404 students now attend the charter, with 176 children in sixth grade, 126 pupils in seventh grade, and 102 kids in eighth.  During the 2015 to 2016 term there was a student body of about 200.  Next year it is anticipated that there will be about 500 kids attending DCI.

Anyone who has met Ms. Shaffner knows that she is the definition of a go-getter.  Her story about landing at DCI is one of the best examples of this character trait.  After having her first child, the DCI executive director looked around for possible schools in which to send her offspring.  Although she visited some of the best public schools available at the time, little excited her about the environment.  She thought that there must be a way to make educating kids dynamic, more relevant to the outside world, and less about preparing for a test.  So she got together with about 11 other like-minded parents who had an interest in international education and the Chinese language.  “In the group was a lawyer, Andrea Lachenmayr; a writer, Lisa Chiu; an elementary school educator, Amy Quinn; and a special education specialist, Carmen Rioux-Bailey,” related Ms. Shaffner.  “It took us two years to create the charter.  We received fantastic assistance from FOCUS in forming the application.  Washington Yu Ying PCS opened its doors in 2008.  Amy Quinn is still the International Baccalaureate program coordinator at the school.”  Ms. Shaffner served as Washington Yu Ying’s executive director from the beginning until the end of the 2011 to 2012 school year.

Ms. Shaffner explained that the same problem that existed when she was trying to find a school for her child played itself out for the parents of students at the city’s bilingual charters.  There were simply no satisfactory public or private middle schools once the elementary years were completed.

In an unprecedented charter collaboration, five elementary school leaders joined to start DCI: DC Bilinqual PCS’s  Myrna Peralta; Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS’s Linda Moore; Latin American Montessori Bilingual PCS’s Diane Cottman; Mundo Verde Bilingual PCS’ Kristin Scotchmer; and Mary Shaffner from Washington Yu Ying PCS.  They all received permission from the PCSB to extend their charters so that DCI would exist, with Ms. Shaffner and Yu Ying the first of the group to ask permission to expand.

One of the major driving forces for creating another new facility that would go through the twelfth grade was the desire for kids to be able to obtain the IB diploma, which is the gold standard in international education.  It was the combination of IB with language immersion that was behind the motivation to create DCI.  Carmen Rioux-Bailey, the special education teacher referred to earlier who was one of those behind the start of Yu Ying, reprised her role again for the new middle and high school.  Andrea Lachenmayr, the attorney who was also part of the Yu Ying founding group, worked pro-bono on DCI.  The team spent a year ironing out the final proposal.

But not all went exactly as planned.

The original concept of DCI was that each graduating senior would get their diploma from their member school.  But Ms. Shaffner related that after the school was formed the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and the Office of the Chief Financial Officer informed her in May of 2014 that the city could not pay for educating their enrolled pupils.  The issue was that the school was not its own Local Education Agency.  Ms. Shaffner cringed at the thought of telling the parents that that they had to find another middle school for their sons and daughters at such a late date.  But then Councilmember Phil Mendelson and Deputy Mayor of Education Abigail Smith pushed through emergency legislation that corrected the problem.  Now all students at DCI attend one institution and will receive their commencement from DCI high school.

Now that the charter has had the experience of a year of instruction, Ms. Shaffner described the school as heading in the right direction.  “We have built a great culture,” the DCI executive director attested.  “Students have a lot of freedom here.  There are speaker presentations they can take advantage of participating in.  There are numerous clubs and after-school sports.  When a student comes here they will find a lot of choice, a sincerely caring environment, great intellectual thinkers, and an opportunity to join the IB program.  As part of the IB program students complete a community project in the eighth grade and a personal project in tenth.

The population of the school,” Ms. Shaffner added, “is exceptionally diverse, which is something the students greatly appreciate.”

Looking at sample student schedules, it appears that the kids are taught approximately 40 percent of the day in the language they are studying other than English.  Of course, they take classes dedicated to the second language as well as a class entitled Approaches to Learning, art, and history, as examples.

Ms. Shaffner is especially proud of the grant provided by the CityBridge Foundation as part of its Breakthrough Schools DC competition.  The award has contributed toward DCI developing student-led inquiry in which each scholar can create their own curriculum and course of study.

The DC International executive director stated that she and her staff consistently strive to find a balance between personal interests of the students and academic standards.  Everything the school does, according to its executive director, is geared toward advancing its mission to foster “inquiring, engaged, knowledgeable and caring secondary students who are multi-lingual, culturally competent, and committed to proactively creating a socially just and sustainable world.”  This includes, according to Ms. Shaffner, benchmarks that students must meet that are consistent with the mission.

The DCI community is excited that this summer ground will be broken on the school’s permanent facility on the site of the old Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  The building will be 170,000 square feet with a 25,000 square foot wing dedicated to an expansion of LAMB.  The new space will permit the charter to grow eventually to the 1,450 students included in its charter.  As Ms. Shaffner would say, the future of DCI looks exceedingly bright.

I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down recently with Hilary Darilek, the new chief executive officer of E.L. Haynes Public Charter School. She has the challenging job of succeeding Jennie Niles in this position. Of course, Ms. Niles is the current District of Columbia Deputy Mayor for Education under Mayor Muriel Bowser and the founder of E.L. Haynes.

In several ways, Ms. Darilek is the perfect fit for the task ahead. She is a native Washingtonian.  She was also a math and science teacher for two years through Teach for America during the organization’s first decade, educating seventh and eighth graders in a Baltimore City middle school. Ms. Darilek is obviously extremely smart. She received her undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary as a mathematics and economics double major and then went on to earn three masters’ degrees. She obtained a master’s of arts in teaching from the Johns Hopkins University, a master’s of science in operational research from the London School of Economics, and an executive master’s in leadership from Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business.

Following her work as a teacher, Ms. Darilek joined the RAND Corporation for three years as a quantitative analyst. She then left research to work for New Leaders for New Schools, ultimately becoming the managing director of the D.C. program that focused on training aspiring principals for local district and charter schools. Ms. Darilek was with this organization for four years, and it was here that she developed her strong appreciation for how crucially important the role of the principal is to the success of children in a school. New Leaders was a start-up at the time and her work there introduced her to leaders across Washington;  in D.C. Public Schools (DCPS); D.C. charter schools; and the many local foundations and non-profits working to support students in the city. It was at New Leaders that she first became acquainted with the efforts of Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson. Ms. Darilek was inspired by the changes she saw happening in DCPS, and was so impressed that she took an opportunity to join their team.

For six and a half years she served as DCPS’ deputy chief for principal effectiveness focused on principal recruitment, selection, development, compensation, and evaluation. While there, she led the creation and development of the Mary Jane Patterson Fellowship for aspiring principals. DCPS launched this internal program by leveraging internal resources combined with support from the U.S. Department of Education’s Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grant program, the CityBridge Foundation, and others.

This was a time when it appears everything was crystallizing for Ms. Darilek around what it really takes to change the culture and practice in our nation’s public schools. She was also working with Chancellor Kaya Henderson to help Georgetown University launch a version of its executive master’s in leadership degree program for an annual cohort of 25 DCPS principals. Together with Georgetown professors, she helped make this learning opportunity even more relevant to public school principals. When there was an extra space in the inaugural cohort of students, she asked and received permission from Chancellor Henderson to enroll.

I asked Ms. Darilek what she had learned. “Great people change schools,” the E.L Haynes CEO answered without hesitation. “True positive change comes from having excellent teachers and principals and then giving them the tools they need to perform their jobs.” But she had much more to say on this subject.

“There are six elements to creating really good schools,” she opined. “First, it starts with really solid instructional knowledge. Then there has to be an understanding by the principal as to how to lead people in the building. Closely associated with the idea of leadership is the ability to form a strong culture of learning for both adults and students. I have also found that family and community engagement plays a vital role in creating great schools.”

The fifth element to forming excellent schools, according to Ms. Darilek, revolves around operations management. School leaders must know how to efficiently allocate scarce resources. Lastly, she pointed out that a principal must have strong personal leadership. “The individual should be skillful in communication and understanding students’ unique cultural needs. She or he must be able to admit failure and know how to keep going. It takes a true knowledge of oneself.”

Ms. Darilek summarized all of her points by simply stating that “what makes a great principal is what makes a great leader.”

The new CEO then revealed to me that for years before joining the school she was aware of the fine work going on at E.L. Haynes. When she was still with New Leaders she visited its classrooms. Ms. Darilek said that she could feel a powerful sense of community when she entered the building. She had in fact become a supporter from the very beginning of the school’s existence when it was located above a CVS drugstore. So when the position for CEO opened she decided to throw her hat in the ring. Ms. Darilek mentioned that she already has several goals in mind for the future of E.L. Haynes.

“Our mission is to serve every student,” she detailed. “We have a true commitment to understanding how race and equity impact our school community. When we are making a decision we strive to have multiple perspectives at the table. We are deliberate in our goal of inclusion and listening to different points of view.  We will also continue to be collaborative in nature. E.L. Haynes will strive to raise the level of academic achievement for all students in the city. Toward this end when we discover a best practice we will share this with other stakeholders whether they be from DCPS schools, charter schools, or independent schools.”

According to Ms. Darilek, another aim of E.L. Haynes, and something that has been identified in the school’s VISION 2020 strategic plan, is to continue to build student leaders before they graduate from high school. Moreover, she indicated to me that in the school’s drive to have them accepted by the college of their choice, the staff also wants to figure out how best to support them at that institution.

In my short time with her I completely understood why Ms. Darilek was selected to lead E.L. Haynes. She has a gentle and kind personality. When talking with her you immediately get the sense that she would do anything just to help. Ms. Darilek concluded our conversation by stating how fortunate she feels she is to be in her position at this moment in E.L. Haynes’ history. “This is only the second year that we are not growing and adding a new grade,” she stated. “We have the incredible luxury of having our permanent facilities in place. In fact, we just completed the addition of a new turf field and track at the Kansas Avenue N.W. location.  We can now focus on what happens in classrooms and continually improve to make our mission a reality. Our drive is to serve a diverse student body and continue to achieve academic success with every student in the school community.”

Clearly, E.L. Haynes PCS is in exceedingly competent hands.

This morning the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools released a follow-up report on the strength of the charter school movement in each of the 50 states.  Washington, D.C. is number one on the list.  It was in the same position when the initial study was published by this organization in 2014.

According to the Alliance the states at the top of the rankings share the following characteristics:  “they have a large percentage of students in charter schools, strong rates of new schools opening and they serve a significant amount of historically underserved students.  They also measure high on innovation – meaning they have a diverse array of school models, and on quality – meaning their charter schools are showing strong academic gains.”

One reason that the results are impressive is that the NAPCS raised the bar when reviewing each locality compared to two years ago by doubling the number of quality metrics used in its evaluation.  The findings are also especially noteworthy because D.C.’s charter school law, while strong, is not recognized by this group as the best in the nation; it reaches the twelfth position in comparison to the Alliance’s model legislation.

I congratulate the DC Public Charter School Board on this great achievement.  As an oversight organization it has already won many accolades.  But there are two roles that the PCSB plays.  It is both a regulator and promoter.  At this point in the evolution of our movement the promotion side is the one that I would desperately like to see enhanced.

For example, lets take a look at the list of schools that I have written about over the last week.  These include Washington Latin PCS, Two Rivers PCS, and Washington Yu Ying PCS PCS.  Each of these schools has a waiting list of around 1,000 students.  Recently, the head of Lee Montessori PCS invited me over just for a discussion of charters in the nation’s capital.  During the conversation I learned that his institution has another 1,000 kids wanting admission who cannot get in.

That’s 4,000 of the 22,000 currently on waiting lists.  And what is the PCSB doing about adding capacity for families with young children living here?  I’m not sure that it sees this as within its scope.

These parents want what every parent wants: the best for their children.  Don’t be surprised if the recent growth in our school-aged family population begins an exodus once again to the suburbs in the search for a good public education.

Although I have witnessed firsthand some truly amazing sights over my seven years covering the D.C. charter movement, I can honestly say that I was overjoyed during my recent visit with Maquita Alexander, the head of Washington Yu Ying PCS. This Chinese language immersion school currently has 552 students in grades pre-Kindergarten three to fifth. The charter, which opened in the fall of 2008, was started by a dozen parents who were fascinated by the Asian culture and language together with a strong desire for their kids to have an international education. Ms. Alexander came into her position a year after Yu Ying became a reality.

Immediately after meeting this head of school you get the feeling that she never really stops working. Information I requested was available immediately at her fingertips. Ms. Alexander seems so intertwined in the details of what is taking place at the school that I’m hoping at the end of the day she is able to sit back and enjoy all that she and her team have created.

It may be that Ms. Alexander’s drive evolved from her years of experience in the field of education. She has played a multitude of roles in her 19-year career, from being a first and second grade teacher, a reading recovery specialist, a school-based technology specialist, and an assistant principal. Fifteen of those years were spent in Fairfax County Public Schools.

Washington Yu Ying is housed on a sprawling three-acre campus complete with a playground, turf field, and nature center located near the Old Soldiers Home in Northeast D.C. The redbrick building, which looks straight out of an Ivy League college, originally was a Marist seminary that was used by the troubled Joz-Arz Public Charter School before it relinquished its Board of Education charter in 2006. Washington Yu Ying’s previous executive director Mary Shaffner, now the executive director of the D.C. International Public Charter School, played a major role in securing the building which now measures approximately 50,000 square feet after the current occupant augmented the space with two 10,000 square foot additions. Before moving into this permanent facility in the fall 2011, Yu Ying shared a Building Hope charter school incubator space with Potomac Preparatory PCS on Eighth Street, N.E.

The aesthetics of the site is in perfect alignment with the high level of academics going on inside. For example, pre-kindergarten three and four year olds spend their entire day speaking Mandarin. Ms. Alexander wanted me to know that the kids almost universally love learning this language, something I can attest to seeing the broad smiles on their faces as I visited the brightly colored classrooms. Once the children reach Kindergarten then English language classes are paired with those across the hall taught in Chinese. The same pattern repeats though the fifth grade, with pupils learning in English one day and Mandarin the next. Ms. Alexander explained that the rotation between classes does not involve a repeat of the same material in two languages. “The teachers coordinate their lesson plans,” the Yu Ying head of school related, “so that each session adds content to those the students just experienced.”

Besides language immersion, a crucial component of the Yu Ying curriculum is the International Baccalaureate program. Ms. Alexander stated that this course of study begins in pre-Kindergarten three in Mandarin. The pre-Kindergarten four and younger students take four trans-disciplinary units and the older students take six. The combination of the Chinese language with I.B. has led to Yu Ying being quantified as a Tier 1 charter on the PCSB’s Performance Management Framework for each of the three years that schools have been ranked. The school is doing so well that there are over 1,000 children on their waiting list.

But I wanted to know from Ms. Alexander what other factors have led to her institution’s outstanding success. It appeared from her immediate response that she has thought about this question before. “We have a tremendous leadership team that has been in place for the last couple of years,” the Yu Ying head of school responded. “We have a fantastic teaching staff. They are completely passionate about what they do. To support them we have half day Friday for professional development and team planning. This is in addition to two weeks of professional development before the start of the school year and additional days throughout the term. We have created an exceptionally interesting curriculum together with the central idea of the Common Core, but simultaneously we provide latitude around how the teachers present the material to their pupils.”

Ms. Alexander informed me that the school’s staff spends considerable time analyzing student data. They utilize a test that is a predictor of how students will perform on the PARCC, and data specialists create dashboards documenting each child’s progress. Several layers of intervention are available for kids who are falling behind.

The Yu Ying head of school talked to me about the challenges inherent in her program to support a pipeline of qualified teacher applicants. “All of the Mandarin instructors come from mainland China or Taiwan and they must speak English,” Ms. Alexander remarked. “We sponsor them on visas and green cards, and have a partnership with two universities. There is, however, a lottery for visas and as a result we don’t get to keep as many instructors as we would like. The school also has had some interesting experiences with miscommunication. We try and mitigate these situations by assigning our foreign teachers English mentors, and we provide the Chinese teachers with cross-cultural training.”

Another fascinating aspect of the program that needed to be tackled is the whole nature of the dual immersion pedagogy. Ms. Alexander detailed, “Research shows that by the fifth grade students begin to catch up with their traditionally taught peers, but until that year it is important to keep in mind that they are getting half of the instruction in English that pupils in other schools receive. Therefore, our English teachers need to work twice as hard.”

Yu Ying has defied some of the recent fads in education by providing their student body with virtually no test preparation and not a lot of “skill and drill.” Ms. Alexander said that they substitute these activities with an emphasis on writing and having them think about, question, and analyze the material being presented.

Yu Ying has a 95 percent student retention rate, but the staff is still not completely satisfied. They want to better serve those who are behind grade level; in fact, they want to do the best for every child who attends the charter. The teachers and administrators continue to reflect on how to improve their practice, how they can better connect with parents in a transparent manner, and how everyone involved with the school can spend more time in the classroom.

Ms. Alexander stressed that she has a real sense of urgency regarding providing the best education to her students that she can. She commented, “No parent wants to waste a year of his or her child’s educational experience while their school learns how to improve. My kids didn’t have a year to waste. We have to do whatever we need to do now to help our student body learn to the best of their ability.”