Today it has been announced that Two Rivers PCS, the academically high performing charter that opened a new campus this school year, has won a $202,500 Next Generation Learning Challenges award. The grant will greatly enhance the school’s effort to develop an in-house assessment to measure the deeper learning skills of their students. In 2015, Two Rivers was selected for a two year $200,000 Cycle 1 Planning Grant with Breakthrough Schools: DC as part of their initial effort to create this assessment.

As I have written about in the past, the Next Generation Learning Challenges program supports over 150 new or revised blended learning schools since 2010 serving grades Kindergarten through twelve and higher education across the United States with a budget of over $21 million. Breakthrough Schools: D.C. is a $2 million grant completion partnered through NGLC and run by the CityBridge Foundation. At the end of 2013 I spent a day at the organization’s Education Innovation Summit to observe firsthand the presentations by schools seeking a Breakthrough Schools award.

Chantele Martin, the director of development at Two Rivers PCS explained to me that deeper learning, or 21^st Century skills, are abilities such as complex communication, collaboration, and critical thinking. Ms. Martin revealed that the assessment is currently in draft form, and is not tied to knowledge around specific content areas or subjects but instead looks at student abilities around the behavioral traits being measured.

It was not an easy feat to win this grant. Approximately 150 applications were submitted and 12 were approved. Two Rivers is by far the smallest of the groups provided with the NGLC grant and is the fine company of:

• The Colorado Education Initiative
• WestEd
• The Center for Collaborative Education
• Summit Public Schools
• New Hampshire Department of Education
• Virginia Beach City Public Schools
• Henry County Schools
• Hawai’i Department of Education
• Learning Policy Institute & the California Performance Assessment Consortium
• Fairfax County Public Schools
• Del Lago Academy – Campus of Applied Science

The money, among other goals, will allow Two Rivers to partner with experts in the field, such as SCALE, the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity at Stanford University, to validate the assessment. After this has phase has been completed, Two Rivers PCS plans to make the tool available to the public.

Yesterday, Washington Latin Public Charter School named Peter Anderson as its new head of school, replacing Martha Cutts who is retiring at the end of this term.  Mr. Anderson comes to Washington Latin from Hyde Leadership Public Charter School in the Bronx, New York, where his position is director of the elementary school.  Prior to working at Hyde, Mr. Anderson was the head of school for the Future Leaders Institute Charter School in Harlem and an associate head of school for St. Philips Academy located in Newark, New Jersey.

The press release revealing the change states that Mr. Anderson has over 20 years experience in the field of education after graduating from Haverford College with a Bachelors degree in sociology.  He also holds a Masters degree in sociology from the London School of Economics and a Masters degree in education from New York University. The announcement points out that Mr. Anderson was attracted to the job “because of his deep appreciation for Latin’s essential elements: classical mission, faculty excellence, diverse and integrated community, and academic success for all.”

Interestingly, Hyde Leadership PCS has a student population in which 93 percent of its students are classified as economically disadvantaged.  Latino students make up 63 percent of the enrollment, with blacks comprising 35 percent of those in classrooms.

Ms. Cutts ends her tenure at Latin after eight and a half years during which it has grown to 685 students and is widely recognized as one of the city’s highest academically performing public schools.  She was only the third leader of the charter, which is about to celebrate its 10 year anniversary.  The charter’s permanent facility is at the former DCPS Rudolph School in Northwest, D.C.

The Office of the State Superintendent of Education’s audited enrollment count for this year demonstrated that 38,905 students now attend charters, an increase of 3.2 percent from the 2014 to 2015 term.  The traditional school system also experienced growth in its student body, with 1.9 percent more kids signed up for a total of 48,439. This is the seventh consecutive year that D.C. public schools have experienced a jump in enrollment.

It is also the fourth year in a row that charter school enrollment as a percentage of all children attending public schools in Washington D.C. has remained flat.  This is a highly disturbing trend, especially in light of a 2006 study produced by Fight for Children that predicted that charters would reach the 51 percent mark by 2014.

Obviously, the growth of charters has not kept up with demand, especially in the face of the DC Public Charter School Board’s history of closing 55 campuses at the low end of the quality scale.  A recent Bellwether Education Partners report states that there are 22,000 kids on charter school wait-lists.  22,000!  Many of the best charter schools in the city have lines of those trying to get in of over 1,000 pupils.

So what is going on here?  Perhaps the goal is to restrict expansion of our local charter school movement.  I recall the commentary that came out just about a year ago by John “Skip” McKoy, the past chair of the Public Charter School Board, and Scott Pearson, PCSB executive director, which asserted that “the balance we have, with a thriving public charter sector and strong traditional schools, is about right.”

There is a bromide that says, “if you believe in something it will eventually become true.”  Well, here in the nation’s capital, often described as this country’s bedrock of public education reform, when it comes to the growth of our charter school sector we have officially reached stasis.

In another unanimous vote last evening the DC Public Charter School Board voted six to zero to close Potomac Preparatory PCS.  Potomac Preparatory is a pre-kindergarten to eighth grade school enrolling approximately 425 students and is located in Ward 5.  The charter was ranked as barely a Tier 2 school on 2014’s Performance Management Framework tool and the year before that is was classified as being in Tier 3.

Potomac Preparatory PCS first ran into trouble with the PCSB when it underwent its 10 year review in 2014.  At that time the board had found that the charter had failed to meet 17 of its 20 goals.  The board attempted to shutter the school then but the institution had initiated strong turnaround efforts and so the revocation process was terminated in return for the school meeting four specific conditions around academics and student attendance rates.  In an interesting addition last night to the procedure of shuttering a school, PCSB executive director Scott Pearson explained that the board had the Office of the State Superintendent of Education collaborate the quantitative measures used by the board to determine that the new goals had not been met.

One other note about this issue.  In December 2014, Potomac Preparatory amended its charter to include the revised targets with the understanding that if they were not reached the school would relinquish its charter.  But when it became clear that the charter had not lived up to its end of the bargain it refused to abide by the agreement.  Therefore, the board had no choice but to begin the revocation procedure.  Potomac Preparatory will cease operations at the end of the current school year.

This week D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser finally announced the 26 members of her Cross Sector Collaboration Task Force.  This is the group that is to determine over the next two years where charters and the traditional schools can coordinate their efforts to improve public education in the city.  The list was supposed to come out at the end of September.

Representing the charter sector are, of course, Dr. Darren Woodruff, chairman of the DC Public Charter School Board,  Scott Pearson, executive director of the PCSB, and Irene Holtzman, executive director of FOCUS.  Emily Lawson, founder and executive director of DC Prep is a member, as is Lars Beck, chief executive of Scholars Academies, Shantelle Wright, founder and executive director of Achievement Prep PCS, Ariana Quinones, who used to work for FOCUS and Fight for Children and whose child has attended a charter school, and Melissa Kim, secondary school chief academic officer of KIPP DC.   These names are no real surprises.  However, I might have included Michela English, CEO and president of Fight for Children, Katherine Bradley, president and co-founder of the CityBridge Foundation, and Maura Marino, managing director of NewSchools Venture Fund.

If you eliminate people in the Bowser administration, the body includes the same number of supporters of charters and DCPS.  This may be the first and only time there is true equity between the two sectors.   Now, according to my agenda, it is up to this team to figure out how to increase the speed in which high quality charters are replicated, how to attract more good charter operators to the District, how to bring revenue for charters up to the DCPS level, and how to free up surplus DCPS buildings for charter school use.  As you can see it is an extremely tall order.

What this effort is not about is limiting the amount of charter school growth or deciding where charters can and cannot locate.  It will be fascinating to see if the charter representatives can pull all of this off.

Yesterday I was able to attend a fascinating discussion over at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute entitled “The Future of Parent Choice in Washington, D.C.”   The conversation featured Scott Pearson, executive director of the Public Charter School Board.  On the panel to provide commentary regarding his remarks was Abigail Smith, the past Deputy Mayor for Education and chair of the E.L. Haynes PCS board of directors, and Cassandra Pinckney, founder and executive director of Eagle Academy PCS.  I had the pleasure of visiting Eagle Academy back in 2014.  The moderator for the afternoon’s talk was Michael Petrilli, Fordham’s president.

Mr. Pearson spent much of his allotted time speaking about how his organization is trying to increase transparency to the public regarding public school options in the nation’s capital.  He explained that one of the main tools that is now available for this purpose are the equity reports created by the PCSB, DCPS, the Office of the State Superintendent of State Education, and the Deputy Mayor for Education that document many of the key indicators regarding performance of our local educational institutions.  Using the report from Cesar Chavez Prep PCS for Public Policy as an example, Mr. Pearson took the audience through the document which provides information and statistics such as the ethnic composition of a school’s student body, math and reading proficiency rates, and the number of suspensions and expulsions.

I have found that the most interesting part of many conferences is the question and answer period, and in this regard this session did not disappoint.  I asked the speakers whether they thought charter schools should back fill available seats, and Ms. Smith had an extremely strong opinion on this subject.  “Anything that makes charter schools appear to be a little less than true public schools should be avoided.” She went on to indicate that E.L. Haynes admits new students through the twelfth grade and stated that as an organization the leadership believes this is an important characteristic for the school to uphold.  In response to my point that at yesterday’s monthly meeting of the PCSB it was revealed that DC Prep PCS does not admit students in the seventh and eighth grades, Ms. Smith explained that school founder and executive director Emily Lawson is currently re-examining this policy.

It was then Ms. Pinckney’s turn to comment, and her take was extremely interesting.  She explained that the reason many charters do not back fill vacant spots is that they are concerned about the quality of education that these students have received in the past.  Of course, many pupils enter charters two or more years behind grade level.  The worry is that there will not be sufficient time to catch them up.  But Ms. Pinckney’s contention was that it was the regulatory environment that encourages schools not to accept new students.  When you are being held to particular standards, she related, it provides a disincentive to enroll kids who will impact accountability measures.  Ms. Smith hoped that there could be a way to take into account the admission of students who have spent a relatively short time with an individual school.

I have thought deeply about Ms. Pinckney’s words since the forum ended.  She was able to highlight one of the main conundrums facing charter schools.  These institutions are supposed to be fountainheads of innovation in the way we teach inner city kids.  But at the same time, when they are held strictly accountable through report cards such as the Performance Management Framework, the impact can be to  dissuade leaders from deviating from past methods of pedagogy.   It is, unfortunately, something that these education pioneers face on a daily basis.

It has been awhile since I’ve observed the monthly meeting of the DC Public Charter School Board, and even more time has elapsed since I’ve sat through one in person.  So last night I traveled to the campus of Cesar Chavez Prep Public PCS for Public Policy to see the action up close.  It was a highly worthwhile decision.

A few quick observations.  I know that the board is trying to get out in the community by rotating meeting locations but the space last night was not adequate for the number of people in attendance.  Second, the composition of the board has changed.  Gone is member Barbara Nophlin.  She resigned last month with no explanation, and my questions about this matter to the PCSB communications director failed to shed light on the subject.  Two new individuals have joined the group. Steve Bumbaugh, from the CityBridge Foundation, is now on the board as well as Ricarda Ganjam, who has worked with KIPP DC on a college readiness program through Accenture, the company for whom she is employed.  Ms. Ganjam has three children in public school, one at DCPS’s Brent Elementary and two at Basis PCS.  I have to say I enjoyed her comments from the perspective of a parent.

The evening started with a routine request from DC Prep for a student enrollment increase, the third over the last 12 months.  School founder Emily Lawson was on hand to testify and she immediately received well deserved praise regarding the stupendous academic performance of her now five campuses with a student body of over 1,500 children.  But the niceties did not last long.  Rapidly came inquiries as to why students are not enrolled after the sixth grade.  This was followed by questions about DC Prep’s higher than average student suspension rate.  Vice chairman Don Soifer, who ran the meeting in Dr. Darren Woodruff’s absence due to illness, even hinted that her desire for more pupils was somehow tied to kids being taken out of class for punishment.

Ms. Lawson did her usual admirable job responding to the board’s comments, stating that her team is having discussions around admitting students in the seventh and eighth grades, and detailing the many steps they have taken to reduce out-of-school suspensions.  Look for the enrollment increase to be approved.

There was a long discussion regarding a student enrollment increase proposal from Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS.  A decision on this issue was tabled until the January session in the face of many people showing up to testify during the public comment period that parking around Edgewood Street, N.E., has become impossible since the charter relocated to its permanent location nearby on Douglas Street last year.

It was then announced that the PCSB was supposed to vote on whether to approve a new charter school applicant, Pathways in Education, which would have been part of a national network of schools serving at-risk students.  However, Mr. Soifer stated that the application had been withdrawn and the PCSB vice-chair seemed to be unaware of the reason behind the school’s action.

Next up was a consideration of the 10 year charter continuance of St. Coletta PCS.  Accolades were abundant from the dais for this institution that educates level four special education students.  Any contrary opinions  over this affirmative decision were avoided through the school’s cooperation with the PCSB  on separating the charter’s revenue and expenses from its private school parent company and thereby increasing its financial transparency.

Also on the agenda for a charter continuance vote was Richard Wright PCS.  Among those representing the school were my heroes, founder and chief executive officer Dr. Marco Clark and journalism and media arts coordinator Michelle Santos.  The discussion over whether to allow the charter to keep going past its first five years was much tougher than I thought it would be considering the tremendous academic progress this institution has made over its short history while teaching kids living in poverty.  The board was not happy with the math proficiency rates at the school and they let it be known loud and clear.  The staff, however, had obviously given this subject much thought and they demonstrated in clear and direct terms their efforts to infuse mathematics into every act of learning taking place at the charter.  The continuance was approved.

Finally came the moment the audience was waiting for, which was the decision regarding whether to start the charter revocation procedures against Potomac Preparatory PCS.  Many will remember that the board wanted to shutter the school last year for failure to meet its academic targets as identified during its 10 year charter continuance review.  The school convinced the PCSB that a serious turnaround effort was in place, and the charter was allowed to operate after a series of four specific targets were established for the 2014 to 2015 term.  The deal was that if these were not met the charter would have to be relinquished.  Last evening, Ms. Naomi Rubin DeVeaux, the board’s deputy director, announced that three out of these four goals had not been reached, adding that the board has been informed that the school had no intention of  voluntarily giving up its right to operate.

The atmosphere in the room was extremely tense.  Many of the attendees had already spoken earlier during the session passionately about their opposition to charter revocation.  Those testifying from the school strenuously disagreed with the board’s findings.  Shouts from supporters loudly permeated the discussion.

In the end the board voted unanimously, without comment, in fact, with an almost deafening silence, to begin the process of closing Potomac Preparatory PCS.  The school has 15 days to present their side of the story.  It looks like this fight is far from over.