OSSE

D.C. State Superintendent of Education takes new job

mlerner10 Covid-19, Mayor Bowser, OSSE, Standardized Test Scores Leave a comment

WAMU’s Tom Sherwood just reported on X that D.C. State Superintendent of Education Dr. Christina Grant is leaving her post to become the executive director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. According to today’s news release from CEPR, Ms. Grant has been at OSSE since 2021.

The announcement is fitting and completely in sync with Mayor Muriel Bowser’s schizophrenic view of the District of Columbia. Allow me to explain.

Last Friday I attended the D.C. Policy Center’s conference regarding the release of their study entitled “State of D.C. Schools, 2022-23: Challenges to pandemic recovery in a new normal.” The entire meeting came across as bizarre to me. All in attendance, including educators, local education leaders, and policy people, were in a tremendously good mood. It seemed that everyone was congratulating themselves and each other on the tremendous job being done to teach young people in our city. The opening remarks were provided by Ms. Grant and she stayed throughout the hour-long conference. I had not had the opportunity to observe the State Superintendent in action. I have to say I was impressed. Her words were highly enthusiastic and she remained that way upon returning to her seat. Sitting a few rows behind her I saw the Superintendent shaking her head affirmatively to all that she heard, while often using hand motions or clicking her fingers to show her complete support for the comments of panalists. At various points I thought she might just fly above the room. When I came home I actually commented to my wife that I could not imagine someone over this government agency being so animated as much of what OSSE does revolves around data collection and grant compliance.

There was absolutely no hint by Ms. Grant or others that she had accepted a new position. There was also little regard for the 2021 to 2022 PARCC standardized test results that demonstrated 31 percent of students in D.C. are proficient in English Language Arts, while 19 percent of students are proficient in math. My mood soured as the disconnect between the dismal state of academic achievement in the nation’s capital and the euphoria of the audience looked like a scene depicted in a surrealistic painting.

I have had time recently to watch online Mayor Bowser at various events around town. Her optimistic outlook seems an insult to what many are experiencing recently in the District. Allow me to give you an example. On my way to the Martin Luther King Library to join the Policy Center event, I arrived at 9 a.m., a half hour before the library opened. It allowed me to witness all the people sleeping in front of the structure . As I walked around the block looking for someplace to eat breakfast I saw building after building of vacant storefronts. The smell of marijuana filled the air. The streets were almost completely void of pedestrians. Considering all the crime that has been taking place in the city I was afraid to be there. The only way to describe the scene in comparison to before the Covid pandemic is night and day.

It is probably best that Dr. Grant is moving to Cambridge. I wonder how much longer she could have kept up the ruse.

The DC Bilingual PCS new addition Ribbon Cutting

mlerner10 Charter School Expansion, Charter School Facilities, Charter Schools, Mayor Bowser, OSSE, PCSB Leave a comment

Last Friday, on a perfectly sunny crisp fall morning, hundreds gathered outside on the grounds of DC Bilingual Public Charter School to celebrate the addition a spectacularly beautiful 27,000 square feet addition to the existing permanent facility. The new space grows the existing structure by 55 percent, and, most importantly, will allow the charter to increase its enrollment from its current size of 494 scholars to over 700.

Head of school Daniela Anello led the festivities that included, besides students and staff, the presence of many leaders of the school, the District of Columbia’s education sector, and D.C. government. In attendance were D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, State Superintendent of Education Dr. Christina Grant; chair of the DC Public Charter School Board Lea Crusey; DC PCSB executive director Dr. Michelle Walker-Davis; and D.C. Council Ward 4 Council member Janeese Lewis George. Following an energetic performance by the Busy Bees, the school’s dance team, there were emotionally charged speeches by Mayor Bowser and the charter’s board chair Nadia Ramey, who both congratulated the school body on this important milestone. The next individual to address the attendees was Ms. Anello.

DC Bilingual is a tremendously successful school on many levels. For example, while educational institutions across the country posted declines in academic achievement coming out of the pandemic, DC Bilingual’s 2022 PARCC standardized test scores were the highest they have ever recorded. After interviewing the head of school in 2017 I came to understand that this attainment is due to a plethora of effort. Perhaps we can glean the reasons behind this feat from the words delivered by Ms. Anello on this day:

“Hello everyone my name is Daniela Anello and I am the incredibly proud Head of School at DC Bilingual.

Thank you for joining us for this special event. Today we will hear remarks from Mayor Bowser, who we are so excited to host, and from our Board Chair, Nadia Ramey. Then we invite everyone to join us in the ribbon cutting celebration. Afterwards, students will return to their classrooms and we invite our guests to join us inside for a reception featuring a historical display of the use of the land that we are so lucky to be on & have a school tour. We hope you will be able to stay the whole time.

Today’s celebration is in many ways the culmination of decades of work by literally hundreds of dedicated staff members, families, and supporters.

This is my fourteenth year working here, which means that I have had the privilege of have made DC Bilingual what it is today.

At the very beginning, our school was located in Columbia Heights and we had shared building space. We had a planter box as a school garden, a playground on the roof of the building that got extremely hot on sunny days, and for gym space we had to walk across several city blocks to the local neighborhood recreation center.

Today, we have the second-largest school garden in the city, two large, age-appropriate playgrounds, access to a large field, designated spaces for each of our six specials classes, brand new and well lit classrooms, a bilingual school library, and we even have a food lab!

We are very lucky–and I am so grateful we have access to so much!

Like many of our students. I am a first generation immigrant.

When I was four years old, my parents moved my sister and me to New York from Viña Del Mar, Chile in search for more opportunities and a better education.

Since then, I have spent my life trying to seize every opportunity presented to me, and I have learned first-hand the power of spaces that allow people to feel fully and completely themselves and to feel like they belong.

It’s a simple thing, but I’ve realized that experiencing a sense of belonging comes from having the opportunity to learn how to be our full selves and having access to resources with which we can thrive. Sadly this is something that not very many have the opportunity to receive.

This mindset is what drives me each and every day in my role as a school leader, and it’s the commitment I have made to our students, our staff and our caregivers.

Over the next five years we are looking to grow our school to serve over 700 students, and our dream is to ensure it remains a beautifully diverse and thriving school community.

This year we adopted the equitable access preference, which gives school entry to any student experiencing homelessness, who is in the foster care system, or receives government benefits. Our dream to grow our school to serve the students we know need the highest quality education came true.

DCB Staff: I feel incredibly honored to be able to serve you in this capacity , and I do not take for granted what it means to me to be part of this learning community here with you, working each day to better serve our students. Your dedication to our mission, your drive and your ability to go “all out” is contagious — even if it means having to join you on a choreographed dance to Olga Tanon in front of the whole school!!

To our parents & caregivers: thank you for choosing DC Bilingual to be part of your family, thank you for being part of our school team, and thank you for trusting us each day with your incredible children. We love them, we are inspired by them, and we are grateful for the chance to be a part of their lives.

To the DC Bilingual Board of Directors: thank you for helping our students follow their dreams, for opening new doors for us, and for always steering our ship in the right direction.

To our donors, and volunteers: you made this all possible, and we hope to make you proud.

To our Mayor, our councilmembers, ANC commissioners & our school partners: thank you for working hand in hand with us to ensure our students are safe and have access to the resources that will ensure the best experience possible at DC Bilingual.

To our project team, Gilbane Construction, Hord Coplan Macht (HCM), and John Breyer. Thank you for the design and construction of the building addition. The added facilities and outdoor spaces are more beautiful than we ever imagined, and we can’t wait to grow to fill all of our new spaces that you built for us.

And finally to our students: You are amazing. I urge each of you to seize every opportunity presented to you and that you proudly become bilingual scientists, mathematicians, avid readers, gardeners, cooks, performers and much more. But most importantly, I wish for you to become fully and completely yourselves. Know that you deserve all of this and remember that you always belong.

At DC Bilingual we have a tagline–“juntos somos lideres” or “Together we LEAD” This tagline couldn’t be more true for all of us right now. Let’s seize the opportunity to lead together and make sure everyone feels safe and welcome in the spaces we create. Thank you for being part of the DC Bilingual community. Juntos Somos Lideres!”

Public school reform advocates should vote for Muriel Bowser for D.C. Mayor

mlerner10 Charter School Facilities, D.C. Council, DCPS, Mayor Bowser, OSP, OSSE, PCSB, SBOE Leave a comment

I have to admit that Robert White Jr.’s comments on public education scare me. As WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle pointed out, when the Mayoral candidate was asked during a May 4, 2022 debate as to whether schools should remain under the control of the city’s chief executive, he apparently answered in this way:

“We need a mayor who’s not just going to go to the easy talking points, but who’s going to get in the details. And this mayor has not gotten into the details. And that’s why she doesn’t have a clear understanding of why so many students are leaving our schools. Right now, 30% of elementary school students leave D.C. Public Schools before middle school. There is an urgent problem, and we need a mayor with a sense of urgency on public education.”

Mr. White’s vague answer on this critical issue brought a strong response from current Mayor Muriel Bowser, according to the WAMU reporter:

“D.C. residents want a mayor they can trust. And if your answer shifts depending on which way the wind blows, they can’t trust you with their kids. And the most important thing you have to do as mayor is provide mayoral leadership of the schools. I think it is a seminal issue in this race. And I think what we’ve heard are councilmembers who are equivocating and waffling. I’m straight forward.”

For close observers of the education scene in the nation’s capital, the unified opinion is that we cannot move backward to the time when the D.C. Board of Education ran the public schools. Going to a public school was dangerous then, and there was a distinct lack of pedagogy going on in the classrooms. The buildings were crumbling literally and figuratively. We just cannot allow this to happen after so much progress.

Mayor Bowser has been a supporter of public education reform but has not been as strong as charter school advocates have desired. She has consistently annually raised the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, the baseline money allocated each year to teach a student, but has lagged in her willingness to also increase the per pupil facility allotment. The most glaring weakness of her Administration has been the unwillingness to turn over surplus DCPS facilities to charter schools. While recent previous Mayors Adrien Fenty and Vincent Gray have given buildings in the double digits, I believe that Ms. Bowser has relinquished two. Her almost total avoidance of following the law when it comes to these structures resulted in an End The List Campaign in 2019 that mobilized the charter school community in an effort to force her to do the right thing.

The Mayor has also put pressure on the DC Public Charter School Board not to approve new schools. This is an area where the board has to find a way to stand up to her. Finally, she has been exceedingly slow to nominate replacement members to the PCSB.

Ms. Bowser has also been a steadfast supporter of continued operation of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, the private school scholarship plan for low income children living in D.C. A 2017 letter from D.C. Chairman Mendelson to the U.S. Congress to bring an end to the vouchers was opposed by the Mayor, and interestingly, was not signed by Councilmember Robert White.

There is one aspect of Mr. White’s proposed education program with which I strongly agree. I have advocated, as he is doing now, that the Office of the State Superintendent should be independent of the Mayor. I think OSSE should be separated from political pressure. However, although we agree on this one concept, I do not believe that education reform would be in steady hands if he won the upcoming election. Despite her failings in the area of public education which I have documented, Muriel Bowser is my choice for Mayor.

Friendship PCS Blow Pierce Elementary Campus’s Dominique Foster is D.C.’s Teacher of the Year

mlerner10 Charter Schools, Mayor Bowser, OSSE, PCSB Leave a comment

I received the following press release yesterday from Patricia Brantley, Chief Executive Officer Friendship Public Charter School:

Washington, DC) – Today, Mayor Muriel Bowser presented Dominique Foster, a pre-K teacher at Friendship Public Charter School (PCS) – Blow Pierce Elementary with the 2022 DC Teacher of the Year Award. The Mayor was joined by Acting State Superintendent Christina Grant and Friendship PCS Blow Pierce Elementary students and staff to surprise Ms. Foster with the award. The prestigious honor, which comes with a $7,500 prize, is awarded annually to a DC Public School or public charter school teacher who has demonstrated outstanding leadership and commitment to student achievement.


“Washington, DC has the strongest universal pre-K program in the nation, and it’s because of creative and passionate teachers like Ms. Foster who help our young people become curious learners,” said Mayor Bowser. “Thank you, Ms. Foster, for all you have done for your students and school community. Now, we’ll be cheering you on for 2022 National Teacher of the Year!”


In addition to receiving this honor, Foster is now in the running for the National Teacher of the Year Award<https://ntoy.ccsso.org/>, which is run by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). She will also receive an additional $2,500 to support travel to national conferences, workshops, and other professional development opportunities during her one-year term as 2022 DC Teacher of the Year.


“Throughout the COVID-19 public health emergency, Ms. Foster provided a high level of instruction and robust educational experiences during distance learning. When field trips weren’t possible, she brought the community to her virtual classroom, inviting special guests to share their lives and experiences with her young learners,” said Acting State Superintendent Christina Grant. “It’s so important that we honor teachers like Ms. Foster who go above and beyond their call of duty. Congratulations, Ms. Foster, for the well-deserved honor of being named 2022 DC Teacher of the Year.”


The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) also awarded $1,500 to two other 2022 DC Teacher of the Year finalists: Dr. Takeisha Wilson, a fourth grade English Language Arts and Social Studies teacher at Shepherd Elementary School, and Rickita Perry Taylor, who teaches medically fragile students and students with profound disabilities in grades K-2 at Turner Elementary School.


Foster has been teaching for 13 years, six of which have been at Friendship PCS Blow Pierce. She earned a bachelor’s degree in organizational communication from Xavier University and is currently working on a master’s degree in Montessori Education at Xavier. She has extensive training and experience in Montessori, Reggio Emilia, International Baccalaureate and Creative Curriculum approaches to learning and pulls from each to create an engaging and inclusive classroom learning environment for children of all backgrounds.


Foster began her career at Howard Road Academy Public Charter School in Ward 8, and has held kindergarten teaching positions during the school year and summer at two other Friendship PCS campuses: Woodridge International Campus and Southeast Campus. Foster also supports developing and maintaining a positive school climate through several Friendship PCS leadership roles, including a new educator mentoring program, the annual Friendship Blow Pierce Women’s Expo, a yoga instruction program, and tutoring for young learners and the school’s Early Childhood Graduation program.


“I enthusiastically congratulate Dominique Foster on this accomplishment,” said DC Public Charter School Executive Director Michelle J. Walker-Davis. “Ms. Foster makes learning an experience and believes her students, no matter how young, should have choice and voice in their learning environment. She lives and teaches by that philosophy every day which she is why she is the 2022 DC Teacher of the Year.”


Foster also has participated on committees and teams focused on the charter network’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including virtual learning and the school’s reopening plan. She considers the virtual learning experience during the 2020-21 school year one of the highlights of her teaching career. While she initially considered teaching Pre-K students through a computer screen a “formidable task,” Foster said the experience quickly evolved into “a life-changing experience we, as a class community, will cherish forever.”


This inclusive class community, Foster noted, involved parents, siblings and even neighbors who offered support, guidance, and encouragement during distance learning lessons that combined hands-on learning, family involvement and real-world connections to engage students of all backgrounds and abilities.


“Family involvement allowed learning to extend beyond the virtual classroom, as parents became active participants and even co-teachers in the daily lessons. Time spent in the virtual classroom space was limited but maximized, as each lesson and activity allowed for cross-curriculum integration,” Foster explained in her DC Teacher of the Year application. “My belief in making learning an experience transcended the traditional classroom setting and we discovered how to bring joy into learning on a virtual platform.”


For more information on the DC Teacher of the Year program, visit the OSSE website<https://osse.dc.gov/service/district-columbia-teacher-year>.

https://www.localdvm.com/news/washington-dc/2022-dc-teacher-of-the-year-announced-during-surprise-celebration/

It’s time for an independent Office of the State Superintendent in the nation’s capital

mlerner10 D.C. Council, DC Charter School Alliance, Mayor Bowser, OSSE, SBOE Leave a comment

There are two bills being debated currently in the D.C. Council regarding the reporting structure for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education in the District of Columbia. One suggestion is to have OSSE fall under the purview of the State Board of Education. This legislation should be dead on arrival since it reminds me of the terrible old days when the Board of Education contributed to our town having one of the worst run school systems in the country. No one wants to go back to those days.

However, the second proposal, authored by Councilmember Mary Cheh, comes out of more recent controversies around DCPS that arose four years ago. Beginning in November 2017, the traditional schools faced a trio of problems that came in quick succession. First, a study by WAMU and NPR found that many seniors attending Ballou High School should never have graduated. From their report:

“An investigation by WAMU and NPR has found that Ballou High School’s administration graduated dozens of students despite high rates of unexcused absences. WAMU and NPR reviewed hundreds of pages of Ballou’s attendance records, class rosters and emails after a DCPS employee shared the private documents. The documents showed that half of the graduates missed more than three months of school last year, unexcused. One in five students was absent more than present — missing more than 90 days of school. . . Another internal email obtained by WAMU and NPR from April shows that two months before graduation, only 57 students were on track to graduate, with dozens of students missing graduation requirements, community service requirements or failing classes needed to graduate.”

Then in February 2018, Deputy Mayor for Education Jennie Niles and DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson resigned after the D.C. inspector general had found that with Ms. Niles’ assistance one of Mr. Wilson’s children had bypassed the school lottery to gain admission to Wilson High School. She had been enrolled at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts but was not happy there.

That same month the Washington Post reported that OSSE had discovered that as many of half of the students attending the Duke Ellington School of the Performing Arts lived outside of D.C. but were claimed to be residents so the families would not have to pay tuition. The story stated that a lawyer at OSSE told officials in his organization to slow the fraud investigation “because of the risk of negative publicity during a mayoral election year.”

These incidents point to the problem of having OSSE report to the Mayor who also controls the traditional public schools. As Ms. Cheh indicates in her proposed legislation:

“However, in 2007, with the passage of the Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007 (“PERAA”), the SEO became the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, a change that came with much greater responsibility. OSSE took over a
number of responsibilities previously handled by the Board, including developing state-level standards and assessments, grantmaking, and, importantly, oversight of the District’s public schools. In addition, under PERAA, control of DCPS shifted from the Board of Education to the Mayor. For the first time, the District’s state level oversight body and its public school system were subordinate to the same person—the Mayor.

For this reason, OSSE is unlike any other state-level oversight body in the country. In every state, school districts answer to state-level education authorities, which are empowered to audit all school data and demand corrective action where an audit identifies areas of concern. In no other state does the state-level oversight body report to the head of a school system it oversees. This conflict of interest compromises the work of our Superintendent, risking the public’s trust in the integrity of our school data. Unfortunately, the effect of this conflict of interest on OSSE’s work is not merely speculative. In recent years, there have been concerning reports regarding OSSE’s oversight of our public school data, and failures to adequately identify errors or misrepresentations in data on student attendance, suspensions, and graduation rates. In these instances, it was members of the media—not OSSE—who identified these data issues and brought them to the public’s attention. In the normal course, such issues would have been identified as part of regular audits; that they were not raises genuine concerns about our audit processes and how OSSE oversees our school data. What’s more, at that time, it was reported that an OSSE attorney directed staff to delay a particular investigation because it was a mayoral election year.”

An independent OSSE would avoid the inherent conflict of interest that was established with PERAA’s passage in 2017.

I should mention that Shannon Hodge, the founding executive director of the DC Charter School Alliance, testified before the Council that she is opposed to both acts currently being debated about OSSE’s reporting structure. About Ms. Cheh’s suggestion she commented:

“Making OSSE an independent agency within the DC government, as the Office of the State Superintendent of Education Independence Amendment Act of 2021 (Bill 24-101) would do, would separate it from other agencies that it is deeply interconnected with. For example, OSSE and DC Health work closely together on a number of issues relating to the ongoing pandemic and need to be able to make coordinated decisions. OSSE simply needs the support and collaboration of every city agency to best accomplish their work.”

It is an unusual position because the new organizational structure of OSSE mirrors that of the DC Public Charter School Board. With the PCSB, the Mayor appoints the members but the body is run on its own. I say the council should pass this legislation.


Individual D.C. public schools are having to perform their own Covid-19 contact tracing

mlerner10 Charter School Facilities, Covid-19, DC Charter School Alliance, DCPS, Deputy Mayor for Education, Mayor Bowser, OSSE, PCSB Leave a comment

Yesterday, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson held a seven-hour public hearing to gather information on the process of re-opening schools this fall. The Washington Post’s Perry Stein covered the event, focusing only on the experiences of DCPS. For example, she writes:

“Publicly available data indicates that, as of Friday, D.C. Public Schools had reported 370 positive cases among its 52,000 students and 1,088 students were quarantined. There had also been 120 positive cases among the system’s 7,500 employees. The District has an asymptomatic testing program, but so far, it has failed to meet its goal to test at least 10 percent of students for the virus in every school each week.”

Ms. Stein leaves out the 43,857 scholars who learn in our nation’s capital charters, I guess because she insists that these schools are “publicly funded but privately run.” I mean really, if your job is to put into words what is happening in this town’s classrooms cover both sectors or simply refer to yourself as the government-run school reporter.

In her piece she documents parent complaints about how the year is going, including unstandardized procedures if a student tests positive, the lack of a virtual option for families that would rather keep their kids at home, and a dearth of study material when students have to quarantine. But here is the part that I found particularly disturbing:

“The union representing the principals has said the administration of contact tracing has wrongly fallen to individual schools.”

This statement appears to be accurate because the issue is also mentioned by DC Public Charter School Board executive director Dr. Michelle Walker-Davis in her testimony:

“And schools are adapting protocols to keep up with the evolving guidance. The flexibility afforded to LEAs in the interpretation of the guidance has put a lot of pressure and tough decisions on school leaders. Some of that flexibility, intended to account for the unique characteristics of each school community, has made it difficult to explain protocols and procedures to families to get them comfortable with safety plans.

We also hear contact tracing needs to improve. Currently, contact tracing is done at the individual school level by the school staff, based on guidance from DC Health and with support from OSSE. This process is burdensome, taxing already stressed educators, including those at our state education agency, whose primary focus should be on teaching and learning.”

Really, on top of trying to teach kids wearing masks all day and using energy that should be channeled to instruction on keeping scholars safe, the individual staffs of our charters need to contact trace? You have got to be joking. This is the best plan that Mayor Bowser, Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn, and acting D.C. State Superintendent of Education Christina Grant can come up with after all these months on planning? This is ridiculous.

I wish that the DC PCSB and the DC Charter School Alliance had listened to me. Charters have throughout their history taken matters into their own hands. When no one would provide them with a building, even though they are public schools, they figured out how to get them. When the payment from the city didn’t come on time they somehow managed to meet payroll. When a long line of education experts said they couldn’t close the academic achievement gap they produced standardized test scores as high as selective institutions.

The movement needs to stop feeling like they are somehow inferior to traditional facilities. Also, they have to end their fear of the Mayor. Charters must once again be bold in the face of all the odds stacked against them. That is the way we will reach the golden goal of equity.



D.C. parents and educators fight over bringing children back to in classroom learning

mlerner10 Covid-19, Mayor Bowser, OSSE, SBOE Leave a comment

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has mandated that children return to the classroom when DCPS starts school on August 30th. But many parents and instructors are raising concerns. Yesterday in an excellent article the Washington City Paper’s Ambar Castillo captured these issues as expressed at a State Board of Education meeting last Wednesday evening, which revolve around fear of the rise of Covid-19’s Delta variant, the inability of students to accomplish social distancing due to a lack of space, the fact that there is no available vaccine for children younger than twelve years old, and the lack of a virtual learning option. In addition, parents argued that lunch should be provided outdoors, which led Raymond Weeden, the Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS executive director, to explain that this is not possible for his attendees because of the large number of shootings around the school’s Anacostia neighborhood.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the City Paper piece was the revelation that the founder and long-term head of Achievement Prep PCS has now joined the DC Charter School Alliance. Sarah Lewis is listed on the school’s website as the interim CEO. Ms. Castillo wrote:

“Shantelle Wright, the DC Charter School Alliance Interim Director of Advocacy and Policy, expressed a need for “a citywide contingency plan should the District have an unexpected outbreak that puts schools remaining open at risk.” She said the alliance is asking the mayor to include charter schools when the city coordinates a protocol to tackle an even worse COVID caseload crisis.”

Ms. Wright is expressing a point of view previously expressed by the Alliance that is driving me up the wall. What happened to the days when charters took control of their own destiny? Isn’t it possible for the Alliance or the DC Public Charter School Board to devise a contingency plan for an unexpected outbreak? How hard can it be? Wouldn’t the answer be to return to distance learning lesson plans?

The DCPCS has granted permission to KIPP DC PCS and Maya Angelou PCS to offer limited virtual learning going forward. The board turned down a request for Howard University PCS’s request to do the same although no reason was given. Apparently, AppleTree PCS withdrew an initial request to be able to provide virtual instruction. Friendship PCS already has an online institute.

At the same meeting complaints were raised about Ms. Bowser’s expressed policy that school nurses will not be allowed to care for students or teachers who may have contracted the virus. This would be handled by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education. WTOP’s Acacia James captured Washington Latin PCS’s head of school Peter Anderson explaining that his school’s nurse resigned due to this condition. From her article:

“’When we pushed back on this, our nurse also tried to push back on this, was told nothing’s going to change and so she quit,’ Anderson said. ‘And so now we no longer have a nurse and we don’t know what the situation is going to be for us.’”

There is also controversy over testing. Ms. James stated that the city will cover the cost of testing ten percent of students. However, if a school decides to test more than this number, it will have to pay.

It appears that D.C.’s school sectors are about to begin a grand experiment of teaching children in person during a pandemic.

 

Mayor Bowser takes first step in charterizing all D.C. public schools

mlerner10 Charter Schools, OSP, OSSE, PCSB, School Choice Leave a comment

Last week, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced her choice to replace Hanseul Kang as the State Superintendent of Education. Ms. Bower’s selection is Christina Grant, who oversaw the charter school sector in Philadelphia. 68,364 students attend charters in Philadelphia across 68 schools representing 36.4 percent of city’s public school students. In Washington D.C. there are 66 charter schools located on 125 campuses educating 43,795 pupils. The Mayor’s press release on the nomination of Ms. Grant say this about her qualifications:

“She recently served as the Chief of Charter Schools and Innovation for The School District of Philadelphia, she oversaw a budget of more than $1 billion and a portfolio of both district and charter schools. In this capacity, Dr. Grant managed a complex organization, working closely with the Superintendent of Schools and the President of the Board of Education and Mayor’s Chief Education Officer. Dr. Grant’s career began as a public school teacher in Harlem; since then, she’s held numerous roles in education, including as Superintendent of the Great Oaks Foundation and Deputy Executive Director at the New York City Department of Education.”

Not mentioned in Ms. Bowser’s statement is that Ms. Grant was a teacher in New York City for a KIPP public charter school and that her role as executive director in New York City Public Schools involved managing the process for the opening of new charters. Following her stint with NYC schools, she moved on to become executive director of NYCAN, a New York City-based charter advocacy organization.

The Washington Post’s Perry Stein revealed that Ms. Grant received training at the Broad Academy, a pro-charter educational leadership program that is now run by Ms. Kang at Yale University. Ms. Stein mentions that D.C. Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn and Chancellor Lewis Ferebee also attended the Broad Academy.

When schools in the nation’s capital finally reopen fully in the fall I expect that Ms. Grant, in her effort to bring equity in education to all District students, will fight to expand the charter sector by replacing failing DCPS facilities with schools of choice.

Consistent with our efforts in public education to provide a quality seat to any child who needs one is an expansion of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, the federal private school voucher program in our city. But there are storm clouds on the horizon regarding the plan. D.C. Congressional Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton announced that as part of President Biden’s proposed budget he supports “winding down” the scholarships. Here Mr. Biden is following in the muddy footsteps of his idol Barack Obama, who stopped new entrants from participating in the O.S.P. when he was President, directly hurting students living in poverty. I think suggesting to make this move after a year of remote learning is especially heartless and cruel.

One more thought for today. When I tuned into the May monthly meeting of the DC Public Charter School Board I noticed that Steve Bumbaugh was not present. It turns out that his term had expired. I will greatly miss Mr. Bumbaugh’s presence on the board. His observations and comments were always insightful. He was an especially strong advocate for those on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder in Washington, D.C. Mr. Bumbaugh had a profound appreciation of the nature of school choice, and gave great deference to the opinions of parents as to whether a school under review should be allowed to continue operating.

His absence leaves a critical vacancy on the board.

In STAR system comparison with PMF, it looks like we are reliant on D.C. charter board measure.

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Last Friday, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education released its DC Report Card which ranks schools in the nation’s capital on a School Transparency and Reporting (STAR) framework of one to five, with five being best.  This effort is the result of the State Board of Education’s effort to comply with the U.S. Congresses’ Every Student Succeed Act which required that states offer a measurement of the quality of its public educational institutions as a substitute for the Annual Yearly Progress measure under the No Child Left Behind law.

Scott Pearson, the executive director of the DC Public Charter School Board, pointed me to the excellent analysis of the new grading scheme conducted by Empowerk12.  This is only the start for this organization as there is much more number crunching to come.  It offers in great detail a comparison between STAR grading and the DC PCSB’s Performance Management Framework.  I will not pretend for one minute to understand all the nuances of its conclusions.  But I can offer some overall general observations regarding our city’s charter schools after looking at the data.

My biggest question about the new ranking was whether it would replace PMF.  This issue appears clearly settled in favor of the charter board’s quality school reports simply because the OSSE STAR report does not include all schools.  Excluded are charters that have only early childhood education programs like AppleTree PCS.  It also does not measure schools at the other end of the spectrum such as those that focus on the teaching of adult students.  Alternative programs are also left out.

When you look at charters that offer traditional grades to a general population of students, the picture becomes murky for STAR in relation to the PMF.  For example, going down the list of Tier 1 PMF charters, these schools sometimes received a five, such as Washington Yu Ying PCS or Washington Leadership Academy PCS.  But they can also earn a three, as seen with Lee Montessori PCS and KIPP DC College Preparatory Academy PCS.  Most of the top tier charter schools get a four.  If I were a parent I would be shy about sending my child to a place that only received a three.  In addition, while I might favor a school labeled as a five, there are only a few that measured this high.

Where the PMF and STAR report more closely correlate is in relation to the lower performing schools.  Out of the six of seven Tier 3 charters that receive a STAR number, four receive a one ranking on STAR with two others getting a two.  The message to parents is that if it is academic quality that most interests you in a school, look for a number higher than two.

One weakness of the STAR grading system is that it includes five levels while the PMF only has three.  This makes the PMF easier to understand for the general public.  Although some have expressed serious problems with the charter’s board’s tiering, especially when it comes to schools with a large population of at-risk students, it looks like this is the best that we have at this moment in time.