School Choice

At monthly charter board meeting, public pushes back

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Yesterday, I attended perhaps the most exciting policy forum around public education that I have been to in decades. Sitting on the CATO Institute’s Hyack Auditorium stage were five educational entrepreneurs who have created highly innovative microschools. Three of the participants were able to take advantage of the existence of Educational Savings Accounts in the states in which they are located to fund their endeavors. ESA’s are dollars provided by states to parents for educational services for their children outside of those provided by the local neighborhood schools.

There is a new educational choice movement on fire in this country, much of it ignited by the closure of regular classrooms during the pandemic. According to CATO, “In 32 states plus Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, many families can use school choice programs to select the learning environment that works best for their children.” I pictured Andrew Coulson, the former long-term director of CATO’s Center for Educational Freedom who passed away in 2016 at the age of 48 from a brain tumor, smiling ear to ear from above as he watched the event.

One of the panelists was Jack Johnson Pannell. Mr. Pannell had formed an all-boys charter school in Baltimore focused on helping those living in poverty. A friend introduced him to the universal ESA’s available in Phoenix. He decided to relocate his school across the country, establishing it as a Christian all-boys private school.

It was most likely not a difficult decision. By going the private school route this educator avoids all of the bureaucracy and regulation associated with chartering. In the audience was Shawn Hardnett, founder and executive director of D.C.’s Statesmen College Preparatory Academy for Boys Public Charter School. His eyes lit up as Mr. Pannell spoke, and why shouldn’t this be the case? His school had its five year review by the charter board recently and, for all its excruciatingly difficult work and the right to continue operating, here’s what it received:

“Statesmen PCS will develop and implement an academic improvement plan. At a minimum, the plan must include specific strategies the school will use to improve academic outcomes for all students. The plan must also include a description of how the school will measure its academic progress toward meeting its goals. Statesmen PCS will report on its progress implementing the plan in its annual report every year leading up to its 10-year charter review.”

“Additionally, Statesmen PCS will develop and implement a procurement contract compliance improvement plan. At a minimum, the plan must include strategies the school will use to improve internal procedures for both bidding and submitting procurement contracts. The plan must also include a description of how the school will measure the plan’s success. Statesmen PCS must comply with DC PCSB’s Procurement Contract Submission and Conflict of Interest Policy and Data and Document Submission and Verification Policy. Should DC PCSB recognize noncompliance, it will engage Statesmen PCS’s board about needed improvement or take additional action as appropriate under each policy.”

A shocking alternative to the energy I found at the CATO conference was observing Monday night’s monthly meeting of the DCPCSB. The sessions are held virtually, a reminder of the horrible days of the pandemic. The connection via Zoom made it clunky and awkward to connect sequentially the over 20 people who volunteered to speak as part of the public comment period. Almost all testified passionately against a proposal by the Mary McLeod Bethune Day Academy PCS’s plan to relocate its 16th Street, N.W., campus to Takoma Park Baptist Church located on Aspen Street, N.W. Apparently, the school failed to communicate or miscommunicated the move to those living in the area around the Church, including the ANC. The District’s charter movement is almost 30 years old but I found the entire two hour get together to be a replay of those that I first attended in 1999.

So, while listening to the back and forth discussion between members of the board and the school, I thought about the day that ESAs would come to the nation’s capital. Imagine a parent going on My School DC and picking a private school for their child instead of the regular one in their neighborhood. Then in the mail would come a credit card pre-loaded with almost $13,000 in educational dollars to pay for a year’s tuition in one of the 135 private schools that at one time operated as charters.

People are allowed to dream, aren’t they?

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools backs lawsuit to block opening of a public charter school

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Word came yesterday from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools that it has filed an amicus brief backing the efforts of Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond to stop the opening of the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Public Charter School. The Alliance’s senior vice president for state advocacy and support Todd Ziebarth, whose title in light of this action seems Orwellian, stated the following:

“Since the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board’s approval of a charter contract for a religious charter school, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools has stood firmly in solidarity with the Oklahoma Attorney General to declare religious charter schools unconstitutional and to affirm that all public schools must maintain their status as public, non-discriminatory, and non-religious for all.” 

“To this end, we filed an amicus brief with the Oklahoma State Supreme Court to proactively highlight that the Board’s actions to approve, contract with, and oversee the religious charter school violate the Establishment Clause.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Ziebarth, he is misunderstanding the United States Constitution’s First Amendment. But you do not have to take it from me. We now have a long line of Supreme Court cases that have given the green light to public funds going to religious institutions, most recently in Carson v Makin in which parents in Maine sued to be able to send their children to a Catholic high school in a rural area where traditional public schools are not located. As in this instance, just like in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris in 2002; Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc., vs. Comer in 2017; and Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue in 2020, the words of Chief Justice John Roberts in Espinoza rings true, [The blocking of the use of taxpayer dollars] “discriminated against religious schools and the families whose children attend or hope to attend them in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the Federal Constitution.”

Mr. Drummond goes on to remark, “All charter schools are public schools. The National Alliance firmly believes charter schools, like all other public schools, may not be religious institutions or discriminate against any student or staff member on the basis of sex, gender, race, disability, or religious preference.”

Agreed. Also concurring with this opinion are the founders of St. Isidore. The school’s website under admissions declares, “It is the policy of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School not to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, or disability in its programs or employment practices as required by Title VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.”

In light of the explosion of school choice plans across the country, this effort by the National Alliance to limit individual freedom appears antiquated. If the mission of the group as it asserts “is to lead public education to unprecedented levels of academic achievement by fostering a strong charter school movement” is no longer relevant, then it should go ahead and close up shop.

U.S. House Republicans may hurt D.C. voucher program in trying to help it.

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An article yesterday by the Washington Post’s Lauren Lumpkin stated that Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are trying to unbalance the three-sector approach to federal school funding in the District of Columbia to steer more money to private school vouchers. Remember that the three-sector approach has been in place since 2004, and was championed by Joseph E. Robert, Jr. , the Washington D.C. area philanthropist who passed away in 2011. It provides an equal amount of dollars to traditional and charter schools in addition to the scholarship plan. According to Ms. Lumpkin’s piece,

“Now, however, Republicans want to increase the voucher program’s share from $17.5 million to $26.25 million and cut D.C. public schools’ piece to one-sixth of the $52.5 million pot of funding — posing a funding crunch for the 50,000-student district.”

The justification for changing the formula is that costs to educate children have gone up dramatically in recent years. According to John Schilling, an educational consultant who for years worked at the American Federation for Children, “The Opportunity Scholarship Program desperately needs more funds. . . There’s tremendous demand for the program, and the reason the program needs more money is because it’s been flat-funded.” Mr. Schilling goes on to explain that due to inflation each scholarship is larger in size, which has translated into a lower number of children who can take advantage of them.

However, this move is fraught with risk. In the District, Mayor Muriel Bowser has been a consistent supporter of the Opportunity Scholarship Program. This makes logical sense in that it brings thousands of dollars each year to the regular schools and charters. But if DCPS loses this revenue I could see the chief executive changing her mind. In 2017, when the SOAR Act that funds the OSP was up for Congressional renewal, a majority of the D.C. Council wrote Congress opposing the voucher program and arguing that it should be shut down. President Biden has stated that he wants to end the program in fiscal year 2023.

My view is that if Republicans want to increase the dollar amount of the scholarships, they should also provide an equal amount to charters and DCPS to maintain the three-sector approach.

Michelle Rhee credits charter schools with DCPS academic achievement

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A tremendous thank you to Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, for alerting me on Twitter of the most recent podcast by Education Next. The recording features my new friend George Parker, past president of the Washington Teachers’ Union and now senior advisor, school support for the National Alliance, and Ms. Michelle Rhee, who needs no introduction. The two engaged in a highly fascinating conversation regarding the groundbreaking union contract the two negotiated when Ms. Rhee was Chancellor of Washington, D.C.’s traditional school system in 2010. The contract would eventually lead to Mr. Parker being voted out of his position.

At the start of the discussion, moderator Paul E. Peterson, Education Next senior editor, explains that following the implementation of the labor agreement, DCPS, as measured by Mathematica, experienced substantial gains in reading and math for fourth grade students, and rising standardized test scores in reading in eighth grade pupils, but not a corresponding increase in math. Mr. Peterson asked Mr. Parker to characterize the contract. “It was the first union contract that was focused on the child and the teacher,” Mr. Parker intoned.

As background, please recall that this contract was truly groundbreaking in that for the first time in the history of public education a teacher’s performance evaluation was tied to student academic results. Moreover, it did not play an insignificant part. Fully fifty percent of the final rating was dependent on standardized test scores. In addition, instructors could earn substantial pay bonuses, up to $20,000 a year, for rises in academic marks. The agreement also reduced the power of seniority regarding job transfers and made it simpler to terminate a poor performing teacher.

When is was Ms. Rhee’s turn to speak, Mr. Peterson was most interested in the factors that created an environment in which it was possible to obtain such significant changes in the working relationship between teachers and management. Ms. Rhee recalled the unique educational ecosystem of reform present at the time. She said that the District had one of the bravest politicians she has ever seen in Adrien Fenty being elected Mayor. Soon after coming into office Mr. Fenty was able to achieve mayoral control of the regular schools. Ms. Rhee discussed the additional resource allocation the system was able to realize due to closing of under enrolled sites. She revealed that the sector received new philanthropic dollars to support the new pay for performance. Then, eight minutes and twenty seven seconds into the discussion, she dropped the bombshell.

Ms. Rhee explained that there was a strong choice dynamic in place. There were charter schools and there was the federally administered private school voucher program. She asserted that even for those who did not want change, people realized they had to do something because with these options available for parents “in ten years there will be no D.C. public schools.”

So there you have it. You can listen to the statement yourself. While there has been a highly intense debate in education circles as to what led to the strong academic achievement prior to COVID in PARCC and NAEP scores for students in public schools in the nation’s capital, we now have irrefutable proof of the cause. No one had a closer front row seat as to what took place in classrooms than Mr. Parker and Ms. Rhee.

Washington Post editorial board takes 20 year U-turn on private school vouchers

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A potentially dangerous change in opinion by the Washington Post editorial board revealed itself the other day in a column entitled, “The Supreme Court is eroding the wall between church and state.” The piece was decrying the United States Supreme Court’s decision regarding Washington State high school football coach Joseph Kennedy, who once led religious prayers at the fifty yard line after games. The Post editors commented on the court’s finding in Mr. Kennedy’s favor this way:

“A conservative Supreme Court majority is redefining the constitutional order — dismissive of Americans’ privacy rights, committed to dangerous pro-gun dogmas and, as the court showed twice this month, alarmingly permissive of mixing religion and government.”

It is not the newspaper’s opinion on Kennedy v Bremerton School District that I find worrisome. It is the concluding paragraph in its editorial that generates concern:

“Along with another court decision earlier this month, in which the justices ordered the state of Maine to finance tuition at religious schools under a statewide voucher program, the majority appears determined to rule in favor of those seeking to use government resources to advance their religious beliefs — and against those who object to dismantling the wall between church and state.”

Now, here is the problem. The United States Supreme Court has been a defender of the right of parents to utilize private school vouchers in sectarian institutions beginning in 2002, with Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the case in Cleveland, Ohio won by Clint Bolick when he worked for the Institute for Justice. Before that ruling was issued the editorial board made this argument:

“In principle, there is no reason why a carefully designed voucher program should offend the Constitution. The money is given to parents, not directly to schools, and it flows to schools only as a function of parental choices about where to send their children. In this sense, vouchers are not all that different from other programs the court has already upheld — though approving them is a step the justices have not previously taken. The key is for the justices to avoid using a broad principle that would allow more direct aid to parochial schools.”

The Post started writing editorials supporting school choice programs involving religious schools following my meeting with columnist Colbert King in the summer of 1999 in which I asked him to publicly argue in favor of a private school voucher plan for the District of Columbia. Mr. King was the deputy editorial page director from 2000 to 2007. This backing was critically important since public policy makers, include Supreme Court Justices, often read the Washington Post. The role of this newspaper in the national fight for increased school choice was recognized by Mr. Bolick in his book Voucher Wars in the aftermath of the Post editors coming out in opposition the the Milwaukee school voucher program:

“And only a few years later, the Post abandoned its reticence and became one of the nation’s most consistent and influential backers of school choice experiments,” (page 58).

The newspaper has stayed the course for two decades. Last year, the editorial board wrote one of its strongest defenses of school choice reacting to Congressional attempts to shutdown Washington D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program in a piece entitled, “Why are unions and Democrats so opposed to giving poor children a choice in schooling?” Please pay careful attention to the reference to religious schools.

“It is striking how some foes of the scholarship program — and here we think of D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) — see no inconsistency in their opposition to this program and their support for the $40 million DC Tuition Assistance Grant program, which provides funds for college. Like the opportunity scholarship program, DC TAG can be applied to private schools in the metropolitan area, including religious schools, but unlike the opportunity scholarship program, wealthy families (with incomes up to $515,000) are eligible. Where is the logic in supporting a tuition assistance program available to affluent D.C. families and not one that only benefits very low-income D.C. families? To be sure, the quality of the city’s public schools has improved since the program was enacted — perhaps in part due to competition from school choice — but that doesn’t mean that poor parents deserve no choice in where their children go to school.”

The Washington Post’s editorial board’s recent missive on the U.S. Constitution’s separation between church and state is potentially an extremely menacing precedent.

Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss completely misrepresents upcoming U.S. Supreme Court school choice decision

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Last week, the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss wrote one of her “Answer Sheet” columns that was titled “Supreme Court Likely to Drop School Voucher Bombshell.” Ms. Strauss is referring to the case Carson v. Makin which will be ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court later this month. Here is a summary of the case: Maine issues educational scholarships to children to attend private schools when there is no local public school in the area in which they live. However, it prevents these vouchers from being used at religious institutions because the State believes it would then be violating the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Post reporter goes into hysterics to describe what would happen if the court decides in favor of the parents:

“In Carson v. Makin, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court is likely to require Maine officials to use public funding to subsidize religious teaching and proselytizing at schools that legally discriminate against people who don’t support their religious beliefs. A ruling in favor of the families would ‘amount to a license to outsource discrimination,’ according to Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder’s School of Education.”

She goes on:

“Welner also wrote that a ruling against the state could affect charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently operated. A Carson ruling in favor of the families may mean that states could be seen as ‘engaging in discrimination if they did not allow a church or religious entity to operate a publicly funded charter school as a religious school.’”

I was not exaggerating, was I? There are just three problems with her reasoning. The Supreme Court now has a perfectly consistent record of allowing public funds to go to religious institutions when they are providing a public function.

Year 2002: The Supreme Court ruled in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that parents could utilize private school vouchers to send their children to religious schools. The logic behind this finding was that the money for educating the students is going to the parents, not to support the school.

Year 2017: The Supreme Court ruled in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc., vs. Comer that funds Missouri was providing to enhance playgrounds at public schools could not be prevented from going to private religious institutions. As I pointed out at the time, the majority opinion stated that, “the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand.” 

Year 2020: The Supreme Court ruled in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that a Montana tuition school tax credit program could be utilized for children to enroll in parochial schools. In my post about this decision I included Chief Justice John Roberts’ comment that “The application of the no-aid provision discriminated against religious schools and the families whose children attend or hope to attend them in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the Federal Constitution.”

So now we have Carson. If history is any guide, then the Court will find in support of the Maine parents. By the way, this case, as well as Espinoza and Zelman were all argued by the libertarian Institute for Justice. Here comes another victory for this highly impressive group.

One final point. I have no problem with a charter school having a religious mission. I made the same argument when Center City PSC was created from the conversion of six Catholic schools. I have no doubt that the Supreme Court would support my point of view.

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg donates $200 million to charter schools

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A couple of days ago Cayla Bamberger of the New York Post revealed that former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg granted two charter networks, Success Academy PCS and Harlem Children’s Zone PCS, $100 million each in order to help them grow to accept more students. The money is only the beginning of Mr. Bloomberg’s investment in these alternative schools. His goal is to spend $750 million nationwide. The former Mayor told the Post:

“I don’t know that 30 years from now, when they don’t have the kind of life that we’d want for them you can explain to them what happened and why we were asleep at the switch.”

My point exactly. The pandemic has created a magnificent opportunity for charters. I do not understand why pro-charter organizations are not buying up vacant office buildings to house schools. I’m sure there are great deals to be had in the current marketplace. Is there no one in D.C. who will be embarrassed in 30 years that they did not act when they had the chance?

The DC Public Charter School is currently on a year-long pause for considering new schools and the expansion on existing ones. This needs to end now with the result being that it is simpler for new charters to open and easier to add more seats for those that are already operating.

I found interesting that the Washington Post’s Perry Stein found the need in her recent story about D.C. middle schools to talk about Mayor Bowser’s view of the expansion of the charter sector. The reporter wrote:

“While charter schools are independent, the mayor can have a role in shaping the sector and the Bowser administration has been considered charter-friendly. Bowser appoints the D.C. Public Charter School Board, which authorizes which charter schools can open and which must close for low-performance. She said she speaks with all her appointees about the need to approve only charters that address an unmet need in the city.”

Ms. Stein contradicts herself. She claims that charters are independent yet simultaneously points out that they are overseen by the PCSB whose members are selected by the Mayor. But this is slightly off topic. I just love the quote that Ms. Stein includes in the article from past charter board chair Rick Cruz regarding the growth of charters while many DCPS school are under enrolled.

“It means little to us and even less to many D.C. families to hear that there are thousands of seats in many schools that boast poor academic results.”

Right on! It is now time to wake up from our Covid-19 lull. Come on Mr. Bloomberg, District charters are ready to accept your cash. Who else is out there that wants to pitch in?

Membership on the D.C. charter board dwindling

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Last evening’s monthly meeting of the DC Public Charter School Board started strangely. Long-term member and previous vice chair Saba Bireda announced that this was her last meeting. Also on the Zoom broadcast for a short period was Naomi Shelton. She revealed that her last meeting was actually the August session. She had joined just to say her farewells. Both individuals received accolades from the remaining members of the board.

Recall that last June during a D.C. Council oversight hearing on the charter sector, Chairman Mendelson asked whether DC PCSB chair Rick Cruz and executive director Dr. Michelle Walker-Davis were aware of Mayor Muriel Bowser naming a replacement board member for Steve Bumbaugh whose term had ended, and whether she intended to renew the term of Ms. Shelton. Neither had any information. Now here we are at the end of September with Ms. Bireda having to step down apparently because she has accepted a position with the federal government that conflicts with her PCSB service and, as I postulated three months ago, Ms. Shelton will not get a second appointment to the board. This leaves the charter board with only four members. I cannot recall a time in the approximately twenty-five year history of the PCSB that the number of members has dropped so low.

I do not know if it is the impact of this terrible pandemic or the lack of support for his body from D.C.’s chief executive, but chair Rick Cruz appeared dejected. Or it could have been due to a general lack of enthusiasm by the populace for the charter movement as a whole. For also on this night, Ms. Walker-Davis announced that her organization is in the midst of reviewing the application process for new schools and for replication. Of course, this evaluation is long overdue, and I have called for years to make it simpler both for charters to open and grow. Charter school expansion has been much too bureaucratic. However, I was shocked to hear that because of this deliberation no new charter applications will be accepted until the 2023 cycle and all existing schools will also be prevented from adding additional grade levels until that time. Charter amendments for expansion of student ceiling limits will still be entertained. It felt to me that perhaps we should simply end this entire experiment in school reform.

Or maybe it already has stopped. Earlier in the day the Mayor mandated that all school employees and contractors, no matter what their role, will now have to vaccinated against Covid-19, without an option to skip the shot and be tested. This is something Rocketship PCS, Perry Street PCS, and Monument Academy PCS adopted weeks ago and a mandate that the charter movement should have led as it used to proudly set high standards. The DC Charter School Alliance went along with the move with founding executive director Shannon Hodge stating, “Charter school leaders and the DC Charter School Alliance are prepared to work together with Mayor Bowser, DC Public Schools, and DC Health to ensure we provide safe spaces to learn and adequately protect students and staff in the fight against COVID-19.” Really, what else could she say at this point?

As if all of this was not depressing enough, WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle reported last week that eleven charter schools have agreed to include an admission preference for at-risk students. The ability to offer this preference was granted to charters by the D.C. Council in 2020, and is in addition to admission preferences that include siblings of existing enrolled students, children of school employees, and special education students. As a school choice purist, I am fine with the admission advantage for siblings and employees but I stop there. In the most simple terms I do not believe anyone should be discriminated against when trying to gain a seat at these schools. The answer for charters wanting a greater proportion of at-risk students is to open more campuses that can serve these scholars, especially if we can accomplish this by taking over failing traditional schools. It is what we should have been doing for years.

Last month I observed a brief spark in our local charter ecosystem and I was hoping this was the start of a flame. It looks like the match has burned out.

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

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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.

Mayoral control did not fix D.C.’s public schools

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Yesterday, the editors of the Washington Post came out strongly against the suggestion by At-Large Councilmember Robert White that a committee be created to study the governance structure of D.C. public schools. They say that the move had one motive and that is to return DCPS to an arrangement in which it reports to the school board. In their piece the editors point out that Mr. White ran on the notion of ending Mayoral control. They wrote:

“Here is what is important: There has been undeniable progress in the city’s schools since mayoral control was instituted. A school system that was once unable to pay its teachers and ensure that buildings were ready for the first day of school has been completely transformed. There have been increases in student achievement across all student groups, and the national report card, the gold standard of testing, has shown D.C. to be one of the fastest improving systems in the country. Additionally, there is a flourishing public charter school sector that offers worthy choices to parents. There is no question that there is still much more to be done. Far too many children can’t read or do math, and the achievement gap between students of color and their White peers persists; new urgency is needed in addressing these challenges.”

But here is where the Post editors are confused. The improvement in the traditional schools had nothing to do with who was in charge. The tremendous change in DCPS came due to competition from the charter sector. I know, because I watched all of this take place being an active participant as a charter school volunteer tutor, board member, and through my coverage of the movement.

Just to recap. As soon as the first charter school opened parents rushed to place their children in these facilities. Their decision was not primarily to provide their offspring with a better education, although that was a consideration. The driving concern was over the safety of their sons and daughters. The regular schools were routinely filled with gang members, drugs, and weapons. As I’ve written many times, it was often safer during this period to keep your kids home than to send them to the neighborhood schools.

As more charters opened, DCPS lost more of its pupils. Those of us who believe in school choice were waiting for DCPS to react, since funding was tied to how many students a school taught. Shockingly, it took DCPS losing more than twenty-five percent of its enrollment before we saw the election of Mayor Fenty over his campaigning on a promise to fix the schools. He brought Mayoral control, Chancellor Michelle Rhee, and modernization of school buildings that really should have been condemned due to their poor physical condition.

The Washington Post editors do get something perfectly right. There is much more work that needs to be done. This is why I’m struggling. If charters are what caused all schools to increase in quality, then why not have more of them? Will the editors heed my call to turn traditional schools over to the sector that has driven academic standards to soar? Why don’t we allow the competition for students to permanently close the academic achievement gap?

Again, as I’ve written on numerous occasions, now is the perfect opportunity to make such a dramatic change. Schools are mostly closed and trying to figure out how to reopen. Let’s give the regular schools the freedom and opportunity to re-cast themselves as a new version of themselves by offering them self-governance. I concur strongly with the Washington Post editor’s closing statement: “new urgency is needed in addressing these challenges.”