D.C. students are being held accountable; the adults not so much

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The Washington Post’s Perry Stein reported on Tuesday about the students caught up in the inflated graduation rate mess that has engulfed DCPS:

“Taahir Kelly, a junior at Roosevelt in Northwest Washington, said he never knew accruing 30 unexcused absences in a course would automatically result in a failing grade. He has eight older brothers who graduated from the school, and they also did not realize that such a policy existed, he said.”

Tragically, there are going to be many Taahir Kellys this year.  Last week DCPS announced that the 2018 high school graduation rate is expected to be 42 percent.  Last year it was 73 percent.  That is a lot of students who, with three months remaining in the school year, are finding out that their future path is about to take a detour.  Again from the Post article:

“Kelly said he and his friends think the school’s attendance policy is reasonable. But they object to the sudden enforcement and believe the city should have waited until at least next year to adopt the tougher policy.”

The grownups in the traditional school system have let these young people down, pure and simple.  By setting low expectations and failing to hold these children accountable, they set them up for failure.  They have reignited the school-to-prison pipeline.

All I can really think about at this moment is Dr. Howard Fuller’s words at this year’s FOCUS Charter School Conference:

“On Feb. 1, 1960, 58 years ago today, four Black students from North Carolina A&T sat down at a lunch counter and demanded to be served. And by doing so they changed the course of history. And here we are in 2018: four Black students sit down at a lunch counter where they are welcomed and can’t read the menu.

Here is my question – quoting Beyonce from “Drunken Love” – How did this shhhhh happen?  It has happened because there is no real political commitment in this country to create excellence and equity for Black and brown children, particularly poor Black and brown children. And furthermore it has happened because we have allowed it to happen and continue to do so today. We talked about leaving no child behind a few years ago and now we are talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. In a few years there will be some new buzz words. We have conferences, give out awards, and praise ourselves for being awesome but where is the anger. Where is the outrage that year after year we continue to allow them and us to fail far too many of our neediest students.”

Three people that I am aware of have lost their jobs after it was discovered that over 30 percent of kids received high school diplomas who should not have been allowed to graduate.  This includes Jane Spence, the DCPS chief of secondary schools, who has been placed on administrative leave; Ballou High School principal Yetunde Reeves, who has been reassigned; and assistant principal Shamele Straughter, also been placed on administrative leave.  But both the Chancellor Antwan Wilson and the Deputy Mayor for Education Jennie Niles were able to stay in their positions until the latest controversy erupted about the transfer of Mr. Wilson’s child from one school to another while avoiding the lottery.

Today, the Post’s Peter Jamison revealed that Mayor Muriel Bowser is refusing to testify under oath in front of the D.C. Council’s Education Committee about Mr. Wilson’s discretionary school placement of his daughter.  Ms. Bowser has asserted she learned of it on February 12th from the D.C. Inspector General.  Mr. Wilson now states that the Mayor was first told that his child was attending Woodrow Wilson High School last October. Councilmember Grosso, who, when he found out about the school transfer initially, said he was going to hold an emergency Education Committee meeting, now has stated, according to Mr. Jamison, that he “preferred a public hearing but might settle for some alternative.”

I’m completely out of patience and I feel that both Ms. Bowser and Mr. Grosso have to go.  If you want to know how I came to this conclusion, recall what Dr. Fuller remarked about charter schools at the 2017 FOCUS Charter School Conference:

“The strength of the charter school effort is not just our existence; it is understanding the purpose of our existence.  I support charter schools as long as they work for our children. If they don’t work, then they have no value. Work for me is more than test scores: It’s treating our kids with respect; It’s understanding all of the issues that impact them before they ever get to school; It’s confronting the issues of race and class in our facilities and in our behavior towards our children; In the rules and regulations that we set up in so many instances to control our children because we are unable to manage them. It’s recognizing that as Paul Tough said in his latest book, that poor children are capable of deep learning.”

These people have abandoned their responsibility to our children.

 

 

Tragedy at D.C.’s traditional schools; Mayor Bowser to blame

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Yesterday, we received the answer to a question that has been floating above the news that DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson had circumvented a policy he himself had created and signed when he moved his daughter from Duke Ellington School of the Arts to Woodrow Wilson High School without going through the lottery.  After his action was exposed by the media it was Jennie Niles, the Deputy Mayor for Education and former founder and executive director of E.L. Haynes PCS, who was immediately forced to resign by Ms. Bowser.  The move appeared odd because Mr. Wilson was allowed to stay in his position.  “My decision was wrong and I take full responsibility for my mistake,” the Washington Post’s Perry Stein and Peter Jamison report him saying at the time.  The Mayor immediately reacted to his admission with the assertion, “I have confidence in his vision and leadership.”

Now we can comprehend, as revealed by the same two Post journalists, the reason the Mayor tried to protect Mr. Wilson.  It turns out that she was informed by Mr. Wilson what he had done four months before he was let go.

With the exception of Ms. Niles, we are not dealing with the most honorable people here. As soon as word got out about Mr. Wilson’s policy violation against discretionary school placements by public officials the former Chancellor blamed the Deputy Mayor and his own wife.  From the original Washington Post story about Jennie Niles vacating her job:

“A few weeks into the academic year, the family decided the arts magnet school was a poor match, and Wilson approached Niles. The administration official said Wilson, knowing strict rules govern school placement, had his wife speak and coordinate with Niles.  Wilson’s daughter was transferred to Wilson High, a high-performing neighborhood school in Northwest D.C. with a wait list.”  The wait list at Wilson is more than 600 students.

In the aftermath of Mr. Wilson receiving his $140,000 severance package, one half of his annual salary, he clearly feels free to set the record straight about his discussions with the Mayor.  In an interview with The Washington Post he claimed that he related to Ms. Bowser last September that he was working with Ms. Niles to have his child exit Duke Ellington.  He also stated that he told her the following month that she was now enrolled at Wilson.  According to the former  Chancellor, in the days before February 12th, when D.C. Inspector General Daniel Lucas informed the Mayor that he was investigating the student’s transfer, the Mayor would inquire of Mr. Wilson how his daughter was doing at her new school when they would run into each other at events.

Ms. Bowser denies all of it.  From the Post story on February 16th announcing that Ms. Niles had stepped down:  “Bowser said she was not aware the chancellor’s daughter had transferred to Wilson High. A spokeswoman for Bowser said the mayor’s chief of staff and top advisers were also unaware.”  Then again yesterday:  “In a brief interview Monday, the mayor again denied she knew about the school transfer. ‘I in no way approved of a transfer or knew about an illegal transfer,’ she said.”

The Washington Post quotes the Mayor as stating that “the decision by Wilson and Niles to move the girl to a new school in the way they had was ‘inexplicable’ and ‘indefensible.'”  Yes, that is true.  But what is equally inexplicable and indefensible is misleading the public about what you knew and when you knew it.  No wonder DCPS is handing out diplomas to kids who don’t deserve them and letting students into D.C. schools who don’t live in the District without having them pay tuition.  When dishonesty starts at the top, it tends to run downhill.

D.C. four year high school graduation rates clearly show the power of charter sector

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With the trifecta of controversies recently experienced by D.C.’s traditional school system, it is easy to miss an obvious point about the condition of public education in the nation’s capital:  we desperately need more seats for children in our city’s strong performing charter schools.  My reasoning behind this conclusion is straightforward and compelling.

Last week it was announced that the new estimate for the DCPS 2018 four-year graduation rate will be around 42 percent.  Kate McGee of WAMU presents the background:

“DCPS says it’s releasing this data for the first time to increase transparency after an investigation found that one-third of last year’s graduates received diplomas even though they didn’t meet all the graduation requirements.

‘We are focused on making sure the students who graduate have earned their diploma and the students and communities feels that way as well,’ said Michelle Lerner [no relation], Deputy Chief of Communications for DCPS.”

The low statistic comes after the Office of the State Superintendent of Education just last November claimed that the four-year adjusted cohort high school graduation rate for DCPS was 73.2 percent.  This figure was only slightly lower than the charter school rate of 73.4 percent.  However, we know now that 34 percent of seniors attending the regular schools should not have been given diplomas.  If we subtract the 34 percent from the originally published OSSE rate we get a true percentage of 39.2, exceedingly close to the recent estimate of the size of the graduating class in 2018.

Moreover, as was documented by the OSSE study looking into this mess, the matriculation scandal did not occur at charters.  If this sector’s four-year graduation rate remains the same this year as in 2017, although we certainly hope it will improve, the astonishing reality is that there will be a 31.4 percent delta between the number of pupils that graduate in four years from a charter high school compared to the number that graduate in four years from a facility that is a part of DCPS.

Charters will therefore graduate one-third more of their students.  In addition, these schools will most certainly greatly exceed the DCPS graduation rates for important at-risk subgroups of students.  When the DC Public Charter School Board released its graduation statistics last year it made the following observation:

“For five consecutive years, public charter high schools have consistently exceeded the four-year citywide averages for: African American (72.6% graduated), economically disadvantaged (74% graduated), and Hispanic (79.2% graduated).”

We now know that the charter board was greatly underestimating the groundbreaking and astonishing achievements of the schools it oversees.  It is therefore not in anyway an exaggeration to state that if you are a parent sending your child to a high school in the nation’s capital the choice of whether to choose a charter or traditional school has become a potentially life-changing event.

The problem is that there are not a sufficient number of quality charter high school seats.  For the 2017-to-2018 school year, the PCSB has estimated that there is a 1,600-student wait-list.

As Miss Bowser selects a new Deputy Mayor for Education and a new DCPS Chancellor, and as the City Council grapples with how to restructure its relationship with the Mayor in order to prevent the recent problems from re-occurring any time soon, it is imperative that charters must expand to serve as many of our kids as possible.  In this case the numbers really do tell the story.

 

Mayoral control of D.C.’s traditional public schools is in deep trouble

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D.C. education observers thought the news could not possibly get any worse.  A National Public Radio and WAMU investigation found that at-risk students attending the city’s traditional schools received high school diplomas despite being absent from class for significant periods of time while recording passing grades for courses they should have failed.  The graduations came as a result of pressure from administrators on teachers to socially promote these kids.  It was discovered that these problems had previously been revealed to Chancellor Antwan Wilson who took no action until the report became public.

Then the once highly respected Deputy Mayor for Education Jennie Niles, founder of the high performing E.L. Haynes PCS, was forced to resign after it was found that she colluded with the Chancellor to have one of his children transferred from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts to Woodrow Wilson High School without having to participate in the school lottery.  The discretionary enrollment violated a new rule preventing this type of action by the head of DCPS, a policy that Mr. Wilson created and signed.  The school to which his daughter was moved has a waiting list of over 600 students.  The Chancellor was asked to leave his post last week.

Yesterday, a new bombshell broke.  City officials looking into the student body at Duke Ellington have found that more than half of the pupils live outside the District of Columbia, with their parents or guardians falsifying their permanent addresses to show they reside in the city so they don’t have to pay the $12,000 a year tuition to attend the school.  Now here’s the part that makes me sick.  The Washington Post article by Peter Jamison, Valerie Strauss, and Perry Stein includes the following accusation:

“That finding was shared in December at a meeting attended by representatives from the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education — which was managing the investigation — and the office of the D.C. attorney general, the officials said.

Shortly after that, a lawyer in the state superintendent’s office told those handling the case in that office to slow-track it because of the risk of negative publicity during a mayoral election year, said the officials with knowledge of the probe. It is unclear how far the investigation has progressed since then.”

So now we have the third and final position comprising Mayoral control of the regular public schools, the State Superintendent of Education, shoulder deep in scandal.   At a news conference yesterday Ms. Hanseul Kang, the State Superintendent, and Mayor Bowser denied that anyone had been asked to delay the review.  But even if this is true, why didn’t anyone know about these findings for almost three months?

Following the resignation of the Chancellor I questioned whether Mayoral control of the traditional public school should continue, a viewpoint that upset the editors of the Washington Post.  I wrote:

“We need to replicate the success that the charter sector has had on the regular school side.  Perhaps there needs to be a DC Public School Board composed of volunteers named by the mayor.  The board would then open and close neighborhood schools based upon a charting system mirrored on the PCSB.  The timing could not be better, as the Office of the State Superintendent of Education is rolling out a five-star rating system for all public schools under the Every Student Succeeds Act.  Schools scoring lower than at least a three could be shuttered.  I’m not sure if this new organization is the answer. Maybe all schools should simply report to the charter board. But I do know that with so much power in the hands of the Mayor, priorities become one person’s prerogative. When it comes to the future of our children, I’m afraid we need something more.”

Now I’m especially convinced that those responsible for our public schools, the DCPS Chancellor and the State Superintendent of Education, need to be independent positions that act as a check and balance to the power of the Mayor, similar to our three branches of government established under the U.S. Constitution.  Perhaps these individuals should report to a non-partisan organization in the model of the DC Public Charter School Board.  Whatever the final structure looks like, inaction is no longer an option.

Rick Cruz elected chair DC Public Charter School Board

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At last night’s monthly meeting of the DC Public Charter School Board, Rick Cruz was named the new chairman, replacing Dr. Darren Woodruff.  Traditionally, the vice-chairman has transitioned into the chair position when the current leader’s term is up, but in this case that role was being played by Don Soifer, who is now employed out of state as the president of Nevada Action for School Options.  Saba Bireda was elected as vice-chair.  It will be interesting to see how Mr. Cruz handles matters regarding Prep PCS in his new post, and whether he recuses himself when issues concerning the charter come before the board.  Remember that for a little over a year Mr. Cruz was the CEO of the school with the intent of replacing Emily Lawson, but that arrangement did not work out.  In the recent past as a member of the board, Mr. Cruz has weighed in on decisions regarding DC Prep.

The other extremely interesting aspect of yesterday’s session was not on the official agenda.  When the floor was opened for public statements at the beginning and end, a string of disgruntled parents and teachers came forward to relate negative situations occurring at City Arts and Prep PCS.  Remember that City Arts is the renamed William E. Doar, Jr. Public Charter School for the Performing Arts, of which I was a founding board member and chair.  The school has been going through a turnaround of late, for a time working with Ten Square Consulting and Charter Board Partners to attempt to raise its academic performance.  Look for more fallout from the clearly unstable environment over there.

One other aspect of the proceedings caught my attention.  Usually a section of these gatherings which I don’t follow closely is the PMF policy and technical guide updates.  But prior to opening up for comment the standards for the current school year, the board’s staff made a startling discovery.  From the meeting’s supporting documentation:

“In September 2017, the Board approved the 2017-18 PMF Guide per DC PCSB staff recommendation.  At the time, DC PCSB staff simulated the recommended changes using data from school year 2015-16 (the most recent data available at the time). We projected the PK-8 campuses would lose an average of 0.7 PMF points. Since then, we simulated the approved changes using the newly available school year 2016-17 data. We now project that PK-8 campuses would lose an average of 1.9 PMF points.  Additionally, we determined that some schools would lose as many as 7.7 PMF points, while others would gain as many as 2.2 points.  Appendix B shows the impact analysis for every school based on 2016-17 data with the previously approved floors and targets.  While DC PCSB staff recommend adjustments to the PMF Guide almost annually, we have not recommended changes that result in such dramatic performance shifts.  The Framework is most valuable when it has stability, allowing stakeholders to rely on its outputs over multiple school years.  On January 18, 2018, DC PCSB staff met with the PK-8 task force to share our findings and discuss proposals. An overwhelming majority (87.5%) of schools approved our proposal to revert to the 2016-17 PARCC weights, floors and targets, and to hold the School Environment floors and targets steady for one more year.”

Since the failure of the board to revert back to the 2016-17 PARCC weights, floors, and targets could have a tremendous impact on PMF scoring, schools may want to weigh-in on this proposal.  Comments will be accepted until March 19, 2018.

In other actions, a visibly irritated PSCB deputy director Naomi Rubin DeVeaux read into the record a letter received from Excel Academy PCS announcing its decision to become part of DCPS.  In addition, Latin American Montessori Bilingual PCS (LAMB) received a renewal for another 15 years, but not before Dr. Woodruff read a prepared statement detailing that despite the exemplary academic results at the school, parents of children enrolled at the facility have expressed severe frustration over leadership changes, a perceived lack of communication, and the situation involving the teacher sentenced a year ago to eight years in prison for sexually abusing six students at the charter.  There was much discussion between the board and school representatives over these issues.

Finally, Maya Angelou PCS was up for its 20-year review, and was granted permission to continue operating under a long list of conditions.  I have been following the history of this alternative education charter for years and the up-and-down trajectory of its standing with the PCSB continued last evening unabated.

 

 

 

Exclusive interview with Dr. Darren Woodruff, chairman DC Public Charter School Board

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Note on the interview:  My meeting with Dr. Woodruff took place shortly before the resignations of the D.C. Deputy Mayor for Education Jennie Niles and DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson, and a few days prior to Excel Academy PCS announcing that it would become part of DCPS next school year.

I had the privilege of sitting down recently for an conversation with Dr. Darren Woodruff, chairman of the DC Public Charter School Board.  I have interviewed Dr. Woodruff a couple of times in the past, and sadly, this will be the last one as PCSB chair since his term is ending in the spring.  He has been on the board for the last nine years.  I began by asking Dr. Woodruff for his viewpoint on the situation at Ballou High School.   He had clearly already formed an opinion.

“I think the problems at Ballou are not unique to that school,” the PCSB chairman informed me.  “It is important to me that we not throw the teachers, administrators, and most of all the students under the bus.  I view what took place at Ballou regarding high student absenteeism, and the pressure placed on teachers to graduate these kids, as an opportunity.  If the Mayor, D.C. Council, DCPS Chancellor, and other public education stakeholders take this seriously then we have a chance to improve the situation.  We know we are dealing with an extremely challenging environment with these kids.  We need to figure out a way to support them.  The question is what as a city are we going to do about it.  We should not be talking about these issues two years from now.”

I pointed out to Dr. Woodruff that the same consultants who investigated Ballou on behalf of the Office of the State Superintendent of Education also looked at D.C.’s charter schools and did not find the same pattern of irregularities around high school graduations.  I asked him for the reason behind this finding.  “I think we are not seeing these things,” the PCSB chairman opined, “because we have an established a consistent metric for school quality in the Performance Management Framework.  Our sector has persistently and unapologetically focused on quality.  In addition, the PCSB has had consistent leadership.  We look at school transcripts.  I sign all high school diplomas.  We have an infrastructure in place to monitor student academic progress.  The PCSB executive director Scott Pearson and his staff continue to search for ways to further evaluate the advancement of our charter school pupils.  At the same time, I have to give credit to our school leaders that adhere to high standards.”

A controversial topic that came up recently in our local charter movement was the placement of John Goldman, the PCSB’s senior manager, finance, analysis and strategy, on administrative leave after it was discovered that he had written material associated with discriminatory views of the Alt-Right.  I wanted to know from Dr. Woodruff if a final decision had been made about his continued employment.  “I’m not exactly sure where we are with this to be frank,” Dr. Woodruff revealed. “ I know that we are in the middle of an investigation.”

I then requested from Dr. Woodruff to understand his overall impression of how charters are doing at this point in their 22-year history.  “Overall, very well,” Dr. Woodruff commented without hesitation. “We now have 51 Tier 1 schools as ranked on the PMF.  With the exception of Ward 3, we have a variety of quality campuses in each of the city’s wards.  Fully 40 percent of our schools are Tier 1.  We have waiting lists at most of our schools.  There are exciting schools opening in the fall.  I contend that we should be celebrating how far we have come.  Families are now at least considering sending their children to charter schools when this was not the case not all that long ago, and we want to see them get even better.  I’ve been exceedingly privileged and blessed to see the improvements in our portfolio of schools.  We must remember that there is no finish line.  We can continually raise our performance.”

The charter board voted last month to close Excel Academy PCS at the conclusion of this school year.  I had heard from some Excel teachers at this year’s FOCUS Charter School Conference that KIPP DC PCS and Friendship PCS were vying to take over the charter.  I asked Dr. Woodruff if he had the same understanding.  The PCSB chair asserted, “I hope someone does continue its operation.  We don’t want to scatter more than 600 students to the wind.  We hope a strong school will take it over, especially since this is an all-girls school.  It is up to the Excel board, not us, as to the organization that would eventually lead the school.”

During the discussion about the future of Excel, that school and Somerset PCS made the case that the PMF is biased against charters that teach a large percentage of at-risk students.  I wanted to know from Dr. Woodruff if he agreed with this assessment.  He responded immediately.  “No, I don’t believe that there is a bias.  Every year our staff does a validity check to determine whether the tool is predisposed against any group, whether it is at-risk kids, African-Americans, boys, or girls.  We have not found a significant correlation that this is occurring.  But based upon the recent testimony by those schools we will take another look.”

Dr. Woodruff continued, “There are charters in Wards 7 and 8 that as part of their heroic missions are taking in the most difficult to educate children.  We should be rewarding these schools with special recognition.  It is an exceptionally difficult population to teach.  These pupils are different from those in Ward 1, for example.  We should highlight the work of places like KIPP DC PCS, Friendship PCS, DC Prep, and other schools whose strategies are working with these children.  We can dive deeper and see how they are doing it, and then hopefully share that information with other charters.”

Next, I brought up a couple of points that attorney Stephen Marcus had addressed in my interview with him.  First, he alerted me to the fact that schools are required by the PCSB to earn a PMF score of at least 45 percent at the 10 year mark of operation and 50 percent at 15 years of teaching.  He related that the PCSB puts pressure on schools to adopt the PMF as their goals, and then eventually raises its floors.  The attorney contends that this action is equivalent to the charter board setting charter school goals which is a violation of the School Reform Act.  I asked Dr. Woodruff to react to these assertions.  “There is nothing particularly magical about a score of 45 or 50,” Dr. Woodruff explained.  “What we want to see is that there is improvement.  We did not establish the expectation that a school would score a 65 percent at a particular period in time which is at the Tier 1 level.  We give schools flexibility to earn Tier 2 but we don’t believe schools should be Tier 3 after being open for 10 or 15 years.  As to Mr. Marcus’s point about the floors, yes, they have gone up, but so has the academic track record of our charters.  It is like grading on a curve.  If all schools had recorded lower performance levels, then the floors would be lowered.  I don’t want to apologize for our increased expectations for student learning.  We want to see all schools do their best for the children they serve.”

The last topic I wanted to raise with the charter board chair was his vote last year against the expansion plans of D.C Prep because of its higher than average student suspension rates.  The board’s initial decision on this matter to not approve the charter amendments caused much controversy as people accused the PCSB of exceeding its authority under the SRA.   I asked Dr. Woodruff to react to the above statement, and that is exactly what he did in a highly emotional manner.  “Here’s the thing,” Dr. Woodruff said.  “I respect the SRA as much as anyone else.  As I mentioned earlier, the board’s primary focus is school quality.  My interest in raising school quality is the reason I joined this board.  What we have found is that school discipline is not being administered uniformly.  Consider these statistics.  During the 2016-to-2017 school year 17 pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade charter schools had zero suspensions.  40 pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade LEA’s suspended less than 10 percent of their pupils.  67 pre-Kindergarten through 12th grade charters, or 60 percent, saw less than 10 percent of their kids suspended.

The average suspension rate is about 9 percent.  Therefore, here’s what we did as a board.  We took the nine percent figure and tripled it, considering that any school that had a suspension rate three times the average was an outlier.  Schools such as D.C. Prep PCS, Democracy Prep PCS, KIPP DC PCS, Monument Academy PCS, National Collegiate Preparatory PCS, Paul PCS, and Seed PCS are in this category.  11 campuses were outliers that represents only 7 charter school LEA’s.  Moreover, it is not that these suspension rates are leading these schools to become Tier 1 institutions because several are Tier 2 or Tier 3 schools.  I’m personally concerned about these schools and the impact of suspensions on their students.”

Dr. Woodruff had much more to say on this topic.  “The vast majority of our schools, such as Kingsman Academy PCS, Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS, and DC International PCS, are doing an amazing job in this area.  But the ones that are outside the norm are suspending African American students and students with disabilities.  What I’m concerned about is exclusionary discipline on kids that are already at-risk.  I believe strongly that we should fix this problem internally.  We have tools such as the Equity Reports, and conferences on topics such as restorative justice to help us in this area.  But we desperately need to do more.  I’m baffled by the push back on this subject.  In addition, while I admire Councilman David Grosso’s leadership on this topic, I do not believe legislation is the way to fix it.  I would love to see schools come up with their own solutions.  I feel like we have a board that understands the nuances of this area and can help move the issue forward.”

 

Now what? Structural changes needed atop D.C.’s traditional schools

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The Chancellor and Deputy Mayor for Education are gone, and in the Chancellor’s case he lasted only a year in his position.  It appears that pressure to increase high school graduation rates exerted on school leaders by the person who preceded Mr. Wilson resulted in kids receiving diplomas who did not attend class and who were given passing grades in classes they should have failed.  Mayor Bowser could simply name new individuals to fill these spots but we really cannot go through anything like this again.  It is simply not fair to our kids.

Today, the editors of the Washington Post assert that pointing the blame on Mayoral control of the traditional public schools is the wrong place to look:

“Such thinking is shortsighted. The school system that exists today is a far cry from the sorry state of affairs a decade ago when schools didn’t open on time, teachers went unpaid, expectations for students were low and parents fled the system. The seriousness of the problems related to inflated graduation rates can’t be discounted, but that does not negate what has been accomplished under school reform. In addition to building a prekindergarten system, rigor has been added to the curriculum, new instructional strategies have been introduced and the teaching force has been transformed into a performance-based profession. Enrollment is up, and test scores, including on the highly regarded ‘nation’s report card,’ show improvements in student achievement.”

Yes, the neighborhood schools are in much better shape than when they reported to the D.C. Board of Education.  But in reality what choice was there?  Charter schools were enrolling students from the regular schools in waves.  In fact, it was not until DCPS lost over 25 percent of its population that Michele Rhee entered the picture to try and turn things around.  If something were not done the neighborhood schools would be a ghost town.

Much more drastic improvements are still needed.  The achievement gap, now at about 60 points, is growing, not shrinking, after 20 years of school reform.  At least a dozen, and in reality many more, school buildings sit vacant that could be going to charter schools.  Many DCPS facilities are significantly under-enrolled.  Charters are receiving about $100 million a year less than the regular schools illegally outside of the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula.  Low performing neighborhood schools are allowed to continue operating in perpetuity, while charters that demonstrate poor academic results are closed.

We need to replicate the success that the charter sector has had on the regular school side.  Perhaps there needs to be a DC Public School Board composed of volunteers named by the mayor.  The board would then open and close neighborhood schools based upon a charting system mirrored on the PCSB.  The timing could not be better, as the Office of the State Superintendent of Education is rolling out a five-star rating system for all public schools under the Every Student Succeeds Act.  Schools scoring lower than at least a three could be shuttered.

I’m not sure if this new organization is the answer.  Maybe all schools should simply report to the charter board.  But I do know that with so much power in the hands of the Mayor, priorities become one person’s prerogative.  When it comes to the future of our children, I’m afraid we need something more.

 

D.C. Deputy Mayor for Education forced to resign; calls into question Mayoral control of traditional public schools

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Last Friday the astonishing news broke that DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson skirted the city’s public school lottery to have one of his children enrolled at Woodrow Wilson High School where there is a wait list.  In transferring his daughter in this manner away from the Duke Ellington School for the Arts and bypassing Dunbar, his neighborhood high school, Mr. Wilson violated the new policy that prevents D.C. Chancellors from making discretionary placements.

The individual responsible for creating and approving this policy was Chancellor Wilson.

In his apology for his action, which the Mayor forced him to do and that has now been removed from the DCPS website and Twitter, Mr Wilson stated that “my decision was wrong and I take full responsibility for my mistake.”  But in reality, he has taken no responsibility at all for his behavior, instead throwing Deputy Mayor for Education Jennie Niles so far under the bus that Mayor Bowser forced her to resign her position.  Apparently, as soon as Mr. Wilson’s action was discovered, he explained that he had his wife work with Ms. Niles to make the change.  The Mayor then dismissed Ms. Niles because she should have known it was against the rules.  The student is no longer attending Wilson.

All of this is so sad.  Ms. Bowser has explained on numerous occasions over the years that when she approached Ms. Niles about becoming her Deputy Mayor for Education she was turned down.  The Mayor has bragged that it took four requests before Ms. Niles changed her mind.  The reality is that Ms. Niles should have stayed at E.L. Haynes PCS, the high performing charter that she founded, and not had her fine reputation and integrity caught up with someone who needs an Office of Integrity to tell him that students who cannot read, write, or perform basic math should not graduate from high school.

The entire incident now calls into question the turning over of the traditional public schools to Mayoral control.  Michelle Rhee was fortunate that she resigned because citizens were ready to run her mean-spirited persona out of town.  Kaya Henderson was the reform-minded Rhee with a pleasant demeanor, and she was extremely well respected until it was determined that it was under her reign that there were discretionary placements for politically well-positioned friends which led to the development of the current policy Mr. Wilson ignored.   It was also while she was in office that high school students received diplomas who rarely came to class.  Now we have the Wilson mess.

Alternatively, pundits are pointing to the academic progress that students have made as a plea not to go back to the old days when the Board of Education was running the show.  However, and it really pains me to say this, I’m starting to have doubts about the validity of these results.

If the Mayor want to keep her schools she better move fast.  Mr. Wilson and anyone associated with the recent scandals need to go as quickly as possible.   Then Ms. Bowser needs to bring in someone who has a proven track record who the public can trust.  Someone like Jennie Niles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excel PCS to remain open; abdicate status as a charter school

mlerner10 Charter Schools, PCSB Leave a comment

News came yesterday about the future of Excel Academy PCS, and it was not the announcement that was expected.  The charter, whose operation beyond the 10 year mark was rejected by the DC Public Charter School Board last month, will remain open beyond this summer but will do so under the authority of DCPS.  It will continue to be an all-girls school.

I will remind you of the charter board’s assessment of the school’s academic progress which was made in November of last year:

“Excel PCS is a single campus local education agency (LEA), serving grades prekindergarten-3 (PK3) through eight, that adopted the Performance Management Framework (PMF) as its goals and academic achievement expectations.  Pursuant to the school’s Charter and Charter Agreement, Excel PCS has not met its goals.  Per its charter and charter agreement, the school committed to achieving an average PMF score of 45% for the past five years of operation. Excel Academy PCS’ average score is 41.4%, and it only exceeded a score of 45% in school year (SY) 2012-13, the first year of this five-year review. The school’s 2016-17 result, 36.7%, is the school’s lowest score yet, and reflects a downward trend, making the improvement provision in its charter agreement inapplicable to assessment of its goals. While the PMF number is an average, the low score reflects overall low academic achievement and school climate. Math results have been consistently poor – both absolute results as well as year-to-year student growth. English language arts (ELA) results have been higher than math, but are on the decline, with student growth now below the state average in ELA as well. Reading and math growth for grades K through two, as measured by NWEA MAP, has been below 50 for the past four years. Both attendance and re-enrollment rates have also been below DC averages in every year of the review period.  Separate and apart from the determination of the school’s goal and academic achievement expectation attainment, DC PCSB staff has determined that the school has not committed a material violation of law or of its charter, has adhered to generally accepted accounting principles, has not engaged in a pattern of fiscal mismanagement, and is economically viable. Based on these findings, DC PCSB staff recommends that the DC PCSB Board vote to initiate revocation proceedings of the school’s charter, with a final date of operation on June 30, 2018.”

Once the board voted to close Excel, the word on the street was that two high performing charter school networks, KIPP DC PCS and Friendship PCS, were interested in taking over the school.  This information was confirmed to me by teachers from Excel at the 2018 FOCUS Charter School Conference, and again just this week by Dr. Darren Woodruff, chairman of the DC PCSB.  Whenever there is a decision to revoke a school’s charter, it is the hope that the facility would come under the auspices of schools that have a solid track record of producing strong academic results.  Unfortunately, in this case, this is not the path that the charter decided to pursue.

It frankly saddens me that the Excel students of Ward 8 will not longer be held to the high accountability standards of the DC PSCB.

The move by Excel is not unprecedented.  In 2014, Hospitality High School joined DCPS after it decided to relinquish its charter in the face of low academic performance.  At the end of 2015 it was closed and its students dispersed to one of three traditional schools.

Now we will watch as students, parents, and educators, who were used to functioning under the framework of a charter, make the transition to a traditional school system.

 

 

 

 

 

President Trump proposes to end D.C. college scholarship program

mlerner10 OSP Leave a comment

News broke like wildfire yesterday that President Trump’s most recent fiscal 2019 federal budget submission includes in it the elimination of DCTAG.  Here’s a description of the scholarship plan by the Washington Post’s Danielle Douglas-Gabriel:

“Through the tuition program, tens of thousands of students have received $350 million to enroll at 578 colleges. Students can receive as much as $10,000 a year to attend public universities outside the city, or up to $2,500 to enroll in a private college in the D.C. metro area or at any historically black college or university across the nation.

The grants are available to all District students — except high-income families — but student advocates say the money makes the biggest difference for low-income residents. The annual family income cap has shifted in recent years; it once was $1 million but, in more recent years, has stood between $750,000 and $777,000.”

DCTAG was the brainchild of Northern Virginia Congressman Tom Davis, who believed that there were not enough high quality options for state colleges for children living in the District.  My wife and I helped Mr. David become elected to Congress in 1994, running his campaign in Reston.  The program costs the American taxpayer $40 million a year.  The Trump Administration, according to the Post’s article, made the proposal “because of a lack of a clear federal role for supporting the cost of higher education specifically for District residents.”  Ms. Danielle Douglas-Gabriel states that 26,000 students have taken advantage of the scholarships.

A school choice advocate close to the Administration explained to me yesterday that DCTAG is in no jeopardy of being shutdown.  He points to the words of U.S. Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, again from the Post article:

“Norton said in a statement that the two-year budget deal reached last week preempts the White House budget, rendering it ‘dead on arrival.’ The District’s only representative in Congress said she wants to assure D.C. parents and students that she does not believe they are in danger of losing funding for the tuition assistance program.”

Interestingly, even the CATO Institute’s director of educational freedom Neal McCluskey finds the move strange. “It strikes me as an odd candidate to target for elimination,” he comments to the Post.  “Surely there are targets far more ripe for elimination.”

Mayor Bowser was incensed.  She wrote on Twitter: “#DidYouKnow that the college education of thousands of DC students is at risk? President Trump has completely eliminated the DC Tuition Assistance Grant program in his 2019 budget proposal. Urge Congress to reject Trump’s proposal. #SaveDCTAG today:

A petition has been started to protect the program which has been signed by D.C. Council education committee chair David Grosso, and he has encouraged others to follow his lead.  My question is why is the Councilmember so upset about DCTAG when he fought so strongly against Congressional renewal of the Opportunity Scholarship Program?