By Guest Contributor, on November 19th, 2018 Cross-Posted from Education DC
Written by Valerie Jablow
At last week’s November 15 council hearing, on the plan to build a new Banneker high school at the site of the closed Shaw Junior High, dozens of public witnesses testified, advocating for either Banneker or a Shaw middle school of right on the site.
But after more than four hours of their testimony, it took less than 10 minutes for the two government witnesses to outline DC’s newest educational initiative–which would be doing whatever someone in power wants.
The opening 5-minute salvo came during acting DME Paul Kihn’s opening testimony, in which he presented a rationale for not putting a Shaw middle school of right in Shaw–as called for in multiple capital plans as well as the 2014 boundaries study.
Cautioning about “using data” to determine a need for a Shaw middle school, Kihn recited population forecasts from the office of planning as well as current and expected enrollments, the “average boundary participation rate” in DCPS (24%), and available capacity at Cardozo.
After blithely concluding that all that “data” show that there is no need at all for a Shaw middle school of right, Kihn amazingly floated the idea of a citywide middle school at the Shaw site because, uh, no boundaries!
It’s hard to imagine that Kihn really does not know that the lottery works for schools of right as well as for schools of choice.
As it is, boundary participation rates are not indicative of enrollment–as the staff in his own office know very well because by using their own data, I can see that DCPS’s Sousa middle school has a 68% in boundary participation rate–and is underenrolled. While Stuart-Hobson, fully enrolled for the last several decades, has a 25% in boundary participation rate.
Yeah.
The other seminal moment of testimony was this 2-minute clip of interim chancellor Amanda Alexander (who in that role is subordinate to the acting DME).
In it, Alexander responds to a question from education committee chair David Grosso, who asked her to explicate the meetings DCPS held with the Banneker and Shaw communities about the plan to locate Banneker at Shaw. While explaining (eventually) that the decision to locate Banneker at Shaw was made after the feasibility study was completed (August 15, 2018), the interim chancellor stated that the Shaw community was engaged on the subject starting in May 2018.
This sounds good until you realize that the idea of Banneker at Shaw had been raised months before, in February 2018 (see here for all the Banneker modernization plans), when the Banneker feasibility study was undertaken.
But the feasibility study strangely explored only two options: Banneker at its current building and Banneker at Shaw. As thorough as it is in its examination of those options, the study contains nothing about a Shaw middle school in Shaw nor any discussion about other sites for Banneker–or data to justify expanding it to almost twice its current size.
It appears that someone somewhere ruled all of that out well before February 2018–something no official at the hearing ever raised.
The sad truth behind all of this public obfuscation is that Banneker still needs a renovation and an appropriate facility.
More to the point, Banneker’s renovation has been deferred for so long that it falls in the same disturbing pattern of inequity that we have already seen in our city for school resourcing and modernizations. It was that pattern, in fact, that led the council to enact the PACE Act in the first place, to ensure political power was not the driver of modernized, adequate, and safe school spaces.
Yet, instead of focusing on that urgency and the fact that no one in his own office pursued a fulsome feasibility study examining all the “data” for Banneker around the city, the acting DME used his time at the hearing to admonish advocates for a Shaw middle school of right for not being “practical” and “fiscally responsible.”
This was pretty rich, given that later in the hearing the acting DME had no accurate cost estimate whatsoever to share with the council on the new Banneker at Shaw.
And it was also pretty rich given that Kihn spent time talking about how he thought some Shaw residents “feel excluded” from the planning and the importance of public officials not going into public meetings with a “predetermined outcome.”
Now, it is possible that hundreds of people complaining for weeks before the hearing–and testifying in droves during the hearing–about the lack of public engagement in Shaw on this subject suffer from mass hallucination. (See their apparently non-hallucinatory petition here.)
Nonetheless, the fact remains that the acting DME used his time at that hearing to characterize the actual disenfranchisement of actual DC residents in the alteration of an actual plan for an actual school in their own neighborhood as one of mere hurt feelings–and politely promised to do better and engage well going forward.
There were other disturbing notes as well.
For instance, no city leader even mentioned the new Bard high school, whose plan is publicly amorphous: we don’t know what it will be or even where it will be and whether its creation (in conjunction with an expanded Banneker) will necessitate closing one or more DCPS high schools. For all anyone in the public knows, that is the intended outcome of both projects. Data, schmata!
Also, when asked about keeping Banneker at its current building, Alexander noted that the building is “not fit pedagogically” to suit high school students because it was built as a middle school. (Thank goodness no DCPS high school is in, say, a repurposed elementary! Oh, wait.)
Then, when asked if she considered St. Elizabeth’s as a location for a new Banneker, Alexander responded that it would be “disruptive” to the Banneker community, since many of Banneker’s students come from wards 4 and 5.
Having heard public witnesses at the same hearing opine about what they considered the silliness of Shaw parents not wanting their middle school students to travel far from home, I can only think that there is no way that this hearing was ever intended to question the decision made by someone, somewhere, that Banneker will go at Shaw.
After all, only two council members were present for most of the hearing (Grosso, there the entire time, and Ward 6’s Charles Allen for most of it), despite the fact that the Banneker at Shaw proposal is at least roundly estimated to cost $143 million–a significant sum completely outside the planning process that the council itself enacted.
More to the point, Grosso himself supports Banneker locating at Shaw and doesn’t want to pause the plans–in agreement with acting DME Kihn, who noted (without offering evidence–oh, that pesky data again!) that pausing the plan was not in the city’s or community’s interests.
And yet, while Kihn went out of his way to note that many DCPS schools of right have excess capacity, what he didn’t say was that expanding Banneker thusly might not be good for any school, even Banneker itself–and especially at Shaw, where it would be in close proximity to two under-enrolled DCPS high schools of right.
(Data on the effect of creating new schools was not the only thing happily unexamined by those in charge: Charles Allen noted that Kihn’s population analysis in the clip above was the first time he had heard those numbers, and he worried about their veracity.)
In the end, the driving interest of both Kihn and Alexander at that hearing was not doing right by this process or even examining its effect. Rather, their interest was rooted in a decision that had already been made, no matter the consequences. The public, late to the party, was left to fight it out amongst themselves.
(Not coincidentally, I heard neither Kihn nor Alexander mention “rights” with respect to schools–only “access.”)
So here is where we stand:
–No accurate cost analysis for building Banneker at the Shaw site except that it will cost at least $143 million;
–No apparent consideration of other sites for Banneker;
–No plan for a middle school of right for Shaw;
–Misleading data used to discredit a Shaw middle school of right;
–Misleading statements about public engagement on the subject;
–No analysis of the effect of the expansion and/or move of Banneker;
–Complete flaunting of the PACE Act;
–No explanation of what the existing Banneker building would be used for, much less Garnet-Patterson;
–Plenty of people in Shaw attesting to not being engaged whatsoever, while the interim chancellor says they were engaged and the acting DME says they just “feel excluded” and
–Neither David Grosso nor our education leaders wanting to even pause and ask how this fits in with the plan for Bard or a plan for the city at large to invest in its own schools.
Hmm: what was that bit about a “predetermined outcome”? Continue reading This Is What Democracy Doesn’t Look Like: Banneker/Shaw Edition
By Sarah Livingston, on August 22nd, 2018
 
Information about DC’s schools and related matters
Changes A-Plenty Coming in School Year 2018-2019: At D.C. Public Schools (Pages 1-4), Board of Education (Pages 4-5), and in this newsletter (Page 6) Very Important update on chancellor search (Page 4)
Some of the changes at D. C. Public Schools:
Central Office Personnel
A search for a permanent chancellor began on June 28. In an email letter of July 23, Interim Chancellor Amanda Alexander named Dr. Melissa Kim as deputy chancellor of Social, Emotional, and Academic Development; Dr. Amy Maisterra– interim deputy chancellor for Innovations and Systems, and Charon P.W. Hines—Senior Advisor to the chancellor.
Rules and regulations
During the spring and into early summer DCPS conducted a process to review and update its policies on Attendance and Truancy, Student Promotion, Secondary Grading and Reporting and Graduation Requirements. They were all signed by interim Chancellor Alexander with a note that says they take the place of any previous policies and are effective August 13, 2018. They are very detailed and run six to eight pages long.
An overview of the process and link to the documents can all be found at https://dcps.dc.gov/page/graduation-excellence-engagement. There are forty-three pages of public comments filled with observations and suggestions.
According to LIMS, the Mayor sent a resolution to the Council for its approval of the rule changes on June 25. On July 26, the Committees of the Whole and Education held a joint roundtable on PR22-0935, “Truancy, Reporting, and Graduation of Students Approval Resolution of 2018.” Dr. Maisterra testified for DCPS. Many other changes were mentioned in the discussion including a “toolkit” that brings them all together available on the dcps.dc.gov homepage. The resolution was “deemed approved on August 11, 2018 without Council action.”
Schools
Tables below and on next page show all 116 D.C. Public Schools by Ward, NOT by feeder pattern, with new principals (NP), extended year schedules (EY), modernization construction starting or ending 2018 (MC), and 2018 PARCC scores in ELA and Math with gains of 2% in Levels 4 and 5 (2G).
 Continue reading Citizen Reader August ’18-Changes Galore!
By Guest Contributor, on July 16th, 2018 This crosspost from Valerie Jablow is for all those DC education advocates who really want to understand some of what would be needed to have effective reform in DCPS. Good teachers need to be trained, recruited and supported.
Cross-Posted from EducationDC
written by Valerie Jablow
We know that teachers are the single most important school-based factor affecting student learning (Rice, 2003). Ensuring that students in all schools have access to effective teachers is critical for academic success. Yet, as in many other school districts, high-poverty schools in DCPS have fewer highly effective teachers compared with lower poverty schools (Gordon, Kane, & Staiger, 2006; Jackson, 2013; Sass et al., 2012).
Credit: Betsy Wolf, 2018. Graph was created using data Mary Levy obtained from DCPS responses to questions from the city council during performance hearings. The drop box with this information is posted on the council website.
Credit: Betsy Wolf, 2018. Graph was created using data Mary Levy obtained from DCPS responses to questions from the city council during performance hearings. The drop box with this information is posted on the council website.
One reason for such inequity is higher teacher turnover in schools with larger percentages of low-income students and students with low test scores, who are not on grade level–which affects many schools in DC.
Credit: Betsy Wolf, 2018. Turnover data for all staff (not just teachers) here is from the public drop box for the council education committee. PARCC data is from OSSE.
As DC public school analyst Mary Levy has documented, DCPS’s new hires alone leave at a rate of 25% per year, with staff leaving the 40 lowest-performing (and highest poverty) DCPS schools at an average rate of 33% per year. Studies of other jurisdictions have found similar results. For instance, a typical school in Chicago will lose half of its teachers within five years, and the 100 most disadvantaged schools there will lose 25% of their teachers each year (Allensworth, Ponisciak, & Mazzeo, 2009).
Credit: Betsy Wolf, 2018. Graph was created using data obtained via FOIA by Mary Levy from DCPS in SY2017–18.
As the graph above shows, teachers in high-poverty schools in DCPS have fewer years of experience in the system. That means that teachers are either moving to more affluent schools or leaving the system altogether, which creates teacher churn in our most disadvantaged schools.
The effects of such teacher churn are particularly pernicious, given that most of our publicly funded schools, particularly in DCPS, have large proportions of low-income students.
As it is, schools with high-poverty populations often have challenges that high-income schools don’t and thus need more instructional resources, including effective teachers, to increase student achievement. Yet in DC, low-income schools most often have fewer instructional resources—and less effective teachers—on average than high-income schools. Continue reading How To Have Effective Teachers In Every School (Or, What DC Doesn’t Do–But Should)
By Guest Contributor, on June 5th, 2018 Cross-Posted from EducationDC
written by Valerie Jablow
What is outlined below happened thus far in 2018 in just one of our public education sectors. As far as I am aware, no DC public official has publicly commented with concern nor called for any investigation of the charter board’s actions.
–The charter board and its staff appear to be tied–in ways that remain unknown to the public–to a private organization that gets public money through contracts with charter schools regardless of its actual performance with those schools. Charter school staff have reported being afraid of the organization.
–Despite knowledge throughout 2017 of the fiscal woes of Washington Mathematics Science Technology high school (WMST), and with its own reportsshowing deep financial troubles as early as 2014, the charter board appeared to take no action to help WMST. Public notification of the school’s dire fiscal situation also was not apparent.
–In January, the charter board staff completed a 20-year review of WMST, which was posted on the charter board website. I saw the review in late February or early March and noted that it seemed only mildly concerned about the school’s finances. In April, I looked again for the review, but it was gone. When I asked about it, a staff member directed me toward this review, dated March 12, 2018. On that day, the charter board met in an “emergency” session to vote to begin revocation of the school’s charter. This version raises concerns with the school’s finances that I recollect the January review did not. I asked several charter board staff what happened to the January review. No one responded. The January review existed, as materials the City Paper received via FOIA regarding WMST (see hereand here) make reference to it (see in the first link pages 315, 428, and 623).
–These points together suggest that rather than allowing school performance to actually determine a school’s fate, the charter board (or its staff or both) determines which schools will be closed through the board’s own actions–or lack thereof.
–This week, I testified about WMST to the charter board. I noted that most of the city block where WMST is located was bought in May 2017 for $66 million by Douglas development and LLCs associated with it. The intention was to make a major development there. After that May 2017 Douglas purchase, the only properties on that block not owned by Douglas and its investors (who are publicly unknown) were WMST and a fast food restaurant on the corner of New York Avenue and Bladensburg Road. That meant that after May 2017, WMST was the only impediment to a contiguous Douglas development there.
–In February 2018, WMST applied with the charter board to get a new location. Its application made clear that it would sell its property, but remain in it until 2019. In March 2018, around the time ground was broken for the Douglas development, the charter board voted to allow WMST to stay open only if it sold its property within a month, to raise money. In April 2018, Douglas bought WMST’s property for $6.25 million–well below its assessed value of nearly $10 million. The purchase price was enough only to pay off the school’s outstanding loan–but not to continue operations. The charter board executive director stressed repeatedly that the school’s value was much too high at $9 million.
–The charter board voted on April 23 to have DC charter schools report only contracts that are greater than $100,000, citing the “burden” to schools to do otherwise. It is not clear that the charter board has the authority to make that rule. Such rulemaking may require the scrutiny and approval of elected leaders, as it changes the guidelines of the School Reform Act, the authorizing legislation for DC charter schools.
–When the new contracts rule goes into effect later this year, no one in the public will be able to access or know about any contracts in any DC charter school less than $100,000, unless the schools themselves voluntarily disclose those contracts or the charter board asks them to. This is because no DC charter school is subject to FOIA. Charter schools in other jurisdictions are subject to FOIA.
–The transcript of the April 23, 2018 charter board meeting approving the contract change notes that there were 6 public comments on the rulemaking. But none of the comments are publicly available.
–The charter board violated the FOIA law, in not giving a complete disclosure of documents during the reporting on the board’s relationship with a private organization.
–When I filed a complaint with the board of ethics and government accountability (BEGA) about the actions of the charter board in regard to the oversight and closure of WMST, I was told that charter board staff are not considered public employees and thus are not subject to BEGA’s oversight. As a city agency under the control of mayoral appointees, BEGA recently refused to renew the contract of the director of the office of open government, Traci Hughes. Some years ago, Hughes overruled mayoral appointee and former deputy mayor for education Jennifer Niles and said that meetings of the cross sector collaboration task force must be open to the public. More recently, Hughes ruled that the DC charter board violated the open meetings act by approving a charter school expansion without public notice. And more recently yet, the city council took a preliminary vote to put the once-independent office of open government under control of BEGA. (A final vote by the council is June 5.)
–I also filed a complaint about the WMST oversight and closure with Attorney General (AG) Karl Racine. He told me that his office would investigate only what the school did; anything else they found about the actions of the charter board or its staff would be referred to BEGA or the Office of the Inspector General.
–Charter board executive director Scott Pearson made a donation of $1500 to AG Racine on March 8, 2018. He also made a $1500 donation to council chair Phil Mendelson on February 21, 2018. Both Racine and Mendelson are up for re-election. Pearson’s donation to Racine came 4 days before the charter board voted to initiate charter revocation of WMST. Both donations were also Pearson’s only local political donations recorded thus far this election cycle and constitute about a third of all Pearson’s donations to DC city politicians.
–The executive director of the charter board said that they do not enforce the lawregarding suspensions. He was under oath when he testified about that before the education committee of the city council.
–The public is not entitled to know anything except top level data about charter school facilities in DC. Building surveys of charter schools for the master facilities plan (due out later in 2018) are being paid for by the Walton Foundation, a major charter supporter. City officials have said this means the public will not be able to have that data. There was no explanation for why public funds could not be used for this purpose.
Remember, it’s an election year–and there are candidates offering something different than business as usual. There’s even a proposal for a truly independent education data group–for a fraction of the money spent in what is outlined above. Seems that once again, democracy sure beats the alternative.
By Sarah Livingston, on May 22nd, 2018   The National Education Association, founded in 1857, traces the beginnings of a national teacher appreciation day back to the 1940s when a couple of teachers contacted then first Lady Eleanor Roosevelt suggesting that teachers be recognized across the country. Congress passed a bill to have a National Teacher Appreciation Day in 1985. Later, it became annual, and later still extended to a week. It’s celebrated internationally too, usually on October 5 each year.
In School Year 2017-2018, DC Public Schools had 4,012 teachers, according to its two page “Fast Facts” information sheet. Starting salary, which it describes as “the highest starting salary in the country” was $55,209 ($51,539 in SY 16/17) with $108,262 ($106,540 in SY 16/17) being the highest possible a teacher could earn.
In 2016, DCPS published a “then” and “now” report describing the reforms of the teaching corps system “from recruitment all the way to retirement.” That can be read here: https://dcps.dc.gov/page/we-people-2016-report-dcps-educators.
DCPS teachers are represented by the Washington Teachers Union. Their previous contract expired in 2012 and five years later, in September 2017, a new one was approved that includes a raise in pay and governs their other terms of employment for the next three years.
Teacher Awards in 2018
The 2018 National Teacher of the Year, selected by the Council of Chief State School Officers, is Mandy Manning, an English Language Arts teacher at the Joel Ferris High School in Spokane, Washington. She was honored at the White House on May 2.
The CCSSO selected Paul Howard, a Social Studies and History teacher for 7th and 8th grades at the LaSalle Backus Education Campus, as the Teacher of the Year for DC in the State category.
Tameka Colman of Walker-Jones Education Campus in Ward 6 was selected as the Excellence Award Teacher of the Year at the Standing Ovation awards ceremony on February 8, 2018 and received $10,000. In addition, Jillian Atlas, Joanna Davila, Taylor Parsons, Kaila Ramsey, Lauren Bomba, Lashunda Reynolds and Pamela Tucker each received $5,000 Rubenstein Awards.
Standing Ovation is hosted by the DC Education Fund using money donated by businesses and philanthropists. This year the ceremony was moved from the Kennedy Center to the Anthem Theater at the newly opened District Wharf in the Southwest neighborhood.
The budget the Mayor proposed on March 21, 2018 for all the DC government’s operations and capital projects is $14. 4 billion for Fiscal Year 2019 which begins on October 1, this coming fall. Of that $14.4 billion, she proposed to spend a total of $2,766,292,803 for the Public Education System. The table below shows the agencies that make up the Public Education System, the amounts proposed and the change, if any, from the FY 18 budget.
Using those figures and all the public and government testimony, the Committee on Education “marked up” the education budget May 2 to 4th. Once agreed on the changes they wanted to make from the Mayor’s proposed amounts, the committee then sent its recommendations to the Council’s Budget Director where they will be incorporated into the budget the Council as a whole will consider for its approval. The Committee’s report can be read at www.davidgrosso.org.
The Council will hold its first meeting on the FY 19 budget on Tuesday, May 15 at 10 am in Room 500 and its second meeting on Tuesday, May 29, also at 10 am in Room 500 at the John A. Wilson Building.
A part of the education committee’s mark-up report is about the capital budget for school modernizations. In several instances, they questioned or disagreed with the proposed amount or schedule but in most cases, left it to the forthcoming Master Facilities Plan to resolve.
There are several modernization projects in Wards 7 and 8 that are in the works now and had money added, or they are receiving money in FY 19 to start planning. For example, the Mayor added $4 million for the Kimball Elementary School project due to escalating costs as the work progresses. Kimball students are attending classes at the formally closed Davis Elementary School on H St. SE during the work on their building. The Mayor also proposed $500,000 each for Burrville Elementary and C.W. Harris Elementary playground updates.
In Ward 8, MalcomX@Green is scheduled for $1.5 million in window replacements. Johnson Elementary is scheduled for a $2 million full roof replacement. Henley Elementary and Adams Elementary in NW are scheduled for $4,250,000 to replace their HVAC systems.
Modernizing Orr Elementary…the building
 A full modernization is underway in Ward 8 at the currently named Orr Elementary. The picture to the left shows Orr Elementary School as it looks while walking south on Minnesota Ave. SE. The entrance is to the right of the rose bushes in the foreground. As we walked toward the entrance to personally deliver our thanks to some DC teachers, we were greeted by a friendly woman standing just inside the open door.
When she learned the purpose of our visit she took us to meet the assistant principal in charge of operations. He too was friendly and welcoming, and, without an appointment, invited us in to his office.
His position, he said, is about three years old and is one of the changes DCPS made to support principals. By dividing the labor into an academic and instructional area and a separate operations area that handles the needs and functions of the building itself, one person is not trying to do everything and can better do what each is responsible for. He’s been there for ten years and says his favorite part of the job is greeting the students and parents as they arrive in the morning. He described his sensitivity to students who come with a feeling of having “the whole world on their shoulders” and is happy that he, and everyone in the school, can help the students feel that while they are there, the grown-ups will take care of them and they have only their learning to focus on. Below is the new building going up just to the side of the current one with a part of the church next door on the far right.
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