Far too many DC students face enormous challenges—unhealthy environments, housing instability, food insecurity, care-giving responsibilities, and the stress of living paycheck to paycheck. About half of DC students currently qualify for ‘at-risk’ funding because they are growing up in families struggling to make ends meet, or they are at risk of falling behind in the classroom.[1] Both DC Public Schools (DCPS) and public charter schools receive an additional $2,334 per-student in local ‘at-risk’ dollars.[2] But the underfunding of schools often results in the misuse of these extra resources intended to support students facing the greatest barriers. The District needs a better blueprint for the resources required to staff every school and the resources needed to support low-income students in particular.
‘At-risk’ funds were designed to promote equity: to ensure that low-income students get the same kinds of enriching opportunities and services as their higher-income peers, and to ensure that students who are struggling academically get the targeted supports they need to succeed in the classroom. These funds are supposed to help schools provide supplemental resources and expand important services for the students who need them most.
But tight school budgets have led to the misuse of ‘at-risk’ funds. Schools struggling to maintain current staffing or otherwise meet necessary requirements are often forced to re-direct dollars for targeted services for the students who need them most and/or de-prioritize enriching arts and afterschool programs—never mind make needed improvements. In this way, inadequate school funding limits the ability of schools to change the large and troubling differences in academic outcomes between the District’s low-income and higher-income students.
There are deeply distressing differences between the educational outcomes of economically disadvantaged students and their wealthier peers in the District. Less than a quarter of low-income DC high school students test college and career ready in English.Schools are also failing to prepare students of color for college and careers to the same degree as white students. In high school English, 87 percent of white students are considered college and career ready compared to only 21 percent of Black students (Figure 1). In fact, racial disparities in student outcomes are widening in the District. Although the PARCC scores of all DC students and subgroups have improved overall, the scores of white students improved five percentage points more than Black students.[3] Economic and racial injustice are distinct and yet intertwined, with particularly devastating consequences for low-income students of color. Addressing the injustice of these inequalities requires targeted resources, like ‘at-risk’ dollars.
Figure 1.
Every dollar of ‘at-risk’ funding should be easily identifiable, because all the dollars should be supplemental. But information on the school-level allocation of ‘at-risk’ funds is not made readily accessible in real time, and actual spending of ‘at-risk funds’ at the DCPS school level is not tracked. Of the $50.3 million that is supposed to follow DCPS students to their schools, only 59 percent ($29.8 million) was allocated in ‘at-risk eligible ways,’ according to Mary Levy’s latest analysis (Figure 2).[4] The allocation of the other 41 percent ($20.5 million) of ‘at-risk’ funds could not be identified in the individual school budgets.[5] It is likely that a large share of these unaccounted for ‘at-risk’ funds are once again being used for functions that are required at all schools as part of DCPS’s staffing model, instead of supplemental services for the students who need them most. Even if every dollar of ‘at-risk’ money in the FY 2019 budget was allocated on targeted services as intended, these funds would remain far short of the levels recommended in the 2013 Adequacy Study.[6]
Figure 2.
School level leaders in both DCPS and public charters, alongside teachers and families, should be able to leverage ‘at-risk’ funds to serve their students’ specific needs in evidence-based ways. Whether school communities choose to use those funds on targeted supports or school-wide benefits, those resources should be supplemental.
Schools must be adequately funded so that basic needs are met, without having to tap ‘at-risk’ funds. Budget increases for DCPS and public charter schools in recent years have been arbitrary, and not connected to what it really costs to provide quality education. Five years have passed since the 2013 Adequacy Study, and yet we still have not reached the level of resources it recommended, once adjusted for inflation– let alone the level needed to keep up with all of our system’s changing needs. DC Council should allocate enough money in FY 2019 to revise the 2013 Adequacy Study and update our understanding of investments needed to support every school and ensure that we are meeting the needs of low-income students.
Read more about DCFPI’s FY 2019 education budget recommendations here.
[i] A projected 44,496 students in DC qualify for ‘at-risk’ funding in the 2018-2019 school year because they are a foster care student, experiencing homelessness, overage for their grade, or participate in SNAP or TANF, (DCPS FY 2019 Budget Chapter; PCS FY 2019 Budget Chapter)
[ii] In the District’s proposed Fiscal Year 2019 budget, there are $103.9 million ‘at-risk’ dollars for both DCPS and public charters overall.
[iv] This is actually a conservative estimate. It assumes that ‘at-risk’ funds are being used to support every staff person beyond those positions guaranteed to every school by the Comprehensive Staffing Model, when most schools should also have other pots to draw from, like Title I.
[vi] With a weight of 0.37 as recommended in the 2013 Adequacy Study, qualifying students would have $3,943 in additional ‘at-risk’ funds, or $175.5 million total (based off of a projected ‘at-risk’ subpopulation of 44,496). That is $71.6 million more. If the ‘at-risk weight’ were increased as recommended, and all else remained the same, schools would have $71.6 million more ‘at-risk’ dollars (or $1,609 more per-student) to invest in supplemental services for students overall, than the current $103.9 million total in at-risk funds, (2013 Adequacy Study).
We often think of the District of Columbia as a liberal enclave but have the liberal positions of the city’s council members led to the justice and equality sought by the residents they represent? This Saturday’s candidate forum and a political scorecard provided by Jews United for Justice might shed some light on those council members whose positions lean left of center.
It’s An Election Year! Candidate Forum On Education 3/17 & Political Scorecard
Cross-Posted from Education DC written by Valerie Jablow
Tomorrow, Saturday March 17, the Washington Teachers’ Union (WTU) is holding a candidate forum starting at 10:30 am in room 150 at McKinley Tech high school (151 T St. NE). Sign up is here, with an information sheet here. Candidates are expected to speak about issues surrounding public education in DC.
Council candidates from wards 1, 5, and 6 are slated to speak between 10:30 and 11:30 am. Then, at 11:30-12:30 pm, candidates for the two at large council seats will speak.
From 12:30-1:30 pm, candidates for the council chair will speak, followed at 1:30-2:30 pm by candidates for mayor.
[Confidential to DC voters: Our mayor has challengers! Now, maybe we will see whether politically “credible” = something other than a few million $$ in the bank.]
And just in time for primaries, the Jews United for Justice Campaign Fund has created a handy political scorecard for the DC city council, wherein the votes of council members on a variety of social justice issues (affordable housing, economic justice, etc.) are tallied.
For those following the ins and outs of District of Columbia Public Schools, here in it’s entirety is the March 2018 edition of the Citizen Reader.
I PUBLIC EDUCATION
The Association of School Superintendents (www.aasa.org), joined by more than twenty other national education organizations, is hosting the National Public Schools Week March 12 through 16, 2018. The week’s events are being co-chaired by six members of Congress who will give speeches in the Senate and House of Representatives and hold a press conference.
A statement on the above website explains the purpose of Public Schools Week saying “With the mounting changes in the education landscape, this campaign creates a platform for Americans to join together and express their strong feelings toward public education and why its success is a key determinant when it comes to our country’s future.”
The senators and representatives are Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), Rep. Ryan Costello (R-PA), Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) and Senator John Testor (D-MT).
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS WEEK March 12 – 16, 2018
● Morning of TUESDAY (3/13): Speeches on the floor of the Senate celebrating the great things happening in public education. ● Evening of TUESDAY (3/13): 1-minute speeches during which House Members share a story about the great things happening in a public school or with public schools students in his/her Congressional District. ● Afternoon of WEDNESDAY (3/14) at 2 pm in the Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 430: Press Conference for Public Schools Week. House and Senate Co-Chairs of Public Schools Week will share their support for public schools and specific legislation that supports public schools. ● Morning of THURSDAY (3/15): Speeches on the floor of the Senate and House if applicable celebrating the great things happening in public education. ● THURSDAY from 1-3 pm (3/15): Tweet storm using #PublicSchoolsWeek! We will be lifting up the floor speeches via social media. ● FRIDAY from 10-11 am (3/16) at the Rayburn House Office Building Room 2044: Panel Discussion “Understanding the funding streams that impact public school students” featuring: Bruce Lesley, President of First Focus; Stan Collender, Executive Vice President at Qorvis MSLGroup; and Sharron Parrot, Senior Fellow and Senior Counselor, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Moderated by Lauren Camera, National Education Reporter U.S. News and World Report.
Monday, MARCH 19, 10 am in Room 412, at Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The Committee on Education will hold a Public Oversight Roundtable on The Future of School Reform in the District of Columbia. The purpose, according to the announcement on the Council’s website, “is to focus specifically on improvements to the D.C. Public Education Reform Amendment Act and other cross-sector issues.”
In addition, “it will be the first in a series of roundtables that will be scheduled during both daytime and evening hours to get the full engagement of the public.”
To testify, sign up online at http://bit.do/educationhearings or call 202-724-8061 by 5 pm Friday March 15. Written statements for those who can’t testify in person can be submitted by email to astrange@dccouncil.us or postal mailed to Committee on Education, Council of the District of Columbia, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave. NW 20004. Closing date for written statements to be determined.
On March 24, the kids and families of March For Our Lives will take to the streets of Washington DC to demand that their lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today. March with us in Washington DC or march in your own community. On March 24, the collective voices of the March For Our Lives movement will be heard.
in conjunction with Ward 6 DC Council Member Charles Allen Ward 6 Representative Joe Weedon, State Board of Education, and Capitol Hill Public Schools Parent Organization
Monday, April 9, 2018
6:30 to 8:30 pm at the North East Neighborhood Library, 330 7th Street NE
The information in this workshop will be provided in three ways.
1–Know Your Rights Discussion–lead by the Office of Student Advocate Team. 2–Individualized Mini-Sessions–to help answer your specific questions about the needs of your student(s).
3–Special Education Resources–list of special education resources including 504 plans v. IEPs (Individualized Education Plans), how to make a request for evaluation, annual reviews, and connections for organizational support.
RSVP at http://bit.ly/2g4BeJU For more information, email student.advocate@dc.gov or call 202-741-4692.
DCPS Performance Oversight Hearing Government Witness, March 1, 2018
Interim chancellor Amanda Alexander gave the government witness testimony on the performance of DCPS during Fiscal Years ’17 and ’18 to date. In her prepared statement she spoke of her experience in DCPS beginning as a kindergarten teacher in 1998 and going on to serve as principal of Bunker Hill and Ross Elementary Schools. She also led the redesign of DCPS’s principal supervision structure and served as an instructional superintendent of a group of elementary schools. From there she became deputy Chief of Schools, managing literacy initiatives and a district-wide task force to identify and implement strategies to improve student performance. Most recently, she served as chief of the Office of Elementary Schools leading the system’s elementary support and early childhood programs.
She gave three examples of changes in DCPS over the past decade—the overhaul of all aspects of the teaching corps, implementation of Common-Core aligned curriculum to determine if students were mastering basic skills, and increasing enrollment and opening of new schools.
While acknowledging the many problems that still exist, she said “DCPS is definitely not the
same district it used to be.”
In response to a question from committee member Robert White as to how, in light of
recently revealed problems, people can be confident that DCPS is on the right track, Ms. Alexander reported some information from a recent meeting between her team and the Instructional Superintendents.
The purpose of the meeting was to review the middle of the year (moy) literacy data. She explained that the data is viewed in quintiles, or five segments, that range from Well Below Average to Below Average to Average to Above Average to Well Above Average. They found that 23 schools had hit the Above Average and Well Above Average mark.
The schools are: Brightwood EC, Burroughs ES, C.W. Harris ES, Dorothy Height ES, Drew ES, Houston ES, Ketchum ES, Lafayette ES, Lasalle Backus EC, Malcom X ES, Marie Reed ES, Patterson ES, Payne ES, Ross ES, Seaton ES, Simon ES, Smothers ES, Thomson ES, Trusdell EC, Tyler ES, Walker-Jones EC, West EC and Whittier EC.
She concluded her response by saying that those increases in students’ literacy skills are the basis for her confidence that DCPS “is on the right track.”
Her full testimony can be read at www.dcps.dc.gov under the Testimonies tab at the bottom of the home page. In addition to the Oversight Hearing, the Committee on Education also sends questions to DCPS each year which it then responds to in writing and sends them back to the Committee where they are posted on the Council’s website www.dccouncil.us near the top of the home page. They provide many pages of detail on the inner workings of DCPS.
Recent education blog must reads
● At educationdc.net, https://educationdc.net/2018/02/28/gun-violence-our-dc-schools/ by blog master and DCPS parent Valerie Jablow and https://educationdc.net/2018/03/02/this-is- not-a-boat-accident/, a guest post by school advocate Peter McPherson comparing the mayor in the town depicted in the 1975 film Jaws with DC mayors’ needs for a certain narrative on school reform.
● From Guy Brandenburg at https://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/. Retired DCPS math teacher in a March 10 post entitled Ten Years of Educational Reform in DC—Results: Total MathCounts Collapse for the Public AND Charter Schools recounts his recent experience as a judge for the math competition for 7th and 8th graders which has dwindled to two students from past times when teams of four were common and won over private schools such as National Cathedral and Sidwell Friends. In addition he provides links to more than a half dozen articles detailing DCPS’s problems. One of them was written by Natalie Hopkinson, DC resident and writer, in the Atlantic magazine of September 15, 2010.
Also not to be missed
The Public’s testimony on the performance of DCPS at the Oversight Hearing on February 21, 2018 can accessed by video on the Council’s home page under Watch Hearings Live www.dccouncil.us. Some of the written public testimonies can be read at https://chpspo.org/. Scroll down past the Meeting Notes for February 20, 2018 to find them.
Speaking freely… A letter to the editor
Thank you for including the Network for Public Education’s “A Call to Action on April 20, 2018 for school safety against gun violence.” It is in the form of a letter from Diane Ravitch, a former education official in the federal government and the president of the Network.
I agree with the Network that gun violence in this country must be stopped, and I would urge that we, as citizens of the Nation’s capital city, show up on April 20 as Ms. Ravitch recommends.
I recommend, in particular, that those of us pushing for more effective gun regulations
press home the points to Congress and the White House that the crux of our gun problem is the easy availability of guns.
Within the Supreme Court’s guidance regarding the Second Amendment in the Heller v. District of Columbia case, written by Justice Antonin Scalia in 2008, it is legal and possible for the national government to take the following affirmative actions:
(1) Authorize and support research by the Centers for Disease Control into the incidence of death and injury attributable to the number of guns stored in residences, the number sold in a year in particular jurisdictions, or other measures which can inform us of the effects that guns have on our society;
(2) Establish, maintain, and at yearly intervals make available a national database, administered by the Department of Homeland Security with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, of registered gun sales and ownership;
(3) Require background checks for all gun purchasers, irrespective of whether guns are sold by individuals, by stores, at gun shows, or by any other means.
Similarly, I recommend that we focus on the following prohibitions:
(a) Carrying or transport of guns in or near schools, day-care centers, medical facilities, college campus grounds, concert venues, public parks, government properties, shopping malls and areas, and houses of worship;
(b) Interstate transport of guns or other weapons, except by military forces or state or local police forces which are in the process of collaborating in pursuit of one or more suspects across jurisdictional lines;
(c) Sale, possession, or use of AR-15 or other assault weapons, bump stocks, large
magazines (more than 5 bullets capacity).
I believe these affirmative steps and prohibitions would bring down the incidence of gun- related deaths and injuries in this country. They ought to be regarded as a manifesto for our April 20 activities, moving the country in the direction of improved public safety. If enacted, these steps and prohibitions would constitute an effective resumption of our path toward “a more perfect Union” as contemplated in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States.
C. Ellis, DC father and grandfather
Citizen Reader is a project of Livingview Communications—a citizens’ information service that is dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of democracy and the honor of all who have fought and died to equally participate in and protect it.
Contact ess.livingston@gmail.com with corrections, letters to the editor or request for email subscription. Thanks!
We invite you to endorse and participate in the D.C. Area Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools from February 5-9 to bring social justice issues into the classroom and empower students of color across the D.C. area. Sign up, download resources, and more: http://www.teachingforchange.org/black-lives-matter-week-action
Teaching for Change, Center for Inspired Teaching, Washington Teachers’ Union, D.C. area educators, as well as community members are collaborating on D.C. Area Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools. This week of action builds on the momentum of the The National Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Our Schools campaign taking place in cities across the U.S. to promote a set of local and national demands focused on improving the school experience for students of color.
In these times of emboldened racism and xenophobia, we must listen to and elevate the voices, experiences, and history of our fellow citizens and communities under attack. The thirteen guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter movement will be highlighted during this week of action as a means of challenging the insidious legacy of institutionalized racism and oppression that has plagued the United States since its founding. The Black Lives Matter movement is a powerful, non-violent peace movement that systematically examines injustices that exist in the intersections of race, class, and gender; including mass incarceration, poverty, non-affordable housing, income disparity, homophobia, unfair immigration laws, gender inequality, and poor access to healthcare.
Each day will explore two to three of the Black Lives Matter movement thirteen guiding principles. In school, teachers across the district will implement Black Lives Matter Week of Action curriculum designed for pre-K through 12th grade classrooms. In the evening, there will be events for educators, students, stakeholders, and community members to actively engage in the movement.
The goal of the Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools is to spark an ongoing movement of critical reflection and honest conversations in school communities for people of all ages to engage with critical issues of social justice. It is our duty as educators and community members to civically engage students and build their empathy, collaboration, and agency so they are able to thrive. Students must learn to examine, address, and grapple with issues of racism and discrimination that persist in their lives and communities.
[Ed Note: On Friday, December 15, the education committee of the city council held TWO related hearings on graduation rate accountability, arising from reporting that students at DCPS’s Ballou high school graduated without earning appropriate credit. Below, DC education activist Peter MacPherson puts the official investigation of what happened at Ballou into historical and civic perspective.]
It’s a big deal in a democracy when two branches of a government decide a third just isn’t working well, needs to depart this mortal coil, and then administers the coup de grace. That’s what happened in 2007 when former Mayor Adrian Fenty and every member of the city council—save one—decided to dispatch the elected Board of Education from this realm. It was a decision made by a small number of actors, with the support of elite institutions like the Washington Post and with no meaningful opportunity for District residents to express whether they wanted one of the city’s few vestiges of democratic life to disappear.
The elected Board of Education has now been gone for a decade. Those who eliminated it made the argument that putting the final authority for DCPS under the aegis of a single person, namely the mayor, would be the antidote for what was commonly described as a failing school system. It’s been a popular narrative in our country: that uninhibited executive power is what’s needed to fix the badly broken. Fire the non-performing and eliminate the bickering and the need to build consensus on an elected board. Develop a bold plan for improvement and then implement it without the barriers that an elected board represents.
After a decade of mayoral control, few would say that the city’s schools are actually fixed. Huge improvements have been made in renovating or reconstructing school buildings. But the benefits of the school modernization program have not been experienced equally, with improvements closely tied to race and class. The achievement gap between white and non-white students remains as jarring as ever.
Nonetheless, there is a persistent narrative that our schools have dramatically improved, that DCPS is “the fastest improving urban school district in the United States,” as the mayor and her lieutenants frequently note. These kinds of statistics are often cited by the editorial page of the Washington Post.
Besides scores on standardized tests, significant improvements in high school graduation rates are also mentioned as evidence of improvement. The latter, if the numbers are to be believed, is a success that DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson wishes to build on: In the next 5 years, he wants 85% to graduate from high school within four years and 90% within four to five years.
But it’s difficult to judge that goal, because the current state of achievement in our schools is actually unknown.
For instance, reporting by WAMU and NPR has raised considerable doubt about the actual graduation rate at Ballou in Ward 8. The school had reported an improvement in its graduation rate from 50% in 2012 to 67% in 2017. And the school also reported that all of its 2017 graduating class had been accepted to college. However, the WAMU/NPR reporting makes clear that those numbers are illusory. Evidence of excessive absenteeism on the part of students as well as the massaging of grades indicate that many were allowed to graduate when they in fact were not eligible to do so.
Our mayor and chancellor desperately want this scandal to be isolated to a single school. And if only Ballou is investigated, that’s where it will remain. As it now stands, the Office of the State Superintendent for Education plans to only investigate Ballou.
This is exactly why education reform in the District of Columbia is failing.
Those running education in the District are deeply invested in the reform model adopted a decade ago. Eliminating the elected school board and embracing a high-stakes testing paradigm were supposed to transform our schools. Those brought in to run the schools were sold as pedagogic alchemists who possessed the secret formula.
That narrative is paramount: The political and media class are not invested in all students succeeding academically. Essentially, they care about the perception that students are learning and achieving in our schools. When scandals appear, like the one involving cheating on standardized tests that USA Today uncovered (and even more since then), scenarios have been constructed to give the appearance that what was reported was limited to a few isolated examples. Unlike in Atlanta, where a similar scandal had taken place and a fulsome investigation conducted, much more limited inquiries were conducted in DC. In Atlanta, school system officials went to jail for their role in the cheating scandal.
No such sunlight was brought to bear on events here in DC. Cheating took place that was engineered by adults. And no one in DC went to jail.
District stakeholders have every reason to be skeptical of how city students are faring in our schools. The problem is that the civic bodies in DC that ensure accountability–the mayor, city council, OSSE, the media, the charter board–are so heavily invested in a particular narrative that they have largely forsaken their actual roles.
Before 2007, we had relatively poor oversight, and many schools and educational situations that were demonstrably bad. After the elimination of the democratically elected school board, all that has happened is a continuous storyof improvement. Actual and honest assessment has been abandoned. In fact, challenging the current educational orthodoxy seems as perilous as criticizing Joseph Stalin in Russia in the 1930s. Critics are forced from the system or characterized as dead-enders clinging to a sclerotic old order.
Common sense says we should be skeptical about what our city’s educational agencies are telling us about the progress of our students. The PARCC—and the DC-CAS that it replaced–have consistently shown that many District high school students have low scores on these tests. These test results, where some high schools have single digit percentages of students scoring proficient in both reading and math, should make everyone skeptical that 72.4% on average (the current graduation rate for the city) were able to credibly graduate.
We do not need an investigation just of Ballou. We need a comprehensive investigation of high school graduation rates at every high school.
And, as council member Robert White has asked, this investigation needs to be done by an entity that has no direct connection with the District government. The findings should be released independently and not filtered by the mayor, chancellor, charter board, or the state superintendent for education, all of whom have a stake in ensuring a positive narrative emerges no matter how egregious the treatment of students actually is.
During the past decade, those with direct responsibility for education in the city have placed the credit or blame for levels of student achievement on teachers and principals. The current education orthodoxy, which has been relentlessly defended for the past 10 years by city politicians, the media, and the business community with little questioning, has to be abandoned in favor of a far more rigorous assessment of what our students actually need. Their success or failure is not just a function of the schools or programming or personnel. It’s also very much about the context in which many DC children live their lives. Poverty matters. Food insecurity matters. Domestic violence matters. If we can start having reliable information about how students are actually faring in schools, we can start having honest conversations about how to help kids get the education they need.
But doing so requires the grownups–the actual adults in the rooms where these decisions are made every day–to start being honest. It’s hard to imagine anything more pernicious than a willingness to misrepresent what is happening to children in school.
I 
Monday, MARCH 19, 10 am in Room 412, at Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. The Committee on Education will hold a Public Oversight Roundtable on The Future of School Reform in the District of Columbia. The purpose, according to the announcement on the Council’s website, “is to focus specifically on improvements to the D.C. Public Education Reform Amendment Act and other cross-sector issues.”
Teaching for Change, Center for Inspired Teaching, Washington Teachers’ Union, D.C. area educators, as well as community members are collaborating on D.C. Area Black Lives Matter Week of Action in Schools. This week of action builds on the momentum of the