WMATA service cuts could affect DCPS students

By: Jake Schindler

According to Washington Post education columnist Bill Turque, several student-only bus routes that serve DCPS turned up on a list of possible WMATA service cuts. On Friday, he wrote about the issue on his D.C. Schools Insider blog:

“D.C. public schools do not have yellow school buses that take students to regular school programs, but WMATA serves some schools with special bus lines that are for students only. On the list of possible route cuts are the buses that serve Watkins Elementary and Peabody Elementary; Deal Middle and Sousa Middle; Anacostia High, Eastern High, McKinley High, Spingarn High and Wilson High; and Duke Ellington School of the Arts.”

Of the schools listed, two (Sousa and Anacostia) are in Wards 7 and 8. In addition, the Duke Ellington School of the Arts is just a few blocks from Georgetown, and serves students from all over the District. Transportation is an issue of great importance for DCPS families, not only because of the lack of school buses, but because students in D.C. are not restricted to attending schools in a specific ward or neighborhood, as is the case in many other cities. Parents can send their children to any school in the District, but a lack of reliable transportation may limit their options.

It’s easy to see how this could have a disproportionate effect on the underserved communities of the 7th and 8th Wards. Without public transit, parents who lack the time or resources to drive their children across the District each morning would have few alternatives to their neighborhood public school, regardless of its quality.

Fortunately, WMATA is saying that the school routes are not in danger, and that even if they were to be cut, they would be replaced by alternate bus or rail routes. This is reassuring news. But fewer service cuts for cash-strapped Metro could mean even more fare hikes on top of those introduced earlier this year. Either way, it could soon become more difficult for a lot of D.C. students to get to school.

Bill Turque’s article can be found at:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dcschools/2010/04/are_metros_dedicated_school_li.html

For more on Metro’s budget woes:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/08/AR2010040803905.html

Encouraging Dreams of Higher Education in D.C. Public Schools

By: Hannah Klusendorf

Below is an opinion I wrote for The Hoya for the April 13th edition. The link is http://www.thehoya.com/opinion/encouraging-dreams-higher-education-dc-public-schools, but I posted the article just in case. In the article, I presented how severe the education gap is in D.C. and how Georgetown students specifically can/should rally around D.C. issues like education reform. As I wrote, a Georgetown degree will mean nothing if we do not use the knowledge it represents to serve the community as a whole. Hope you like it!

Our high school senior selves probably wished at one point or another that they had never heard of the college admissions process and SATs. For many students in the District, however, ignorance is not bliss. Rather, it equates to low wages and limited career options.

According to a 2006 report, 68 percent of students across the country graduate from high school in five years; 48 percent enroll in college within 18 months of graduating from high school; and 23 percent receive degrees within five years of entering college. In the District, only 43 percent graduate from high school in five years; 29 percent enroll in college within 18 months of graduating from high school; and 9 percent receive a college degree within five years of enrolling. In Wards 7 and 8, just 33 percent of students graduate from high school, and 5 percent receive a college degree.

A high school diploma alone cannot support a family. Eighty percent of the fastest-growing job sectors in the United Sates require some postsecondary education. Seventy percent of college-educated males earn more than their high school-educated counterparts. Likewise, female college graduates earn about 80 percent more than female high school graduates. D.C. children will face a future of diminished life opportunities if no one takes up their cause.

As a coordinator for D.C. Reads, I see firsthand the students, schools and struggles these statistics represent. Part of our program includes a curriculum specifically geared toward cultivating a college-going culture in the fourth grade at Houston Elementary in Ward 7.

Every Friday, a group of tutors and coordinators meets with these dozen or so students to discuss what it means to go to college and be a college student. The fourth-graders knew that one needs to study hard in order to attend college, but they lacked the vocabulary to understand what that entailed. SATs, applications, scholarships and high school extra-curricular activities are now topics Houston’s fourth grade can grasp. But more importantly than knowing what an SAT is, the students can comprehend why one goes to college and what one does when one arrives on campus.

We stress to the students that the college experience consists of much more than simply going to class. One need only walk through Red Square to see a diverse body of interests represented by T-shirts, flyers and bake sales. Painters, singers, basketball stars and political activists all walk these halls. The interests we cultivate here influence and factor into our career and life choices after graduation.

Many D.C. public school students, however, do not realize the value of learning outside the classroom in college. Scott, a fourth-grader at Houston and an avid television watcher, once dreamed of taking the online college classes he saw advertised on TV. Because a Georgetown student took the time to have a meaningful conversation with Scott, he now wants to go to a university where perhaps he will find a club dedicated to TV fandom. If he and the other fourth-graders of Houston Elementary continue on this college-conscious path, no goal of theirs is impossible.

As Georgetown students, we are in a pivotal position to help foster a college-going culture within the District of Columbia Public Schools system. We are all veterans of the admissions process and soon-to-be beneficiaries of a university degree. DCPS need more Joe and Jane Hoyas to become a part of its mission to create a postsecondary culture. As D.C. residents, we, along with educators and community leaders, share in the responsibility of bolstering college graduation rates. We need to see past Georgetown’s front gates and realize the grass is not greener on the other side of Healy Lawn.

Social justice issues like educational reform require more time and effort than four years here can afford, but Georgetown and its student body of women and men for others can have an impact in the DCPS system. Programs such as D.C. Reads are committed to alleviating the educational gaps in Wards 7 and 8. A Georgetown degree will mean nothing if we do not use the knowledge it represents to serve the community as a whole. Scott and his classmates deserve the right to one day complain about the college admissions process, too.

Upcoming Field Trip to the National Museum of American History

By: Kelly McAllester

When you tutor for D.C. Reads you often have unexpected revelations. Some of these revelations, such as when you discover a book your tutee truly loves to read, make every struggle up to that point worth it. Some, however, make you wish you could do something more than just help children learn to read a couple hours a week.

This was the case when I discovered last semester that many of the kids I was tutoring had never visited the National Mall, or been to a single Smithsonian Institution museum. Think back to your own third and fourth grade memories. How many field trips had you been on by the time you left elementary school? I personally remember visiting the state capital, an old mine, and a historic colonial village in the fourth grade alone. It isn’t right that the kids we tutor haven’t been exposed to some of the best museums in the country which are not only located in the same city where they live, but are also free!

When I brought the topic up in an Advocacy Committee meeting, I discovered other tutors and coordinators where thinking what I was thinking. So we decided to take action.

As a result, a sub-committee of the Advocacy Committee is currently planning a field trip for the students we tutor to visit the National Museum of American History and have lunch on the National Mall. The date for the trip has been tentatively set as Sunday, May 2nd, so this past Saturday I went with a group of fellow students to the museum to scope things out.

While the museum doesn’t offer tours to school groups, they do have a very useful website full of activities for all age groups, time periods, and historical themes at this address: http://historyexplorer.americanhistory.si.edu/.

While at the museum we decided to plan a trip around five exhibits: The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden, First Ladies at the Smithsonian, Communities in a Changing Nation: The Promise of 19th-Century America, The Price of Freedom: Americans at War, and a theatrical reenactment of the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in. We plan on using these exhibits not only to engage the students in the history of their nation but also to introduce in a concrete way the various important roles Americans have played in forming our country and the different careers every student can aspire to have as an adult: doctor, scientist, activist, educator, even the President. All of these careers require the solid education D.C. Reads promotes.

I hope that the planned field trip will not only be fun, informative, and inspirational, but also set up a precedent of D.C. Reads acting not only as a tutoring organization but also as a group that exposes students in D.C. to a broader sense of the world they live in and how they can fit into that world as an adult.

Hopefully next semester we will explore dinosaur bones, space shuttles, and Jackson Pollock! Until then, however, I will keep you updated on our progress and hopefully post some pictures of the trip itself.

Chancellor's Forum Recap

By: Matt Buccelli

Last Wednesday night, I went with several other tutors and coordinators to one of DCPS chancellor Michelle Rhee's monthly community forums. This one took place at Kimball Elementary School in Ward 7, and the was centered around the district’s attempts to develop an action plan for improving DCPS high schools.

After an introduction by Chancellor Rhee, one of her deputies detailed how and why DC is moving forward with its plan to improve secondary schools. Rhee’s deputy said that DCPS is currently engaged in a three-phase plan for secondary school transformation --- after coming to agreement on expectations for high school students and tactics for moving forward, the school district will examine student performance and best practices from other urban school districts, and then create a final plan for meeting its expectations. In other words, DCPS’ “Vision for DCPS Secondary Schools,” as the forum was billed, is in its infancy.

The lady representing the district pointed out repeatedly that while DCPS would like to see more of its students go to college, the plan for improving secondary schools is designed to prepare high schoolers for “long-term success in the labor market.” That preparation, she clarified, can come in the form of a college degree, or simply in terms of giving students the basic skills and resources in high school so that they can become good citizens and productive members of society. But her PowerPoint presentation did contain two seemingly obvious but nonetheless telling graphs: one demonstrating significantly higher average lifetime incomes attributed to higher degrees of educational attainment, another connecting higher educational attainment to lower unemployment. Preparing students on the district-wide level for long-term success, then, necessarily involves sending more kids to college. But the DCPS “working draft” does also focus heavily on youth development, and includes as goals that students “serve and volunteer in school or community,” and “explore personal interests, aptitudes and skills.” So it’s not only a college thing --- that’s just a large part of the equation.

After the DCPS presentation, a panel of DCPS principals and other district officials took questions from community attendees. The questions stressed the need for more guidance counselors, better resources in some schools, and effective implementation of the draft plan. One question that I thought was particularly pertinent asked why DCPS, in the questioner’s view, doesn’t work more effectively with various community organizations throughout DC. Obviously DC Reads and DCPS work very collaboratively. But the questioner seemed discouraged by DCPS’ lack of engagement with non-educational community organizations. If high schools are going to encourage their students to “serve and volunteer in school or community,” that would seem to be an essential link.

In the van back to Georgetown from the event, the consensus among the four other tutors and coordinators I was with seemed to be that the DCPS plan represented good vision and forward thinking on the part of the school district, but lacked specifics for implementation. I would have to agree. I was encouraged by the fact that this is hopefully going to be an ongoing initiative. It seems that in the climate of school reform, high schoolers get sort of lost in the shuffle --- I was actually surprised to see that while students under No Child Left Behind are required to be tested once every year from third grade through eighth grade, the law only demands one high school evaluation. So DCPS gets points for understanding that high school represents the critical final stage in a child’s development that cannot be ignored.

The working draft is fairly detailed, which is also good sign. The emphasis on graduating good citizens was also commendable. But with the plan in its early stages, there are a lot of blanks that need to be filled in as far as how the district will follow through on goals for its high schools that should also get credit for being fairly ambitious. Will DCPS develop stronger relationships with community organizations to insure that students have the opportunity to pursue their extra-curricular goals? More questions remain: is this plan going to get the significant time and attention it will need to be successful? Or will it drop down the list of Chancellor Rhee’s priorities?

I think there’s a lot of potential in this latest effort by DCPS, but as with most things there is going to need to be effective follow-through. If anyone else attended the forum, what did you think?

DC Students Show Reading Gains

By: Matt Buccelli

Amidst a bevy of disappointing new federal reading data, modest gains in DC reading scores stand out as a bright spot.

A report from the National Assessment on Educational Progress (NAEP), which the federal government uses to monitor reading proficiency in the states, shows that while reading scores in 49 of 50 states have stalled while the No Child Left Behind law has been in effect, DC schools have made steady gains in reading since 2003. The DC NAEP scores remain below the national average, but DC joined Kentucky, which was the only state to achieve significant gains, as the only public school systems to improve steadily in reading since the enactment of No Child Left Behind.

To read the rest of the article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/24/AR2010032400929_2.html?sid=ST2010032603631

Fall 2009 DC Teacher Firings

By: Katie Seymour

Out of all the controversial actions Michelle Rhee has taken during her career as Chancellor of DC Public Schools, her fall 2009 layoffs of several hundred teachers have inspired the strongest reactions in the public yet.

Warnings about upcoming layoffs began circulating publicly in September, when Chancellor Rhee announced that she would have to fire an unspecified number of teachers as part of an effort to address a $40 million deficit in the DCPS budget. On October 2, 2009, the Chancellor followed through by firing 229 classroom teachers, as well as over a hundred more school employees, prompting an immediate backlash from groups of students, teachers’ unions, and the DC City Council. Ever since, supporters and detractors have debated whether Chancellor Rhee’s actions were a legitimate move to save the public school budget while doing the least damage possible or a political ploy to replace older, higher-paid teachers who have resisted her reforms with newer, lower-paid recruits.

Chancellor Rhee explained her actions in an October 23 “Chancellor’s Note” published on the DCPS website. Every year, she says, the school system must “equalize” the difference between the preliminary budget, based on projected school enrollment, and the actual budget, which can only be determined after families have finished enrolling their children for the school year in the fall. Most years, the system responds by redistributing teachers based on individual schools’ needs, absorbing the cost of any extra teachers. Unfortunately, the gap between anticipated and actual enrollment was wider than usual for the 2009-2010 school year, and declining DC tax revenues, along with the recession, meant that the cost of retaining the extra teachers could not be dismissed. Ultimately, the Chancellor had to initiate a Reduction in Force that resulted in the loss of hundreds of DCPS positions in order to balance the budget.

Detractors, however, say that Chancellor Rhee manipulated the entire situation in order to staff DC schools with teachers who would cost less and support her more. Ms. Rhee hired an unusually high number of new teachers over the summer: over 900, when the usual number stays around 300. Opponents, including the Washington Teachers Union, cite these numbers when arguing against the firings, as Courtland Milloy did in his furious October 14 column for the Washington Post, claiming that “Rhee…used a relatively small budget shortfall as a ruse to get rid of older teachers and make way for the 900 new ones she had hired over the summer.” By doing so, the system could clear out expensive older teachers for relatively cheap new ones, while removing some of the entrenched union and teacher opposition to Ms. Rhee.

The Washington Teachers Union even filed an injunction against Ms. Rhee that would make the system rehire the fired teachers, accusing her of ageism. Although the DC Superior Court ruled against the Union, many teachers blame their loss on poor handling of the case by the WTU President George Parker, who had described Ms. Rhee’s actions as “union-busting.” Angry teachers have protested by forming another group, Fight for Fired District of Columbia Personnel, and Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, has spoken out against the layoffs.

The unpopularity of the Reduction in Force has not led Chancellor Rhee to alter her position. Rather, she has stood firm in her belief that her actions were for the good of the students, which she frequently cites as her highest goal. DC law allows her to make firing decisions on more than just experience, and she exercised that power in October by collaborating with principals to determine teacher performance and school needs, which also factored heavily into her decision. In an October interview with the Afro-American Red Star, Ms. Rhee summarily dismissed accusations of ageism or other bias in her decision, noting not only that it would be illegal but impractical for her to “target experienced teachers,” whom “research shows…are more effective than brand new teachers,” when she has frequently expressed a desire to hire only those who would produce the highest gains in student achievement. Moreover, Ms. Rhee’s desire to pay the best teachers significantly higher salaries in exchange for a less strict tenure policy (a deal unpopular with the WTU) makes accusations that she orchestrated the layoffs so that she could pay teachers less somewhat less likely. The official statistics of the firings show that the majority of those fired had worked less than ten years, and most of those had worked even fewer than five. Many of those with more experience had only recently begun working in the District, and only seven percent had more than twenty-five years of experience.

The DC City Council, which has clashed with Chancellor Rhee in the past, has also objected to the Reduction in Force. On October 29, the Council met with Ms. Rhee to investigate the nature of and reasoning behind the layoffs. Councilmembers, including Chairman Vincent Gray, claimed that Ms. Rhee ignored the Council’s directives on how to manage the reduction in budget. The Chancellor, on the other hand, claimed that Chairman Gray and the Council had ignored her warnings in May of what could come of the budget error. Mayor Adrian Fenty, unlike the City Council, supports Ms. Rhee’s actions wholeheartedly, and views what some councilmembers consider disrespect for the system as a willingness to take unpopular actions that ultimately produce results.

The Chancellor’s more recent comments have also colored the public’s perception of the firings. Talking to Fast Company magazine in February, Ms. Rhee alleged that she had “[gotten] rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?” An uproar ensued. Teachers accused Ms. Rhee of slandering their profession, parents wondered why such teachers had not been fired immediately, and Chairman Gray demanded an inquiry into the issue. It was ultimately determined that fewer than ten of the several hundred fired had fallen into any of these categories. The Chancellor once again refused to back down. In a subsequent conversation with Jay Mathews, an education columnist for the Washington Post and self-declared supporter of Ms. Rhee, she refused to retract her statement for any reason, on the basis that “she thought that was something people should know.”

Although the fallout of the layoffs in regards to education will not be fully known until test scores have come out for the 2009-2010 school year, the Chancellor’s decisions have already affected her popularity. A January Washington Post poll shows that her ratings, as well as Mayor Fenty’s, have dropped significantly. Not quite half of the DC population still supports her, whereas at the beginning of 2008 almost two thirds did. Somewhat paradoxically, however, the public has also begun to view the public schools themselves in a significantly more positive light; the percentages of people who consider violence, the quality of materials, and the public schools themselves “a big problem” have all dropped by over 10%.

As with many of her previous actions as Chancellor, Michelle Rhee has inspired reactions at both ends of the spectrum with the fall 2009 firings. Some believe she took actions that, if unpleasant, were also necessary for an ailing school system. An October 28 editorial in the Washington Informer by Cynthia Newsome Bullock, a parent and former PTA member, credits Ms. Rhee “for putting the focus back on children,” saying “she has guts and I support her.” Others find these same “guts,” in the form of her willingness to alienate parents, the City Council, and teachers’ unions, more off-putting, which could account for her poor performance in recent polls. The same polls, however, show that DC has begun to recognize positive effects from her time in office. As Chancellor Rhee herself has put it, she is trying something new: "I'm not going to try to please people so I can stay here a little longer." Hopefully DC will be more pleased by her results than her methods.

Further Reading/Resources:

Chancellor’s Corner: A section of the DC Government website dedicated to the Chancellor’s office. Includes a biography, schedules of Ms. Rhee’s public appearances, contact information, and the Chancellor’s Notes.

The Washington Post Education Section: Has a great deal of information on education in Maryland, Virginia, the District, as well as nationwide. Daily blog updates, roundups of nationwide stories on education, and special coverage of Michelle Rhee.

All articles referenced but not linked to were obtained through ProQuest Newspapers Database.