The National Research Council Makes Its Report, Finally
It feels like forever that DC Public Schools have been known as one of the worst (if not the worst) public school systems in the nation. Low test scores and high dropout rates back up the perception. Twenty years ago, DC School Reform Act of 1995 (a gift from Congress, not a District initiative) gave us charter schools. Many Washingtonians with an investment in the school system (i.e. parents, students, teachers, etc. ) believed that this was the answer. But after ten years, the numbers hadn’t improved—not in the new charters or in the traditional public schools.
In 2007, Mayor Adrian Fenty and his supporters put their money on Michelle Rhee and the Public Education Reform Amendment Act (PERAA). The law gave control of DC Public Schools to the Mayor and more flexibility to administrators like Chancellor Rhee. To make sure that the changes instituted under PERAA worked, the mayor was required to submit either an independent annual evaluation or a five-year evaluation of the DC public school system. Mayor Fenty chose to go with the five-year assessment, which was due September 15, 2012. The National Research Council—the independent agency that received the contract to do the evaluation in 2009— has finally completed their 300-page report An Evaluation of the Public Schools of the District of Columbia: Reform in a Changing Landscape. On June 3, 2015, the Council of the District of Columbia’s Committee on Education held a public round table to discuss the results.
Surprise! Despite more than eight years of mayoral control, DC’s public schools still have ridiculously low test scores and high dropout rates. The Report states:
“while there have been some improvements in the public schools of the District of Columbia since a 2007 reform law, significant disparities remain in learning opportunities and academic progress across student groups and the city’s wards.”
Retired math teacher and stalwart DCPS advocate Guy Brandenburg is not impressed with the results. According to Brandenburg:
“if you care anything about reducing the gaps between achievement levels of white students and those of color, the poor, special ed students, and English language learners (i.e. immigrants), then mayoral control has been a spectacular failure.”
Brandenburg breaks down the numbers in his blog post A Quick Look at the National Academy Report on Mayoral Control of Schools of Washington, DC: “The gaps between the pass rates on the DC-CAS standardized tests of those groups under mayoral control or the Public Education Reform Amendment Act are enormous and have essentially remained unchanged since 2007, when the law was implemented, according to the data in this report.
Note that the report combines the data for both the DC public schools and charter schools, combined, at all grade levels, in both reading and math. Here are two graphs, made by me from data in the report, which show the lack of change. …. HIGH NUMBERS ARE BAD because they show large gaps in proficiency rates. Low numbers are good. Notice that there has been almost no change since mayoral control; some lines go up a tiny bit, some go down a bit, others waver back and forth a bit. Not a success story.”
To rectify the problem, Chancellor Rhee implemented the DCPS Effectiveness Assessment System for School-Based Personnel otherwise known as IMPACT. Believing that DCPS’ failures rested largely with the teachers, Rhee implemented IMPACT in order to weed out the good from the bad. Once done, she would shuffle the deck and place “highly effective” teachers at more difficult schools. But as Brandenburg points out, “every single teacher remaining in DCPS has been repeatedly measured as effective or better. Yet the ratings for teachers at schools with high poverty rates remains much lower than those at schools with low poverty rates … these low-ranked teachers are not holdovers from the ‘bad old days’ – they are either brand-new hires or have been repeatedly measured as good or excellent under IMPACT.”
The report makes several recommendations, including that the city take a more coordinated approach to monitoring learning conditions in schools, such as school environment, discipline, and academic support, to better understand what progress is being made for students.
Mary Filardo executive director of the 21st Century School Fund was interviewed on the radio program, the Education Town Hall. No doubt, she has some recommendations of her own to share. The episode can be found at this page – http://educationtownhall.org/2015/06/10/mayoral-control/. You must scroll down a little to find it.
It’s wonderful to read your coverage of this long awaited evaluation of PERRA. Not that no one knew something was amiss years ago as shown in the post of December 17, 2012, “Report: DCPS Scores Have Not Improved With Reforms.” But now the official study has graphed it out very clearly, along with much else that isn’t working in mayoral control.
The ray of hope for me is in the second part of the provision of PERRA that called for the evaluation. It, Title. II. Sec 204 (b)(2), says “A determination as to whether sufficient progress in public education has been achieved to warrant continuation of the provisions and requirements of this act or whether a new law, and a new system of education, should be enacted by the District government.”
So far, I have not heard anyone mention that part and I think it’s just as, if not more, important than the evaluation because it gives us an opportunity to transition out of mayoral control and into a better way of governing the city’s schools.
Hello Sarah,
I completely agree with you. I haven’t read the 300 page report. This blog post is based on other reporting sources, all of which I’ve referenced. But man it does seem like a huge oversight that no one’s mentioning Title. II. Sec 204 (b)(2). Mayor control is obviously not working. I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you think might work better. Maybe you could write up a blog post about it. When I was researching this, I saw something that Mary Levy wrote about DC never having an elected school board with actual budget authority. I think she might be on to something. How many school districts across the nation have their administrators pretty much completely imposed on them like we have here in DC?
I feel one way to better DC school students it to get the parents more involved. For parents that are Finically supported by the District… They need to be hands on at the school and with the teachers so they know what their child/children are learning in school.
For the parents that work a 9-5 Monday – Friday. The schools need to set up a time after school (not just PTA Meetings) so the parents can get a much better feel.
The parents are the key… then the teachers. It is no excuse for a child to fail school or drop out if they have an adult that’s on top of them. DC need to hold these parents more responsible. Cut off the warfare if they cant become better parents. AND we will see them parent running to the schools.
Hello Victoria,
I think parental involvement in the school is really helpful when parents have the time. My daughter is graduating from Wilson. There were always stay-at-home moms there who wouldn’t hesitate to call Kaya Henderson’s office if anything was out of order. Thanks, in part to them, the facility is pristine. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. So, I’m thankful to those moms, but I personally never had time for much more than parent-teacher conferences and the events my daughter participated in.
She’s gotten into a bunch of really excellent schools despite my relative lack of involvement at school. I did stay on top of her at home. She didn’t want for anything and I expected her to get her work done and stay on top of her grades. She responded by getting her work done and staying on top of her grades. I think a stable home helps just as much if not more than being involved in the school.
On the other hand, we lucked out. My daughter mostly went to good schools. Wilson is well-funded and the teachers are mostly excellent. If she’d gone to a school where the teachers weren’t so good and the kids were always fighting, I’m pretty sure I’d have been at the school all the time. So, you may have a good point.
The truth is that no matter what “educational reforms” (lobbyist interests) that are pushed through without advance thought or any beta testing (like IMPACT), they will NEVER be fully successful until the politicians in this country, with no in-class experience, identify that the root cause of lower performance in schools is the widening gap of income. When parents are home less due to work hours, children are supervised by cable, xbox and the street. Some teachers in DCPS are rated as developing in SE, move to NW (where students tend to be more respectful and less destructive in classes) and those teachers are highly effective, is that a true demonstration of the teachers’ ability or the environment that they are working in?
Students come to school unprepared with what used to be common sense social skills and manners, and now students come to school with an egocentric, “I need to be first in every line” mentality. Almost all behaviors that children demonstrate are learned behaviors, and they are learned from the 16 hours a day not surrounded by structure (although some schools in DC are being lead by Principals who state that they want school to be like the students’ homes- which is terrifying).
No amount of testing or data will ever create the necessary change as long as people can make MILLIONS off these children. It’s not about education for these people, it’s about getting rich from tax payer funds.
Follow the money, that’s my modus operandi. Follow ALL the money and see who promotes “reform”.
I could not possibly agree with you more, Shaun. A few years ago, I had more time and did more posts re: education.
Back then, I was doing a lot of research on ALEC like this one
http://www.grassrootsdc.org/2013/07/a-lesson-in-systemic-racism-part-ii-alec-schools-closures-and-the-school-to-prison-pipeline/
And this one about school closures and the interest of developers –
http://www.grassrootsdc.org/2011/12/how-school-closures-hurt-our-community/
These articles are old but nothing’s changed. We’re still selling our schools and the right to shape our kids’ minds to the highest bidder. It’s horrible. If you have time to research some of this stuff, I’d love an update on ALEC and the school closings-developers connection.
There is a well known discovery between lead poisoning and violent crime. Why is this relevant? Many poor mainly black Neighborhoods in DC have high rates of lead in the environment . Black ppl are more likely to live in the inner city/housing projects. Unfortunately the inner city/housing projects are surrounded by toxic wastes. Dangerous levels of lead can be found in their water at home, air pollution in the neighborhood, from the Walls at home, walls at the public schools, and the water in the public schools. Why is this important? Significant amount of evidence shows that lead poisoning, does a huge damage on the brain, nearly destroying the gray matter in the brain, , lowers IQ, causes Adhd, BEHAVIOR problems, troubles in school and mental disabilities, learning disabilities, and causes AGGRESSION. This goes on in every inner city. But can be found in DC. When you read in depth
the problems caused by lead poisoning, it’s no wonder why many public schools are failing. We need to stop throwing money at the problem and Until we address the Mental Health Issue. It’s a must. As long as the mental health issue goes ignored the problems in our communities will exist.
Sorry just voicing my opinion 🙂
Here are the articles below.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-lead-poisoning-science-met-20150605-story.html#page=1
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/07/violent-crime-lead-poisoning-british-export
http://m.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3423272
Forgive my bad grammar lol
Hello Addison,
I agree that lead is a serious problem in many areas, DC is no exception. However, I don’t think it’s the only reason that DC Public Schools are struggling. Mayoral control has been bad for DCPS and I think it’s worth reporting as much. There are lots of reasons why the schools aren’t doing as well as they should. I think we should be addressing all of them, including the one you mention.
Don’t worry about your grammar; your meaning is clear. You should not apologize for your opinion. There’s a lot of valid research that backs up your position. Any thoughtful comment is welcome here.