It was a very welcome sight to this citizen’s eyes to read Grassroots DC’s announcement a few weeks ago about the report on mayoral control of the schools—An Evaluation of the Public Schools of the District of Columbia: Reform in a Changing Landscape. Especially since the report has received far, far less attention in the other media than passing the law that gave the mayor control, the Public Education Reform Amendment Act (PERAA), did in 2007. The reasons for this difference in attention may have something to do with the fact that those who benefit from mayoral control probably aren’t so keen to have a report that shows several deficiencies in this form of school governance widely known amongst the public.
The saddest, but probably not the most surprising, finding the report makes is that in all the schools together, DCPS and charters, 49.9% of the 70,000 plus students are proficient or above in reading and 54.4% proficient or above in math. That means that about half the students in the two systems, some 35,000 of the city’s children and teenagers, have basic or below basic skills in two of the most important things they need to know in order to continue learning.
Without acquiring these skills in the early grades, kindergarten up to third or fourth grade, children are seriously impaired in their ability to go further in their learning and stay on grade level or better. Catching up is hard to do and even harder in schools that aren’t providing these students with what they need to learn the basics in the first place, much less catch up when they do fall behind. But mayoral control has put people in charge of DCPS who don’t seem to know what’s needed and even when the Council increased funds for “at-risk” kids in 2013, spent the money on other things.
Meanwhile, the charter schools have gained a reputation for finding ways to eliminate students who have fallen behind, which helps their reading and math scores look somewhat better—51.4% in reading and 59.6% in math—than the city-wide average shown above. But still, and especially with all the talk of charter school’s superiority and the charter school Board approving one charter after another, many of which go to people who don’t come from DC but are funded by DC taxpayers, these figures from the Evaluation are the “bottom line” of what mayoral control has added up to in its eight years.
This is a painfully telling finding especially to the honest who’ve been going along with it in a good faith effort to give it a try. And, perhaps, it’s a “bottom line” that those benefiting from mayoral control would rather not get much, if any, attention.
All this organization do is blame the government. Grassroots and empower dc need to point fingers at Parents… Families. That’s the responsible party. The teachers can not do everything by themselves. The mayor can have the best plan, but without the parents support, it will not work.
Hello Rikardo Livingston,
Thank you for your comment. This article is indeed about the failure of mayoral control over DCPS, but I agree with you that there is a lot of blame to go around. It does not all lie at the feet of the government but I believe that government has a responsibility to its citizens particularly with regard to education. Without a good education, you will not be competitive in the marketplace and will not get a good job and have a good salary. Without a good salary, you will not find a decent place to live, your children will be raised in a community that probably also has failing schools and a cycle of poor education and subsequent poverty begins. Parents can help interrupt this cycle, but they are the exception and not the rule.
One exception is Quintess Bond and her mother Pearl. She volunteered for Grassroots DC, when we were affiliated with Empower DC (we haven’t been associated with them for more than two years). Quintess produced a video about the importance of parents in the education of their children. At the time, she and her mother were struggling with homelessness. So, as I say, it can be done. But Pearl had a solid education growing up and understood how important it was. Because of that understanding, Quintess did exceptionally well in school–she graduated from School Without Walls as class salutatorian.
All of this despite the fact that Quintess and her mother were homeless for the last four or five months of her high school career. (Pearl had a stroke and without good insurance—this was pre-Obamacare—she ended up in a very bad way financially) Quintess spent her afternoons in Grassroots DC’s lab where she had access to the Internet and was able to complete her homework and stay on track. We often shared meals. She also produced the video that’s included with this post.
http://www.grassrootsdc.org/2014/08/one-students-take-really-matters-dc-public-schools/
I hope that you will watch it, because it demonstrates that Grassroots DC does not blame government for everything. Not surprisingly, in the video, Quintess agrees that parents are the deciding factor in education. Pearl was certainly the deciding factor for Quintess. She’s brilliant, but she wouldn’t have been nearly as successful without Pearl.
The problem is that we cannot clone Pearl. When we cannot insure that every child has parents who understand the importance of education and also have the skills needed to make sure their children get a good education, then we as a society are screwed. We cannot control the behavior of our neighbors but as taxpayers we have a responsibility to demand that government live up to it’s creed and promote the general welfare. Providing every citizen with a good education is in my humble opinion the best way to promote the general welfare because it does exactly what you seem to be promoting in all of your comments. A good education helps individuals to fend for themselves without further help from the government. Providing health care is also critical but that’s a whole other kettle of fish.