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With that in mind, the DC Alliance for Youth Advocates (DCAYA) will meet with Councilmembers and staff to advocate for a more youth-friendly District budget for FY2018 at the Wilson Building on Thursday, May 11. According to the DCAYA, the District’s proposed FY2018 budget leaves significant funding gaps for a number of key programs that could better address the needs of children and youth.  Comments are closed  Education, Social Services  children and youth, DC Alliance of Youth Advocates, DC City Council, DCAYA, District budget, FY 2018, lobbying Cross-Post from The Fight Back This is the first in a three-part series on Kaya Henderson’s time atop DCPS. After six years as head of D.C. Public Schools, Kaya Henderson is calling it quits Friday. According to the Washington Post, her biggest booster, Henderson is leaving behind a “legacy of progress.” Not everyone agrees.  Kaya Henderson and Michelle Rhee. Photo: Washington Post Before ascending to chancellor, Henderson served three years as top deputy to her close friend, Michelle Rhee, known for mass teacher firings and school closings. Henderson has continued in Rhee’s footsteps, albeit with less bombast. Throughout the Rhee and Henderson years, the Post has played the role of lead-cheerleader (even collaborating on coverage). Now the Post wants the good times to continue. Instead of conducting a search for the next chancellor, the Post’s Jay Mathews says D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser should just ask Henderson to name her replacement since “she knows better than anybody what the job is.” But after nearly a decade atop DCPS, some don’t give the Rhee/Henderson team such high marks. ‘Haters’ Improving test scores has been central to Henderson and Rhee’s claims of turning DCPS around. But when retired DCPS teacher Erich Martel dug into the data, he found the gains were largely due to D.C.’s rapid gentrification, which has pushed lower-income African American students out, while ushering in wealthier whites, who score higher on tests. Associated Press reporter Ben Nuckols similarly noted, “The gains in test scores have… coincided with the city becoming wealthier and the white population increasing.” “Literally, I just got to just let this out,” Henderson has said in response to such critiques, “Haters are going to hate.” Cheating Scandal Within a year of Rhee’s 2007 DCPS takeover, test scores started climbing, dramatically at some schools. While the Post was busy touting the results, out-of-town news organizations questioned them. A 2011 USA Today investigation found a higher than average wrong-to-right erasure rate the prior three years at “more than half of D.C. schools.” Erasure rate refers to the number of changed answers on a test and can be used to identify possible cheating. “A high erasure rate alone is not evidence of impropriety,” Henderson said in response. But some of the erasure rates were very, very high. At Noyes Education Campus, for example, USA Today found,
After USA Today’s exposé, scores at Noyes dropped, according to data posted at Guy Brandenburg’s education blog. “Real students may be fidgety and jumpy, but their scores on yearly high-stakes tests… do NOT jump around like this,” wrote Brandenburg, a retired DCPS teacher. “Look at those scores,” wrote historian and education scholar Diane Ravitch, who served as assistant secretary of education under George H. W. Bush. “First the soar up, then they plummet down. Nothing suspicious there, right?” Not for D.C. Inspector General Charles Willoughby, who found no evidence of widespread cheating, despite only investigating one school, Noyes. The U.S. Education Department Inspector General, in a “tandem” investigation, came to a similar conclusion. Meanwhile, DCPS failed to conduct its own investigation, even after an internal memo called for one, as PBS’s John Merrow reported at his blog. “There have been no meaningful investigations of the evidence of widespread cheating,” civil rights attorney and D.C. budget expert Mary Levy wrote in response to the inspectors general’s findings. “Among the top 10 DCPS erasure schools… scores plummeted at all but one by 2010,” noted Levy. “The bottom dropped out by chance at all those schools?” Atlanta Public schools in Atlanta experienced similar testing irregularities around the same time DCPS did. In Atlanta, however, superintendent Beverly Hall was unable to thwart an investigation. “There’s one key difference between Atlanta and Washington,” wrote PBS’s Merrow, “the role played by the local newspapers.” Unlike the Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution kept a spotlight on the issue. The result? Dr. Hall and 34 educators were charged with racketeering. The co-leader of Atlanta’s independent investigation, former DeKalb County District Attorney Robert Wilson, also followed the situation in D.C., concluding, “the big difference is that nobody in D.C. wanted to know the truth.” ‘Legacy of Progress’ As Henderson prepares to step down Friday, she does so amidst a wave of positive press, led by the Post. “For a decade… Henderson has worked to turn around one of the nation’s most troubled school systems,” the Post reported Tuesday, pointing to “better test scores” under her watch. The role that gentrification and cheating have played in achieving these “better test scores” is left unsaid. Next up: See Ya, Kaya: Shortchanging At-risk Students Comments are closed Education DCPS, District of Columbia Public Schools, Kaya Henderson, Michelle Rhee, Pete Tucker, The Fight Back
Calling All Citizens: The SBOE Seeks Your Thought on the ESSA
Calling All Citizens: The SBOE Seeks Your Thought on the ESSALike their counterparts across the country, DC’s State Board of Education and State Superintendent of Education are in the process of leading the city in the transition from the No Child Left Behind Act to the new federal education law that replaced it in December 2015–the Every Student Succeeds Act. As a part of that process, the Board has set up a page on its website just for ESSA and on that page there is a survey in three languages: English, Spanish and Amharic. The public is encouraged to email the Board with any thoughts that don’t fit on the survey. There is also a schedule of meetings the Board is holding across the city to provide an overview of the new law and its requirements and to hear the public’s views and thoughts. The meetings are Ward based but they are not limited to residents of the particular Ward—anyone is free to attend the meeting in any ward. The Board’s ESSA page also has a video-recording of its March 16 meeting where three very knowledgeable people with long experience in public education, policy and law presented their understandings of the new law and there is a document called “What YOU Need to Know About ESSA” in a power point format that shows some of the contrast between NCLB and ESSA and many of the requirements and other factors to be considered as DC works out its own plan for what its public education system should be accountable for and how it will do that. See next page for more resources and last page for schedule of the meetings.
Additional Information about ESSA:● All the information mentioned on the previous page can be found at www.sboe.dc.gov/essa. The Board’s email address is sboe@dc.gov. 202-741-0888 ● There is more at www.osse.dc.gov/essa And the following: ● US Department of Education, www.ed.gov/essa explains it all and has a link to the law itself. ESSA rule making has been moving along quickly. The US Department of Education’s committee to write the rules needed to implement the new federal law, Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, held its first three day session in late March. On April 1, the Department issued a press release, Education Department Releases Proposals for Consideration by ESSA Negotiated Rules Making Committee. The proposals concern two elements of the law: Assessments and the mandate to Supplement, Not Supplant. The press release summarizes the proposals and provides links to the full versions. www.ed.gov/news/press-releases
District Law and Lead in ChildrenOne of the DC Department of Energy and the Environment’s responsibilities is ensuring that DC laws about lead and other toxic substances are known and adhered to. You’ll find everything about the subject at www.doee.dc.gov/lawsandregulations A law, “Childhood Lead Screening Amendment Act of 2006” that became effective on March 14, 2007 requires that all children living in DC be screened for lead by the age of 6. The schedule by which the screenings are supposed to take place is: So, children born in DC since 2007 should already have had two screenings by the time they are two years and 2 months old as part of their well-baby check- ups. Parents or guardians with questions should contact their child’s doctor. Comments are closed Education Citizen Reader, ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, Sarah Livingston, State Board of Education The following was taken from the April issue of the Citizen Reader, which focused in part on this year’s school budget. DC auditor’s comments on the Fiscal Year 2016 budget“30 percent: That is how much the District’s local funds budget has grown, adjusted for inflation, since the fiscal year 2006 budget was approved…” according to DC’s auditor Kathy Patterson in an opinion piece in the Washington Post on May 21, 2015. “Local funds budget,” she went on to say “means the dollars raised from taxes—sales, property and income—and excludes federal grants and fees raised by utilities and other special sources.” The FY16 budget was $7.3 billion of local funds compared to the FY06 budget of $5.6 billion. In addition, the number of DC government employees increased 13.5 percent from 2006 with 27,708 full time equivalent employees or 35,835 if part-time and temporary personnel are included. The median salary, she said, is $63,600. And 4,352 earn more than $100,000. “The three highest earners, hovering around $300,000, are the [then] interim president of the University of the District of Columbia, the new city administrator and the chancellor of D.C. Public Schools.” Fiscal year 2016 also includes $600 million for the cost of borrowing. “That number,” the auditor stated, “is, in part, the price we are paying for all the new schools and recreation centers. In 2006, the council opted to spend annual tax revenue to rebuild schools, but that lasted just three years. Since then, it’s all been borrowed money.”
Highlights from the FY 2017 Proposed Budget and Financial Plan, “A Fair Shot”“This is the first budget that recognizes our authority over our locally raised funds, and is submitted to you within a week of the historic decision of the Superior Court, upholding the lawfulness of the Budget Autonomy Act.” Mayor Muriel Bowser in her budget transmittal letter of March 24, 2016, Executive Summary ● Total amount of the proposed budget and financial plan: $13. 4 billion ● FY 17 Local funds increase $222.4 million or 3.4% over FY16 Six largest “coat drivers” of the increase: Pay-As-You-Go Capital: $54.3 million *Explained in the text as due to increased enrollment in both systems and to 6 new schools opening in SY16-17, 2 in DCPS and 4 new Charter Schools. These figures are from pages 5-7 of the CFO’s transmittal letter to the Mayor at the beginning of Volume 3. ● From Volume 3, Agency Budget Chapters-Part II, Public Education System:
*Note: PCSB does not use the District’s financial system. For gross funds actual expenditures, please refer to PCSB’s annual report located on the agency’s website at http://www.dcpsb.org/report/pcsb-annual-reports. List compiled of figures at beginning at each agency’s section. FTEs are full time equivalency employment positions. ● At-risk funds: ● Number of students served: Audited enrollment total public school students: 87,344 for SY15-16, up 2.3% from 85,403 in SY14-15 • For much, much more on the budget for DCPS see www.c4dcpublicschools.org/blog Comments are closed Education Citizen Reader, D.C Public School budget, D.C. City Council, DCPS, Sarah Livingston |
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Beyond voting or joining a well publicized march or rally, many citizens are unsure how to become politically engaged. One of the most effective ways to have an impact on public policy is to tell your local representatives what you want. Lobbying is not just for professionals paid by corporate interest groups. In fact, government and the institutions they regulate are far more fair, just and equitable when regular citizens like you and me show up at their office and insist that they listen to what we have to say.
