Will Any DC School Officials Answer Ward 8 State Board of Ed. Member Mr. Trayon White’s Question?

By Guest Contributor, on August 12th, 2013

By Erich Martel Retired DCPS Social Studies Teacher

At the July 31st meeting of the DC State Board of Education, Ward 8 Member, Mr. Trayon White, said that he had attended the 2013 graduation of Thurgood Marshall Charter HS and wondered why there were so few graduates when four years earlier, as a 9th grade, the class was much larger. No one replied. It’s time that our public officials conducted an independent investigation of this scandal.

Quick Facts about Thurgood Marshall Public Charter School

Between 2007 and 2013, only 45% of starting 9th graders graduated four years later. Between 2007 and 2011, only 32% of the tested 10th graders are African-American males.

Over the past seven years, 2007-2013, Thurgood Marshall graduated 394 of the original 872 9th grade students enrolled. That’s a completion rate of 45.2%.

What happened to the other 478 starting 9th graders counted by OSSE? 336 or 38.5% were transferred before the 10th grade DC CAS testing roster was set. 142 or 16.3% were transferred after the 10th grade test, but before graduation.

Thurgood Marshall has trouble keeping African-American male students. According to gender data reported on OSSE’s DC CAS website, of the 462 10th graders tested in the 5 years from 2007 to 2011: – 314 or 67.97% were female. – 148 or 32.03% were male. In no year, did the % of male students exceed 33%.

Of the 88 Thurgood Marshall students tested in 2011, 62 (70.5%) were female, only 26 (29.5%) were male.

At each of Councilmember Catania’s recent ward education “conversations” and at most of the Council’s Education Committee hearings, Councilmember Catania and/or Councilmember Grosso contrasted Thurgood Marshall as an example of charter school success against DCPS failure. According to the numbers, Thurgood Marshall does not live up to that distinction.

Mayor Gray chose Thurgood Marshall Charter HS as the symbolic site to announce his proposed legislation to give the chancellor chartering authority.

The public has a right to know – and the Mayor, Council and State Board of Education Members should demand to know:

The reasons why these students were transferred; Their receiving schools; Their practice scores (DC BAS) were before transfer; Their official DC CAS scores after transfer; Whether they graduated with their class or cohort; Whether any of them dropped out;

And many other questions that public officials holding positions of public trust should feel obligated to answer and not cover up as they make public education policy.

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Report: DCPS Scores Have Not Improved With Reforms

By Guest Contributor, on December 17th, 2012

Cross-Posted from The Examiner Written by Lisa Gartner

Third-graders in DC Public Schools have failed to show any gains in math or reading since aggressive school reforms began in 2007, according to an independent analysis of the city’s standardized test scores.

The report, to be released Monday by the nonprofit DC Action for Children, also suggests the city’s public charter schools do not outperform the traditional school system on the DC Comprehensive Assessment System exams.

“We are spending way too much effort and money in education reform not to see results,” said HyeSook Chung, the organization’s executive director. “If the data isn’t lying, what are we doing wrong? Why aren’t we seeing improvements in test scores, which everyone is obsessed with, if we are indeed making change, as the city claims?”

Elder Research Inc. conducted a statistical analysis of test scores from 2007 to 2011 by weighting schools’ performance by the number of students who score “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient” or “advanced” on the exams. Schools were given one to four points for each student in the respective brackets, then averaged and aggregated. Chung says this allowed the researchers to create a more nuanced picture than the results released by the city each year, which have showed an upward trend by examining only whether students are proficient or not.

The group chose 2007 because many of former Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s reforms began then with the passage of the School Reform Act. It chose the third grade because research cites third-grade proficiency as a key indicator of whether a student will graduate from high school. The third grade is also the first year that students take the exams.

On the one-to-four scale, DCPS’ average weighted score in math has inched up from 2.15 to 2.2 from 2007 to 2011 — an insignificant statistical move. Reading moved from about 2.25 to 2.2.

A spokeswoman for the school system deferred comment to the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, the agency that regulates DCPS and the city’s charter schools. A spokeswoman for OSSE did not return phone calls seeking comment.

David Grosso, who will begin his term as an at-large D.C. Council member in January, said the report provides “good direction.”

“We have to try to be more open and transparent about what’s going on in the school reform effort,” Grosso said.

The report also suggests that charter schools, which enroll 43 percent of the city’s public school students, do not statistically perform better than DCPS. On the weighted scale, charters moved from 2.05 to 2.25 in math, and from 2.25 to 2.3 in reading.

Naomi DeVeaux, deputy executive director of the DC Public Charter School Board, said she would like to see data on older students, as she believes charters help students improve their scores over time.

“Without knowing that, you can’t judge a school,” DeVeaux said. “How low did students come in? How low below ‘basic’ were they? And then what growth occurs?”

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