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See Ya, Kaya: ‘Legacy of Progress’?

By Guest Contributor, on October 7th, 2016

Cross-Post from The Fight Back written by Pete Tucker

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,

The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance.

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 . . . → Read More: See Ya, Kaya: ‘Legacy of Progress’?

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OSSE & SBE Oversight Hearings

By Liane Scott, on March 2nd, 2015

In Kaya Henderson’s State of the Schools Address in September 2014, she declared that DC Public Schools “will become the best school system in the country, where everyone in this room would be proud to send their child to any school in this city. We’re aiming for great schools, with a variety of engaging academic offerings, and nurturing cultures and climates. But most of all, we’re 100% committed to ensuring the EVERY child attending a DCPS school is held to the same high standards, has the same rich experiences, and has equal access to the same level of learning resources- whether they live west of the park, east of the RIVER, or anywhere in the middle.

High ideals but DC-CAS scores show that we’re very far from those goals, with our students being only slightly more than 50% proficient in reading and math.

This Thursday, the DC City Council has scheduled Performance Oversight Hearings for both the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and the State Board of Education (a misnomer since DC isn’t a state) should give us some clue as to how well DCPS is moving towards Henderson’s loft goals.

DC City Council Committee on Education Performance Oversight Hearings Office of State Superintendent of Education & State Board of Education March 5th, 2015 @ 10:00 AM Wilson Building, Room 412 1350 Pennsylvania Ave Washington, DC 20005

To testify at the hearings in front of committee Chairperson David Grosso please contact: Christina Henderson, chenderson@dccouncil.us or by calling 202-724-8061. Watch the hearing online at: http://dccouncil.us/videos

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Key Elements of School Closure Lawsuit Move Forward

By Grassroots DC, on October 12th, 2013

Posted on behalf of Empower DC

Case Brought by Empower DC Alleges Discriminatory Impact of School Closures, Group Granted Discovery as Litigation Continues

Yesterday, Federal Court Judge James Boasberg found that plaintiffs have established sufficient facts to allow the bulk of their case alleging discrimination in the city’s pattern of public school closures to move forward.

The case of Shannon Smith et al Vs Kaya Henderson et al was filed last March by members of Empower DC as part of an effort to stop the closure of 15 DC Public Schools in low income communities of color. After a hearing on May10th, Judge Boasberg did not grant a temporary injunction and the closure of 13 DC Public Schools was allowed to go forward this fall, however the court has yet to issue a final ruling on the merits of the case, which has now survived the city’s motion to dismiss and will be litigated further.

Communities throughout the nation have mobilized to fight the closure of dozens of public schools, predominately in low income communities of color, in cities including Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore. To date, Empower DC’s suit is the first to have withstood dismissal, a point highlighted by Constitutional Law Professor Jamin Raskin, a member of the group’s legal team.

“This will be the first time that a federal court addresses evidence showing that a school system closed majority African-American schools as a response to under-enrollment when it never closed majority white schools as a response to under-enrollment. In this case, thousands of African-American and Hispanic students face school closings east of the River and only two white students find themselves in the same situation. Equal Protection simply does not permit government to impose discriminatory and selective burdens on minority communities even in pursuit of otherwise lawful objectives,” said Raskin.

In his 30-page opinion, Judge Boasberg dismissed some of the plaintiffs’ claims including those relating to compliance with the city’s statute requiring notice and input from Advisory Neighborhood Commissions, as well as those relating to disability laws. However all claims were dismissed without prejudice, a judgment which signifies there has not been a ruling on the merits of the claim and the claim could be brought in another court.

The key claims of the lawsuit have been upheld by Judge Boasberg, meaning that the plaintiffs provided sufficient evidence for litigation on those to continue. As a result, plaintiffs will be able to move forward with the discovery process during which the defendants, Chancellor Kaya Henderson and Mayor Vincent Gray, will have to make documents and data available to the plaintiffs.

The Judge’s opinion states, “The Court agrees with the District on the bulk of the Plaintiff’s claims. Nevertheless, the parents and guardians have alleged sufficient facts to state claims of discrimination under the three civil-rights provisions at the heart of their case: the Equal Protection Clause, Title VI, and the D.C. Human Rights Act.”

Attorney Johnny Barnes, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, stated, “We are not unhappy with this decision. While the Court dismissed, without prejudice, many of our claims, it left the heart of the case in place. We plan to vigorously litigate the equal protection, disparate treatment and D.C. Human Rights violations aspects of the case in the weeks and months to come. We look forward to probing the minds of those District officials who undertook the school closings which the Court indicated on the face of the facts merits deeper inquiry. While we continue to believe that the ANC notice and citizen participation counts of our Complaint are strong, notwithstanding the dismissal, without prejudice, we shall likely pursue those purely local matters in another court in a case already pending. We are pleased that we were able to present a brief that caused the central theme in our case to continue — unconstitutional discrimination in the closings — while every other lawsuit filed across the Country has not met with the same success.”

Empower DC’s members continue their campaign to save community schools, and the neighborhoods that depend upon them. “Our members never gave up their fight,” said Parisa Norouzi, Executive Director. “The Supreme Court has ruled in the past that a court is empowered to order that schools be reopened, where discrimination has been found. We continue to believe that it is possible schools like Ferebee-Hope Elementary will be reopened at the end of this fight – as would be the fitting tribute to the parents and students . . . → Read More: Key Elements of School Closure Lawsuit Move Forward

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Events Leading Up To DC Public School Closings Lawsuit

By Sarah Livingston, on June 13th, 2013

From left to right – Adrian Fenty, Vincent Gray, Kaya Henderson and Michelle Rhee.

Although the injunction that would have stopped the closing of 15 DC Public Schools was denied and we’re still waiting to find out the date for the hearing that will decide the actual merits of the case, it might make sense to remind ourselves of the events that led to the lawsuit in the first place.

In my experience, the seeds for the lawsuit were sown in the first week of January, 2007, when the newly elected Council chair (Vincent Gray) dissolved the Committee on Education and the newly elected mayor (Adrian Fenty) announced his intention to take over the schools.

There was strong opposition to that idea expressed in testimony at the hearings and through protests and demonstrations. There was a call for the matter to be decided by the people in a referendum since a mayoral takeover required a change to the Home Rule Charter that would decrease the people’s power in determining their own affairs for themselves.

By June, Fenty had, through the Public Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007 (PERAA), stolen the power of the people and taken it unto himself. The law further decreased the power of the people by putting the elected Board of Education way over there to the side as an advisory body with little if any power, while the Council’s power to focus on education matters through a committee was weakened to near nothing by being dispersed among all thirteen members.

With the people shoved aside–no more Board of Education responsible for hiring the best qualified school Superintendent and no more Education Committee on the Council–Fenty used his power to appoint into the PERAA created position of “chancellor,” a woman who had never run a public school district before in her life. This too was opposed because the mayor bypassed the provisions of the law that first, required a search committee be formed to find candidates for the position, and second, required that the person be qualified by education and experience. That opposition was ignored as well.

Rhee’s experience in education consisted of attendance at private schools herself, three years of Teach for America experience in a pilot program to test a profit making company’s idea in a Baltimore public school, and 10 years as the founder and president of a teacher placement agency called the New Teacher Project in NYC. Nevertheless, Fenty handed DCPS over to her on a silver platter and the two of them quickly adopted an attitude that DCPS belonged to them in a very private manner and no one else had any say in it. Within two years of the establishment of the Ombudsman’s office, it was “defunded” and never heard about again.

Parents protest the closing of their children’s schools.

Throughout their tenures, opposition arose to many of the actions they took. Hundreds of people, elementary, middle and high school students among them, testified at innumerable Council hearings about the way teachers and their union were being treated–closing 23 schools, budgets that were all over the place, the assignment and reassignment of principles in all manner of nonsensical ways and much, much more. For the most part, the Council’s response was to shrug their shoulders claiming there was nothing they could do.

In 2010, Fenty was defeated by Gray; Rhee left; and Gray, also ignoring the provisions in PERAA for filling the position of “chancellor,” simply calls up Rhee’s Deputy, Kaya Henderson, who had no more idea of how to run a public school system than Rhee. Henderson came from public schools in a middle class suburban district, also got into teaching the Teach for America way and spent 3 years teaching Spanish before she became the Vice-president of the New Teacher Project (NTP). In that position she acquired a contract for NTP with DCPS to place teachers in it and eventually moved to DC to manage the contract on site.

Henderson and Gray have continued what Fenty and Rhee started–keeping the public’s voice out of any say in how the schools are run, despite the fact they they are funded by the public’s money.

The five year report on the mayoral takeover required by PERAA came due in 2012. But it has not been forthcoming. What the public got instead was another so-called Five Year Strategic Plan, “A Capital Commitment” that reads as nothing more than a list of many of the same problems DCPS started . . . → Read More: Events Leading Up To DC Public School Closings Lawsuit

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Judge Rules on School Closings Lawsuit

By Liane Scott, on May 16th, 2013

Last week, Empower DC and a number of DC Public School parents went to court to plead for an injunction to keep 15 more schools from being closed under Mayor Vince Gray and Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s consolidation plan.

According to Johnny Barnes, the lead attorney in the case, the case includes four complaints:

1) The school consolidation plan violates the law that requires equal protection to all District Citizens. “Hobson v Hansen made clear that the equal protection clause applies to DC through the 5th amendment: If you offer education to one student you have to offer to all.”

2) The school consolidation plan violates Title VI, which states that you can’t treat different classes of individuals disparately.

3) The school consolidation plan violates the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act both of which contend that when dealing with special education students, you have to design individually, not with a blanket plan to close a school.

4) The school consolidation plan is in violation of the District of Columbia’s Human Rights Act.

In a 31-page opinion, which analyzed each of plaintiffs’ claims, US District court Judge James E. Boasberg ruled against Empower DC, stating: “In this case, there is no evidence whatsoever of any intent to discriminate on the part of Defendants, who are actually transferring children out of weaker, more segregated, and under-enrolled schools.”

But according to Barnes, “The case is not over. The battle is just beginning…The ruling was on the injunction, not on the merits on the case. The govt has not even filed a response.” Barnes’ case centers around “protected classes” of race, residence, disability, he said, noting that 100 schools have been closed in DC since 1976, but not one in Ward 3, home to the city’s wealthiest residents.

Attorney Barnes and Jonetta Rose Barras discuss the judge’s ruling during the May 16, 2013 episode of We Act Radio’s Education Town Hall, which airs every Thursday at 11:00 AM. The full interview can be found at the link is posted below:

Jonetta Rose Barras and Johnny Barnes, Esq. on The Education Town Hall w/Thomas Byrd May 16 2013 by Education_Town_Hall on Mixcloud

Attorney Johnny Barnes and Empower DC plan to appeal the case. The courts ruling should be judged against the mounting evidence that DC’s School Consolidation and Reorganization Plan have not saved the District of Columbia money or improved school outcomes.

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