Here is a curiosity. The recent investigation of graduation rates in the D.C. Public Schools–which revealed that one-third of the graduates lacked the minimum qualifications to graduate–did not include charter schools. Nearly half the students in the D.C. schools attend charter schools. Why were they not included in the investigation?
D.C.’s answer to the scandal is to create an “Office of Integrity.” Former teacher Erich Martel says that is not enough because such an office would be subservient to the authorities creating and covering up the scandal.
He writes:
Council Education Committee Chairman and Members, Council Members,
(Council staff: Please print the attachment for your CM, thank you)
DCPS chancellor Antwan Wilson’s proposed “Office of Integrity” is inadequate because it is not independent of the education hierarchy that ignored it for years. Teachers and school staff will not trust any office that is within the DCPS bureaucracy. And, it doesn’t cover charter schools, voucher recipients, college funding recipients or home schools.
The bill before the MD state legislature calling for an Investigator General under a proposed “Education Monitoring Unit” that is INDEPENDENT of the state education hierarchy with an independent funding stream is a far better alternative, more likely to fulfill its intended function.
It has to have investigative powers with full due process protections as the proposed MD bill spells out.
Alternatives for DC might be:
An education investigator general (or whatever name) under the DC Inspector General, DC auditor, with authority over DCPS, DC charters, DC voucher recipient schools, DC college funding recipients and home schools.
And – I am waiting for the Council to conduct an independent audit of DC charters’ graduates compliance with attendance requirements and fulfillment of graduation requirements.
Erich Martel
Retired DCPS high school teacher
Ward 3
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m glad they’re investigating but we know how this goes. They’ll go crazy. They’ll do 5000 fixes and do none of them well and then they’ll immediately start pushing whatever they do as a huge success and “scale” it.
I’ll tell you right now the Ohio numbers are inflated by credit recovery but since credit recovery was an ed reform idea maybe we could NOT go crazy this time?
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YES: “…they’ll immediately start pushing whatever they do as a huge success” and very publicly blame teachers, kids, neighborhoods and parents for anything which blatantly fails.
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Sorry, I was wrong about the D.C. graduation report. It did include charter schools.
It said that absences were higher in traditional public schools than in elite selective schools and charter schools (which are selective in their own ways). No surprise.
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I think the grad rates were overblown because ed reform needed a success story.
They’ve been in charge nearly 20 years and people were starting to ask where the improvement was, also, of course, DC was their proof point and they made Michelle Rhee into this larger than life celebrity so that had to be justified.
It got so I could predict the three places Arne Duncan would point to – DC, New Orleans and Tennessee. No one even knows if there are success stories in places that DIDN’T use market-based ed reform- it’s a big country. There may well be.
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so, the reason that the original study didn’t look at charter schools is because the offenses and the original attention were with public schools. I do think that it’s fair for the Office of State Superintendent (OSSE) – the state arm of DC education – to have a similar examination. But would one douse a building in water just assuming that there will be a fire there. So I would cut OSSE some slack there.
As for the claim that grad rates were “overblown because ed reform needed a success story” I disagree completely. There are plenty of other reasons they were overblown, but I don’t think that was one of the main ones…I do think that DC is the classic example of Campbell’s Law and that folks should learn about the role accountability plays in evaluation, bonuses, etc.
I also think that there were some cases were teachers felt they were doing the right thing. Where they realize that a student had legitimate reasons for missing school (taking care of a sibling, having to work, etc) and didn’t want to punish him or her. I know, I know, not everyone was in this boat, and yes some shady things may have happened. BUT…I think it’s dangerous to just lump everyone into one boat.
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Having read your last paragraph, I appreciate your acceptance of the fact that test scores do not take into account legitimate student life issues, “taking care of a sibling, having to work, etc.”, that make it dangerous to use the scores to “just lump everyone in the same boat.” Thank you. You’re wrong about the OSSE, but thank you for acknowledging the fact that teachers should be free to teach to the students we have instead of to a capriciously invented, statistical target.
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Is “The Office of Integrity” anything like “The Ministry of Truth”?
Who makes up these names anyway?
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Happiness engineers.
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This is exactly what happens when you get rid of your school board. Create a customer service Office of Integrity so that people can complain, but there’s still no accountability. Fox in charge of the henhouse…
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Why were they not included in the investigation? Because according to the ECS database: “Charter schools are exempt from D.C. statutes, policies, rules and regulations established for the D.C. public schools by the superintendent, board of education, mayor, D.C. council, or authority, except as otherwise provided in the school’s charter or D.C. charter school law.” Deregulation is a beautiful thing, eh?
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