Archives for category: District of Columbia
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Congress Reauthorizes DC Voucher Program, Despite Evidence of Negative Effects, and Restricts Future Research

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2017 //
20

Emma Brown and Peter Jamison report that Congress reauthorized the D.C. Voucher program, on the heels of a federal evaluation showing that vouchers have a negative effect on students who use them.

Now we know that vouchers don’t “save poor children from failing schools.” They actually do educational harm to those children. The purpose of vouchers is choice for its own sake.

Even more surprising is that the new language in the reauthorizatuon bars the use of randomized field trials–long considered “the gold standard”–in future evaluations. RCT is a means of comparing similar groups.

Thus, Congress demonstrates that it not only doesn’t care about the effects of vouchers, but doesn’t want to learn about them in the future.

“The D.C. study was conducted using what’s known as the gold standard in scientific research: An experimental design, comparing the performance of students who received a voucher through a citywide lottery to the performance of their peers who applied for a voucher and didn’t receive one. The study was designed to comply with the law as currently written, which requires the “strongest possible research design” for determining the vouchers’ effectiveness.


“The reauthorization rolls back that language and prohibits the department’s researchers from using that gold standard. Instead, it says that researchers must use a “quasi-experimental” design, comparing voucher recipients to students with “similar backgrounds” in D.C. public and public charter schools.


“Researchers say this approach is generally weaker because it creates uncertainty about whether the comparison is fair.

“This program has been studied rigorously since it began in 2004, using an approach that the field of medical research would regard as common practice,” said Mark Dynarski, who co-authored the D.C. study released last week. “If rigor is rolled back, a future study might lead to more questions than answers.”


“Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) called the research change an “egregious dilution” of serious science, accusing his Republican counterparts of trying to escape empirical data that might not back up their school-choice philosophy.”

Categories District of Columbia, Vouchers

What DeVos Said About Evaluation of D.C. Voucher Program

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2017 //
33

A federal evaluation of the D.C. voucher program came up with negative results. Students in elementary schools who participated saw their scores drop, a finding similar to recent studies in Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/federal-study-of-dc-voucher-program-finds-negative-impact-on-student-achievement/2017/04/27/e545ef28-2536-11e7-bb9d-8cd6118e1409_story.html

What did Betsy DeVos say?

“DeVos defended the D.C. program, saying it is part of an expansive school-choice market in the nation’s capital that includes a robust public charter school sector.


“When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools,” she said in a statement. She added that the study found that parents “overwhelmingly support” the voucher program “and that, at the same time, these schools need to improve upon how they serve some of D.C.’s most vulnerable students.”

So her assumption is that voucher programs are not likely to have better outcomes than public schools. Students who are performing poorly in public schools will perform poorly in voucher or charter schools. As long as parents are satisfied, that’s it. Reform.

That’s quite a theory of action. Or inaction.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

New Study Shows Negative Effects of Vouchers in D.C. Program

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2017 //
5

Voucher advocates have protected D.C.’s voucher program, known as “Opportunity Scholarships,” since it was created in 2004 despite lack of strong evidence for its benefits. Evaluations have found little or no improvement in test scores. This new evaluation shows negative effects on test scores in the elementary grades for those who enrolled in voucher schools. This echoes studies in Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio, where voucher students lost ground as compared to their peers who were offered vouchers but stayed in public schools. In the past, the D.C. evaluation team was led by Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas, the high temple of school choice. The evaluation team for this new study was led by Mark Dynarski of Pemberton Research and a group of Westat researchers. Dynarski, you may recall, wrote a paper for the Brookings Institution calling attention to the negative impact of vouchers in Louisiana and Indiana. Previous evaluations showed higher graduation rates in voucher schools, but also–as is now customary in voucher schools–high rates of attrition. Of those who don’t drop out and return to public schools, the graduation rate is higher.

The Washington Post reports:

 

Students in the nation’s only federally funded school voucher initiative performed worse on standardized tests within a year after entering D.C. private schools than peers who did not participate, according to a new federal analysis that comes as President Trump is seeking to pour billions of dollars into expanding the private school scholarships nationwide.

The study, released Thursday by the Education Department’s research division, follows several other recent studies of state-funded vouchers in Louisiana, Indiana and Ohio that suggested negative effects on student achievement. Critics are seizing on this data as they try to counter Trump’s push to direct public dollars to private schools.

Vouchers, deeply controversial among supporters of public education, are direct government subsidies parents can use as scholarships for private schools. These payments can cover all or part of the annual tuition bills, depending on the school.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has long argued that vouchers help poor children escape from failing public schools. But Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the top Democrat on the Senate Education Committee, said that DeVos should heed the department’s Institute of Education Sciences. Given the new findings, Murray said, “it’s time for her to finally abandon her reckless plans to privatize public schools across the country.”

DeVos defended the D.C. program, saying it is part of an expansive school-choice market in the nation’s capital that includes a robust public charter school sector.

 

“When school choice policies are fully implemented, there should not be differences in achievement among the various types of schools,” she said in a statement. She added that the study found that parents “overwhelmingly support” the voucher program “and that, at the same time, these schools need to improve upon how they serve some of D.C.’s most vulnerable students.”

DeVos’ statement suggests that neither vouchers nor charters will ever outperform public schools. The goal of choice is choice, not better academic achievement or better education, not to “save poor kids from failing schools,” but to provide choice.

 

 

 

 

Categories District of Columbia, Research, Vouchers

D.C.: New Millions Added to Increase “High-Quality Seats” in Charters

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2017 //
13

One of the strange ideas in the privatization movement is that only charters are able to provide “high-quality seats.”

There seems to be a magical place where charter operators go to buy chairs that are unavailable to public schools.

Only charter operators can buy those chairs. Those chairs are “high-quality seats.”

The Citybridge Education Foundation in D.C., financed by billionaires Katherine and David Bradley, is putting up the money to add new charter schools and to help revamp some low-performing public schools in the District, in search of those elusive “high-quality seats.”

What is it about those “high-quality seats”? Does that mean the teachers are ill-prepared Teach for America recruits? Does that mean that the school gets to exclude low-performing students or students whose disability status and language needs make them a “bad fit” for “high-quality seats”?

Where is the warehouse where they keep those “seats”?

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization

DeVos Wants More Vouchers in DC, Despite Lack of Results

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2017 //
17

The Republicans are set to expand the D.C. Voucher program, even though no evaluation has shown better test scores for D.C. voucher students and a high attrition rate.

Students who get a voucher will check their constitutional rights at the door. The voucher schools may exclude students with disabilities and LGBT students. DeVos doesn’t care.

Republicans have already started moving HR 1387, the SOAR Reauthorization Act. This bill would reauthorize the DC voucher program (the only federally funded voucher program in the country), and the group that administers the program has said they expect to provide “hundreds” of new vouchers to DC students with Republicans in charge.

The bill was passed out of committee earlier this month on a party line vote, and we expect the bill to hit the House floor soon. Just as telling as the final vote on the bill was how the committee voted on amendments, and this headline says it all: GOP lawmakers refuse to protect LGBT students and those with disabilities in school voucher bill.

This is the first voucher bill being moved this year – and while Betsy DeVos refused to say during her confirmation hearing that schools taking federal money should have to abide by IDEA and provide the same services and protections to students with disabilities as public schools, members of Congress may soon have a chance to go on record themselves about this very issue when the SOAR Reauthorization bill is voted on.

Categories Betsy DeVos, District of Columbia, Special Education, Vouchers

DFER Launches Phony Phone Campaign in DC to Promote Common Core and High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2017 //
10

The hedge-fund manager group called Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) is conducting an aggressive telephone campaign in D.C. to promote the Common Core and high-stakes standardized testing. The rhetoric is deceptive, as usual.

Jeffrey Anderson writes in the Washington City Paper:

“In a one-party city with a civic focus on education, an advocacy group like Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) sounds as wholesome as Mom and apple pie. Everyone in D.C. is a Democrat, right? Who isn’t in favor of education reform?

“Aided by such safe assumptions, the New York-based PAC recently injected itself into a complicated school debate when it employed phone banking that connected D.C. residents with their respective school board members.

“Residents around the city received calls on behalf of DFER to tell them that the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is proposing to “hold schools accountable not only for the academic achievement of students but also for the growth that students make on their achievement at whatever level they start out.”

“Sounds like a winner, right?

“The callers then offered to direct residents to their representative on the D.C. State Board of Education to “let them know you support this proposal.” They then asked, “May I put you through?”

“What the campaign does not tell citizens is that the proposal presents the school board with complex decisions in an ongoing policy debate that is central to a virtual culture war over public education reform in America.

“Nor does it disclose that Democrats for Education Reform is a PAC that raises money from corporations, foundations, and influential philanthropists to back political candidates who favor standardized testing and the Common Core standards—and apparently seeks to directly influence elected school board members on contentious policy issues.

***

“OSSE’s draft plan is based on the federal “Every Student Succeeds Act,” which requires states to create a new school accountability system beyond the standardized math and reading tests of “No Child Left Behind.” The idea of Every Student Succeeds is to provide states with flexibility to also measure performance in science, social science, art, and other indicators of school quality.

“Under the plan DFER is promoting, 80 percent of school accountability for elementary and middle schools is based on standardized tests in reading and math and a complex formula meant to determine student “growth.” (Most of the remainder is based on attendance and re-enrollment.) The accountability system not only rates schools relative to one another but also sets guidelines that will influence educational and administrative priorities.

“Proponents of the plan, such as DFER’s D.C. director Catharine Bellinger, believe that a school rating system should be based on single test scores that reflect performance on college and career-ready exams, such as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).”

Here is a safe bet: Not one member of the board of DFER sends their children to a school that is ranked by test scores or uses standardized tests to rank students.

Now that DeVos is leading the national movement for privatization, DFER can concentrate its energies on testing and ranking other people’s children.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Feds Cite D.C. Charters for High Suspension Rates, Especially for Black Students

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2017 //
24

A new report from the Federal Government Accountability Office criticized charter schools in D.C. for their high suspension rates. Will Betsy DeVos care?

Washington Post columnist Joe Davidson writes:


A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report says suspension and expulsion rates for charters in the capital city are double the national rate and disproportionately high for black students and those with disabilities.

During the 2013-2014 school year, for example, “D.C charter schools had about a 13 percent suspension rate, while the national rate for all charter schools was about 6 percent,” the GAO reported. “This was also true for expulsions, with charter schools in D.C. reporting double the rate of charter schools nationally.”

The agency that oversees charter schools in the District acknowledges it has issues, but it also had problems with the GAO’s findings. In a response included in the report, the D.C. Public Charter School Board said the GAO “reaches some inaccurate conclusions and from these draws ill-advised recommendations” because it did not use more recent data.

Data from the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 school years show that “steady and significant progress has been made every year in reducing out-of-school discipline,” the board said in response.

If there is good news here, it’s only by comparison. D.C. charter suspension and expulsion rates did fall from the 2011-2012 to the 2013-2014 academic years. Also, the charter suspension rate is only a little higher than that of the city’s traditional public schools.

But that’s not good enough.

When D.C. charter schools kick students out, they are not allowed to return, the GAO reported. They generally transfer to a traditional public school.

“In contrast, D.C. traditional public schools generally do not expel students,” the GAO said. “Instead, D.C. traditional public schools generally use long-term suspensions (greater than 11 days) and temporarily transfer these students to an alternative middle and high school.”

It’s no surprise that the greater suspension and expulsion rates for charter schools fall heavily on black students. From preschool discipline and throughout the criminal justice system, studies have shown that black people are treated more harshly than white people for similar conduct.

The GAO “found that the rates of suspension for Black students in D.C. charter schools were about six times higher than the rates for White students and the rates for students with disabilities were almost double the rates for students without disabilities.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization, Race

Jeff Bezos Loves Charters and Privatization

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2017 //
24

Who is Jeff Bezos? Jeff Bezos founded Amazon. He is a billionaire. He loves charters and privatization of schools. In 2013, he bought The Washington Post, which had been a bastion of liberal thought under the ownership of the Graham family.

 

Bezos did not introduce charter-love and teacher-bashing to the Washington Post. While the news staff always played it straight, the Post editorial board was madly in love with Michelle Rhee during her stormy tenure. In their eyes, Rhee could do no wrong. She was their Joan of Arc. Even now, after a decade of Rhee-Henderson control, the Post still worships Rhee, as this article by editorial page editor Fred Hiatt showed.

 

When Bezos bought the Post in 2013, investigative journalist Lee Fang revealed in The Nation that Bezos is a generous supporter of school privatization.

 

Lee Fang wrote:

 

“There’s one area where Bezos has been hyper-active, but it is largely unknown to the general public: education reform. A look at the Bezos Family Foundation, which was founded by Jackie and Mike Bezos but is financed primarily by Jeff Bezos, reveals a fairly aggressive effort in recent years to press forward with a neoliberal education agenda:

 

• The Bezos Foundation has donated to Education Reform Now, a nonprofit organization that funds attack advertisements against teachers’ unions and other advocacy efforts to promote test-based evaluations of teachers. Education Reform Now also sponsors Democrats for Education Reform.

 

• The Bezos Foundation provided $500,000 to NBC Universal to sponsor the Education Nation, a media series devoted to debating high-stakes testing, charter schools and other education reforms.

 

• The Bezos Foundation provided over $100,000 worth of Amazon stock to the League of Education Voters Foundation to help pass the education reform in Washington State. Last year, the group helped pass I-1240, a ballot measure that created a charter school system in Washington State. In many states, charter schools open the door for privatization by inviting for-profit charter management companies to take over public schools that are ostensibly run by nonprofits.

 

Other education philanthropy supported by the Bezos Foundation include KIPP, Teach for America and many individual charter schools, including privately funded math and science programs across the country.”

 

Lee Fang says there is one good result of Bezos taking over the Post. It used to be controlled by for-profit Kaplan University and avoided negative coverage of the sham industry.

 

He wrote:

 

“For now, the change in ownership will probably only benefit the Post’s education coverage, given the newspaper’s long relationship with Kaplan, which helped prop up the paper’s finances for years while the Post either largely ignored the issue of for-profit colleges or sent its executives to Capitol Hill to lobby against better oversight of the industry.

 

“Part of the ugly history of the Post is its reliance on a predatory for-profit college called Kaplan University. Though Washington Post blogger Lydia DePillis seemed to whitewash this relationship yesterday by referring to Kaplan as only a “lucrative test prep business,” in reality, Kaplan University was one of worst for-profit colleges in the country.”

 

 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Privatization, Rhee, Michelle, School Choice

Mercedes Schneider: The Rigging of DC Scores to Claim “Improvement” That Didn’t Happen

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2016 //
7

Mercedes Schneider has assembled data on a scandal in D.C. In recent years, Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson claimed that it was the fastest improving district in the nation. The national media repeats their claim.

 

Retired D.C. teacher Erich Martel alerted me to what appeared to be the cooking of the books, and I connected him to Schneider.  She confirms that D.C. cooked NAEP data to overstate gains for the district.

 

She reviews the data and concludes:

 

“Rhee took the DCPS helm in June 2007; when she left in 2010, her deputy, Kaya Henderson, took over.

 

“According to NAEP, they both failed. So has the mayoral control of schools responsible for both Rhee and Henderson. And what is particularly striking is that these “reformers” would rather lie to the public about their success by concealing information than confront their failure and change their corporate-reform-fed course.

 

“I challenge DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to offer a public response to Martel’s NAEP story as publicized in this post, and I challenge DCPS to post the full spectrum of DC’s NAEP results, beginning with the 1998/2000 results; to make such posting easily accessible on the DCPS website, and to use accurate numbers.”

Categories Data, District of Columbia, Hoax

Mike Klonsky: Why Antwan Wilson Left Oakland for D.C.

By dianeravitch
November 28, 2016 //
7

Mike Klonsky has some thoughts about why Antwan Wilson, superintendent of schools in Oakland, left his $400,000 a year job to take Kaya Henderson’s job in the District of Columbia.

It can’t be for the money. He will probably earn about the same, maybe more.

Could be because he is a Broadie, and Broadie don’t set down roots in any community.

Must be for the visibility.

The people in D.C. credited him with raising test scores in Oakland, but he was only in Oakland for two years.

He will bring some Broadie ideas with him that folks in D.C. were not expecting, like trying “to dismantle special education.” Although, having weathered nine years of Rhee-Henderson policies of high-stakes testing and privatization, they must have some idea of what they will be getting. More of the same.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, District of Columbia, Privatization
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