Archives for category: District of Columbia
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John Thompson: A Closer Look at the “Success” in D.C. That Wasn’t

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2015 //
8

John Thompson knows that reformers point to the District of Columbia as one of their examples of success. After all, the district has been controlled by Teach for America alumnae Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson since 2007. They own whatever successes and not-successes that occurred over the past eight years. The centerpiece of their claims of success is NAEP scores, which are up.

 

In this post, Thompson identifies the flaws in the narrative of success. Thompson lauds John Merrow for critiquing the narrative of a district he once held up as an exemplar of successful reform. Merrow asked, in his post, why anyone was celebrating Kaya Henderson’s five-year anniversary in the wake of the disastrous scores on the Common Core PARCC tests, which showed a district where academic performance was dismal.

 

Thompson reviews the NAEP scores, using Rick Hess’s data.

 

Hess cites overall gains in NAEP growth under Rhee and Henderson, but those same NAEP studies actually support the common sense conclusion that the numbers reflect gentrification. Hess’s charts show that from 2005 to 2013, the percentage of D.C. students who are low-income dropped from 66% to 61.6%. (In my world, a 61.6% low-income urban school seems danged-near rich.) Per student spending increased by 40% during that time. (The new spending, alone, comes close to the total per student spending in my 90% low-income system.)

 

According to Hess’s chart, the percentage of the D.C. students who are black dropped by 1/8th from 2005 to 2013, and the percentage of students with disabilities dropped by 1/7th. And, the 2015 NAEP excluded as many as 44% of D.C.’s English Language Learners. The conservative reformer RiShawn Biddle calls that exclusion “massive and unacceptable test-cheating.”

 

Even so, as Merrow reminds us, the performance gap between low-income and more affluent students has grown even wider; for instance, from 2002 to 2015, the 8th grade reading performance gap grew from 17 to 48 points.

 

Before Rhee/Henderson, the growth in D.C. test scores was spread much more widely. Because I believe that 8th grade reading is the most important NAEP metric in terms of evaluating school performance, I will cite some of those metrics in support of Merrow. From 1998 to 2002, black 8th grade reading scores increased from an average of 233 to 238. By 2015, they were down to 236. From 1998 to 2002, average 8th grade reading scores for low-income students increased from 229 to 233. In 2015, they remained at 233.

 

Thompson says it is sad that the elites now re-engineering public education are utterly disconnected from the lives and realities of the children who attend those schools or the people who teach in them. They need a reality check, or maybe a course in sociocultural sensitivity training so that they stop stepping on the faces of children and adults whose lives they know nothing about.

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Common Core, District of Columbia, Education Reform, NAEP, Testing

The Shadow Chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2015 //
21

Some people think that Kaya Henderson is the Chancellor of the D.C. public schools. Think again. The real chancellor is a very wealthy woman named Katherine Bradley. She is married to a media mogul (The Atlantic), and she is very very interested in the public schools. She is quite certain she knows how to fix them. She works closely with the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Graham family that used to own the Washington Post. She is a power in D.C. politics. All decisions about the future of the schools must be cleared by her. You know by now that she believes in free-markets and privatization.

 

Katherine Bradley is a symbol of the erosion of democracy in our society. She has no obvious qualifications to make decisions about the future of public education. Being rich is not a qualification. I don’t know for sure, but I would wager that she didn’t go to public school, never taught in public school, and has never had a child in public school. So why is she the shadow chancellor? Why do her wishes decide the fate of a public institution?

 

A group called Empower DC sued to block the closure of D.C. public schools. Their request was rejected by a judge, but they were nonetheless able to obtain thousands of emails about the closures. Katherine Bradley pops up often in the correspondence.

 

This is one of the emails that was released:

 

“The bottom line is that overall there was not a huge difference performance change between students in schools which closed and all other students. The small difference there was was actually negative, so it’s probably just better to avoid this angle if it does come up.”
— Greg Garrison, DCPS Deputy Chief, Office of Data and Accountability (former) to Peter Weber, DCPS Chief of Strategy (November 7, 2012 – Bates # 014934)

Categories Charter Schools, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Privatization

John Merrow Asks: Why is Washington Celebrating Kaya Henderson’s Five-Year Anniversary?

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2015 //
12

John Merrow says that the celebration of Kaya Henderson’s five years as chancellor of the D.C. public schools is premature.

 

In a scathing article, he reviews what has happened in the District of Columbia under the nine-year rule of Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson.

 

Last month Kaya Henderson celebrated her fifth anniversary as Chancellor of the public schools in Washington, DC. Five years at the helm of an urban district is a milestone that few big city superintendents achieve, and she has been praised for hanging in and for calming down the storm created by Michelle Rhee, whose 3+ year reign was marked by numerous controversies, included the massive scandal sometimes called “Erasergate,” when USA Today investigative reporters found that thousands of student answers were changed–and almost always from ‘wrong’ to ‘right.’

 

The Washington Post, a consistent cheerleader for Henderson and her controversial predecessor, celebrated Henderson’s anniversary with a largely laudatory article that included praise from two members of Washington’s education establishment, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the long time Executive Director of the Great City Schools, Michael Casserly. The latter called Henderson “one of the most effective and popular school leaders any place in the country.” As the Post put it, “Unlike her predecessor, whose turbulent style and top-down approach made enemies of many teachers and politicians, Henderson is credited with taking a more collaborative approach.” That’s another way of saying that Henderson is a “kinder, gentler version of Rhee,” a familiar observation over the years.

 

But a closer look at what Henderson has achieved reveals that there’s little reason to celebrate.

 

Looking at the huge score gaps on NAEP and the dismal performance of D.C. students on the Common Core tests (which he calls a “catastrophic failure”), Merrow wonders why the applause for Henderson.

 

It seems to me that the District’s academic performance–the NAEP gaps, the PAARC scores, the exodus of veteran teachers and principals–are prima facie evidence of the bankruptcy of the Rhee/Henderson ‘test and punish’ approach. Henderson may in fact be a ‘kinder, gentler version’ of Michelle Rhee, but she’s still an acolyte and enthusiast for policies that damage learning opportunities for children….

 

Nationally, many in education people are waking up to the failures of ‘test and punish,’ and the new ESEA pulls back on testing. Of course we need ways of assessing teachers, but teachers themselves have to be part of the process. Every other country uses tests to assess students, not to play gotcha with teachers.

 

The approach to ‘education reform’ begun by Michelle Rhee in 2007 and continuing under Kaya Henderson to this day is a failure and a fraud. Washington’s students and teachers deserve better……

Categories Accountability, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Testing

D.C. Test Scores Are Disastrous

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2015 //
44

The public schools of the District of Columbia began their era of radical “reform” in 2007. The City Council, desperate for a quick fix to the low test scores and bureaucratic dysfunction of the school system, believed the much-heralded claims of a “New York City miracle,” supposedly due to mayoral control. The D.C. Council adopted mayoral control, hoping for the same miracle. Hard-charging Mayor Adrian Fenty, acting on the advice of NYC Chancellor Joel Klein, hired Michelle Rhee to be the Chancellor of the D.C. school system in 2007.

 

Rhee became the national face of the new reform movement. She closed schools, despite community protests. She fired principals and teachers. She ridiculed anyone who spoke of poverty as making excuses. She negotiated a sweeping teacher evaluation system and made war with the teachers’ union. She appeared on the covers of both TIME and Newsweek. She even won plaudits from both Presidential candidates during one of their debates in 2008. According to TIME, Rhee had a plan to fix the D.C. schools. She even predicted she would make it the best urban district in the nation.

 

Rhee was a lightning rod for admirers and critics. In 2010, Mayor Fenty lost his bid for re-election; Rhee was the central issue. She resigned, and the new Mayor Vincent Gray appointed Rhee’s deputy Kaya Henderson, fearful of offending the powerful supporters of Rhee and her methods. Henderson pledged to continue Rhee’s initiatives, but with a less confrontational style.

 

So after eight years, how did D.C. students do on the new PARCC test? Recall that D.C. won a Race to the Top Grant and embraced the Common Core standards.

 

The results are in, and they are appalling.

 

“District of Columbia officials released results from a recent citywide elementary school exam Monday, and the scores are abysmal. Less than a quarter of students met expectations in either math or English.

 

“Among all eighth grade students who took the test, just 3 percent met expectations in math, while 8 percent of seventh graders met the math expectations, according to Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test results….

 

“Of all the D.C. public school students in grades three through eight who took the test, only 25 percent met English expectations, and just 21 percent are on the correct level in math achievement.

 

“Around half of individual elementary schools didn’t have a single student who exceeded expectations in math….

 

“In October the test results for high school students showed just one in 10 sophomores is on track to be prepared for college.

 

“The vast majority of city schools scored flat zeros in math preparedness, with the 10 percent average being largely propped up by two premiere magnet schools with rigorous admission standards.

 

“Kaya Henderson, chancellor of DC Public Schools, called the test results “sobering,” and called for more “strategic investments” in the city’s failing schools.”

 

G.F. Brandenburg, retired D.C. Teacher and lose observer of the District’s schools, says the combination of all-testing-all-the-time and putting half the students in unregulated charter schools was not successful.

 

Eight years of reform and what was accomplished? D.C. reforms cost many hundreds of millions of dollars. Many professionals were fired. There was little or no benefit to students. In Wendy Kopp’s last book, “A Chance to Make History,” she points to D.C. as an example of Teach for America’s ability to reform an entire district. That story line just dissolved.

 

Who will be held accountable? Who will really put students in the District of Columbia first? If any district can be considered a full-scale trial of the new punitive, competitive, business-style approach to education, it is the District of Columbia. How sad.

 

 

 

 

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/11/30/less-than-a-quarter-of-dc-elementary-students-prepared-for-school/#ixzz3t2oUCY9b

 

 

 

 

Categories District of Columbia, Education Reform, Rhee, Michelle, Standardized Testing

Chris Lubienski Testifies on the Meager Effects of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2015 //
11

Chris Lubienski is a Professor of Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois. He was invited to testify before a U.S. Senate committee on the subject of vouchers. The committee was considering the reauthorization of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (aka vouchers). Please be aware that vouchers have never been endorsed by voters; wherever they exist, they were enacted by legislatures. Voters in Florida decisively rejected vouchers in 2012, as did voters in Utah in 2007.

Lubienski’s written testimony is here.

The video of the hearings is long. If you want to watch, it is here.

Lubienski reviews voucher research in an impartial manner. Overall, he finds that voucher schools do not produce higher test scores.

If you choose not to watch the hearings or read his testimony, here are his conclusions:

The academic impacts of vouchers on student achievement are generally lacking, and sporadic and inconsistent, at best. Even focusing only on the studies highlighted by the pro-voucher Friedman Foundation, most found no effect for the clear majority of overall and subgroup analyses. However, for both achievement and attainment, the problem is that findings of impact that do exist reflect no underlying causal logic. In the exceptional cases where researchers report an impact, they appear to have an effect for one group in one grade in one subject, but not with that same group in a different subject, or year, or in a different city — or even if examined in a different study, even by the same researchers. Indeed, the equity premise for vouchers — that private schools offer students a better educational opportunity — may be misguided, since nationally representative evidence indicates that private schools are no more effective (and often less so) than public schools 14(Braun, Jenkins, & Grigg, 2006; Lubienski & Lubienski, 2014; Reardon, Cheadle, & Robinson, 2009). So there are reasons for caution in hearing claims about the impact of vouchers. Said another way, there are better arguments for vouchers than their academic impacts.
At the same time, while we have evidence on the academic benefits (or lack thereof) of vouchers, policymakers and researchers may also need to attend to the question of potential social costs. Research points to concerns about social segregation from choice programs that may further hinder educational opportunity for disadvantaged students, relative to their more advantaged peers, even though disadvantaged students are often the intended beneficiaries of voucher policies. As the OECD noted:

“School competition can involve costs and benefits that may not be equally distributed across students. Some of the intended benefits of competition… are not necessarily related to student achievement, and must be weighed against the possible cost in equity and social inclusion. (Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2014)”

Weighing the potential costs and benefits of education policies is a contentious and difficult exercise, with serious implications for individuals, schools, families, and communities. While there is an obvious appeal to interventions that may appear to be a panacea for the deep-seated problems facing urban schools, the best evidence in this case indicates that this approach is not particularly effective, and should be treated by policy makers with a reasonable degree of caution.

Categories Accountability, District of Columbia, Education Reform

G.F. Brandenburg Revises DC PARCC Pass Rates

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2015 //
2

Be sure to see G.F. Brandenburg’s post on the pass rates for DC high schools on the Common Core test PARCC. 

Don’t miss his commentary after the graphs. He tells the secret to getting high scores. He says, as I have written many times, that the cut scores were set so that most students would fail. 

Categories Common Core, District of Columbia, Education Reform

Corporate Reformers Descend on Detroit to Pick Over the Ruins

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2015 //
20

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse for Detroit, here come the stars of the corporate reform movement with advice to do more of what Detroit has been doing without success.

 

More than half the students are in charter schools, but Detroit doesn’t have enough, it seems. The lowest-performing schools were dumped into the woebegone “Education Achievement Authority,” under an emergency manager with dictatorial powers, but that didn’t go anywhere.

 

If Detroit can’t get its school problems solved, it won’t be for lack of quality advice from national education experts.

 

As city and state leaders seek to figure out how best to salvage Detroit Public Schools and improve performance across a complex network of school choices, top school reformers from around the country want a piece of the action, too.

 

Last week, Michael Petrilli, CEO of the D.C.-based Fordham Institute, and Eric Chan, a partner at the Charter School Growth Fund, were a few of the latest to drop in on Detroit. Excellent Schools Detroit, which is helping lead the conversation locally about improving all city schools, invited them to town to discuss how best to create the right environment for quality charter school growth.

 

The more insights, the merrier. Other cities have undergone major school turnarounds, and there are consistent guidelines for success. When asked what Detroit needs to do to start showing results for kids, Petrilli and Chan echoed similar ideas.

 

“Deal with low-performing schools, and encourage high-performers,” says Petrilli, whose organization works to raise the quality of U.S. schools. “There are concrete things we can do.”

 

The examples of success offered by Petrilli and Chan: New Orleans, the District of Columbia, and Memphis. Privatization is the answer. Neither Petrilli nor Chan has an idea about how to improve public education. Just privatize it. Get rid of it. Bring in high-quality “seats.”

 

Readers of this blog have read again and again that most charter schools in New Orleans are rated D or F schools by the state of Louisiana; D.C. continues to be one of the lowest performing districts in the nation, as judged by the NAEP; and Memphis is home to the all-charter Achievement School District, whose founder Chris Barbic promised would produce a dramatic turnaround in only five years. That turnaround has not happened. Not in  New Orleans, D.C., or Memphis.

 

Surely there must be better examples of success for corporate reform. Or are there?

 

 

 

 

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

Why Is D.C. Hiding VAM Data?

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2015 //
14

Audrey Beardsley reveals the answer to the intriguing question: Why is D.C. hiding VAM data? The answer was earlier leaked to blogger and retired math teacher G.F. Brandenburg. Beardsley cites him in this post.

The VAM data show that VAM is junk science. Keep it a secret. D.C. school officials are trying to.

“In Brandenburg’s words: “Value-Added scores for any given teacher jumped around like crazy from year to year. For all practical purposes, there is no reliability or consistency to VAM whatsoever. Not even for elementary teachers who teach both English and math to the same group of children and are ‘awarded’ a VAM score in both subjects. Nor for teachers who taught, say, both 7th and 8th grade students in, say, math, and were ‘awarded’ VAM scores for both grade levels: it’s as if someone was to throw darts at a large chart, blindfolded, and wherever the dart lands, that’s your score.”

Categories Data and Data Mining, District of Columbia, VAM (value-added modeling)

G.F. Brandenburg: Escaping All Those “At-Risk” Kids

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2015 //
24

G.F. Brandenburg studied the wait lists at charter schools in D.C., and he discovered that poor kids were fleeing from schools with the kids “at-risk.”

Lesson:

He says, “What we see here is not “No Child Left Behind” but instead ” “Let’s Leave All Those At-Risk Kids Behind”.

Categories Charter Schools, District of Columbia

G.F. Brandenburg: What Were Differences Between Cheating in Atlanta and D.C.?

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2015 //
15

G.F. Brandenburg asks what the differences were between the cheating scandal in Atlanta under Beverly Hall and the cheating scandal in D.C. under Michelle Rhee.

He can’t find any other than the powerful protection extended to Rhee by the Obama administration. She was the poster child for Race to the Top. They couldn’t let her fail. Arne Duncan even campaigned with her on behalf of Mayor Fenty, a most unusual act for a member of the Cabinet. Fenty lost, and Rhee left D.C. to form StudentsFirst and raise campaign funds for mostly rightwing Republicans who were pro-voucher, pro-charter, and anti-union.

He writes:

“But why is it that only in Atlanta were teachers and administrators indicted and convicted, but nowhere else?

“What difference was there in their actual behavior?

“To me, the answer is simple: in DC, officials at every level, from the Mayor’s office up to the President of the US and the Secretary of Education, were determined to make sure that Michelle Rhee’s lying and suborning of perjury and lies would never be revealed, no matter what.”

Categories Atlanta, Cheating, District of Columbia, Duncan, Arne, Unions, Vouchers
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