By Bill Turque
The Washington Post

The four principal figures in D.C. school reform were on their best behavior Monday when they visited with the National Research Council (NRC) committee that will conduct an independent evaluation of their efforts.

The rare joint appearance by D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, State Superintendent of Education Kerri L. Briggs and Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso was part of an inaugural public meeting for the 13-member panel.

The evaluation is required by the 2007 law that gave Mayor Adrian M. Fenty control of the school system. After months of political squabbling and stalemate over the choice of an evaluator, the Fenty Administration and Gray settled on the NRC, the research arm of the National Academies.

The NRC has assembled a committee loaded with big names in the academic and education policy sectors, led by former Clinton White House adviser Christopher F. Edley, Jr., now dean of the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, and University of Wisconsin sociologist Robert M. Hauser.

The panel’s principal mission — which will play out in a series of reports over the next three to five years — is to determine what significant improvements in the school system, if any, are attributable to the Fenty-Rhee effort. On Monday, all four speakers said they welcomed the NRC inquiry, and committee members asked them what questions they would like to see answered by the study.

Rhee asked the panel to assess whether her “theory of change,” about the District overhaul, which has emphasized raising the quality and effectiveness of teachers, was on target. She also asked the panel to reflect on whether there were organizational changes to be made “to better set ourselves up to be successful.” Without explicitly criticizing the arrangement, she mentioned that the DCPS general counsel reports to D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles, and that the agency’s chief financial officer reports to D.C. chief financial officer Natwar M. Gandhi.

The soft-spoken Reinoso asked that the panel not make final judgments about the failure or success of an effort that he said will be under way for many years. “I don’t think that the standard should be, ‘Have we crossed the finish line?’” he said.

Gray urged the panel not neglect special education and career and technical education when looking at what the District has or has not accomplished. He cited the 2,800 special ed students attending private schools, at an annual cost of $166 million, because they have not been able to get their needs met by the District system. “We are spending dollars in some very ineffective and inefficient ways,” Gray said.

Still, it was an unusually placid appearance for the three agency heads, who often find themselves locked in contentious public hearings with Gray. Edley even remarked how smoothly they worked as a group, each deferring to the person who could best answer a question.

“That’s called punting,” Gray quipped.

When the evaluation was announced last summer, Michael J. Feuer, the executive director of the NRC’s division of behavioral and social sciences and education, said he envisioned a $1.5 million budget, much of it coming from private sources. That has been ramped back to $750,000, with the District contributing $325,000 and the National Science Foundation donating $200,000.

The committee, which hopes to publish an interim report this fall, will spend the next few months trying to figure out what school data it can use to make its assessments — which by itself will be a challenge.

At a Sunday afternoon session Erin McGoldrick, chief DCPS’ Office of Data and Accountability, said that when she came on board in 2007, she found “dozens of data systems that did not speak well to each other.” Improvements have been made, she said, but numbers prior to 2005 are highly suspect.

Here are the rest of the committee members:
Beatrice F. Birman, managing research scientist, American Institutes of Research.
Carl A. Cohn, professor of urban school leadership,Claremont Graduate University and former head of the Long Beach State Unified School District.
Leslie T.Fenwick, dean, Howard University School of Education.
Jon Fullerton, executive director, Center for Education Policy Research, Harvard University.
Fernando A. Guerra, director of health, San Antonio Metropolitan Health District.
Jonathan Gueverra, CEO, Community College of the District of Columbia.
Jonathan Guryan, professor, University of Chicago.
Lorraine M. McDonnell, professor, political science, University of California Santa Barbara.
C. Kent McGuire, dean, College of Education, Temple University.
Maxine F. Singer, Carnegie Institution of Washington.
William F. Tate, director, Center for Study of Regional Competitiveness in Science and Technology, Washington University.

The 2010 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization process comes on the heels of an intense year of federal, state, and local education action spurred by President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative. Like No Child Left Behind (NCLB i.e., ESEA reauthorization 2002), Race to the Top has generated controversy proportionate to the major changes it has ignited in state and local educations policies.

We the undersigned believe that even though neither is perfect, ESEA 2002 (NCLB) and Race to the Top are both landmark education reforms that have moved the country’s education goals and policies in a markedly positive direction. As a result, our school systems have initiated and intensified efforts to:
• Develop and adopt “college and career ready” standards linked to valid tests that comprehensively and accurately assess what students know and can do;
• Insist that all students – regardless of race, ethnicity, family income, first language, zip code, or disability – meet high academic standards;
• Close achievement gaps and opportunity gaps;
• Provide all teachers with the preparation and professional support they need to teach children to high standards in each of the subjects they teach;
• Ensure that every child has a skilled, knowledgeable, and effective teacher and that every school has an effective leader; and,
• Intervene decisively in low-performing schools and, in the case of chronically failing schools, convert them to charter schools, place them under new management, partially or fully reconstitute them, or shut them down and allow students to enroll in other high-performing public schools of their choice.

The last ESEA reauthorization, otherwise known as “No Child Left Behind” (NCLB), was signed into law in January 2002. Even under the quickest possible legislative scenario, the next reauthorization will occur almost a decade after the last. In turn, the upcoming reauthorization will likely guide federal policy for the next seven to ten years. Therefore, we must be as deliberate, thorough, and forward-looking as possible in this reauthorization.

Accordingly, we advance the following principles, which we believe any ESEA reauthorization should embody:

Accountability
• All student achievement data should be disaggregated (i.e., measured and analyzed) by race and ethnicity, gender, disability status, migrant status, English proficiency, and economic status.
• State accountability systems must hold all students to the same high standards and use the same assessments for all students as part of those accountability systems.
• States must set annual, measurable, and ambitious goals for the academic performance of all students and for closing achievement gaps between: 1) economically disadvantaged students; 2) students from major racial and ethnic groups; 3) students with disabilities; and 4) students with limited English proficiency, as compared to their non-disadvantaged peers.
• States and school districts set goals to narrow, and ultimately close, high school graduation gaps.
• Accountability systems that lower the bar for subgroups of students as a function of their history of disenfranchisement are unequivocally unacceptable.
• Accountability systems should be based only on outcome variables (e.g., high school graduation rates and state or national test scores). Mixing outcome data with input variables (e.g., “school climate” or “parent involvement”) will confound accountability systems and mask student performance and achievement gaps.
• Graduation rates should be measured according to the common metric set out in section 200.19(b) (1) of Title 34, Code of Federal Regulations (updated in 2008).
• ”Growth-to-standards” models that evaluate student progress and relative gains over multiple years toward an ultimate common goal are acceptable and encouraged. “Growth-to-nowhere” models under which there is no ultimate, absolute standard that a student is expected to achieve in a specified time do a disservice to all and are unacceptable.
• Every state must be required, by a specified date, to have accountability systems based on both absolute performance and improvement.
• Accountability systems should include both positive and negative consequences based on where schools and districts stand on both measures. Schools or districts that are “stuck” – both low-performing and low-improving – should be targeted for the most intensive interventions. Schools and districts that do well on both should be recognized for their success.

Public Information and Transparency
• Transparency is paramount. Parents have a right to know their children’s current and expected level of achievement. Parents and the public have a right to information about the performance of every school as compared to schools at the local, state, and national level and about the qualifications and performance of school personnel.
• The only factor that should limit access to data is the privacy of individual students. Proprietary data that cannot be accessed by the public simply because it is managed by a private company has no place in a public school system.
• A uniform, one or two page reporting form on student achievement and teacher quality data for each school, district, and state must be made accessible on each school district and state website, and be compiled and made accessible by the U.S. Department of Education on its website. These forms should present material in an easy-to-understand format so that they are accessible to the widest possible audience.

Teachers and School Leaders
• ESEA’s current “High Quality Teacher” designation should be replaced with a more specific, finely-tuned definition that will prevent states from allowing poorly qualified and ineffective teachers to remain in the classroom.
• The new ESEA should stop using NCLB’s Highly Objective Uniform State System of Evaluation (HOUSSE) as a metric for teacher subject matter knowledge. Subject-matter qualification will be based only on performance on state subject matter exams or attainment of a college academic major in each subject taught.
• HOUSSE has been completely discredited as a measure of teacher subject-matter knowledge and skills. Similar efforts to cobble together variables such as professional development hours and other indices with a dubious relationship to student achievement will be no better and should not be considered.
• States and school districts must develop valid measures of teacher effectiveness that make meaningful differentiations between effective and ineffective teachers and that use multiple measures that include student achievement data as a significant factor in determining teacher effectiveness, along with other measures such as observations of teacher practice by objective raters.
• Require the use of a comprehensive set of research-based input metrics for teacher hiring and evaluation, at least until primarily outcome-driven teacher effectiveness evaluation systems, including those that evaluate the performance of teacher training programs and their graduates, are better developed and fully implemented.
• Decisions pertaining to teacher placement, advancement, pay, and tenure should be based on teacher quality and effectiveness.
• Elaborate, clearly define, and enforce federal teacher equity laws, such as in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA): “The State will take actions to improve teacher effectiveness and comply with section 1111(b)(8)(C) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, as amended (ESEA) (20 U.S.C. 6311(b)(8)(C)) in order to address inequities in the distribution of highly qualified teachers between high- and low-poverty schools, and to ensure that low-income and minority children are not taught at higher rates than other children by inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers.”
• Eliminate forced placement of teachers by school districts; require that principals have autonomy in hiring teachers.
• Set aside a significant portion of federal professional development funds for states, local education authorities (LEAs), and non-profits that implement and/or expand proven and effective practices in the preparation and professional development of teachers and future school leaders.
• Ensure that all professional development dollars are used in accordance with a reauthorized ESEA that encourages the equitable distribution of teachers and increases the effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty, high-minority schools and the lowest performing schools.

Interventions and Incentives
• Dramatic school change is possible. Analyses by the Education Trust indicate that at least a quarter of the schools that were categorized as low-performing several years ago are now among the highest gaining in their respective states.
• What is lacking is not the knowledge of how to transform a failing school, but the political will to do so.
• There are school transformation interventions – short of restructuring – such as those that involve focused and sustained high-quality professional development targeted to improve student achievement, and/or those that expand high-quality learning time for students via extended day, weekend, and summer programs, which have shown the potential to transform some low-performing schools.
• We embrace the Administration’s recent push under the School Improvement Grant Program and Race to the Top to compel increasingly intensive interventions in low-performing schools.
• Persistently low-performing schools necessitate fundamental changes in staffing and leadership, including reconstitution, conversion to a charter school, restart, or shutdown. After other approaches have been tried and have failed, these are the only viable options with a reasonable probability of success.
• Federal funds for reform-oriented instructional approaches such as supplemental tutoring, expanded learning time (including after-school, extended day and school year), teacher training, and charter school management should, to the greatest extent possible, be based on their quality and be awarded via competitive grants or sub-grants to public, non-profit, and other non-governmental entities with a proven record of success.
• Specifying the type of intervention is necessary, but not sufficient. Monitoring the progress of interventions and instituting stronger reporting requirements for more intensive monitoring of persistently failing schools is absolutely essential.

Resource Adequacy and Equity
• The federal government’s traditional role in education has been to intervene on behalf of groups of students that have been ill-served or shortchanged by state and local education systems (e.g., students from low-income families, racial and ethnic minorities, recent immigrants and non-English speakers, students with disabilities, and children of migrant workers). It is paramount that the federal government continues to play this role.
• The next ESEA must have a stronger focus on improving both the adequacy and the equity of school funding by states and local school districts.
• States and school districts must make public the distribution of state and local funds according to the proportion of minorities and low-income students in every individual school.
• Under ARRA, LEAs were required to report school-by-school per-pupil expenditures to state education agencies (SEAs) by December 1, 2009, and for SEAs, in turn, to report this information to the U.S. Department of Education by March 31, 2010. This timeline should be adhered to as closely as possible and the data scrutinized for accuracy and integrity. In the past, such data has glossed over school-by-school inequities in intra-district school funding. To avoid this problem, this data should be reported annually on a school-by-school, per-pupil basis.
• Loopholes in provisions of federal law that are intended to require comparable and equal student funding across schools within a district should be closed, and mechanisms should be put in place to require a baseline level of comparable per-pupil funding in each school within a district. Title I funds should add value to the educational programs of each school rather than fill in budget gaps created by school district inequities in the distribution of human capital and other educational resources.
• The distribution of federal education funding via Title I and other programs should be targeted to the neediest children living in the neediest school districts, attending the neediest schools. Schools in the two highest poverty quintiles should receive a greater proportionate share of Title I and other federal education dollars than they do currently.
• The federal government should – through legislative and administrative action – use corrective remedies and incentives to boost overall school funding and bring funding for high-poverty and high-minority schools and districts on par with those that serve more advantaged students.

We applaud your leadership on increasing education funding and promoting reform in the first session of the 111th Congress. We look forward to continued work with you to revise and amend ESEA to further our shared goal that every child has access to a high quality education.

Sincerely,

Citizen Schools

Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights

Civic Builders

Colorado Succeeds

Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCan)

Democrats for Education Reform

Education Equality Project

Education Reform Now

Hope Street Group

Mass Insight Education and Research Institute

The Mind Trust

National Council of La Raza

Parent Revolution

Rhode Island Mayoral Academies

Rodel Foundation of Delaware

State of Black Connecticut Alliance

Texas Institute for Education Reform

UNCF (United Negro College Fund)

By Nick Anderson and Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 5, 2010

The Obama administration gave a major lift Thursday to the reform agenda of Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee and D.C. charter school leaders, announcing that the District had joined 15 states as finalists in an unprecedented $4 billion contest for federal aid.

The District beat out 25 states, including Virginia, with a proposal to “drastically reduce” the number of low-achieving schools, increase standardized test scores by five percentage points a year, and raise graduation and college enrollment rates. The plan would build on Rhee’s drive to use achievement data to assess teacher effectiveness, link pay to performance and improve instruction — ideas that have drawn her national attention and union opposition.

Through the Race to the Top competition, President Obama hopes to catalyze innovation across the country. Among his goals: expansion of effective charter schools, an overhaul of antiquated teacher evaluation systems and other experiments to turn around struggling schools. D.C. leaders contend that many of the city’s schools are already on that path, even though they have far to go to reach the level of high-performing suburban schools.

“I think it was an excellent application that captured the innovative and excellent things happening here in D.C.,” said Lisa Raymond, a member of the D.C. State Board of Education. “We really are at the forefront of education reform. I think it could be an opportunity for the administration to create a model right here in the view of the White House.”

At stake for D.C. schools is $20 million to $75 million. There is no assurance that the District will win anything; Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned that many finalists will not be winners. He said the 16 were chosen based on initial scoring by panels of experts. Each of them reached at least 400 points on a 500-point scale weighted toward Obama’s priorities.

Other finalists are Colorado (the only Western state to make the cut), Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island (scene of a recent battle over turning around a failing school), South Carolina and Tennessee.

“These states are an example for the country of what is possible when adults come together to do the right thing for children,” Duncan said in a statement. “Everyone that applied for Race to the Top is charting a path for education reform in America.”

Analysts pointed to surprises among the finalists, including New York, Ohio and Kentucky. It was also notable that the most populous state, California, missed the cut even though its legislature approved a significant school-improvement plan.

“I’m disappointed,” said Jack O’Connell, California’s superintendent of public instruction. “We put forth a solid, thoughtful application. The systemic reforms we made, we made because they’re the right educational strategies. It was an unprecedented opportunity to actually fund the reforms.”

O’Connell said he was unsure whether the state would reapply, as federal officials are urging.

“We’re not going to go through the drill again if it’s more of the same,” he said. “We had our best people working on it. Our time may be better spent helping school districts here in California.”
Maryland did not apply in the first round but aims to do so by June in a second round.

Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R), who had pressed his state’s case with federal officials, said the state would reapply.

“Today’s decision in Washington shows that we have waited far too long to bring new positive public school innovations like charters, college laboratory schools and virtual schools to young people in the state,” McDonnell said in a statement. “I look forward to helping lead a bipartisan effort to bring innovation and opportunities to Virginia’s public schools, to the benefit of students, parents and teachers.”

Finalists face a series of interviews before winners are announced in April. Duncan has the final call on who wins, but aides say he will lay out in detail his justification if he departs from the expert rankings.

The District’s finalist status suggests that it will continue to be a prominent venue for educational experiments.

Rhee deflected suggestions that the District’s location inside the Capital Beltway gave it an edge.

“I don’t think that played into it, based on what I’ve heard about the process,” she said. “One of the competitive advantages is that we’re a small jurisdiction where all the stakeholders can get into the room and get on the same page.”

The District’s 189-page application was drafted by officials from the school system, charter schools and the office of the state superintendent of education under the direction of Deputy Mayor Victor Reinoso.

These sectors have not always worked in harmony, but Rhee said the application process could be a turning point.

“We were pleasantly surprised at how aligned all of our priorities were and how each of the groups pushed each other’s thinking,” Rhee said.

By Melinda French Gates
Friday, February 19, 2010
Originally published in The Washington Post

Sitting on the desk of the secretary of education are dozens of ideas bold enough to finally start solving our country’s education crisis. They are contained in applications by 40 states and the District of Columbia for grants from the Race to the Top fund, a $4.35 billion piece of the stimulus package designed to dramatically improve student achievement.

Congress established strong guidelines to guarantee that states spend Race to the Top money on audacious reforms. Many states responded with equal fortitude, submitting proposals to radically improve how they use data or to adopt college- and career-ready standards — concepts that used to be considered third rails in the world of education. Never before has this country had such an opportunity to remake the way we teach young people.

One reason I am so optimistic about these developments is because, after decades of diffuse reform efforts, they all zero in on the most important ingredient of a great education: effective teachers. The key to helping students learn is making sure that every child has an effective teacher every single year.

Teachers are at the center of our strategy at the Gates Foundation. Since my husband and I started investing in education 10 years ago, our foundation has partnered with more than 1,000 high schools. Our grantmaking wasn’t always oriented around effective teaching, but gradually we noticed that the schools with the biggest gains were those doing revolutionary work inside the classroom.

Bill and I see evidence of this every time we visit a school. The 82 schools across the country that have implemented the Knowledge Is Power Program invariably get excellent results from the very same low-income students who tend to struggle at traditional high schools. Last year, we traveled to KIPP Houston High, where 90 percent of the students graduate, compared with 65 percent for the city as a whole, even though KIPP’s students are poorer than their peers in Houston’s public school system.

The key to this school’s success is its principal, Ken Estrella, and the 44 dedicated and talented teachers on his staff. In one class, we observed three teachers leading small groups of students in integrated bio-engineering and world health exercises. By urging students to ask penetrating questions about the diseases of the developing world, the teachers were simultaneously helping them master the basics of biology. The lesson plan bore no relation to the passive lecture format that prevails in many schools.

Empirical research confirms what Bill and I have seen in classrooms nationwide. Data show that an effective teacher has more impact on student performance than any other school-based factor. If African American students could be guaranteed teachers in the top 25 percent of their profession throughout high school, the gap between their test scores and those of white students would disappear.

So why hasn’t education policy focused more on raising teacher effectiveness? The country has tried a lot of (outrageously expensive) reforms that don’t improve student outcomes — such as reducing class size by one or two students and paying teachers to get master’s degrees. Part of the problem is that it’s so hard to measure teaching. Anyone who has ever been inspired by a teacher knows that pedagogy is both a science and an art. Finding a sensitive instrument to evaluate it has been a huge obstacle. Tests yield clear numerical grades, but they can’t measure all the intangibles that make a teacher effective.

To help surmount this logjam, a team of researchers (with support from the Gates Foundation) is working with more than 3,000 teachers in seven school districts to develop measures of teacher effectiveness. The project uses seven methods, including videotaping classes, analyzing test scores, and surveying teachers, students and parents.

The Measures of Effective Teaching project will yield a wealth of information that educators desperately need. It will help school districts nationwide make informed decisions about rewarding effective teachers. And it will help all teachers get better at their craft. If we can understand what makes a great teacher great — precisely what they do that helps their students learn — then we can encourage average teachers to adopt those proven methods.

The major teachers unions have been partnering with school officials on this work. In many states, Race to the Top applications have also been a collaborative effort to boost teachers’ performance.

In short, there is strong evidence that the key players are ready to cooperate and innovate. If all the stakeholders — the federal government, state governments, school districts and teachers — continue to coalesce around the goal of having an effective teacher in every classroom, then public schools will start to deliver on their core promise. They will prepare every single American to succeed in college, their careers and their lives.

The writer, a director of The Washington Post Co., is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

February 22, 2010
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A18

School reformers generally agree that the most important education resource is the teacher. But one of the biggest obstacles to putting a good instructor in every classroom is a tenure system that forces principals to hire and retain teachers based on seniority instead of performance.

California grants tenure to teachers after merely two years in the classroom. New York, like most other states, makes teachers wait a grand total of three years before giving them a job for life. In most cases tenure is granted automatically unless administrators object, which is rare.

A recent report in the Los Angeles Times revealed that the LA school district, the nation’s second-largest after New York City’s, “routinely grants tenure to new teachers after cursory reviews—and sometimes none at all.” According to the Times, “the district’s evaluation of teachers does not take into account whether students are learning. Principals are not required to consider testing data, student work or grades.”

This means that large numbers of ineffective teachers wind up with ironclad job protection. When low-performing teachers can’t be fired, it’s the students who suffer. A New Teacher Project study last year looked at tenure evaluations in multiple states and found that “less than 1% of teachers receive unsatisfactory ratings, even in schools where students fail to meet basic academic standards, year after year.” Less than 2% of teachers are denied tenure in LA, where the high school dropout rate is 35% and growing.

Nevertheless, teachers unions do everything in their power to preserve this tenure status quo. In 2005, when California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger backed a proposal to extend the probationary period for new teachers to five years, the California Teachers Association spent more than $50 million to defeat it. In New York, a union-supported law that bans the use of student data in making tenure decisions helped disqualify the state for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Race to the Top grants.

Even when bad schools close, which happens all too rarely, teachers from those schools take jobs at replacement schools or are sent to work at other schools in the system. And union contracts typically allow those with seniority to bump younger colleagues from other schools, even if the younger teachers are getting better classroom results.

In New York City, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has managed to change the rules that forced principals to hire teachers from shuttered schools based strictly on seniority. But even if no school will hire these teachers, they cannot be fired and they continue to receive full salary and benefits. Mr. Klein says that maintaining this “absent teacher reserve” costs $100 million a year.

It’s not impossible to get rid of bad teachers, but it’s extremely hard and expensive. A report this month in LA Weekly noted that in the past decade the Los Angeles Unified School District “spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance.”

The result? Four were fired, two others were paid large settlements and one was reinstated. The paper also reported that 32 underperforming teachers were initially targeted for removal “but then secretly paid $50,000 by the district, on average, to leave without a fight.”

The good news is that school reformers are making progress in some areas. Charlotte, North Carolina, allows teachers to be fired for poor performance. Chicago limits the amount of time a teacher without a job can continue receiving pay and benefits. Starting next year, teachers in Houston can lose their jobs if students fall short on standardized tests. Florida and Louisiana have moved to strike last-in, first-out provisions from collective-bargaining agreements.

The Obama Administration has made teacher accountability a major theme of its education agenda. Let’s hope its Race to the Top selections reward school districts that are actively working to reform the teacher corps and change a tenure system that puts job protection ahead of learning.

By Nick Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 8, 2009 10:00 AM

DC school scores improving while most cities lag

National report card shows little gains in most cities.

Mathematics achievement has surged in D.C. public schools over the past six years, the federal government reported Tuesday morning, and the city schools no longer rank last in math among major urban systems.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress found the D.C school system was the only one of 11 studied in 2007 and 2009 to make significant strides in math in grades 4 and 8. The two-year analysis relied on calculations that excluded scores from the city’s independently operated public charter schools.
Scores in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, Cleveland and Charlotte had no significant change from 2007. Fourth-grade scores rose in Boston, and eighth-grade marks rose in San Diego and Austin.

The report bolstered D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s argument that she has set the long-troubled school system on the right track.

“We were particularly encouraged by the D.C. numbers,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents major urban systems. “It’s a very good commentary on the effect of the school district’s reforms.”

Rhee took office in mid-2007 with a mandate from Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to overhaul the schools from the ground up. Her combative style, especially in challenging the teachers union, has made Rhee a celebrity among some advocates of data-driven and market-based reforms. But the chancellor also has alienated many political constituencies along the way.

The report showed that the upward trend in the District began well before Rhee’s arrival. The city’s fourth-grade math scores, on a 500-point scale, have climbed from to 220 this year from 205 in 2003. Only Boston had greater fourth-grade gains (16 points) in that time among the cities studied.

Eighth-grade scores for the District have risen to 251 this year from 243 in 2003; that advance is comparable to the six-year gains in New York (7 points) and Chicago (9).

Although D.C. scores remain below average for the nation and for large cities, the capital city’s schools have managed to climb out of the cellar in math standings.

In previous studies, the District had ranked last or tied for last in math. This year its fourth-grade average, 220, is ahead of Fresno, Calif. (219), Cleveland (213) and Detroit (200). In eighth grade, the District tied with Milwaukee for second-to-last place, at 251, while Detroit again was at the bottom (238).

Fresno, Detroit, Milwaukee and four other cities participated in the study this year for the first time. The other newcomers were Philadelphia, Miami-Dade County, Baltimore and Jefferson County (Louisville), Ky.

Detroit sticks out as the school system with by far the lowest scores. In addition, the stagnation of achievement in Cleveland is notable. Austin and Charlotte, meanwhile, are at the head of the pack.

Now, the District’s peer group appears to be Baltimore, Cleveland, Fresno, Milwaukee and Los Angeles — and possibly Atlanta and Chicago. The Chicago schools were led by Arne Duncan until he joined the Obama administration this year as education secretary.

The report can be downloaded here.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

AGE WAS MOTIVE, UNION CLAIMED
Budget cut necessitated action eventually, judge says

A D.C. Superior Court judge on Tuesday upheld Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee’s decision to lay off 266 public school teachers and other educators to close a budget gap, flatly rejecting union arguments that she contrived financial problems to rid the system of older instructors.

Judge Judith Bartnoff ruled that the Washington Teachers’ Union failed to prove any of its core contentions in challenging the Oct. 2 job cuts that triggered the most turbulent month of Rhee’s 29-month tenure, which included student protests, union rallies and D.C. Council hearings. The union filed suit five days after the layoffs, branding them an illegal mass firing and calling for the teachers to be reinstated while the matter was turned over to an arbitrator.

But Bartnoff said that given the school system’s fiscal condition after the council cut $21 million from the school budget July 31, a reversal of the layoffs would only force Rhee and Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) to make other cuts.

“The District asserts, and the plaintiff has not disputed, that in that event, other staff would be subject to a RIF [reduction in force] — even further into the school year — or programs that have been deemed essential would have to be cut,” Bartnoff wrote in her 23-page opinion. “Such an action would not benefit DCPS, its teachers, students or staff, or the wider District of Columbia community.”
D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles called the ruling “a slam dunk.”

“I’m very gratified,” he said. “All of this shrill rhetoric about lawlessness and the RIF being a pretext was completely refuted in a court of law, where everyone got their chance to present witnesses and evidence.”
George Parker, the union president, did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.

Union attorney Lee Jackson argued that Rhee, in essence, went on an illegal hiring spree over the spring and summer, bringing more than 900 new teachers on board knowing that she would need to make cuts later. The union claimed that Rhee sought to move out older teachers in favor of younger ones that she wanted to hire.

Bartnoff did not address that allegation but said the union failed to provide any substantive evidence that Rhee packed the system with more teachers than she could pay for. Lisa Ruda, Rhee’s chief of staff, testified at a Nov. 5 court hearing that before the council reduced the agency’s 2010 budget by $21 million, the school system had enough money to pay for all of its teachers.
Bartnoff did not, however, mention testimony at the Oct. 29 council hearing, when Noah Wepman, the school system’s former chief financial officer, disclosed “spending pressures” in the agency’s 2009 budget before the council’s budget cut.

Bartnoff acknowledged the testimony of teachers union witnesses who said that the decisions to lay them off were unwise or motivated by “inappropriate considerations.”

Nevertheless, she added, “some questionable RIF decisions do not establish that the RIF was a pretext for a mass discharge, given the undisputed evidence that the DCPS budget was sufficient to support the existing staff and the new teachers” prior to the council action on July 31.

Bartnoff said the union failed to meet the multipronged legal test for winning a preliminary injunction, the legal vehicle teachers hoped could be used to roll back the layoffs. The criteria include the likelihood of ultimately winning its case, which was doubtful in Bartnoff’s estimation.

The union’s collective bargaining agreement with the city does not provide for arbitration in cases of job cuts caused by budget difficulties. Under District law, employees who believe they’ve been unfairly laid off can file an appeal with the Office of Employee Appeals.

The judge also ruled that the layoffs, while personally painful to many teachers, did not meet the definition of “irreparable injury” required to win an injunction. Nor do the job cuts irreparably harm the teachers’ bargaining unit, she said, despite accusations that Rhee is intent on breaking the union.
Some of the laid-off teachers said they were not surprised by the ruling, given Bartnoff’s negative comments at the court hearing.

“I expected it,” said Cynthia Hill, a former biology teacher at Ballou High School, who criticized the union’s legal strategy of attempting to take the matter to arbitration. “Nobody can represent anybody that badly, I think.

“It’s almost like they’re in bed together anyway,” she said, referring to Parker, Rhee and Bartnoff.
For more on education, please see http://washingtonpost.com/education

November 1, 2009

Local supporters of D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee have grown more organized in recent weeks, as her attempts at reform have come under sharper attack from union officials and members of the city council.

“I’ve never gotten more e-mails from people all over the city asking what they can do to help,” said Anne Martin, executive director of D.C. School Reform Now, an advocacy group in favor of systemwide changes such as entrusting principals with more power to hire and fire.

The group’s online petition has collected 700 signatures in little more than a week. More than 200 of those came Friday and Saturday, following Rhee’s nine-hour D.C. Council hearing about the recent firing of nearly 400 teachers and school employees.

“It’s a little overwhelming,” Martin said, amid planning for a Wednesday pro-reform event at downtown’s E Street Cinema. “A couple of months ago, no one was reaching out to us.”

Martin and her team are hoping to stage events countering the Washington Teachers’ Union’s more organized and immediate displays of indignation, including an Oct. 8 protest of the firings that gathered more than 1,000 supporters, and angry testimony to the council that lasted until 4 a.m. Oct. 17.

Read the full story

Monday, October 26, 2009

After days of frantic blogging on the latest D.C. schools crisis and trading speculation with interested readers, I find it refreshing to visit three educators who are making major changes in two of the city’s lowest-performing high schools. Unlike me and many of the people I exchange comments with, they know what they are talking about.

George Leonard, 57, chief executive officer of the Friends of Bedford group from New York; Chief Financial Officer Bevon Thompson, 35; and Chief Operating Officer Niaka Gaston, 34, sit around a table in the basement of the District’s Dunbar High School. The school was so dark and filthy when they first saw it that they cringe at the memory.

Dunbar and Coolidge high schools, both educational disaster areas, are under the command of their consulting company. D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee handed them the keys to the two schools because of the rigor and high graduation rates they brought to a small public high school, the Bedford Academy, in a low-income neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Perplexed by D.C. politics, they dismiss some myths that live in the blogosphere about Rhee’s cut of 380 jobs a few weeks after school started. Neither Rhee nor any other central office personnel told them whom to fire, they say. They were told they would be getting $229 less per pupil than they had expected, but they decided how many employees had to be dismissed to stay on budget and which ones would get the bad news.

Read the full story

For additional information, contact:

Anne Martin, 415-336-2564

Reform Group Demands That Ineffective Teachers Not Be Returned To Classrooms

‘Reductions In Force’ Should Be Based on Teacher Impact on Learning

Washington, DC – Oct. 16, 2009 – While the District of Columbia City Council and district school leaders tussled over a recent “Reduction In Force” that has resulted in teacher layoffs, a parent and community advocacy group today demanded that both sides commit to making sure that no child be taught by an ineffective teacher, no matter what the budgetary climate looks like.

“Grownups can work out budgetary decisions, but real leaders must ensure today that all staffing decisions in the District of Columbia Public Schools be made with the best interests of children in mind,” said Anne Martin, executive director of the non-profit advocacy group DC School Reform Now. “Chancellor Rhee and the City Council have an obligation to the children of this city and that means making sure that only effective teachers be allowed to work in public schools.”

Martin noted that this commitment to quality teaching and learning should always be the case, but is particularly important when decisions about reductions in force are necessary.

“This city cannot afford to allow ineffective teachers to remain in the classroom at the expense of excellence – and the children in our city need and deserve excellence,” Martin said.

Martin noted that decisions about which teachers should be removed were made based in part on their effectiveness in the classroom, in addition to school need and years of service. Re-instating ineffective teachers would be a move in the wrong direction, she said.