WAMU - NPR Investigation Uncovers Cooked Data In Ballou High Graduation Rates

Ballou teacher Monica Brokenborough

In November 2017 an investigative reporter at the NPR affiliate WAMU, Kate McGee, started listening to teachers. What she discovered (here) was systematic granting of credit to students who didn't show up much, and graduating students who didn't meet the requirements for graduation at Ballou High School. But the reported scandal soon led to the realization that all school across the city had been cooking the books for years. Teachers had been speaking out, but no one had wanted to listen -- not Chancellors Rhee and Henderson, not the Mayors or members of the DC Council, Not the State Superintendent of Schools who runs the data gathering shop at OSSE.

A quick investigation by OSSE confirmed the problems, and a survey conducted by the teacher group, EmpowerEd, and the Washington Teachers Union, to be released on Thursday, January 25, showed that according to teachers, the problems are widespread. Principals are pressuring teachers to change grades and allow students with poor attendance to graduate so that the numbers would look better than they are and problems with student progress will be brushed under the rug. Pressures and deceit are greater in higher poverty schools, but even among those, it is worse in some schools than others.

With this one piece of good investigative reporting and follow-ups by WAMU-NPR, the entire consensus about progress in DC schools resulting from the Rhee/Henderson reforms, was upended. Members of the DC Council started expressing their dismay about what they had been told for years, and local columnists, like Colbert King started questioning the enthusiasm for reforms that had been founded on faulty data. And it has been clear in conversations with teachers in charter schools that the same pressures and lack of transparency and honesty is rampant in charters subject to the same outcome measure evaluations as well. The story is still unfolding, but its clear that for the first time in ten years, that the sheen is off the so-called reform miracle of DC schools. The challenge now is to begin a new era of honesty, transparency, and building a new professional culture in schools that allows teachers to address the real and pressing needs of their students, innovating, collaborating, without the pressure to make their adult supervisors look good at all costs.

Education Reform Hasn't Hit A Wall; It Is The Wall

Award winning former NY principal, Carol Burris analyzes the whopping 14 point nationwide drop in SAT scores for 2015 in this Washington Post column.

Are Charter Schools the Answer?

Furman University in South Carolina professor Paul Thomas nicely summed up the unimpressive track record of over a decade of promoting "choice" in US Education Policy in a post this week,  and Valarie Strauss reprinted it here. Its worth remembering and circulating these stark realities as the uninformed myths about charter schools continue. Thomas reflects national data and his closely examined data in South Carolina. But the data in Washington DC, where charters have more advantages than anywhere else in the nation, fits the same pattern.

Love of Reading and Writing Beats A "Reform" Focus

Valarie Strauss posted an eloquent post by Nancie Atwell, the renowned founder of the Center for Teaching and Learning and an award-winning Middle School educator from Maine, describing her approach to teaching a love of reading and writing as more useful than the current strategies aimed at Common Core. It's worth a read to remind us what is really important. What else is there to say?

Another Charter Scandal -- The Lack of Accountability Is Like the Wild West

Emma Brown revealed in the Washington Post in December that Jeremy Williams, the former DC Public Charter School Board CFO, helped Options Public Charter School and other charters funnel millions to privately owned contracting companies they owned and avoid oversight. Williams received $150,000 from the Options Board for his favors. The Washington Post only obtained the information by filing a FOIA request to obtain private emails. The private emails showed the CFO was in on what was going on and violated even the charter board's rules. This is not the first scandal resulting from the privatizing of public education in Washington DC. No other school system in the country has as lucrative payments to charters from public coffers. Public officials were asleep at the switch when the rules were made and now that 45% of students attend charters it will be hard to change the rules to impose accountability and transparency on the charter sector, but that is what must be done.

We could just keep updating this article with the scandal of the month. This piece appeard February 11, 2015 in the Washington Post.  The Dorothy I. Height Community Academy Public Charter Schools may be closed becasue its director seems to have used a private management organization to pay himself over $1 Million per year out of taxpayer dollars meant for the "public" school he ran. Amos insisted he was worth it. The charter Board met last week to consider closing the school but failed to make a decision.

Stepping Back to Consider What's Wrong With Existing Reform Emphasis

The NY Times published an interesting op-ed yesterday by University of California Professor David Kirp. This is just one of many critiques that have started to emerge now that the 8 years of reform in DC have proven not to move the needle for the students who need improvement most. It is time to consider whether the wrong reforms have been chosen in Washington DC and to consider what the research shows works. In that respect, Mayoral Candidate David Catania is exactly wrong when he acknowledges the track record of failure in DC and then concludes that we need to double down on the existing reform agenda. Rather, its time to hold the reformers, and the politicians who have rubber stamped their ill conceived direction, accountable.

Charters Re-segregate Public Schools -- New Study Tells How

GW professor Iris Rotberg penned an article in the Kappan Magazine a version of which was re-printed in Valerie Strauss' column today describing the various ways that charter schools are re-segregating education. The research is clear, Rotberg argues, but policy makers are just ignoring it and are subverting the intention of Brown v Board.

DC School Reform: "Miraculous" Success or Miserable Failure

Yesterday, in a Post Op-ed, former Post Publisher Donald Graham challenged elected officials and candidates for mayor not to look under the hood of DC school reform but to stay the course with Kaya Henderson, the miracle worker chancellor who has raised student test scores. But candidate for mayor Andy Shallal looked under the hood ten days earlier in a February 14 White Paper on Education where he documents the failure of DC school reform and outlines a different path he would take as mayor. Its the first detailed critique of school reform and articulation of an alternative approach to see the light of day in six years. At issue is how to interpret DC's NAEP score record. Where Graham declares rising average scores a success, Shallal points out that all the improvement is for white and wealthier students and can be credited to changing demographics. The city's poor and African American students, in whose name reform was justified, have seen little to no improvement. The charts and statistics in Shallal's analysis shed new light on the record of "reform." In a follow-up Op-Ed responding to Graham's piece, DC Councilman David Catania took Graham to task on the NAEP score data and the need for Council oversight of DCPS, but Catania curiously reached the opposite conclusion: more of the same reform, faster. He must be running for mayor. But then Valerie Strauss finally got it right when she published on March 12 Mary Levy's 7 charts from the Shallal analysis for the world to see here. Who will hold these politicians and their chancellors accountable?

Roosevelt HS' Struggle Illustrates DCPS' Problem

... and Kaya Henderson refused to comment for this excellent story in the City Paper
and for the charts that the article refers to go here.

Too Soon to Celebrate A Rise in DC NAEP Scores

While DCPS, TFA, Arne Duncan, and the Washington Post were quick to declare the recent rise in NAEP scores in DC as validation of the strategies put into place by Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson, more observant analysts say, "not so fast." James Morrow of PBS' Learning Matters blog cogently described here why those conclusions are not warranted. In fact, most of the improvement came before Rhee and Henderson's tenure. The new reforms seem to have actually widened the achievement gap. And the gains, such as they are, might be attributed instead to the gentrification of the student population -- changing demographics. Gary Rubenstein makes the case for scepticism even more strongly, with charts and graphs that put the supposed gains in context on his blog here.

Pop the Champaign for DC CAS Score Gains? Think Again.

DC Council Education Chair David Catania and others have now blown the whistle on the manipulation of cut scores that led to the recently celebrated student achievement gains last year. Elaine Weiss sums it up as a cautionary tale in this Huffington Post column, that we need to take to heart in DC.

The Charter Experiment Is At Best a Mixed Bag: The New Orleans Case

In this look back at the charter record since Katrina, a feature Newsweek magazine story asks whether this new paradigm in which schools can't keep teachers and is not fun for kids is the best model for the nation's urban poor.

Realities of Race To The Top Implementation

In a new report from the Broader Bolder Approch to Education, the impact of Race to the Top funding from the US Department of Education is analyzed. In exchange for funding that represents on average about 1% of their budgets, states have agreed to policies that will have little effect on achievment gaps, and may do harm. Meanwhile, proven programs that would improve education outcomes for the most needy students are not part of the reform mix being promoted by the federal government. The report concludes that state goals for improvement continue to be wildly unrealistic, while strategies are misguided.

How So-called Education Reform Serves to Preserve the Status Quo

Valerie Strauss posted an analysis worth reading by Arthur H. Camins   Camins describes how the reform strategies promoted by the US Department of Education and blindly adopted by school districts like that in the District of Columbia actually preserve the structures that cause failure for disadvantaged students while giving the illusion of change.

School Professional Climate Trumps Individual Teacher Characteristics

A report from the new director of the Consortium for Chicago Schools Research says that the collaborative climate in a school is more important than the individual characteristics of teachers. What makes this report so interesting is that DCPS reforms since 2007 are premised on the opposite assumption -- rewarding individual teachers and principals when their students score better than the norm, and firing them when scores fall short. If the researchers behind this report are correct, the whole theory of reform in DCPs may be backwards, and the effect on staff morale and collaboration could be making the quality of education worse.

What Are Charter Schools Really For?

The Greater Greater Washington blog's Ken Archer takes Emma Brown's expose of charter school expulsions, and charters' refusal to give students from the neighborhood priority, and follows it to its logical conclusion -- they're not really designed to compete. They're designed to displace neighborhood schools but not serve the same kids.

Students First Ranks States and Ironically Puts Students Last

When Michelle Rhee's "Students First" money raising, privatization advocacy empire released their supposed "ranking of the states" they got a surprising amount of national press, some of it taking the rhetoric of the rankings at face value. However the Opportunity to Learn coalition issued a cogent critique of the Students First report here. The California Superintendent of Schools also cut through the fog of ignorant media coverage by stating that a low score on this ranking is a "badge of honor."

Drifting Toward Two School Systems, Separate and Unequal

Ken Archer of the Greater Greater Washington blog makes the argument that the current proposal by the Chancellor to close 20 schools moves DCPS toward two school systems -- One West of Rock Creek park, with coherent feeder patterns and stable schools; and one for the rest of the city East of the park, with charters that operate by lottery, chaotic openings and closings of schools and poor student results. He suggests that DCPS consider instead an alternative route involving school boundaries and different decisions about the use of schools. Read his post here.

DC's IMPACT contrasted with Montgomery's Proven Approach

The November issue of ASCD's Education Leadership magazine,is devoted entirely to teacher evaluation. An article by Mark Simon compares DC's IMPACT to Montgomery County's collaboratively developed system. The author points out that the philosophical approaches are opposite and the effects on the workforce, teacher turnover, and student achievement are very different.

Growing Movement Against School Closures as a Reform Strategy Emerges in Five Cities

According to an article in Ed Week, a growing movement of parents, public school advocates and education researchers who have seen the costs and benefits of closing neighborhood schools is ringing the alarm bell. In Washington DC, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Newark, parents and others are demanding a moratorium on school closings as a strategy for reform.It's not good for the kids impacted. Its not good for the neighborhoods, and it doesn't even bring savings. So why has it become the strategy of first resort?