Posts by Ken Archer

Ultimately, Gray's mayoralty will leave a lasting effect on the budget and city services, and residents, whether they voted for and endorsed Adrian Fenty (as I did) or Gray, should care a great deal about what the capable people in the administration, unconnected to the campaign or any campaign finance, are doing.

We've also yet to find out whether the mayor himself was part of any illegal activity or knew about it. Based on what we know thus far, it appears that Gray made some very poor choices about whom to trust early on. Since then, he's replaced most of these poor hires with better staff, who are better at sharing the administration's positive accomplishments, such as:

One City One Hire

The administration's program to help unemployed residents find jobs has now suc­cee­ded in getting employers to hire 3,000 unemployed District residents in the past year.

There are numerous obstacles to getting people into jobs, but employers' lack of trust in DC's jobless has been among the most intractable. One City One Hire officials work to restore this trust by personally vetting resumes of unemployed DC residents and asking employers to consider a couple of handpicked resumes for each opening.

Some feel that this is what the Department of Employment Services (DOES) was supposed to be doing all along. This is technically true. It's also true that DC Public Schools are supposed to be properly educating our children. We shouldn't withhold credit where credit is due when DCPS or DOES fulfills its mission.

Sector-specific economic development

Under previous administrations, the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development was concerned almost exclusively with real estate deals. Although targeted real estate deals are important, only Mayor Gray has really invested in developing other sectors that are strategically important to the city.

The Mayor's broader focus has produced new positions critical to the city's economy, even if the officers filling those positions often operate behind the scenes. For example, newly hired DMPED officials regularly meet with leaders of the technology, government contractor, and health care communities to align identify ways DC can support these strategically important sectors.

A newly reconstituted Workforce Investment Council, whose executive director Alison Gerber was recruited from the Aspen Institute, has made it clear that workforce development dollars must be targeted to high demand sectors. As a result, for the first time, workforce development in DC is no longer scattershot, with the Gray Administration targeting key sectors.

DOES has cut off funding to several training providers whose training wasn't aligned with these sectors. A new Workforce Intermediary will ensure that the needs of hospitality and construction employers are addressed by training providers.

Continued capital investments without raiding city's reserves

DC residents were aware of the many capital improvements made under former Mayor Fenty, but fewer were aware that Fenty drew down the "rainy day" fund of $700 million to pay for some of these improvements.

Mayor Gray has continued the pace of capital improvements, with renovations of Takoma Education Campus and Woodson, Cardozo and Anacostia High Schools. While maintaining the pace of the previous Administration, Mayor Gray has managed to replenish our reserve fund, bringing it up to $1.1 billion.

Sustainability plan

If you haven't seen the objectives Mayor Gray set for 2032 in his Sustainable DC plan, then you should take a look. These objectives should provide the basis for numerous DC government initiatives over the next two decades covering issues as diverse as our food supply and obesity, along with transportation, tree canopy, and waste.

For some these strategic plans and objectives may seem mere feel-good talk, but these objectives matter. Historically, DC government has looked to such comprehensive plans and small area plans in designing legislation and framing countless policy debates in subsequent years.

Cameras and parking

Study after study proves that traffic cameras save lives. Mayor Gray significantly expanded traffic cameras in this year's budget, a politically courageous move that will continue DC's trend of lower and lower traffic fatalities.

While the DC Council created visionary pilots in performance parking, the previous administration never made it much of a priority to adjust meter rates to manage curbside space effectively. The Gray administration has expanded performance parking and made it clear this is a priority.

Continued momentum in education reform, streetcars and bike lanes

Some predicted that education reform, the streetcar and bike lanes would stop under Mayor Gray. Let's be clear: that hasn't happened. Mayor Gray has increased the investment in streetcars, pledging $100 million in capital funds starting last year.

The pace of bike lane construction slowed a bit at first, but DDOT is now putting in bike lanes on many streets throughout the city, and is on track to build the L Street track this summer and M street soon after. He even vociferously defended Capital Bikeshare over Twitter to skeptical New York reporters.

Finally, Mayor Gray has continued the process of education reform, despite the fears of many DC residents. Teachers are still being evaluated and sometimes fired based on performance, not on seniority.

The Gray administration's education reforms have included important initiatives which haven't received the same attention and publicity accorded the teacher firings. The administration has already made strides toward improving our special education system and opened multiple Early Stages centers aimed at early identification of kids with special needs. These investments have reduced by 20% the number of children bused, at DC's expense, to non-public special education, saving significant money.

I'm not nominating Mayor Gray for sainthood, but residents need to reexamine the fairly widespread belief that the administration is not getting anything done. While Adrian Fenty was very good at getting press attention for his actions, this administration is acting more quietly.

We should condemn any illegal behavior from the campaign, but we must also give the mayor and his staff credit for the ways the administration is making DC greater for the long term.

First wave of subsidies reap healthy return

Most pre-recession subsidies were made through tax increment financing (TIFs), in which future gains in sales and/or property taxes from a development are used to repay bonds that finance a developer subsidy.

Each of these TIFs are repaying to the city well ahead of schedule, providing needed funds for schools, social services and other cash-strapped priorities in DC.

Many of these projects were harshly criticized at the time as corporate giveaways. So the speedy repayment of these subsidies lends credibility to the arguments of their proponents, such as Councilmember Jack Evans and former Mayor Williams, and to TIFs in general.

Project	Year	Subsidy	Performance
Spy Museum	2001	$6,900,000	Paid in 2007 instead of 2014
Gallery Place	2002	$73,650,000	Returned $15,175,861 to city above debt payments
Mandarin Oriental Hotel	2002	$46,000,000
Embassy Suites	2003	$11,000,000	Paid in 2011 instead of 2016
DC USA	2004	$40,000,000	Estimated to be paid in 2015 instead of 2026
Capitol Hill Towers	2006	$11,500,000	$2.4 remaining, matures in 2029

These TIFs were successful because they were designed in accordance with two principles of effective corporate subsidies. As will be seen below, present-day corporate subsidies haven't always followed one or the other of these two principles.

1) Focus on knock-on benefits: Advocates for corporate subsidies often appeal to the tax revenue that would be lost if a developer doesn't build a building or a company chooses not to locate in one's city. Successful subsidies, however, are more focused on knock-on benefits that are strategically important to a city's finances.

Granting subsidies so that a company's activities—developing a property, locating in one's city—will yield tax revenue only encourages rent seeking by all companies who develop a property or choose to locate in the city.

When the desired activity is to locate in one's city, a "race to the bottom" ensues between states which only hurts their collective ability to pay for education and social services.

That's why effective subsidies are designed to yield knock-on benefits that support a city's strategic goals, like developing a particular sector or a particular part of the city.

The first wave of TIFs were intended to steer the development of downtown away from office buildings and towards multi-use. As Councilmember Evans explained it, "The highest [revenue] use is an office building but then you end up with a Crystal City complex which I can't stand."

The knock-on activities—more downtown residents and more downtown shoppers—the downtown TIFs triggered are not only strengthening those investments, but also producing tax revenue from downtown in many other forms. That's what happens when knock-on benefits are the goal, not the direct tax revenues of an investment.

2) Narrowly target subsidy to yield knock-on benefits: There are always risks with corporate subsidies. The company could pick up and leave without it, or maybe they would have completed the project even without the subsidy.

That's why it's critical to limit a city's exposure. Subsidies are investments, and investments have risks. The DC CFO narrowly targeted the first wave of TIFs to be only as much as is needed to stimulate the intended knock-on benefits for the city.

For each TIF application, the CFO conducted a gap analysis. This analysis compares the amount of private financing that should be available for a development to the costs of the project. The CFO would only certify TIFs at that subsidy amount. The head of economic development finance for the DC CFO, John Ross, explained the process this way:

CFO had to do a certification, and that certification had to include a list of issues. One of them was whether the TIF would cover the debt service payments. One was whether the project would move forward without government support. One was the level of benefits of the TIF that would go to the community. Without that, the TIF could not even go to the Council.

While time-consuming, such a process ensures that subsidies are narrowly targeted to yield the benefits intended.

Present-day subsidies often veer from principles of early TIFs

If the District's first corporate subsidies have reaped such healthy returns, several present-day subsidies veer from the principles behind the successful subsidies.

Some recent large TIFs, like Southwest Waterfront and O Street Market, as well as the proposed LivingSocial tax break, don't follow these principles.

There has been no financial gap analysis for more recent TIFs. Without ensuring that any financing gap actually exists, DC doesn't know if development projects would have happened anyway and it risks overpaying.

The first wave of TIFs were granted under the TIF Authorization Act of 1998 which required a thorough financial analysis and certification by the CFO.

Though no longer empowered to certify TIFs, the CFO still provides financial assessments of TIF applications to the Council and Mayor. These assessments raised particular concerns about 2 TIFs: City Market at O Street and the Southwest Waterfront.

Project	Year	Subsidy
City Market at O Street	2008	$46,500,000
Southwest Waterfront	2014	$198,000,000

The CFO, in his assessment, complained that both the O Street and Southwest Waterfront TIFs were being granted with less information about the project than would be required to issue a complete financial evaluation. There were no final plans or cost estimates for either project.

In fact, neither application included a specific financial commitment from the private developer, making impossible any analysis of the necessary size of the subsidy. The O Street application said that the developer for the hotel hadn't even been identified yet, even though the hotel was supposed to provide 44% of the incremental tax revenues to repay the bond.

While the CFO's office was included in negotiations with the developers after raising concerns in their analyses, the process for granting these TIFs was clearly intended to increase speed at the expense of financial scrutiny.

More recently, the proposed LivingSocial subsidy of up to $32 million to remain and consolidate their operations in the District also veers from proven principles of corporate subsidies.

Proponents of this subsidy often appeal to the tax revenues from LivingSocial that will far exceed this subsidy. Paying for tax revenue, however, only rewards companies who threaten to leave while encouraging a race to the bottom between states competing for companies.

The LivingSocial proposed subsidy is intended to be targeted. The subsidy doesn't begin until 2015 and scales based on the number of DC residents employed, which must be at least half of LivingSocial employees.

But are these jobs that we should be paying for? They aren't strategically aligned with the needs of the city's unemployed, and most of the jobs won't contribute to building a tech sector.

According to a source, only 15% of LivingSocial jobs are in technology, IT, and product development. A subsidy that was targeted to generate knock-on benefits that are strategically important would thus focus on retaining that 15% of LivingSocial positions.

The debate around corporate subsidies is too often dominated by loud voices at the extremes. But experience shows that corporate subsidies can work, and they can also be a waste of precious dollars.

The next time you read of a proposed corporate subsidy, avoid these hyperbolic extremes and ask if the subsidy adheres to these two proven lessons for effective subsidies. If it does, defend the administration that proposes the subsidy, If it doesn't, as recent subsidies have not, then ask questions.

Just for comparison, $32.5 million is about the cost of modernizing an elementary school like Stuart-Hobson ($33.6 million). It's also roughly equivalent to the cuts Mayor Gray is proposing to the Housing Production Trust Fund, our best vehicle for promoting affordable housing ($38 million).

Before supporting the tax break, DC residents deserve to know specific benefits that these LivingSocial tax breaks will yield, and that they are more important than modernizing an elementary school or increasing the supply of affordable housing.

The proposed tax breaks reduce LivingSocial's property and income tax from 2015-2020 on a sliding scale based on number of DC residents employed. At least half of their employees must be DC residents for the tax breaks to kick in at all.

The vast majority of LivingSocial's employees are not engineers. Half of them work in sales and many work in transitional jobs writing copy for the deals.

These are good jobs, but they're not tech jobs, and don't contribute to a tech hub. The people who fill these jobs wouldn't necessarily work in technology firms after LivingSocial.

There are two unique things that LivingSocial or another tech company can bring to the District, and these essential elements are part of all successful tech hubs.

1. Smart money: The executives are good at innovation, and will start investing in other innovative companies if their company goes public or is acquired.
   
2. Smart engineers: The companies recruit and train very capable software engineers.

A deal that will benefit DC residents must be structured to retain smart money and smart engineers in DC.

Smart money, i.e. venture capital, is regional and is not confined to a particular county. So keeping LivingSocial execs who cash out and become venture capitalists in DC instead of Arlington doesn't seem worth paying $32.5 million for.

Smart engineers are another story. Most of LivingSocial's engineering openings are not in DC. Why not structure the tax breaks to target software engineers? Their presence in DC contributes to a larger tech cluster when they leave to work for other innovative tech companies.

The competition for smart engineers is intense in all tech hubs around the country. Even if LivingSocial, which currently loses hundreds of millions of dollars per year, doesn't find an exit strategy, DC would still benefit by the presence of hundreds of smart engineers looking to join innovative startups.

Apparently LivingSocial executives have told Deputy Mayor Hoskins and his staff that Virginia officials are courting them and that they are considering options such as Arlington. That shouldn't be a surprise. All corporate executives try to negotiate subsidies for jurisdictions where they have offices.

At the Tysons Corner software company I co-founded, we are frequently telling local officials where we have branch offices (Norman, OK and Charleston, SC) that we might move. We have received over $100,000 in subsidies over the past 3 years as a result.

But these cities only allow us to spend the subsidies we received on training for local employees in new positions that we add. That makes a lot of sense, because if we do leave, we will leave behind smart engineers who will go looking for jobs with similar companies.

Those jurisdictions are selling their locales based on value, not based on price. Such targeted incentives are what help build a cluster of related firms.

Reducing the corporate tax payments of a company that primarily hires salespersons and copywriters, on the other hand, doesn't appear targeted to yield any specific return. By comparison, spending that $32.5 million to modernize an elementary school or increase the supply of affordable housing feels like a more responsible choice.

DC councilmembers, who will consider the proposed LivingSocial tax breaks, should ensure that the tax incentives will actually help make DC a tech hub. Corporate subsidies and tax credits can benefit the District as long as the subsidies are vetted in a transparent, rigorous process that demonstrates specific benefits to DC residents. A tax break for LivingSocial could do that, but as it's structured right now, it wouldn't.

Switching from standalone middle schools to PS-8, and back to standalone

Ward 5 parents are right to be outraged about their middle schools. The class entering the District's two top public high schools, Banneker and School Without Walls, in the 2011-12 school year included only 5 students from Ward 5.

Much of the parental dissatisfaction with the 7 PS-8 schools in Ward 5 stems from their lack of programs and facilities for middle schoolers, which parents argue affect educational outcomes. Many PS-8 schools lack multiple levels of math including algebra, foreign languages, robust before and afterschool programs, age-appropriate desks and toilets for older children, and so on.

DCPS says that their funding model prevents them from offering the full range of programs at a school when enrollment falls below a certain level.

By dividing Ward 5 middle school students across 7 PS-8 schools, DCPS argues, enrollment at the middle school grades was too low to justify these programs at every PS-8 school.

Former Chancellor Michelle Rhee created many of the PS-8 schools in 2008-2009 in response to parental opposition to school closings. By adding middle school grades to existing elementary schools, the new PS-8 schools were intended to reduce the impact of school closings on Ward 5 parents.

DCPS officials engaged concerned parents last fall and collaborated to arrive at a solution, a project known as the Ward 5 Great Schools Initiative. The result was a plan, announced in more detail this month, to close all but 1 of the 7 PS-8 schools in Ward 5 (some will remain open as elementary schools) and create two new middle schools in their place:

• A standalone middle school focused on arts and languages will be placed on the old Brookland school campus.
  
• A science and technology magnet middle school will be located in a vacant wing of McKinley Technology High School.
  
• The remaining PS-8 school, Browne, will launch an International Baccalaureate program.

If a standalone middle school is a better model, why did it fail before?

A member of the DC Council expressed frustration about building another middle school "when the last middle school we built, Kelly Miller... parents don't want to send their kids there."

Kelly Miller Middle School in Ward 7 was rebuilt from the ground up over 7 years and opened in 2004 to great fanfare. DCPS spent $35 million to build a technology and arts-focused school that was to be the "flagship" middle school in the District. In 2006, the school received a multi-million dollar grant for after-school programs.

Today Kelly Miller, with a capacity of 600 students, has seen its enrollment fall from 586 in 2006 to 328 in the current school year. That's just 28 students away from the DCPS threshold below which programming is cut.

What lessons should be learned from Kelly Miller, or from the failing Ward 5 middle schools that were closed or merged by Chancellor Rhee? How can those lessons be applied when building new middle schools in Ward 5? Unfortunately, DCPS would provide no answer to these questions.

Parents need a larger voice in new school design

The disconnect that one feels when talking to a principal about what they think matters most, and then reading DC Council testimonies, newspaper columns and policy reports on what matters most, is striking.

For all the commentaries on how to fix schools, there is relatively little advice for principals on the specific steps that will improve their school's educational outcomes.

One advocate for parents whose eye is firmly on the ball of what matters is Raenelle Zapata, chair of the Ward 5 Education Council and candidate for the Ward 5 council seat. Zapata argues that a new middle school "is just the beginning of the solution," and she is right.

Zapata points to the importance of marketing the school to Ward 5 parents and the importance of staffing the school with strong leadership. She strongly supports appointing successful middle school principal Patrick Pope as head of the new school.

Zapata says she is in "wait and see mode." But DCPS shouldn't sideline Ward 5 parents into "wait and see mode," particularly when the most important decisions are being made.

Parents are right to demand more details on the newly planned schools, as switching between models has been shown to have no effect on educational outcomes.

Ward 5 parents should demand to know how DCPS will make both the new middle schools and the remaining PS-8 school effective. Furthermore, they should look at successful and failing middle schools themselves, find out what works and doesn't work, and demand to see these lessons applied in Ward 5 schools.

DCPS can leverage parental engagement by creating Local School Advisory Teams (LSAT) for the two new middle schools now, not after they are built. LSATs, made up of parents who consult with a principal on the operational details of their school, have been pivotal to the success schools across the city including Hardy and Deal Middle Schools.

Engaged parents are the key to a school's success, according to Mary Filardo of the 21st Century School Fund. She supports the replacement of PS-8 schools with middle schools in Ward 5, but supports creating LSATs for these schools before they are built.

Filardo explains that research indicates no difference in educational outcomes between middle schools and PS-8 schools. Ward 5 parents' support for the move, says Filardo, is what will make the difference. Filardo points to the pivotal role of parental engagement in the success of the Capitol Hill cluster of schools, as well as many schools in Ward 3.

A Kelly Miller veteran gives the keys to success for Ward 5

Ward 5 parents should talk to teachers and administrators like Waahida Mbatha. Mbatha was a teacher at Kelly Miller Middle School in 2005-2006, and then a teacher and administrator at E.L. Haynes Charter School, a successful PS-8 school.

Mbatha has specific ideas about the keys to success that Kelly Miller lost its focus on, and that must be central to a new Ward 5 middle school.

Mbatha entered Kelly Miller a year after its rebuilding "with extremely high expectations of the school leadership and none of those expectations were met."

"One of the stand out differences between Haynes and KM [Kelly Miller]," according to Mbatha, "is that Haynes spends a great deal of time investing in teachers."

Investing in teachers, according to Mbatha, is far more central to the success of middle schools than is their enrollment or structure. What kinds of demands could Ward 5 parents make on DCPS to improve investment in teachers?

Mbatha identified the following specific practices that accounted for the success of E.L. Haynes and the failures of Kelly Miller Middle School:

• New teacher interviews and orientation: Haynes has "an extensive interview process" with "demo lessons" that administrators observe. Teachers began the year with a "3 week orientation" in which they reviewed prior year test results with coaches and prepared lesson plans.
  
• Coaches: At Haynes, "each teacher was assigned a coach" who regularly observes teaching and whom the teacher can call to help plan for hard-to-teach topics.
  
• Weekly professional development: "Every Friday at Haynes, school is dismissed at 1:00 and from 1:30-4:00 teachers engage in professional development." This time is "spent analyzing data and working on unit plans."

These are the demands that parents should make on the school system, as they are the lynchpins to success.

Parents should not be satisfied with simply building new schools, and they should extend their advocacy to the policies that result in successful schools regardless of their grade configuration.

If you are a Ward 5 parent who feels that the current Ward 5 middle school plan doesn't go far enough, email Mark Jones, Ward 5 Representative to the State Board of Education, Chancellor Henderson and Chairman Kwame Brown to let them know.

While there is an enormous investment in and attention being given to our first chance system—our public schools—our second chance system has received far less attention until very recently.

Our second chance system is our workforce development system that helps people get back up when they've been knocked down—knocked down by changes in labor markets both private and public, knocked down by addiction, knocked down by employers who can't look past one's employment status, criminal record and address or lack of one.

Until our second chance system receives the same investment and accountability as our first chance system, one knockdown will put you out in a city that is increasingly expensive to live in.

The main thing that is working in our second chance system is the Mayor's initiative to put qualified, prescreened applicants in front of employers known as One City One Hire. It's an apt name for the program, because it addresses the lack of trust that many employers have had in unemployed job applicants that hail from a certain part of the city.

Job training providers all work to build this trust on the part of employers in their own clients, and it's wonderful to see the Mayor and Director Lisa Mallory stepping into the gap to build this trust.

The risk, with One City One Hire, is that the next mayor will not give it the same investment and focus. For that reason, it is critical that Director Mallory operationalize One City One Hire into the daily functioning of DOES (Department of Employment Services), and that requires being more publicly transparent about the funding and operations of One City One Hire.

After all, One City One Hire is essentially doing what the Business Services Group of DOES was supposed to be doing all along. It would be helpful to know, for example, what employees work on One City One Hire, how are they organized, and what has been codified from a process and metrics perspective.

Director Mallory and Mayor Gray deserve a good amount of praise for what they have accomplished in One City One Hire, praise that pundits looking for scandal have been uninterested in giving.

So, if One City One Hire is the main thing that is going right, what is the main thing that is going wrong?

When DC residents are without a job, they are told to go to a One Stop Center, known as DC Works. They will help you get a job and, if you have barriers to employment, they will connect you with the resources available to overcome those barriers.

But what unemployed folks usually encounter when they muster the dignity to step into a One-Stop Center and ask for help is a 5-10 stop center that treats them with the indignity that we all suffered at DMVs in the 1990s.

This isn't my assessment. This is the unequivocal assessment of report after report. The Review of the District's One-Stop Service System prepared by Callahan Consultants in 2008, a report by Appleseed in 2008, a report by the D.C. Jobs Council in 2007, a report by Wider Opportunities for Women in 2004, and a report by the D.C. Jobs Council in 2001.

In the most recent report from Callahan Consultants in 2008, we learn that orientation classes are held the first two days of each week, and if customers walk in on any other day or after the orientation has started, they are turned away and told to come back for the next class. No one-on-one orientation was observed.

When customers do make it through the orientation class, they are sent to a computer to look up jobs or training options. If they have obstacles to employment, such as child care, they are sent to other offices like DHS to find available resources. That doesn't sound like one stop to me.

If customers do find a training course that suits them, they apply for ITA funding for the course. If they do not have an 8th grade educational level, they are rejected right away, and referred to an educational provider. The report says the one stop, "does not continue to track these clients, and given the lack of intensive basic and remedial education resources these clients are often lost".

If they do qualify for the class, they then wait for an average of 45 days for the funding to be approved. Keep in mind, that all training providers' courses have already been approved by DOES.

The report says that "the process itself, which includes required return visits for eligibility determination, for testing, and for submission of a vendor acceptance letter, etc, is being used as a screening mechanism" that "could be characterized as a 'creaming' process…to ensure achieving federal performance standards".

Now, Director Mallory is committed to reforming the One-Stops. I think that her reform efforts would only be buttressed by an initiative to charter private one-stop centers, run by private sector organizations, and held to new, strict performance requirements that would apply to all one-stop centers.

Many states outsource all of their one-stop centers to private sector organizations. Just like we have competition between service providers of our first chance system, our traditional and charter public schools, I believe we should have competition between service providers of our second chance system.

Both public and privately chartered one-stops must track the employment status over 6 months, 1 year and 2 years of everyone who walks in the door. As it is, when Callahan Consultants asked in 2008 for the sign-in logs for the past month, the One Stops were unable to provide them.

While private one-stop centers would be an initiative of the Workforce Investment Council which certifies One-Stop Centers, it's important that DOES and Chairman Michael Brown support the initiative. The public employees union will likely fight any such privatization.

Thank you for listening to my testimony, and for your efforts on behalf of the unemployed in our city.

Neighborhood preference would strengthen all schools

Some DC officials have suggested requiring charter schools to give the same preference in admissions to neighborhood children as traditional schools do. Currently, neighborhood schools must accept all students living in their boundary, and fill remaining seats with an out-of-boundary lottery. By contrast, all charter school seats are filled through a city-wide lottery, with no priority given to neighborhood children.

Earlier this week, fellow contributor Steven Glazerman, a deeply knowledgeable education researcher, criticized the proposal, saying that the policy would interfere with schools' educational mission for non-education reasons. But there are several educational objectives that this proposal could advance.

Charter school critics often question whether the apparent success of top charter schools just comes from selection bias, the idea that only more dedicated students and families apply to charter schools. Glazerman partly validated this skepticism by saying that "charters need families who are committed to the program, rather than just attending for the short commute."

Traditional schools don't have the luxury of distinguishing between students who are committed to their program and students who are attending for the short commute. Until charters are unable to make these kinds of distinctions, their educational outcomes won't be taken as seriously.

Charter schools aren't alone in preferring students from a city-wide lottery. According to a high level education administrator who served in the Fenty administration, many big-city school systems find that principals try to fill their buildings with out-of-boundary students.

Out-of-boundary students who are admitted through a city-wide lottery, the administrator explained, are more likely to be committed to their program, and less likely to get into trouble around the building because the building is outside of their neighborhood. The kids and their parents are more likely to be grateful for the opportunity to attend the school and less likely to complain about minor issues.

If charters had to give priority in admissions to students from their neighborhood, they would have to face many of the same educational challenges that traditional schools have dealt with for years.

It's important to level this playing field to better bring charter innovations to a real cross-section of the population, and to ensure that we judge their success or failure evenly against neighborhood schools.

Why not bring charter innovation to bear on the most challenging populations? If charters were competing with traditional schools to produce better outcomes for children who are "just attending for the short commute," it's possible they would discover valuable innovations through their entrepreneurial approach.

Until charters do face the same challenges as traditional schools, traditional schools are unlikely to study and adopt successful charter innovations. For example, many top charter schools have found success with an extended school day. But DCPS appears to be doing little if anything to study extended school days or any other charter innovation.

It's safer for kids to get to nearby schools

Furthermore, charters should give priority to neighborhood children in order to help children get to school safely. Lots of kids die or are injured as a result of car commuting to school.

Car crashes are the No. 1 killer of kids. 30 children under the age of 16 died in car crashes from 2000-2009 in DC (though not specifically while commuting to school).

And increasing driving to school also increases fatalities of kids who walk to school. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 50% of children hit near schools are hit by parents of other students driving the cars.

Level the playing field on facilities

Glazerman makes the excellent point in a comment to his post that charters don't face a level playing field with traditional schools when it comes to facilities.

Charters often have to move multiple times in their first years. Once charters do become successful, requiring neighborhood preference could have some perverse consequences, as Glazerman explains.

If neighborhood preferences are passed, charters find themselves locked into an even tighter real estate market or must risk the downward spiral of a move and starting over with a new student population. Or they will be more constrained about where they initially locate. Or they will simply bid up the surrounding property values and become elite schools, attended by those who can afford to buy into the neighborhood.

Glazerman is right, but the solution to one problem isn't to not solve another problem. That's why the DC Council should step in and level the playing field between charter and traditional schools' facilities.

The DC Council could require that school buildings vacant for 3 years be transferred to the Public Charter School Board to rent at below market rates to charters. When the government stops uses other buildings, it could give priority to charters, just as federal excessed properties get first priority to serve as homeless shelters. There are many ways to improve charters' access to facilities.

The bottom line is that the playing field is tilted against traditional schools by the charter citywide lottery and against charters by DCPS' management of its empty schools. The DC Council should level the playing field in both areas at the same time.

Neighborhood preference for charters is an idea whose time has come, and that can garner broad support from charter school skeptics, from parents in neighborhoods with successful charters and from urbanists advocating safe routes to school.

Politicians often release estimates of jobs they created, and perhaps cynicism around such estimates explains the lack of credit given to One City One Hire for the hiring of 1,400 jobless residents.

The difference here is that the leader of One City One Hire, Director of Employment Services Lisa Mallory, actually knows who these 1,400 people are. She knows who they are because her staff personally introduced them to their current employers.

Understanding One City One Hire requires understanding that one of the biggest barriers to employment in DC has nothing to do with skills, criminal records or addiction issues. A major barrier to employment is the lack of trust by local employers in jobless residents, particularly those east of the Anacostia River.

While this barrier is not often mentioned by the local media, any job training provider can attest to its reality, and the discouraging effect it has on District residents who are otherwise job-ready.

Chris Hart-Wright, Executive Director of Strive DC which works with chronically unemployed District residents, says she spends much of her time seeking to build trust on the part of local employers in her clients. She says that all training providers are doing the same thing, and that they need the city to use its influence to play this role so they can focus on training and case management.

That's what One City One Hire is all about. Run by the Business Services Group within the Department of Employment Services (DOES), One City One Hire asks local employers if they will consider a small number of resumes pre-screened by DOES for their open positions.

Director Mallory has transferred DOES employees into the operation of working with employers to understand the requirements of particular positions and evaluating thousands of resumes of jobless DC residents to fill those positions.

Now, overcoming the trust gap between local employers and jobless DC residents is only one of several difficult steps that need to be taken to address chronic unemployment. But the success of Gray and Mallory in conquering this first barrier raises hopes that they will live up to their promises on other barriers to employment.

First, Mallory has committed to transforming the One-Stop Centers that are responsible for empowering jobless residents with access to training, transportation and child care benefits, and other resources needed to get a job. This is no small task, as these centers have historically been more like DMV centers in the 1990s.

It will require strong leadership in each One-Stop, implementation of a uniform assessment process so that employees are trained in uncovering and addressing barriers to employment, and tight coordination with agencies like DHS that can address barriers like transportation and child care.

If this transformation doesn't occur, then the body that oversees One-Stop funding, the Workforce Investment Council, could conceivably pull all funding from DOES and contract with a private agency to run One-Stops.

Second, Mallory has committed to providing data on jobless residents who enter One-Stop Centers that would provide the first ever profile of DC's jobless and their barriers to employment. Finally, Mallory has committed to holding training providers accountable to metrics of job placement.

These are significant challenges, but the success of Mallory and Gray in addressing the challenge of trust in jobless DC residents should give us cautious optimism they can be met.

Tackling chronic unemployment is not optional. It is essential to improving education outcomes of the 30% of District children living in poverty. It is essential to limiting gentrification and ensuring all residents benefit from the District's resurgence in recent years.

Gray deserves credit for his accomplishments thus far and greater interest in his vision for finishing the job on unemployment.

It doesn't take long to figure out that a key reason why parts of DC face high unemployment is due to lack of preparedness for DC-area jobs, not a lack of jobs. Dozens of job training providers have cropped up to address this need, and dozens of programs across 13 city agencies have been formed to help finance those training providers.

With so many chefs in the kitchen of workforce development, there is little coordination, oversight, or accountability. The DC Fiscal Policy Institute this week released a groundbreaking "resource map" that identifies all of these sources of workforce development funding across the city government, and the various non-profit training providers that receive this financing.

Councilmember Michael Brown, chair of the Workforce Development Committee of the DC Council, says that his committee staff only knew where 30% of DC job training dollars went when he took over the committee. After the past year, they know where 60% of the money goes.

The Workforce Intermediary position is intended to coordinate these training providers and funding streams with the needs of local businesses to optimize our workforce development investments. However, it's not hard to imagine this position becoming yet another layer of bureaucracy.

That's why the DC Council first charged a Workforce Intermediary Task Force to design the position. The report of the task force is due on January 15th.

If the Workforce Intermediary is to be a true change agent, reversing decades of deepening poverty in parts of our nation's capital, it is essential that measurable performance metrics be tied to the program, and to the agencies that support the Intermediary.

Three elements are critical to the creation of a successful Workforce Intermediary that is able to turn the corner on joblessness in DC.

1. Workforce Intermediary performance metrics

The Workforce Intermediary should be held accountable for the percentage of DC jobs that go to DC residents and for DC's unemployment rate. When employers are cutting jobs, more focus would be placed on the former metric, When employers are adding jobs, more focus would be placed on the latter metric.

The Workforce Intermediary will become a waste of money if it is simply a resource to job training providers and city agencies financing training providers to advise them on hiring needs of local employers.

If the Workforce Intermediary is held accountable for these metrics, then we would expect that he or she will contact local employers with prescreened resumes of DC residents for open positions. Currently, dozens of job training providers across DC have to form redundant relationships with employers, and this "hiring manager" role of the Workforce Intermediary would free training providers to train.

Not surprisingly, the Mayor, who is also held accountable for these metrics by voters at election time, is currently playing this "hiring manager" role in his One City One Hire campaign. If the Mayor is held accountable for these metrics, it makes sense that he would delegate to someone to improve them.

2. Job training provider performance metrics

Job training providers currently get access to DC government funding by getting on one of several lists of authorized training providers. No data on training outcomes is required to get on these lists or receive DC taxpayer money. This has to change, and Councilmember Michael Brown has said that it will change.

If job training providers had to demonstrate a placement rate for their clients, within 6 months and 2 years after training, they would be incentivized to work closely with the Workforce Intermediary who provides qualified resumes to local employers. After all, the Intermediary, as hiring manager for DC's unemployed trying to reduce the jobless rate, would be their lifeline to continued financing from the city.

If the Intermediary doesn't provide many resumes from their clients to employers, a natural conversation will ensue about the needs of local employers that the Intermediary doesn't believe are being met by the training provider.

3. One-Stop Center performance metrics

When DC residents want a job, they are supposed to go to a One-Stop Center. These centers, called DC Works! in the District, are federally mandated for states that receive federal workforce development dollars.

Sadly, the One-Stop Centers in DC are more like First Stop Centers, as they historically send jobless applicants to other offices depending on their needs. Or they send applicants to a computer to look at training providers on the Internet.

The current director of the DC One-Stop Centers, Hugh Bailey, acknowledges the reputation they have received and has pledged to turn them around in coming months. However, when asked what metrics the One-Stop Centers should be held accountable for, Bailey was hesitant to suggest any.

Each One-Stop Center should be held accountable to the same performance metrics as job training providers - placement rate of clients within both 6 months and 2 years of entering the One-Stop Center.

One-Stop Centers would aggressively case manage clients to improve their placement rates, and only send them to training providers with high placement rates. One-Stop Centers would naturally collaborate with the Intermediary to learn how to get more resumes of their clients placed in front of local employers.

These metrics will create a virtuous circle of coordination between the Intermediary, training providers and One-Stop Centers that will actually reduce unemployment and ensure the Intermediary places a useful, and not bureaucratic, role in workforce development.

Every mayor in DC history is known primarily for some singular goal—whether it was helping blacks enter the middle-class, improving our fiscal management, or reforming education. Mayor Gray clearly wants reducing unemployment to be his singular achievement. He can leave his mark on the city with a bold stroke of accountability as described above. Let's hope that he finds the political will to pull it off.

The confusion continued this month when Councilmember Alexander unexpectedly submitted legislation extending the school day. Alexander refiled a 2-page bill that Councilmember Cheh had submitted last year, even though she has not discussed extended school days with DCPS, with the teachers' union or with Councilmember Cheh.

The innovation that is perhaps most common in successful charter schools, according to a new research study, is an extended school day. On a comprehensive ranking of public charter schools by educational outcomes released by the DC Charter School Board, all of the top performing charter middle schools have school days longer than the 6.5 hour DCPS school day.

Charter school	Overall %	Ward	Grade level	School day length
DC Prep-Edgewood Campus	92.3%	5	4-8	8-9 hours
KIPP DC: KEY Academy	86.4%	7	4-8	7 hrs, 30 min 9 hrs
KIPP DC: WILL Academy	85.5%	2	5-8	7 hrs, 30 min 9 hrs
KIPP DC: AIM Academy	85.2%	8	5-8	7 hrs, 30 min 9 hrs
Achievement Prep	81.5%	8	4-8	8 hrs, 30 min

These schools consistently point to their extended school day as critical to their higher student outcomes. Achievement Prep explains the importance of extended school days:

Our school day is 2 hours longer than the traditional DC public school, while our school year is 15 days longer. This extended instructional time provides an opportunity for intensive focus around literacy and mathematics and additional opportunities for providing students with academic support.

DC Prep, the highest ranking charter middle school, lists "More time on task" first in the list of initiatives that distinguish their school. According to their web site, "DC Prep students spend approximately 25% more time in school than other DC public school students."

The DCPS school day is not only shorter than those of most successful charter middle schools. It is also shorter than those of every neighboring suburban school system, which consistently deliver higher test scores than DC public schools.

DC parents are right to expect that, given this evidence, someone would study this phenomenon and apply lessons learned to DCPS. Sadly, that appears to not be happening.

DCPS spokesperson Fred Lewis agrees that an "extended school day and extended school year can make a huge difference for children, especially those who are underperforming." Nonetheless, he doesn't see DCPS moving forward with this idea soon for the following reasons:

Before we move forward aggressively we're going to have to examine the implications, the financial implications associated with an extended school day, school year, and figure out with our union partners how we'd have to modify the contract in order to make that work....

In considering an extension of the school day and school year, several factors come into play, such as the overall cost of the proposal (utilities, salaries etc.) and scheduling (transportation for special education students and athletics, for example), as well as student safety (leaving later from school). Legislation would be required as would negotiation with the teachers union.

While the considerations raised by DCPS certainly need to be examined, the reality is that DCPS has not seriously begun examining any of them. Washington Teachers Union president Nathan Saunders says he has not been contacted by DCPS to discuss extended school days. Neither has DC Councilmember Mary Cheh, who proposed legislation a year ago extending the school day by 30 minutes to 7 hours.

The logistical and financial implications of extending the school day could be significantly curtailed with a pilot at a few schools. Last month, that's what Chicago announced it is doing with an extended school day pilot at 13 schools. When asked if Chancellor Kaya Henderson is considering extending the school day on a trial basis with a couple schools just like Chicago, DCPS Spokesperson Lewis had no comment.

Furthermore, Lewis' claim that "legislation would be required" is contested by the DC Council. David Zvenyach, General Counsel to the DC Council, says that the DC Code establishes the minimum school day, but not the maximum school day. When informed of this, Lewis defended the DCPS position that the State Board of Education "establishes through regulation the length of school day" with reference to §38-202 of the DC Code. Zvenyach contends that this section of the Code says no such thing.

What is most troubling about this confusion is that DCPS and the DC Council are not talking to resolve this issue, even though the DC Council has twice proposed legislation to extend the school day. Last year, Councilmember Cheh proposed legislation in order to start a conversation on extending the school day.

That conversation still seems to have not taken place. Earlier this month, Councilmember Alexander resubmitted Cheh's legislation, changing only the duration of the extension from 30 minutes to 60 minutes. Saunders says Alexander has not discussed her legislation with him, and Cheh spokesperson Kiara Pesante says Alexander has not discussed it with Cheh.

WTU President Saunders says he recognizes the evidence and agrees that DCPS should learn from successful charter schools. However, he contends that the fundamental lesson learned is not that the school day should be longer, but that there should be more instructional time or, using the same terminology as DC Prep, "more time on task."

Saunders points to sources of waste in a teachers' day that take teachers off of their primary task of instruction, and claims that DCPS can significantly increase time on task for significantly less money by eliminating these distractions. Chief amongst these, according to Saunders, are time spent doing data entry and time spent on disciplinary matters with students that administrators return to their classrooms over teachers' objections.

These seem like legitimate points for discussion, but that discussion isn't happening. As a result, Saunders called Alexander's legislation "the worst piece of legislation submitted by the Council all year." He contends that Alexander only offered her legislation "because she is running for reelection."

It's time for someone to show leadership in increasing the time on task of DCPS teachers. It's difficult to see why, for example, the new standalone middle school promised to Ward 5 parents can't incorporate the lessons learned from charter schools' extended school days. Sadly, little action is likely any time soon as long as DC officials continue to stall.

Update: KIPP DC has informed me that their school day is actually 9 hours, not 7.5 as originally reported. This has been corrected.

DCPS spokesperson Fred Lewis did not respond to multiple requests last week for information on a city-wide planning process for middle schools. The only existing middle school plan for the District is the Ward 5 Great Schools plan, which is defined by a political boundary and is not city-wide.

Former Chancellor Michelle Rhee reassigned Pope from principal of the successful Hardy Middle School in May 2010 despite the objections of parents, teachers and students. Rhee tasked Pope with creating the arts-focused magnet middle school that was to open in Fall 2011.

Pope is now principal of Savoy Elementary in southeast DC.

A blue ribbon advisory panel was created to guide the planning of the new school. Design and funding concerns delayed the new school's opening from 2011 to 2012, according to an October 2010 email from DCPS, but no more updates had been provided to parents.

When asked last week about the status of the new arts magnet middle school, DCPS Spokesperson Lewis had this to say:

We stopped the planning process for a proposed arts magnet middle school last school year with the appointment of Patrick Pope as principal of Savoy Elementary. This school year, faced with major questions to resolve around school closures and a city-wide demand for a comprehensive middle school plan, we are rethinking all of our options.

Lewis did not address follow-up questions about the status of any city-wide comprehensive middle school plan.

While District parents often feel comfortable sending their children to their neighborhood elementary school, they usually find their local middle school to be unacceptable. As a result, there is heavy competition amongst out-of-boundary families for lottery slots to two successful middle schools, Deal and Hardy.

Deal Middle School, in Tenleytown, has 83-89% reading and math proficiency scores, and is in high demand with 61% of its spots filled by in-boundary students. Hardy Middle School, just north of Georgetown, is an arts-focused middle school with 66-75% proficiency scores and only 13% in-boundary enrollment.

Most other public middle schools have proficiency scores below 50% and aging buildings. Deal and Hardy were each modernized in the past 5 years.

The lack of middle school options forces many parents to move to suburbs in Fairfax, Montgomery, Arlington and Prince George's Counties. Others who don't move often take their chances with the out-of-boundary lotteries for Deal and Hardy, or apply to charter middle schools such as Washington Latin.

When the district reassigned Pope from Hardy, out-of-boundary parents worried this move would reduce middle school options. Some think his removal was meant to bring in a principal who would better recruit in-boundary students into Hardy, thus further reducing middle school options for families out of the Hardy boundary of Palisades and Georgetown.

Rhee promised these parents that their options would in fact increase with the creation of a new arts magnet middle school led by Pope. The cancellation of this school, as a result, is particularly hard for parents to accept.

DCPS cites the need for a city-wide comprehensive middle school plan, and yet the only one that exists is the Ward 5 plan. After several months of meetings with Ward 5 parents, DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson announced last month a plan for 3 new middle schools in Ward 5.

However, Ward 5 is a political boundary that has no relation to school boundaries. Just as half of Ward 3 children feed into Ward 2's Hardy Middle School, and half of Ward 2 children feed into Shaw @ Garnet Patterson Middle School in Ward 1, so Ward 5 children feed into districts in neighboring wards and vice versa. The only reason to plan middle schools by ward is if a Councilmember demanded such a plan.

DCPS is correct that a city-wide, comprehensive middle school plan is what is needed. Parents were led to believe that such a plan existed and was the basis for tapping Pope to lead a new arts magnet middle school.

If a city-wide middle school plan is being created, DCPS should be more transparent about it as it has been with its Ward 5 school planning. If such a plan is not in the works, then it should become a top priority for DCPS. A comprehensive, city-wide middle school plan is the most effective way to retain District families who will otherwise move to the suburbs.