Posts from October 2011

As an educator, I value the ongoing commitment of the President and his administration to reforming schools. As an American taxpayer, I also support NCLB's goals for teacher accountability. I know a lot of other teachers do as well.

The challenge lies in applying that accountability fairly, and in accounting for what the teacher does or does not do—not just what the student does or does not know.

If Maryland and other states successfully achieve waivers from having to obey the parts of NCLB that just aren't working, their governments should be asked to explain how they will work to make the rest of the legislation best serve students and families.

Here are just four parts of NCLB that have helped many minority communities improve academic performance, and simply need to be tweaked so they work better:

Allowing parents to remove their children from the designated local school if it continues to perform badly on Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) exams. This also applies to schools that are consistently dangerous, such as Prince George's County's High Point High School.

For years students, parents and teachers have complained about the violent atmosphere present at High Point. These concerns were largely ignored until the situation exploded last year. To keep the tempest under wraps even longer, the Board of Education censored one of its own members who dared to investigate the concerns independently.

NCLB created this opportunity for students and their families because legislators understood that it would be difficult for a child to learn without a safe and secure environment. Even more if more parents are informed of this right and how to use it, parents won't have to skirt the law to send their children to safer schools (as some Ohio parents recently did).

Requiring a school to provide tutors to their students, at no cost to parents, if the school fails to meet AYP in math or reading for more than two years, until the school improves. This is a costly measure, but it has been poorly advertised to parents and seldom used by schools.

Studies have proven that students, especially those in urban-minority communities, need between 8 and 15 hours of "out of school" learning activities a week to successfully compete with their peers around the world. The most needy children will only be lifted from the bottom of their classes if they have access to tutors proficient in subjects in which students are struggling.

Compelling all schools to break down student performance by such categories as race, economic status, and disability, in addition to just reporting the student body's overall academic achievement. Before NCLB, many states and many Maryland school districts didn't do this and therefore were able to gloss over the need to focus instruction and achievement goals for certain types of students.

Mandating that teachers be certified in the area they teach. We hear repeatedly that more than half of those teaching math and reading weren't certified to teach in those areas, but we continue to be puzzled by their students' poor performance in these subjects. This part of the law forces districts and states to look at this issue and develop plans that get certified teachers into the right classrooms.

There are serious questions about the wisdom of the NCLB law, most pressingly that the funding necessary to achieve its core objectives is continually lacking. Nevertheless, we should not rush to throw out the good reforms that came with the bad intentions. I know almost no teacher that will oppose accountability measures or a merit system, so long as they felt it would fairly judge their work and they were given the resources needed to do their job.

We wouldn't judge the effectiveness of a hedge fund manager without a computer to make trades. We wouldn't judge a quarterback if he didn't have an offensive line that blocked well enough to give him the time to throw the ball. Likewise, we shouldn't attempt impose a merit system on educators who still lack the tools they need to do their jobs well.

What riders want is shorter names. Assistant General Manager for Communications Barbara Richardson said, "Our customers want one name. They want one, common name. They want these to be short."

Few people refer to "West Falls Church Vee Tea You Vee Eh" or "Van Ness You Dee See." Instead, they say they're going to West Falls Church or Van Ness. With a few exceptions like "Franconia-Springfield" and "Stadium-Armory," which really are truly compound names, other station names have a main portion, like "U Street" or "Grosvenor," and then sometimes additional points of interest.

Metro staff got that from their focus groups, and our surveys backed it up. People told Metro that long station names was their biggest complaint about the map. It's annoying and confusing for riders.

Richardson presented the staff recommendations after playing an amusing song, "The Metro Song." It parodies Johnny Cash's "I've been everywhere" to name 46 of the stations in the Metro system:

The staff suggest:

• Navy Yard Ballpark
  
• New York Ave Florida Ave-Gallaudet U
  
• Smithsonian (no National Mall)
  
• Waterfront (no Arena Stage)
  
• Forest Glen (no Holy Cross Hospital, but with an H logo denoting a hospital)
  
• King Street Old Town

Montgomery County alternate member Kathy Porter defended the county's request to add Holy Cross Hospital, or at least "Holy Cross" along with an H symbol, to Forest Glen.

Porter lamented that the county hadn't pushed for the change earlier, since it would have qualified under the previous policy, and suggested the board let Montgomery "grandfather" in the name. However, Fairfax's Jeff McKay pointed out that the reason they're changing the policy is because there have been problems with overly long station names in the past.

Porter noted that the hospital runs a shuttle to the station and there is Ride On service to the station. But in WMATA's focus groups, many members expressed a feeling that anything attached to a station name ought to be within a short walk, not a bus or car ride away.

DC Councilmember Muriel Bowser also wanted to grandfather a non-subtitle, Georgia Ave-Petworth. On this one, there's some good argument either way. I've heard many people call this "Georgia Ave Petworth" or "Georgia Petworth." Several commenters recommended actually making it Petworth, since Georgia Avenue is very long and Forest Glen, Wheaton, and Glenmont are also on Georgia Avenue.

Or, perhaps it could follow the pattern WMATA recommends for Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and make the station Georgia Ave Petworth?

Bowser also took the position held by Gallaudet management and students for keeping that university in the primary name instead of a subtitle, endorsing NoMa-Gallaudet U New York Avenue. She pointed out that no other DC university is slated to become part of a subtitle. We've advocated instead for actually putting all universities and other points of interest in subtitles, and 83% of you agreed.

There seemed to be some interest on the board for this option. Mary Hynes of Arlington noted that they have many universities around their Metro stations, and that perhaps it's not feasible to expect to put all universities in primary names or even station names in general. McKay recommended holding off on any change concerning Gallaudet until this broader question is resolved.

Artis Hampshire-Cowen, though, seemed to be wearing her hat as an executive for Howard University rather than necessarily representing riders of Prince George's County. She argued against moving universities into subtitles, using Howard as a specific example.

Bowser also asked for the ballpark to be part of a main station name, Navy Yard-Ballpark, instead of the staff-recommended Navy Yard Ballpark.

The curly W seems completely dead, though that may be a very recent change. Last week, I'd heard that the Nationals only wanted to pay if the station could be named Navy Yard-, not just for "Ballpark." Today, however, DDOT told WMATA that DC would pay for any change, and Bowser told the board that DC expects the Nationals would cover those costs.

Under WMATA's policy, the jurisdiction has to pay for the station name itself. Another entity can reimburse the jurisdiction, but it has to guarantee the funding to WMATA. WMATA won't enter into a side agreement with a separate organization to collect the funds directly.

McKay asked what would happen if the ballpark gets a corporate name at some point. Would they want to, and would Metro feel any pressure to, rename the station? Members agreed that the staff should further flesh out the no corporate naming policy.

Alexandria mayor Bill Euille pushed for King Street-Old Town, their original request, instead of King Street Old Town, the staff recommendation (and one you overwhelmingly supported).

Marcel Acosta stood up for holding to the policy that the board had just adopted. He noted that the shorter names make things easier for customers, and "we need to temper" the impulse to accommodate local organization requests.

Alvin Nichols, alternate for Prince George's, asked about a request by Mount Rainier to add their name to West Hyattsville. However, Maryland has not officially requested this change, so it's not on the table at this time.

The board adjourned their discussion until next Thursday, November 3, where they will hold a public comment session followed immediately by a full board meeting to vote on changes. It's clear that some members are not paying much heed to rider concerns, or at least the comments of those who participated in the focus groups or filled out our survey (while others very much are).

Maybe if riders come to the public comment session, it will help those members start thinking about the interests of the riders instead of the interests of their universities, hospitals and sports teams.

20 years ago the city was hemorrhaging residents and attracting few new residents to take their place. This damaged our tax base, and contributed to our fiscal problems.

Today, attracting new residents isn't a problem—retaining them once they have children is the new strategic challenge to growing our city's tax base. Schools, parks and walkable, livable communities are the issues that are critical to retaining these families and thus to growing our tax base.

One would expect that the DC Council would have pivoted to focus on schools, parks and walkable, livable communities. Yet we still have councilmembers who see parks and transportation as constituent services, not as the linchpins to improving our city's fiscal position. We have councilmembers who disengage from education issues instead of holding the Mayor accountable for outcomes in their Ward.

In Ward 2, parents aren't asked by their councilmember what would convince them to send their kids to their public schools. Their councilmember isn't engaged in the discussion on middle schools, despite the fact that half the elementary schools in Ward 2 feed into a middle school (Shaw) with 29% reading proficiency.

20 years ago the city was mired in bloated, slow-moving agencies that couldn't deliver basic government services. Today, DC agencies generally deliver the services that residents pay for with their taxes.

The challenge for the future is to deliver more with less through smarter government. Yet we still have councilmembers who believe that 5% across the board cuts will make government more efficient. Instead, we must look to re-engineer government processes to squeeze out waste and fraud in a targeted way.

Earlier this year, KPMG warned in an audit that conditions at the Office of Tax and Revenue were ripe for continued theft, and sure enough another theft was discovered last month. My own councilmember refuses to hold hearings on the conditions at the Office of Tax and Revenue, which is under his oversight. He says, "My job is to do oversight. It's not to catch people who are stealing".

Our council won't be able to effectively address this new strategic agenda while it's mired in the ethics scandals that have so tarnished the city's past. With this next election, it's time to send a message that conflicts of interest are no longer tolerated and that ethics scandals are not just embarrassing to the Council, but, more importantly, to residents.

My councilmember has not offered any ethics legislation and has said the problem the Council is facing "is not because the laws need changing." I couldn't disagree more. Even the General Counsel for the Board of Elections and Ethics says that "the ethics laws of the district are not sufficient."

Do you believe that the DC Council needs a bolder vision for the future? What do you believe the strategic issues are that the council must address?

Come out and let me know what you think tonight, Thursday, October 27th, 6:30 pm at Stoneys (1433 P Street, NW). I'll be there with others who want to move past ethics scandals and yesterday's news and start talking about the future of the District of Columbia.

Fiona Greig is a prospective candidate for the DC Council from Ward 2. The views in this article are hers and do not necessarily represent those of Greater Greater Washington. We invite all candidates running for the DC Council to share their views with our community, but reserve the right to edit posts to fit our content and format rules. If you are a candidate and would like to submit an article, please contact endorsements@ggwash.org.

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As Curt explained, the urban conversation in Indianapolis hasn't come as far as it has here. As a result, Urban Indy plays a large role in introducing Indianans to planning concepts. Curt recounted an instance where the print media came to him about a bike path. He was able to help the reporter (and the readers) to get the terminology right and understand was was at stake.

And that's really how I see the role of Greater Greater Washington. Not as a way of bringing people over to our opinion, but as a way to give people the tools they need to be a productive participant in the conversation.

And while transforming the dialog is a great thing, social media can fill other roles, too. Metro's Nat Bottigheimer mentioned in a panel an idea for a social media network geared toward transit users. It could let transit riders share their experiences, and could help new riders to learn how to get started. While a new social medium may or may not be forthcoming, it is possible to leverage the platforms that already exist.

We heard from representatives of several public sector agencies about the role social media plays in their communication strategies. The Utah Transit Authority has a strong presence in cyberspace; using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare, YouTube, and with three blogs catering to different user groups.

I was impressed with the idea of using Foursquare and blogging to help riders (and potential riders) find things they could use transit to get to. Foursquare has always been one of the social media tools I've not found much use for. But as a spatial tool, it could prove helpful to transit agencies.

UTA's representative, Tauni Everett, also talked about using Twitter to engage the public. A recent spate of hearings about a fare hike drew less than 20 attendees to the 7 meetings held in the six-county UTA service area. But an online public hearing using Twitter generated hundreds of comments, all of which were counted in the public record.

We also heard from people from goDCgo and Nashville's MPO about different initiatives to reach out and use new tools. For planning to be effective, it needs public participation. In today's fast-paced world, it can be difficult to engage people in traditional ways. Using social media is proving to be a way to connect with new voices and regular participants alike.

In our region, agencies are using new strategies for communication as well. Metro, for example, has started to engage riders on Twitter. And the planning department there has started its own blog to help broaden the dialogue.

How do you see the role of social media and blogging as a part of the planning conversation? How could agencies like DDOT and WMATA improve? And what's the next generation of social media?

A foreword by historian James Goode notes, "With so few past landmarks preserved, it is easy to lose sight of the rich heritage of the city's architectural landscape, and thus it becomes ever more important to retell the stories of these lost places for new audiences."

Lost uses personal sketches, lithographs, period photos, and postcards to cover the city's earliest days as a sparsely populated "largely rolling farmland and rugged wilderness" to a city now with more than 600,000 residents.

Deftly moving from Capitol Hill to Upper Northeast in eight separate sections, DeFerrari draws from known and lesser-known sources. Excerpts from newspapers—that first draft of history—provide many quotes and period insights. Lost brings many of the city's departed newspapers back to life as well.

During those simpler times, before the development of the modern entertainment industry (including motion pictures), families could enjoy entertainment at B.F. Keith's High-Class Vaudeville Theater at 15th & G Streets NW. Among the guests opening night in 1912 was President Taft. Across downtown to the east, 513 9th Street NW featured a livelier form of entertainment, burlesque, at the Gayety Theatre.

While focused on the past physical identity of the city, Lost also introduces us to a cast of personalities whose entrepreneurial élan helped build a growing city, the seat of a power of an expanding nation. These characters helped forge the city's emotional and social identity.

Pennsylvania Avenue NW was where the action was all hours of the day. The powerful and influential local and national papers located on "Newspaper Row." reporters and editors rubbed elbows with drunkards and thieves in the same space once known as "Rum Row." Being cutthroat was not the battle cry, it was the battle.

One who played for keeps was Frank Munsey, a "robber baron" of the publishing business at the beginning of the twentieth century. Munsey is credited with perfecting a printing process that used extremely low-quality "pulp" paper to produce magazines that "were both dirt-cheap and filled with enough racy fare to be widely popular." Munsey brought about the era of pulp fiction.

Sacrificing quality to achieve high quantity, Munsey owned numerous papers nationally and eventually established a local bank. He hired a prestigious New York architectural firm to design a grand twelve-story Italian Renaissance Revival that could house the headquarters of his banking and publishing concerns in Washington. The building stood until 1979 when, despite community and legal opposition, the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation (PADC) bought the then-vacant building and demolished it.

Not all has vanished. Lost describes how the Art Deco Greyhound Bus Terminal at 1100 New York Avenue NW, built in 1940, was saved from the wrecking ball. Following the 1968 riots and with construction of Metro, downtown in the 1970's was gritty and grimy, as was the bus station, which closed in 1976. The building was then enclosed with ugly "concrete asbestos panels and a squat-looking metal mansard roof."

After the property was sold in 1985, a coalition of preservationists was able to persuade developers to use the terminal as a gateway to the planned office building. In 1991, the building opened with a "handsomely restored bus station" and a permanent exhibit on the history of the terminal "complete with life-sized plaster casts of historic buses standing where their bays would have been."

DeFerrari launched the blog Streets of Washington in 2009, using his extensive postcard collection as the foundation for featured posts. He also has cross-posted many of the entries here on Greater Greater Washington. This gave DeFerrari an abundance of substantive research ready to be tapped for the book. However, many of the entries in Lost were never published or posted before.

The only gap readers might notice is a lack of coverage of lost landmarks east of the Anacostia River. However, DeFerrari says he would like to write a second volume that would give him a chance to cover sites and neighborhoods left out of Lost.

The planning department (or, in DDOT parlance, "administration") handles bicycle and pedestrian project design and parking policy. Its members review proposed developments to approve or disapprove transportation elements like curb cuts. Their decisions shape buildings that will last 50 years or more, for better or worse.

One of the trickiest pieces of DDOT's task is to balance the use of public space. How do we trade off the needs of people driving, walking, biking, riding buses, sitting in sidewalk cafes, and more? It's the planning department that makes most of these judgments (except if engineers overrule them and refuse to implement elements of a plan).

As more top people left DDOT, many became nervous that the department would lapse into a period of stagnation. While Director Terry Bellamy and most of the rank and file DDOT employees believe in the right goals and visions for the city, would DDOT simply choose the path of least resistance and low activity, like shelving the L and M Street bike lanes (which are now back on track)?

The jury is still out until DDOT actually implements some potentially controversial yet significant innovations, like those cycle tracks or bus priority lanes. But by choosing Zimbabwe, Director Bellamy has sent a signal that he's looking for top-notch people who strongly believe in DC's stated visions of improving non-automotive options for everyone.

I haven't yet worked with Zimbabwe extensively, but we've interacted a number of times and other advocates for sustainable transportation praise him highly. "Sam is a great choice to help DC continue implementing innovative urban transportation practices," said Cheryl Cort of the Coalition for Smarter Growth. "Sam brings a wealth of experience working with communities around the country. DC will benefit greatly from his insights and demonstrated leadership."

Reconnecting America, Zimbabwe's previous employer, is a DC-based national nonprofit that helps communities implement a smart growth and sustainable transportation vision. He and his center helped local transportation and planning agencies think about designing their communities around making good use of their transit systems and maximizing choices.

Zimbabwe holds a Master of City Planning degree in Urban Design from the University of California, Berkley and a Bachelor of Science in Urban and Regional Studies from Cornell. Before Reconnecting America, Zimbabwe worked as an urban designer for Community Design + Architecture Firm and Van Meter Williams Pollack, and was a planning associate with the Port of San Francisco.

Zimbabwe said, "I am really looking forward to working with all of the talented and committed people already at DDOT who have been doing such great work in recent years, and bringing what I've learned about other cities across the country to help build on the successes here."

One of Zimbabwe's first priorities will be to fill some of the open positions funded in the DC budget that took effect this month. Councilmember Tommy Wells (Ward 6) funded 6 vacant positions in planning, including a "parking czar," ward planners for wards 2, 3, and 5, and two development reviewers. All of these folks have the opportunity to make significant positive (or negative) impacts on transportation in DC.

Please welcome Sam, and wish him best of luck in helping keep DC a leader in innovative and effective transportation policies and programs.

More recently, WMATA has moved into the role of just operating their existing rail system, plus the buses and paratransit that were later added. Local jurisdictions lead the way for any expansions. The Silver Line was a Virginia initiative, paid for by the state and federal government. Congressman Gerry Connolly is pushing for planning for Yellow, Blue, and/or Orange extensions to Prince William.

Non-heavy rail projects are also planned and potentially built by each jurisdiction. Maryland has the Purple Line, Corridor Cities Transitway, Montgomery BRT, and maybe rail or bus to Waldorf. Virginia has the Columbia Pike Streetcar and the Crystal City-Potomac Yard transitway (and few transit projects farther out, thanks to a lack of vision from state officials). Meanwhile, DC has its streetcar system which doesn't plan to connect to Maryland even though many of the lines once did just that.

Many of these projects are excellent and may be just the right mode for their respective corridors. But do we really want to spend the next 30, 50, or 100 years building piecemeal rail lines and busways which don't really harmonize? Wouldn't it be better to have a regional plan which accommodates the various needs, desires and circumstances of each jurisdiction but also looks at the regional benefits of each and tries to interconnect them?

This is the question the WMATA Board will consider at tomorrow's strategic planning session. For each of 9 goals, the board will discuss what role the agency should plan. Should it be an operator, just running a service at the command of the constituent jurisdictions? A convener, bringing together different stakeholders for a conversion? An advocate, encouraging jurisdictions to take steps that benefit regional priorities? Or a leader, actually working to set and execute on priorities with the consensus of the jurisdictions?

It's time to choose leadership

The board should choose the role of leader or at least advocate. The fact is that the region needs leadership that's looking beyond local needs. Without it, we'll look back decades from now and wonder why our investments were so shortsighted.

Nobody else is doing this. The Transportation Planning Board and its director, Ron Kirby, has thus far decisively chosen the role of "convener." That board is no more than a "stapler," assembling the priority lists of the 3 state DOTs and squeezing them into an air quality conformance model.

Whatever frustrations we might have with Metro's operational and maintenance issues, which are moving decisively in the right direction, its planning department is widely considered to be first class, and the only one in a position to look regionally.

The board doesn't have to choose the same role for each of its 9 goals. It could choose a stronger leadership role for some of the goals than others. Maybe they want Metro to be a stronger leader on core capacity than connecting activity centers, or actually want jurisdictions to lead on deciding where the money comes from. However, even transportation plans in counties Metro doesn't serve ultimately will help people travel to and from WMATA jurisdictions, and we need to look at regional mobility holistically, not piecemeal.

WMATA plans can give riders something to advocate for

Board members may be hesitant to take a bold role, fearful of stepping on the sovereignty of their home jurisdictions or giving the other states even a small say in their decisions. They needn't be. WMATA will always rely on those jurisdictions for its funding, and its board members will always come from those localities. Each "state" has a veto on any plan or policy. It's hard enough to build a transportation project; nothing will ever get built without broad consensus.

But by letting WMATA lead, we can get the best ideas out into the public marketplace. Metro can conceive a regional transportation vision that's both realistic and exciting enough to start advocating for. Right now, a big obstacle for transit advocates is that there's little to rally around. "Complete the Silver Line and build the Purple Line and all the streetcars" just isn't quite that energizing.

This blog really got started with a series of "fantasy maps" showing a possible region-wide network of transit projects. While it's not really feasible to actually build all of this in the current funding climate, it got a lot of people excited to dream about the possibilities of transit. Someone needs to take this kind of thing, and all the other ideas, and actually run them through models to figure out which ones will improve mobility and sustainability and the quality of communities.

Tomorrow, the WMATA Board will have the opportunity to move the region toward having big visions that take Greater Washington forward, or to keep our best hope for good planning in the back seat. Let's hope they choose to have courage.

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Phelps, McKinley, and Washington Metropolitan are more recent additions. Reconstituted in 2008, Phelps is the first public high school in the country to offer both college preparatory and vocational education dedicated to the design professions and construction trades. Washington Metropolitan School also opened in 2008, as a part of the Big Picture Learning network of schools. Like Phelps, McKinley Technology High School was reconstituted in 2004, and is the only STEM focused high school in the district.

This year, DCPS has instituted an online-only common application for these schools, and it will be the only application accepted.

In the past, parents have had to contend with a more complicated application process involving separate applications to multiple schools. Administrative hurdles may discourage parents from choosing to stay in the District for high school. Creating a systematic process will help DCPS compete with private, parochial, and charter schools for top students.

The common application may also bring about more equity in admissions, as the application may serve to expose students to more schools then they would have originally considered.

This could create some challenges for those students who do not have access to the Internet at home. Therefore, DCPS should consider continuing to offer the paper application through at least the first year. However, as with many policies, DCPS is rolling out the new online-only application fully instead of starting it as a pilot, putting the onus on parents and students to figure out this new system in real time.

The schools are currently beginning their admissions cycles for next year. With exception of Ellington School for the Arts (due December 18th 15th), the deadline for the application is January 6th, 2012. All the schools will hold open houses in November. If you're applying for your child, please share your experiences.

Update: Fred Lewis from DCPS contacted us with a correction to the date of the Ellington application. Also, he noted that the common application will go live on November 18.