Photo from office of David Catania.

Mayoral candidate David Catania has laid out his vision for a key issue in the race, education. Building on the education-related legislation he has introduced as a DC Councilmember, Catania calls for strong measures to improve school quality, reduce the achievement gap between black and white students, and strengthen special education services.

Catania identifies the basic issue in DC education as school quality. The unevenness of that quality, he says, results in what he has called a “morning diaspora,” with some 60,000 DC students choosing to commute to schools other than the ones they’re assigned to.

Catania proposes attacking the quality problem through both vertical and horizontal measures. He calls for “vertical alignment” between the elementary, middle, and high schools in the same feeder pattern, so that programming and expectations are consistent throughout a student’s school career.

On the horizontal front, Catania wants to standardize offerings across the District. One middle school, he points out, might have “expansive language and enrichment programs while a middle school across town has far fewer of both.”

And when elementary schools with different levels of “quality and preparedness” feed into the same middle school, he says, the entire middle school suffers.

Catania also has other prescriptions, such as directing more funding to at-risk students, something that he’s already effected through legislation he introduced. He also wants to guarantee college aid to students who graduate from DC high schools, expand career and technical education, and change the way school improvement is measured to introduce factors other than test scores.

And he discusses, in general terms, the legislation he’s introduced that would overhaul many aspects of DC’s system for delivering special education services.

Catania has made himself into something of an expert on DC’s education system since becoming chair of the Council’s education committee at the beginning of last year. He’s personally visited almost 150 traditional public and charter schools, and he’s introduced a raft of education-related legislation. His energy and ability to retain information are awe-inspiring and have won him ardent supporters among parents and others involved in education.

A variation on “Deal for All”?

But his basic plan for improving school quality—vertical alignment and horizontal standardization—is unlikely to get to the root of the problem. At bottom, it’s a more sophisticated version of his opponent Muriel Bowser’s simplistic mantra of “Alice Deal for All,” a promise to bring the features of Ward 3’s highly sought-after Deal Middle School to every sector of the District.

In arguing for the benefits of vertical alignment, Catania points out that “DCPS’s highest achieving feeder pattern”—the one that includes both Deal and Wilson High School—“already employs this practice of vertical integration with great success.” But while vertical integration may be a good idea, it’s not the reason Deal, Wilson, and the elementary schools that feed into them are high-achieving. That has far more to do with the relative affluence of their student bodies.

Similarly, Catania’s plan to standardize programs and offerings throughout the District will only take us so far in improving quality. You can offer the same “expansive language and enrichment programs” that Deal boasts at other middle schools. But if the students at those schools aren’t prepared to take advantage of them, they’ll be no more than empty promises.

As Catania is no doubt aware, low-income students generally start school far less prepared than their middle-class counterparts, and the gap between the two groups only widens as the grades progress. If you want to truly improve the quality of neighborhood schools beyond the few that are now seen as desirable—and which, not coincidentally, have a high proportion of affluent students—you need to figure out a way to improve the performance of low-income students.

Prescriptions for closing the achievement gap

Catania does have some prescriptions for doing that, but they’re either vague or somewhat mechanical. For example, it’s great that, largely thanks to his efforts, more money will be directed to at-risk students, but there’s still the question of what that money will be used for.

He mentions that directing funds to at-risk students recognizes “the fact that students from more challenged backgrounds often require additional resources for academic and social-emotional interventions.” But he doesn’t specify what those interventions should consist of, or how the government can ensure that poor children get the services they need to counteract the effects of poverty that often interfere with their ability to learn.

Catania also points to legislation he authored that essentially ends the practice of social promotion. True, promoting students who haven’t mastered material year after year is a recipe for disaster.

But merely requiring those students to repeat a grade doesn’t ensure they’ll learn what they didn’t absorb the first time around, especially if teachers use the same methods. And the stigma of being held back can have lasting effects.

School quality and school boundaries

The question of improving school quality has taken on added urgency because of the recent controversy over school boundaries. Catania has said he’s opposed to any plan that would switch students to lower-performing schools.

He’s also said that he would delay implementation of the current plan for at least a year, but the measures he outlines—or any measures, for that matter—are unlikely to improve school quality anywhere near that fast.

Catania doesn’t mention school boundaries anywhere in the 15 pages his platform devotes to education. Nor does he mention another hot-button issue: whether to place limits on the growth and location of charter schools.

And yet both of these issues have major implications for school quality. When more middle-class families attend a school, its quality generally goes up, benefiting the school’s low-income students as well. If boundaries are redrawn so that a group of middle-class parents know their children will be attending a particular lower-performing school in, say, five years, they can strengthen each other’s resolve to send their kids there and improve it.

On the other hand, if charter schools that attract middle-class families continue their current rapid growth, they could undermine that possibility by draining those families out of the traditional system. Catania’s failure to address this controversial question is understandable, but it’s nonetheless disappointing.

For all its flaws, Catania’s education platform is far more detailed and has many more solid ideas than anything that his rival Bowser has put forward so far. There are still many uncertainties, not least of which who Catania would install to replace DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who is likely to depart if he wins. But right now, he’s the only candidate who has both articulated a vision for improving education in DC and who stands at least a chance of winning.