Posts about Kaya Henderson

DC is splitting into 2 separate school systems

For the past decade, more and more children who live in boundary for some traditional public schools, particularly west of Rock Creek Park, have wanted to enroll. The result has been a network of high-quality and popular local elementary schools—Janney, Key, LaFayette, Hyde-Addison, Murch, and so on—feeding into strong middle schools and ultimately into Wilson High School.

The Wilson boundary runs along 16th Street, next to the park that is re-dividing the city into the educational haves on the west and charter lottery applicants on the east. There are a few exceptions, like schools on Capitol Hill, or Ross Elementary in Dupont Circle, but even in these neighborhoods, most families leave DCPS after elementary school because they're not yet comfortable enough with the middle and high schools.

For decades, this boundary mattered far less as schools west of the park had spare capacity for many students east of the park in the out-of-boundary lottery. However, rising in-boundary enrollment west of the park will soon make bus trips across the park a thing of the past.

Wilson High was designed to serve 400 students per grade. Yet there are 750 4th grade students in the schools that feed into Wilson.

In much of the rest of the city, the local elementary school, anchor and civic space of the community, is too becoming a relic. As school closures due to under-enrollment eviscerate the institution of the neighborhood school, car and bus trips criss-crossing the city to charters are increasing in number.

Meanwhile, middle and high schools east of the park struggle to coordinate programming with schools in their feeder patterns as schools open and close and students come and go in droves.

These two public school systems are as separate as they could possibly be. Are they equal?

Is separation a problem?

Should we worry about this? Some, such as perhaps the Washington Post editorial board, might say there's not a problem. If one type of schools works well in some neighborhoods, but is failing in others, why not keep it where it's working and ditch it where it's not? Maybe we need a completely different educational approach for the poorest neighborhoods versus the richest.

However, even education experts still don't agree about whether a system of all charters will actually work better. Charter school critics repeatedly point to studies that show charter schools do not, on the whole, deliver better results than do traditional public schools. Of course, parents across the city know several charter schools that deliver amazing results.

The Public Charter School Board is supposed to address this problem by closing under-performing charter schools. However, they have been more likely to give charters extensions of time to improve. If that works, perhaps that is wise, but there's a real danger it just means more under-performing schools linger for years while doing their students a real disservice.

As out-of-boundary students get pushed out of the most desirable schools, many of them become less diverse. Many wealthier families choosing between public and private school cite diversity, both ethnic, income, and otherwise, as a major advantage of public education. And one of the best ways to help students with disadvantaged backgrounds is to include them in schools with many higher-performing peers.

Having 2 separate school systems could also create political problems. If there is one system that serves rich neighborhoods, and another service the poor neighborhoods, would well-meaning parents in the wealthier and more politically powerful neighborhoods lobby for more funding for traditional public education and inadvertently disadvantage less affluent areas? Or would politicians from the poorer wards of the District end up opposing DCPS's needs? A battle for resources between the haves and have-nots is not what we need, regardless of how it turns out.

From a transportation standpoint, it's not great to have most kids riding buses or being driven long distances to charter schools that might be nowhere near their neighborhoods, if there can be a good alternative nearby.

It's not like residents of the poorest wards want to abolish all of their neighborhood schools. Staffers for Councilmember Marion Barry explained that most of their constituents want neighborhood schools to stay open, to improve and succeed.

What can be done?

Both traditional public schools and charter schools clearly have important roles to play in our public school system. Few deny that. The question is, how do their roles fit together such that we don't end up with separate and unequal school systems?

For one, there needs to be leadership at a high level to reconcile these two systems. DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson will come in for the most strident and vocal criticism of the school closures. This is unfortunate, as she only controls DCPS.

It's difficult to fault Henderson for closing schools left under-enrolled by students leaving for charters. What is the alternative—keep many mostly-empty schools around?

The Deputy Mayor for Education and the DC Council are the bodies that should be thinking about the public school system as a whole, not Chancellor Henderson. Yet both bodies claim organizational impotence. The result is that no one is leading our public school system.

Second, these leaders need to think about this problem and explore ways to address it. For the more successful schools, they could consider a "controlled choice" system, which Michael Petrilli mentioned when interviewed for a recent Washington Post article, and which David Alpert discussed in a series of articles this year.

A related idea on the other side, which Councilmember Tommy Wells has been pushing and I previously discussed, is to give children who live near a non-specialized charter school a preference to attend. Charters would set aside some percentage of their spots for in-boundary families.

This would engage charters in the struggles of their community. While many charters will object that they need parents who are committed to their program, these objections miss the point of charter autonomy. Autonomy is supposed to be autonomy from the bureaucracy and red-tape of DC Public Schools, not autonomy from the educational challenges that students in one neighborhood present.

Ideas such as these for aligning and situating our two public school systems for the good of the entire system come up periodically from isolated councilmembers, advocates, and in the press. It's time for someone to rise to the moment, and forestall a return to separate and unequal school systems in the nation's capital.

Matt Johnson made some maps of the proposed closures for neighborhood elementary, middle and high schools. There are also some schools that serve students with disabilities or other specialized groups which are not on these maps as they do not draw from neighborhood boundaries.

Henderson said that DCPS hopes to keep all of the school buildings for the future. The Office of Planning estimates that the number of school-age children in DC, which has been declining for many years, will start rising again in 2015. Therefore, DCPS will likely begin needing more of these schools once more, but not for at least some years.

DCPS has plans for some of the buildings, such as expanding School Without Walls into the Francis-Stevens Education Campus, which is slated for closure. There are some preliminary ideas for some others, like a suggestion for a community arts center in what's now Garrison Elementary. For many, DCPS plans to work with the local community to identify the best use of the building, possibly including housing charter schools in the buildings.

Earlier this year, a report from IFF, a community development and consulting organization, recommended closing many schools with lower rates of student proficiency and moving kids to schools with higher proficiency. This report came under a lot of criticism for allegely oversimplifying and misreading the statistics.

At today's press conference, Henderson made no reference to the IFF report, and when asked said she had seen the data, but it wasn't the basis for her decisions. Instead, she talked about the Census and about data from the Office of Planning, and claimed that she made decisions to close schools simply to align the supply of space with the student demand.

Many families have been "voting with their feet" and moving to charter schools, and in Wards 1, 5, and 6, the majority of students now attend charter schools. Plus, the population of school-age children has been declining. However, forecasts estimate that there will be many more kids by 2020 in many parts of the District.

The demographic trends and growing charter school demand mean DCPS has much more space than it needs right now, and Henderson said this round of school closings is entirely about addressing that mismatch, not about the theory that closing schools with poorly-performing kids and moving them to a different school will make them perform better. One could as easily argue that such a move would instead make the new schools' test score numbers decline, because while a school can have a lot of impact on a kid's test scores, it's far from the only factor.

DCPS has modernized 47 of its 117 buildings since 2007, but 20,000 students still attend the schools that haven't gotten modernized yet. Kids at Ron Brown Middle School in Ward 7, for instance, will go to the recently-modernized Kelly Miller Middle School.

The changes also mean that DCPS is moving away from the model of having pre-K through 8th grade education campuses, such as Francis-Stevens, whose elementary kids will go to Marie Reed while middle schoolers will go to Hardy, and Winston education campus, which is splitting its elementary and middle school students into Stanton Elementary and Kramer Middle School.

Meanwhile, MacFarland Middle School will now move to Roosevelt High School (preventing the idea some have floated of moving Duke Ellington School of the Arts to the unused space at Roosevelt), and Shaw Middle School will locate with Cardozo High.

DCPS' presentation notes that it has the fewest average kids per school building, 384.12 of any jurisdiction in the region; Fairfax County has 926.2 kids per building.

This brings costs to DCPS, though fewer, larger schools also means fewer kids can walk to their neighborhood school. In the suburbs, families travel very large distances by car to go to school, often to the detriment of public health and traffic congestion.

Here is a full list of the schools slated for closure:

High schools:

• Spingarn (to Eastern, Dunbar, Woodson)

Middle schools:

• Francis-Stevens (to Hardy)
• MacFarland (to Roosevelt)
• Shaw at Garnet-Patterson (to Cardozo)
• Johnson (to Hart and Kramer)
• Winston (to Kramer)

Elementary schools:

• Francis-Stevens (to Marie Reed)
• Garrison (to Seaton)
• Marshall (to Langton)
• Davis (to C.W. Harris)
• Kenilworth (to Houston)
• Smothers (to Aiton and Plummer)
• Winston (to Stanton)
• Ferebee-Hope (to Hendley)
• Malcolm X (to Turner)
• MC Terrell-McGogney (to King)

Specialized schools and programs:

• Sharpe Health (to River Terrace)
• Mamie D Lee (to River Terrace)
• CHOICE at Hamilton (to Cardozo)
• Spingarn STAY (to Ballou STAY and Roosevelt STAY)
• Prospect LC (to neighborhood schools)

Rhee reassigned Pope away from his position as principal of the successful Hardy Middle School in May 2010 over the objections of many parents, teachers and students. We now know that this issue was in her mind when she made that decision.

Instead, Rhee tasked Pope with designing and eventually leading a new arts-focused magnet middle school that was to open in Fall 2011. Design and funding concerns have delayed the new school's implementation for a year.

Hardy Middle School, located at the northern edge of Georgetown, draws 85% of its students from the out-of-boundary lottery. Only 15% of its students come from within its boundary of Georgetown, Burleith, Glover Park and Palisades. 75% of its students are black, while the surrounding neighborhoods are much more white.

The debate over reassigning Pope

Pope's supporters have mounted a vocal campaign to return Pope to Hardy that continues to this day. While some of Pope's support has come from in-boundary parents, the vast majority of those testifying at hearings and leading the campaign for Pope's reinstatement are out-of-boundary parents.

These parents have claimed that Rhee's removal of Pope as principal was an attempt to "whitewash" the mostly black school by replacing him with a principal who will reach out to in-boundary families. As evidence, they point to a meeting Rhee held with parents of students attending Key Elementary, in the Palisades, which feeds into Hardy. The subject of the meeting, held at a private home in the Palisades, was the dissatisfaction of Key parents with Hardy.

Rhee and her staff never publicly explained what, if anything, Rhee wished that Pope had done differently at Hardy. This silence left a void that has been filled with the claims of Pope's supporters that Rhee removed Pope because he wouldn't reach out to in-boundary, usually white, parents of elementary school children to recruit them to attend Hardy.

It now appears that, while Rhee and her deputies viewed Hardy Middle School as unwelcoming to in-boundary white students, they viewed it as far more unwelcoming to poor students. Rhee and her staff were convinced that Pope was filtering out poor students when selecting out-of-boundary applicants.

The lottery and a principal's discretion

Children enrolled in DCPS get automatic admission to the school whose boundary includes their home. If a school has more spaces than the principal's projection of in-boundary student enrollment, it conducts a lottery for students from elsewhere in the District to make up the difference.

DCPS conducts the lottery, whose process doesn't consider a student's race, income level, or academic ability. However, there is also a waitlist for students who don't get admitted through the standard lottery, and principals have much more leeway there.

Furthermore, it's up to the principal how many out-of-boundary spaces to make available through the lottery. The fewer lottery spaces, the more students will need to be pulled from the waitlist. It's this waitlist process which education officials believed Pope used to admit students from more well-off families.

While Hardy had been a typical neighborhood school when Pope became principal, Pope added an arts focus to Hardy and instituted a special application process that included a site visit by applicants.

Most principals select out-of-boundary students off of their waiting list in the order in which they entered the waitlist, that is, blind. Parents have often wondered if Pope selected out-of-boundary students blind as well, or if he used information from the application process to cherry-pick certain students off the out-of-boundary waitlist.

Education officials, Whitmire says, became convinced that Pope was doing just that:

To Rhee and her staff, it looked as if Pope's student selection process at Hardy weeded out lower-income black children who might not fit in (read: be disruptive) and possibly even special education students.

Whitmire spoke with Pope, and writes that "Pope takes strong exception to the suggestion that his application process discriminated against any students."

However, the conclusion of Rhee's staff was that "a selection process that separates out the 'wrong' sort of black families, as Rhee and her staff concluded Pope was doing, was just wrong."

Why prefer out-of-boundary, well-off students?

Why would a principal try to increase admissions of out-of-boundary students, particularly out-of-boundary students that are economically advantaged?

According to the former DCPS official, a common problem in big city school systems is principals who try to fill up their buildings with out-of-boundary students in order to reduce complaints from parents.

In-boundary parents often feel more entitled to complain about teachers, curricula, and other school conditions. Out-of-boundary students and their parents, on the other hand, tend to be more appreciative of the opportunity to attend the school.

Why would a principal go even further and filter low-income students out of the out-of-boundary waitlist? Low income students do have a greater likelihood of creating disciplinary problems. Reducing their numbers would help a principal to improve discipline at the school. That would also build even more support from the other parents.

The concern of many DCPS officials, in other words, was this. By transforming Hardy Middle School into a haven for economically-advantaged African-American students, Pope was able to deliver discipline and academic results that pleased previous superintendents while making entitled in-boundary parents, and poor students, problems for other principals to deal with.

It's unclear if Pope received permission from DCPS to base his out-of-boundary waitlist selections solely on information from his admissions process, or whether the process was intended by DCPS merely to set expectations of out-of-boundary students.

The former DCPS official suspects that former superintendents didn't ask many questions about the admissions process because Pope was known as a principal who was in control of his building. Rhee and her staff, however, saw the demographic data, according to Whitmire, and started asking questions.

A look at the data

A look at demographic data for DC schools lends support to this claim, while it also raises questions about whether weeding out poor students was Pope's intent or simply the effect of running a de facto magnet school.

No middle school in DC has as large a gap between the percentage of African-American students and the percentage of economically disadvantaged students as Hardy Middle School. Students are typically classified as economically disadvantaged if they qualify for free or reduced price lunches.

The percentage of low-income students is generally closely correlated with the percentage of African-American students at DC schools. The other 9 Grade 6-8 schools admit on average 87% as many low-income students as black students.

Hardy, on the other hand, had 420 students in the 2009-2010 school year, 312 (75%) of whom were African-American and 170 (41%) of whom were low-income. Hardy thus admits only 54% as many low-income students as black students.

If Hardy admissions looked like the other 9 schools, low-income students would make up 272 students, or 65% of the student body. This is a far higher increase of students (102 students, or 24%) than any expect to see from in-boundary students in the near future, and one that would mostly result from only 3 years of blind admissions.

Is there a reasonable explanation for this unique disparity at Hardy Middle School? One possible explanation is that any school with an admissions process is going to weed out poor students.

In fact, a look at Washington's magnet high schools shows demographics similar to that of Hardy Middle School.

Perhaps the unique demographics of Hardy were not the result of any specific intent to make poor students another principal's problem. Perhaps they were the unintended effect of using an application process to select students off of the Hardy waitlist with the best essays and in-person interviews.

The future of Hardy and Pope

Leaders of the campaign to reinstate Pope at Hardy complain about a rise in disruptive behavior and a drop in commitment to the arts program in the current school year.

It's revealing to note, however, that the current year's admissions waitlist was managed last summer not by Pope, who had been reassigned by then, but by his successor. Is this change simply a result of Hardy becoming more welcoming to economically disadvantaged students?

Leaders of the campaign to reinstate Pope also argue, as noted above, that the removal of Pope as principal of Hardy was an attempt to make Hardy more acceptable to in-boundary white families. Ironically, however, the change to a blind admissions process will make that more difficult.

Admitting students more randomly will likely increase the number of poor students at Hardy by up to 100 students in only 3 years. Sadly, that would statistically also increase the number of disciplinary problems, likely making Hardy less appealing for parents choosing between Hardy and private schools.

Is this right or wrong?

Should a middle school that had been open to out-of-boundary students regardless of economic status have been transformed into one disproportionately closed to poor students?

Should the plea of Pope's supporters to maintain this system be denied for reasons of economic equity?

The big difference between the magnet high schools mentioned above and Hardy is that the magnet schools were created as magnet schools, whereas Patrick Pope transformed Hardy, with some degree of DCPS approval, into a de facto magnet school.

Given the dire state of child poverty, which is a moral stain on our city, this seems like a bad idea. A better idea would be to create a new middle school that is explicitly a magnet school, thus increasing educational options for all students. This is, in fact, exactly what Chancellor Henderson says she is doing.

The new magnet middle school will be the first in the DC school system. Placing Pope at the helm of the new school would leverage his real strengths in building magnet schools versus running a standard neighborhood school. Chancellor Henderson's plan with regard to Hardy and a new magnet middle school thus enables us to focus on increasing educational options for all children regardless of race or economic status.

Henderson will face the twin tests of working within the new Mayor's collaborative style and advancing a reform agenda with a more confrontational union president, Nathan Saunders. With a contract already ratified, she should have some breathing room on the major union issues, but budget pressure will force hard choices over the coming year.

The Deputy Mayor for Education (DME) position is one that remains to be defined under a new administration. We've questioned the purpose of a DME when you already have strong leaders in the state and local education agencies appointed by and serving at the pleasure of the Mayor, but there are two ways in which a DME in the Gray Administration can be effective.

One is substantive, to advance the Mayor's early childhood and post-secondary education plans. The other is procedural, to keep both the Chancellor and the State Superintendent on message with the Mayor's priorities and prevent political trainwrecks like the one we saw this past year.

The DME can also make urbanists happy by helping the Mayor harmonize public school facilities policies so that all kids in the city can walk or have short commutes to modern, high quality public schools.

Specifically, Wright could help ensure that critical decisions about DCPS school closures, charter school construction, and school facilities modernization all serve the common good, not just serve DCPS at the expense of charters or serve business interests at the expense of families.

School density should follow neighborhood density and magnet programs should be centrally located near transit nodes. Making this happen will require coordination among several city agencies.

State Superintendent is a critical position for the future of DC's education landscape. The person in this role has to manage the District's $75 million Race to the Top grant, win and manage new federal grants, build out the city's education data infrastructure, administer school feeding programs, and write regulations on critical matters such as curriculum, standardized testing, and teacher certification that affect both DPCS and the public charter schools.

Hosanna Mahaley is an inspired pick because she brings fundraising experience and strong substantive background in education. She has been building a long resume, having earned a teaching certificate in California, an executive MBA at Northwestern, and served on the boards of the National Association of Charter School Authorizors, of which DC's Public Charter School Board is a key member, and Education Sector, a respected education policy think tank.

Her most important role has been at the Chicago Public Schools, a system about nine times the size of DCPS, where she oversaw an effort by the city school district to build out 100 new schools with various charter or charter-like governance arrangements. This suits her well for the District, which also must seek ways to improve both the traditional and charter public school sectors simultaneously.

There are several things Mahaley can do to be successful. First, while private fundraising is important, securing federal money is paramount for a state superintendent. It doesn't hurt that her former boss is now the U.S. Secretary of Education, but OSSE will have to be on top of its game if DC will continue to win funds that are awarded competitively instead of by formula.

Second, there needs to be a keen focus on data infrastructure. In 2007, DC won a $5.7 million federal grant to develop a data warehouse, but with the grant about to end in 2011, there hasn't been much public evidence of progress. The state superintendent's office selected a vendor and then canceled the contract in midstream, and a replacement has still not been selected.

So far, DCPS has led the way in using education data to measure teacher performance, but OSSE could provide leadership needed to accelerate the progress of performance measurement for charter schools and DCPS schools on equally rigorous terms. Having spent the last year and a half at Wireless Generation, a firm that provides consulting and software services to school districts, Mahaley should be prepared for this challenge.

Third, the charter sector and traditional public schools need a referee who can ensure that both sectors get the tools they need to compete fairly, succeed, cooperate and learn from each other.

Let's hope that the new education policy team works well together and carries out the Mayor-elect's promises for education reform. The leadership team represents a promising start.

Furthermore, a sense of continuity at the top can only trickle down to create coherence about what's expected within classrooms. With her in charge, there's still a good chance of maintaining the momentum behind key initiatives and keeping up morale.

Big name foundations attracted to Rhee's message will probably feel the same way. It is particularly vital to protect the private dollars raised in support of the changes made to the DC teacher pay scale. Rhee's ability to accumulate those funds drastically changed the potential compensation available and could be a game-changer. It would be a shame to see the game stopped at half time.

Speaking of the latest contract, Henderson understands Michelle Rhee's vision of starting reform from within central office and extending that vision to create an overarching focus on human capital. When Rhee took office, it was clear that some personnel were contributing to fiscal irresponsibility and educational failure, despite the efforts of their hardworking counterparts. Although new evaluation measures like IMPACT aren't perfect, they at least send a message that the bar has been raised.

Henderson can keep the focus on holding the adults in the system accountable while taking the opportunity to express her own leadership style. In the process, she can perhaps avoid the side of Rhee's image that often attracted unwanted media attention. (Think back to Rhee's infamous Time magazine cover, where she sternly holds a broom). Hopefully, Henderson can use this transition period to usher in an era of improved community relations and continued dialogue with those on the ground, especially when it comes to controversial initiatives like the IMPACT performance evaluation system.

If you consider the racial politics in the election results, some have also pointed out the added benefit to Gray in selecting an African-American administrator, although that is certainly not her main qualification, and it would be a bit of an insult to suggest otherwise.

Her extended history with DC traces back to her days working with Teach for America and The New Teacher Project. This experience within the District has culminated in a generally positive relationship with union head George Parker and other key leadership. Parker has gone on the record to confirm his approval, saying that, "I respect her because she is a collaborative person, but also a very strong reformer." The new contract's shift in teacher salary calculations can be attributed to her ability to play well in the sandbox with folks in the Washington Teachers Union while still getting what she needs done. After seeing both her and Rhee speak this summer, I believe that Henderson's style is somewhat more politically savvy.

The rest of the school year will serve as a trial period for both Henderson and Gray. Given what's at stake, let's hope that it ends with a positive outcome that includes a workable relationship. Great cities contain attractive educational options, and Henderson has the experience necessary to follow through on some of Rhee's better ideas while smoothing out a few of the kinks.

Perhaps just as importantly, she has enough of her own moxie, charisma, and personal drive to keep her commitment to the District's children going strong after Rhee's departure.