e-Transition: Education

Final Education Webinar

Presented December 19 to Victor Reinoso.   This is a 2MB fileDownload finalwebinar.ppt 

Report from Fenty Transition MEP Group

Introduction

The Support for the MEP transition group organized its work to answer this question:  “How can the new administration support implementation of the DCPS Master Education Plan (MEP)?  The group reviewed Mayoral Candidate Fenty’s Vision for Education (Vision),  analyzed and prioritized MEP actions, noted the initiatives that are common to both the  Vision and the MEP, and developed a list of actions the new administration can take in support of the MEP.

The Support for the MEP Committee reached consensus on a number of core beliefs that form the underpinnings of our recommendations for action.

·        The MEP is an important document that was built through a process of community engagement.  Its strengths are several: it is research based, substantive, contains timelines, is recognized by experts outside of DC, and has potential to both offer hope and to provide DCPS and the city with a road map for education progress. 

·        The Mayor can play an important role in building more awareness of the plan. Too few residents are familiar with the specifics of the Plan at this point in time. Greater knowledge and understanding will build greater ownership for the Plan. Greater public involvement and demand can help speed the pace of implementation.

·        It is important that Mr. Fenty has indicated his support for the acadmic and curriculuar reforms of the MEP.  It is support is essential in order to stabilize and continue the progress made in these areas in the past two years.  Furthermore, these academic reforms are crucial to long term school improvement and increased student achievement.

·        The Office of the Mayor can support MEP implementation in many different ways.  Those efforts do not require school governance changes, but they do require the office of the Mayor to work differently than in the past.  The Mayor needs to take a leadership role in building strong relationships with the Superintendent and the Board of Education, and in galvanizing the involvement of the many other sectors of the city that affect education.  Only through such a comprehensive approach to building genuine collaboration and improved communication will we achieve the results we seek: stronger schools and greater student achievement.

·        The MEP will not work without the active collaboration of the Mayor and the City.  The good news is the obvious agreement between many aspects of the Fenty Vision for Education and the MEP.  There is tremendous potential for future collaboration.

·        There is an urgent need for education reform NOW.  While it’s true that many changes have occurred in DCPS in a short period of time – the need for alignment between Mayoral and school system actions is critical for specific parts of the MEP and for continued progress in general.

The following recommended action items demonstrate the nexus between Mayoral leadership and implementation of teh MEP.  They build on connections between the Fenty Education Vision (FEV) and the MEP.  See full chart here:  Download new_mep_chart.doc

Need	Action	Outcomes	Timeframe	Resources
DCPS Management Many citizen complaints point to management deficiencies and failures.  DCPS management must be improved.	Implement an Education Performance Accountability system (FEV:  Office Deputy Mayor; MEP: Chapter VII)	- Stronger management & accountability - Ongoing performance evaluation - Stronger performance-based budgeting	- Beginning January 2007 – research systems and models used in similar jurisdictions - Implement model and training, By Jan 2008	- Funding to conduct research, provide training - Possible systems investment - Infrastructure
Systems That Work City technology systems that are inadequate, unaligned and/or inappropriate  with education needs negatively impact DCPS performance.	Overhaul the city management and financial systems that impact directly on DCPS operations. (FEV Make use of community resources; MEP Chapter VII and VIII)	- More efficient reliable, and faster delivery of education services - Improved budget oversight and accountability	- First do needs assessment - Systems design and integration analysis - Research into practices in similar jurisdictions Launch now – complete in the next year	- System investment and redesign - Training - Possibly personnel for implementation
Interagency Collaboration At present this is more a concept than reality.  DCPS cannot meet the whole spectrum of children’s needs.	Establish a process for interagency collaboration among the agencies that impact students and families and school readiness.  (FEV:  Office of Deputy Mayor; MEP:  Chapter III and IV)	- Improved direct services to families and students. - Greater satisfaction with City government and with DCPS - Improved student achievement.	Begin process immediately to establish the process, standards and expectations  for interagency collaboration.	- Personnel (to direct the process) - Research on practices in similar jurisdictions - Systems integration needs
Need	Action	Outcomes	Timeframe	Resources
Partnerships Numerous organi-zations and entities are eager to work with DCPS, yet find it difficult to initiate effective partnerships.	Provide staffing in the Office of the Deputy Mayor to work in collaboration with DCPS’ Community Partnership Office to be a clearinghouse for community-school partnerships (FEV:  Office Deputy Mayor; MEP: Chapter V)	- An established partnership development system - Increased resources effectively matched to teaching and leaning	Begin process immediately to form Mayoral/DCPS working relationship and planning	- Personnel - Communications tools
Dropouts and Graduation rates DC suffers from high drop out and high unemployment, and  low graduate and college attainment rates.	Join with DCPS to support challenging curriculum, implement high quality CTE and workforce training programs, focus on middle school as starting point for college and workforce readiness efforts, and provide broad range of student supports.  (FEV:  Make use of community resources:  MEP:  Chapters I, III, IV, VI)	- Lower dropout and unemployment rates; - Higher graduation and college and work attainment rates - Stronger middle schools	- DCPS is in process with several initiatives:  middle schools formation, expanded CTE options, and student supports.  - Mayoral collaboration immediately could benefit and expand  these efforts.	- Training - New dropout prevention services and incentives - Funding for personalized student support programs
Education Mayor For the last eight years DC has had lip service from the Mayor’s office about the importance of education – but little concrete action.  It’s time for a change.	Serve as the number one public DC public education advocate – making use of the “bully pulpit” to: - Recommit the city to providing high quality education for all DC children - Address education as an important civil rights issue - Inform and sell the MEP to citizens - Attract and retain teachers - Bring new investment to DCPS - Regularly communicate progress and important achievements to all.	- Increased civic responsibility for the education of our children. - Stabilized enrollment. - Increased pride in the schools and in DC - A stronger economy - Attract more families to Washington, DC.	Immediately and ongoing.	- Communication tools - Systems and personnel - Tax and other incentives for teachers

The above six action areas are not presented in strict priority order, i.e. the Committee thinks they are all important, and all would benefit greatly from the future Mayor’s attention and involvement.   It should be noted that in the course of our discussions, we raised many other areas, which we would be happy to pursue as the Mayoral transition process continues.  Progress in the areas listed here, as well as effective support for the MEP in general, would require the office of the Mayor to work differently and more aggressively on education issues than in the past.   The Committee is available for ongoing advice and support.

City faces budget shortfall (WP)

From The Washington Post, November 28, 2006:

District Faces $300 Million Budget Shortfall
The District government faces up to $300 million in unanticipated expenditures over the next two years, presenting an early test for Mayor-elect Adrian M. Fenty and his pledge to improve service delivery without raising taxes. (By David Nakamura, The Washington Post)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/27/AR2006112701335.html?referrer=email

Education Executive Summary

Download education_executive_summary.doc

Special Education Improvements

There needs to be a better approach to the operation of special education programs, at DC Public Schools, that will result into improved and cost effective management. The per-pupil expenditure is much higher than surrounding jurisdictions.

On one hand, the assesment and the composition of individualized education program (IEP) needs revision so that it can improve the learning capabilities of the students, (yet to be completed).

On the other hand, the utilization of private hearing officers will reduce the waiting period between hearing requests and the occurence of hearing sessions. (yet to be completed)

Educating the whole child

In focusing on test scores we have lost sight of dialogue on what the purposes of education should be. Literacy and numeracy are basic, of course, but they alone do not prepare our students for the kinds of jobs our economy is creating (except for MacJobs, perhaps),  to be good citizens, or to lead fulfilling lives. Arguably, the focus on test scores--the endless non-contextual drilling, without explosure to the kind of subject matter that would motivate children to want to read and learn, and the fear and anxiety pervading the schools from the principals on down about performance on the tests--is hindering improvement in performance on them.     Because of the lopsided emphasis on teaching to the test, the arts, PE and civics are being curtailed, if not eliminated, from the school day.  These subjects are currently  offered in DC public schools at the discretion of individual principals, under constraints of the weighted student formula. In smaller schools suffering enrollment decreases, especially, these subjects are disappearing from the curriculum under pressure to decrease staff, but they are also being curtailed in other schools as well because almost all school-day time is being allocated to test-related subjects.  Many remaining arts and PE teachers, as well as Content Specialists, are being assigned to other duties besides what they were hired to do.  Our school bands, once the pride of the city, are disappearing.  In cutting students off from their cultural heritages, depriving  them of the opportunity to develop their creative abilities and develop the skills that prepare them for good (not just low-pay service) jobs, and endanger their health through lack of exercise we are really leaving them behind in ways that test scores don't measure. I believe attention to what is being taught and the quality of those teaching should have a priority in improving our schools.  No change in governance structure alone is going to help until there is a change in what goes on in the classroom.

Dorothy Marschak, President, CHIME (Community Help In Music Education)

Workforce Training

Attached is information capturing some of the debate around the workforce training issues and recommendations.

Download workforce_training_recs.doc

A 'Balanced Literacy' Approach

A MANDATE IN DCPS
WORKING TOWARDS EXCELLENCE IN PUBLIC EDUCATION

As a member of the Fenty Pre-Transition Team on the Education Committee, I have participated in several chats. Yet we have not had the chance to discuss what happens to DC children between 8:40 and 3:30-namely classroom instruction. Because the Fenty team is looking to New York as a potential model to reshape DCPS, I wanted to share some observations regarding Balanced Literacy, the language arts curriculum Bloomberg mandated.

When Mayor Bloomberg saw “Balanced Literacy” in action in some NYC elementary schools, he asked the question, “Why can’t all NYC kids have this opportunity?” Bloomberg made it happen during the past four years, mandating the Balanced Literacy approach in all NYC public schools and working with several organizations, including The Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College, Columbia University to implement the Balanced Literacy philosophy.

Balanced Literacy is not an “out-of-the-box” curriculum:

• It is an approach to teaching literacy in which teachers make decisions about instruction based on assessment and needs of individual students, balancing the various essential components of literacy instruction (i.e., meaning, structure, visual aspect of language) in response to particular students’ needs, rather than based upon a pre-determined format such as a basal reader.

• It is differentiated, dynamic, and it requires three structures, all of which NYC schools put into place: Writing Workshop, Reading Workshop, and in- and out- of-school professional development for teachers and principals that is rigorous and sustained over a several-year period.

• It is the engine of school reform because it creates communities of learners among teachers, students and administrators. This mode of differentiated instruction requires teachers to know every student as a learner. Teachers that were once isolated in their classrooms become colleagues that learn and problem solve together. The strength of community makes the often painful process of reform possible and more effective.

• It takes many years for paradigms and cultures around literacy and teaching to shift in any school. In NYC, scores remained flat in the first year of the mandate, but rose sharply in the second year.

I urge you to consider this model as a mandate for DCPS.

Moving Forward:

• Build upon relationships that are already in place. In partnership with The Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College, Columbia University, 15 DCPS elementary schools implemented the first stage of Balanced Literacy-Writers Workshop in SY 2005-2006, with 9 additional schools starting this September (Cohort I & II).

• Eliminate ‘program-itis’: Too many reading/literacy programs make it impossible to collect evidence to evaluate the effectiveness of any one particular initiative.

• Establish a program to grow high implementing DCPS teachers of Balanced Literacy into staff developers that can support a mandate.

• Ask NYC’s Chancellor Klein to name a mentor from one of his regions to support the growth of this work in DCPS.

Lisa Bernstein, Education Committee-Fenty Pre-Transition Team lisabern@bigplanet.com

Fixing DC schools

The article by T. Robinson Ahlstrom in Sunday's Washington Post (Outlook-Close to Home, 10/29/06) echoes some of my own sentiments.  The school board should be abolished and  replaced with a Department of Education accountable to the mayor.  After that the first priority should be to repair the school buildings.  Today's Post described yet another embarrassing condition of disrepair at Roosevelt High School-- the second time a DCPS sports team has had to deal with such a condition this fall. 

While repairing school facilities will not necessarily lead to higher test scores-- the only measure of educational attainment that currently gets any attention-- a clean, safe, attractive environment is a critical signal that education is now a top priority in the District of Columbia. No one should have to spend their days in buildings where plumbing doesn't work, ceilings are falling, and floors are buckling.  With newly repaired and refurbished buildings, it will be an easier task to get those who spend time in them to feel ownership and take pride in those environments.  School should be a "sacred space", not in the religious sense, but as a special place of learning and development. Having facilities that are in good repair is essential to creating a positive attitude toward school, on the part of both students and teachers.

Ahlstrom's suggestions about making DCPS a model for the nation and creating a National Center for School Leadership are spot on.  This is a more challenging task than repairing the school buildings.  But there are plenty of experts whose ideas should be considered-- scholars such as Paul Hill and Theodore Sizer, for instance, and school turnaround specialists such as Parker Land in Richmond.  At the same time, a serious review of curriculum programs should include those at charter schools, private and parochial schools and public schools with an eye toward creating an approach that borrows from the best of these.

Input from the community in re-shaping the schools is also essential, and this input should include the ideas and views of young people, the ultimate "consumers" of what the schools have to offer.  If Mr. Fenty can apply his constiuent service approach to fixing the schools-- and I have every confidence that he can-- we will be well on our way to getting the DC education system to meet the needs of our community.

One-pager on early care and education

UPDATED -- Pre-K for All, the First Step in Viable, District-Wide Education Reform

Fixing DC's schools begins by ensuring every child has access to high quality early learning opportunities, including free pre-kindergarten. In fact, no remediation program or intervention has been proven to work more effectively to close the achievement gap, than quality pre-k. While the District's current system of early childhood education has been improving over the past several years, we remain far from our common vision of universal school readiness. We will continue to fail in education reform until we realize the critical nature of providing high-quality programs for all children to ensure they enter Kindergarten ready to learn and prepared for success in life. 

Keep reading for "Barriers and Challenges to Universal School Readiness" and "A Vision with Clear Objectives". . . .Download fenty_ece_onepagerupdated.doc