Although signs of academic success are unknown—this year’s round of standardized test scores has not been released—Green Dot has won praise for making the campus safer and sparking significant increases in attendance and student retention rates. That was enough for Rhee to consider Green Dot as a possible partner.
Parents often will pick a charter school over the neighborhood school for reasons of safety or class size or a host of other tangibles. This makes sense. Though we in the policy community focus on achievement, new charters often perform no better (and sometimes worse) than the neighborhood school. This lag is usually made up for after a few years, but in the meantime, parents often play up the other benefits of a well-run charter school, like feeling relatively certain their child’s classmate won’t bring a gun to school. It also makes sense that school safety would be an important factor for Rhee as chancellor of a notoriously violent school district. She’s made some steps to reign in the most troubled schools, but there’s still a long way to go. But this also underscores something else that Rhee apparently believes in: you can’t have a good school until it’s well-run, or put another way, student achievement depends on good management. Steve Barr’s Locke Senior High School takeover might not have produced stellar test scores yet, but it has whipped the management of the school into shape. And there’s something to be said for that.
The Fordham Institute is unique in the school reform sector in that we have offices in both Washington, DC and Ohio. From the Buckeye State vantage point, we see a growing disconnect between reformers inside the Beltway and those toiling in the states. The federal government is flush with money (granted it is borrowed!) and there is big talk about reform; while the states are broke and in the middle of brutal budget cutting that is threatening to set back school reform efforts big time.
Exhibit A: Washington, DC - U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan told a gathering at the National Charter School Conference last week in Washington that now is the time to turn around the country’s 5,000 lowest performing schools, and he said the federal government has $5 billion to spend on this effort over the next two years. Sec. Duncan and the President are actively encouraging more charter schools, dramatic school turnaround efforts, common academic standards across the states, and other reforms backed up by federal “Race to the Top Dollars.”
Exhibit B: Columbus, OH - the General Assembly and the Governor are struggling to cut $3.2 billion from the state’s $54 billion budget. At serious risk are all manner of recent school reform - charter schools (especially cybercharters), STEM schools and associated STEM programs, Early College Academies, the state’s innovative value-added assessment system, and any real talk of improving the state’s standards and accountability systems. Education reform in Ohio has been consumed by the state’s fiscal crisis. Reforms and reformers are now pitted against the status quo and long-established educational interests in a life-and-death struggle for scarce dollars. The reformers are apt to lose big time in the Buckeye State.
The story from Ohio is playing out elsewhere across the country as state’s struggle with massive holes in their operating budgets. Today’s Wall-Street Journal reported that “personal income-tax collections, which account for about 36 percent of state revenues, dropped 26 percent in this year’s January-April period.... Sales-tax revenues have swooned, leaving 48 states with a combined revenue shortfall of $166 billion in the coming fiscal year.”
We are seeing a serious shake-out of school reform efforts in the states. What plays out in state capitals over the next few weeks may very well set the direction for school reform in the United States for the next decade or more. This is despite the valiant efforts of the federal government to try and keep education reform moving in the right direction.
Jordan White, a graduating senior from Georgetown Day in Washington DC, would make any parent proud. She studied AP Psychology and Mandarin Chinese in high school. She organized a school “breakfast club” around her love of orange juice. She received a full scholarship to attend Oberlin College starting in the fall. And for all these accomplishments, Jordan says she’s got the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) to thank. The program provides scholarships for low-income families to send their children to private schools in DC. Congress decided to cancel OSP funding starting in 2010. The program now faces a steep, uphill battle for survival, a fact that hung plainly in the air at last night’s OSP graduation ceremony. Jordan used part of her graduation speech as a plea to keep OSP alive.
“I’d like to say to the decision-makers on Capitol Hill and of the District of Columbia—before any political decisions are made against a program such as this, look at us here today! Talk to us! Listen to us! Hear what we say and feel what we mean!” Jordan said. “More importantly, look toward the future of the children coming up after us who need the same opportunity that we have been given. Every parent and every child should have a choice in education.”
Jordan White, a graduating senior from Georgetown Day, was one of two student speakers during Tuesday’s OSP graduation ceremony at Archbishop Carroll High School in Northeast DC. Jordan will attend Oberlin College on a full scholarship starting in the fall.
Koueni Tchamambe, who just graduated from Archbishop Carroll High School, gets help with his tie from Upoma Uddin before Tuesday night’s graduation ceremony. Koueni has been accepted at Virginia State University, where he hopes to study to become a pharmacist.
The audience gives OSP graduates a standing ovation as they walk into the auditorium.
Shirley-Ann Tomdio, a graduating eighth grader from Sacred Heart School, chats onstage after giving her graduation speech. She will attend Georgetown Visitation this fall. “Sacred Heart, my Principal, my family, my hard work, and the Opportunity Scholarship all made going to Georgetown Visitation possible,” she said. “The D.C. OSP is important to me because without it I wouldn’t be able to receive the best education possible. It should continue so that my sister, brother and other students get the same chance. Every child should get the chance to go to a good school.”
Jesus Martinez, father of graduating eighth grader Gabriela Martinez, takes pictures as his daughter walks across the stage to accept her certificate.
About 50 OSP students participated in Tuesday night’s graduation celebration.
Francisco Garcia Diaz, a graduating 8th grader from San Miguel School, poses with his certificate, his mom Alma Diaz and his brother Julian Garcia Diaz after the graduation celebration. “Three years he’s in the scholarship program,” said Alma Diaz. “He’s high in mathematics and reading and science. Before, he had Ds, Cs, Fs. Now, I’m very proud.”
Sharon Stanley, sister of OSP student Jasmine Stanley, laughs with her family during the reception after the graduation ceremony.
There was a time during my government days when we were working on the budget and trying to navigate a sticky situation regarding DC’s education funding and the Opportunity Scholarship Program. Representing DC in the talks was Dan Tangherlini, DC’s city administrator. He turned out to be extremely smart and cagey, the savviest negotiator I had ever come across. In the end, we didn’t get what we wanted most, and he did. It was a real lesson for me.
People matter.
Had anyone else been negotiating for DC, I am certain that the results would have been completely different. That he was at the table made all the difference.
I was reminded of those events by this Post article. Tangherlini has been tapped by the Obama administration to be an Assistant Secretary in the Treasury Department. I wish him well; I’m sure he’ll be an asset.
But it’s another reminder of the staffing situation at the Department of Education. They are administering the largest-ever influx of federal education funds, crafting an NCLB ESEA reauthorization, and so much more, and they still aren’t fully staffed.
Moreover, they haven’t brought in as many proven reformers as some of us had thought/hoped they would. Schnur is gone. Johnston stayed in Colorado. Rotherham is still Eduwonking. The deputy position went to a manager. There’s still no Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education. There’s no chief of staff.
As the Tangherlini episode shows, the substance of staffing isn’t just a DC parlor game—who’s in and who’s out—it deeply influences policy. I have to wonder if the botched handling of the OPS evaluation, the ARRA implementation missteps, and some other incidents might have worked out better had ED had more folks in place.
Obviously Secretary Duncan is talented and cares about kids; there’s no doubt about that. And there are a number of very good people around him. But ED faces many difficult challenges, and they need these remaining seats filled swiftly and well.
The US Senate held a hearing on the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program today. Watch the video here.
The parent and student testimony is moving. You can’t help but be touched when hearing these young people talk about what would’ve happened to them were it not for the program.
Kudos to Sen. Lieberman for chairing the meeting and Sens. Collins, Ensign, and Voinovich for their comments. Interestingly and sadly, Sen. Lieberman said that Mayor Fenty, Chancellor Rhee, and union leaders were invited to testify, and they all declined.
Disappointing news from the Obama administration today. While the President’s budget will include funding for the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, it will formalize the Department’s recent decision to not allow any new students to join. The proposal would permit all current students to continue in their private schools until they graduate from high school and remove the congressional language requiring program reauthorization before any more money can be spent.
For supporters of this program, this is just about as unfortunate a decision as could have been expected. The only worse alternative—defunding the program immediately and forcing existing participants out of their schools—would’ve been cruel and political untenable.
Assuming Congress approves the President’s proposal, the program won’t die immediately. It will just wither on the vine.
Let’s not forget, a Department evaluation just found that program participants are learning more.
Yesterday on a mid-afternoon run to CVS, I walked past a bus on the corner of 16th and K streets. Guess what was on the side? An advertisement for the now defunct DC Opportunity Scholarship program. How depressing.
Flypaper readers know we’ve been all over the saga of the District of Columbia’s federally-funded “Opportunity Scholarship Program” in recent weeks, but I’ve yet to give the latest twists the proper Reform-o-Meter treatment. How to view Arne Duncan’s spin of the IES evaluation report, and his decision to rescind scholarship offers to 200 students not yet in the program?
Mostly, I see this as a story of opportunities missed or squandered. That’s not meant as an indictment of the Obama Administration’s overall performance; with very little staff, too little time, and an enormous stimulus bill to implement, Arne Duncan and his team are doing a respectable job of keeping it all together at the Education Department. When it comes to the voucher program, however, they’ve made some early mistakes. The key question now is whether they will learn from them—and possibly salvage a valuable little program that is accomplishing some of their major objectives.
Their first blunder was underestimating the symbolic importance that both sides of the school choice wars assign to the D.C. program. It’s a little bit like Vietnam: on the surface, it’s small and strategically insignificant. But both proponents and opponents seem to believe in a sort of domino theory of school choice. If vouchers make it in the nation’s capital, goes the thinking, they might spread like kudzu to other locales.
How else to explain the conflagration over an initiative that serves fewer than 2,000 students? Why else would the National Education Association send Democratic members of Congress a thinly veiled threat that they had better kill this program or face the music? How else to explain the heat that certain Congressional Democrats put on Duncan et al. after the Secretary voiced his sensible view that the students currently in the program should be allowed to remain in their schools? It looks so petty and mean-spirited that it’s hard even to understand unless these folks truly believe that D.C. is a harbinger of things to come.
The Obama team’s second (related) mistake was to suppose that it could triangulate between the position of Democrats on the hill (”kill the program”) and voucher supporters (”extend it”) and somehow oblige everyone. (As Ruth Marcus wrote this week, the President has yet to pick a real battle with the Hill, but needs to do so soon. She channels Machiavelli: “it’s better to be feared than loved.”) They seemed surprised that choice opponents on the Hill were strongly displeased by their statements about protecting current students. And then they got rolled over when Congress passed its Omnibus Appropriations Bill (which Obama dutifully signed) without any provision to help even current scholarship recipients.
Now they have tacked left again, trying to appease Congressional appropriators by rescinding scholarship offers to 200 low-income families who thought their children would be attending private schools come fall. I’m not sure whether that placated the Hill, but it sure did enrage the right. Now, on this issue, Team Obama is neither feared nor loved, and rightly so.
But perhaps the biggest mistake—and greatest missed opportunity—came when the program’s evaluation results were released a few weeks ago. President Obama and his team had a chance to live up to their rhetoric about following the evidence. Remember that the President said while campaigning that “If there was any argument for vouchers, it was ‘Alright, let’s see if this experiment works,’ and if it does, then whatever my preconceptions, my attitude is you do what works for the kids. I will not allow my predispositions to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn. ” Well, now the D.C. findings are in, and they are mostly positive, which is unusual for gold-standard studies. So why not “do what works” for kids?
I suspect that he and Duncan and their teams didn’t even pause to consider whether they should adjust their position on vouchers (they’re busy these days, remember). Instead, they plowed ahead with the spin that “students from low performing schools, the program’s target group, continued to show no improvement.” Well if that’s the standard, Mr. Secretary, let me warn you that about 200 of your Department’s programs (in other words, virtually all of them) don’t measure up. Do you plan to axe them, too?
Now Messrs. Obama and Duncan find themselves in a Vietnam-style quagmire. They’ve crushed the hopes and dreams of 200 low-income D.C. families while staking out the otherwise-reasonably-decent position that 1700 youngsters already in the program should be protected until they graduate. Yet even that outcome is in doubt, as the program’s enemies strive to kill it outright. Meanwhile, both are vulnerable to personal attacks, with the President’s children in an elite private school and the Secretary admitting that he chose a (public) school outside the District for his daughter because he didn’t want to “jeopardize my own children’s education.”
The time has come for both to learn some key lessons. First: though it might look like a teapot, the D.C. voucher program is capable of causing a major tempest that isn’t going to end anytime soon. Second: if you want Congress to cough up funds to keep the program’s current students in their schools, it’s going to take a fight—an affirmative fight by you in defense of vouchers that work for poor kids! And third: don’t fear such a fight, because the facts—not to mention a compelling human narrative—are on your side.
So what does this mean for the Reform-o-Meter? I’m going to be generous and give this a “Cold” rating, rather than “Ice Cold,” only because I think the Administration is sincere when it claims that it’s trying to do right by the 1,700 students already in the program. What do you think, Flypaper readers? Are you willing to be so generous?
Jay P. Greene had an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. He talks about the problems that charter schools are facing in New York:
With voucher programs facing termination in Washington, D.C., and heavy regulation in Milwaukee, the teachers unions have now set their sights on charter schools. Despite their proclamations about supporting charters, the actions of unions and their allies in state and national politics belie their rhetoric.
In New York, charters are facing, among other things, budget cuts and strangulation by “red tape.” What does this mean for education reform in general?
Vouchers made the world safe for charters by drawing union fire. But now that the unions have the voucher threat under control, charters are in trouble.
Kurt Schmoke, the former mayor of Baltimore, has been chosen to mediate contract negotiations between Michelle Rhee and the DC teachers union. Schmoke, who’s been the law school dean at Howard University since 2003, had a mixed record on education (by his own account and many others) while in Baltimore. One interesting wrinkle: Rhee was an elementary school teacher in Baltimore during Schmoke’s tenure.
As a Maryland guy, I’ve wondered about Schmoke’s possible reemergence into public/political life. Maybe this is the beginning of something?
Mike points out that the Obama administration isn’t in full control of the fate of the D.C. voucher program, as the appropriations bill funded only current students—and, we are to assume, the program’s opponents on the Hill could have cut that funding too were Duncan or Obama to fight them. To which I say: hogwash. If President Obama wanted to pick a fight with Democrats on the appropriations committee (starting with Dave Obey, presumably), he could—and my money would be on Obama. Imagine the post-partisan, reformer, “change-we-can-believe-in” bona fides he would earn by standing up for this program—he would look tough, rational, compassionate, and consistent with his campaign message all at once, while his opponents would look petty and partisan. And imagine the PR nightmare Congress would face if it actually ended the program and sent current students packing.
This is a fight Obama could win easily if he wanted to pick it. The fact is, he chose not to pick it, and he and his administration shouldn’t get a pass for that.
With all of the attention directed toward the DC voucher program, we could be misled into believing that this represents the current and future of the private school choice debate. Not so.
For my money, this story from Cleveland captures the logical—and exciting—next phase of not only choice but also urban education reform.
A few of the city’s highest performing charter operators have teamed up with a high-performing Catholic school in an effort to create more great schools and collaboratively tackle issues like human capital. Their motivation? They don’t care who runs excellent schools serving poor kids; they just want more of them.
This story is even more intriguing because the consortium is planning to apply for a slice of the $650 million “scale up what works” fund in the stimulus package.
While the ARRA’s legislative language forbids using funding for private school vouchers, it doesn’t prohibit innovative ideas like this one, where funds would be used to help a team of traditional public, charter public, and private schools create more high-quality seats. As a matter of fact, groups of schools are eligible applicants for this pot of money.
I hope this Cleveland group follows through and applies, and I hope they are joined by similar multi-sector groups from other cities. But how would the Department view such a proposal?
Yes it’s innovative, aimed at disadvantaged communities, promises benefits for under-served kids, and seeks to scale up successful models. But it also engages a faith-based entity, which is still anathema to some.
I suspect that right now a team at ED is working on the application and guidance for this program. They’ll need to address this matter: Can a religious school be a partner in a proposal?
Let’s hope that their answer is a resounding, “Yes,” and that they make clear that this program is designed to replicate what works and help America’s low-income urban students, not favor one school sector over another.
That would not only look good in departmental guidance, it’s a solid principle for urban education reform writ large.
Former DC mayor Anthony Williams and former DC councilman Kevin Chavous channel Malcolm X in a Post op-ed on the DC voucher programs.
We should learn from the legacy of Malcolm X and the civil rights movement. In the long term, let us continue to reform, recalibrate and reenergize our education system. In the short term, however, we cannot afford to lose any more children to bad schooling. We must be willing to allow innovation and creativity to flourish so that all children benefit today. “By any means necessary” is a calling. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program is a necessary means of educating children who otherwise would be lost; it must be maintained and allowed to flourish.
I’ve previouslystatedmystrongsupport for the DC voucher program and derided the Secretary’s use of what I believe to be the weakest argument against the program. However, in recent days severalreputable outlets have gone farther, charging that the Department did something underhanded, putting its thumb on the scale during the debate over the program’s continuation.
The accusation is that the Secretary and his top brass knew that the Institute of Education Sciences final evaluation of the program was finished (showing positive results) but sat on the report, not releasing it until after the debate was over and Congress had effectively killed the program.
From my time on the inside, I find this charge unlikely. Here’s why:
IES is a largely autonomous research entity, not an arm of the Secretary’s office. In a number of cases, like this one, it is charged by Congress with conducting independent evaluations of important initiatives.
When it is finished with a study, IES leaders typically brief the leadership of the Department on the findings and then the report is released directly. It may take days to do so, maybe even a week or so, but I’d be very surprised if months elapsed between the Secretary’s being made aware of the final results and its public distribution.
Furthermore, this report was expected this spring, not earlier. Previous iterations of the study (the interim versions) were released in the spring. Last year, while at the White House, I was dying to know the results of the last preliminary version (the “impacts after two years ” edition), but we didn’t get notice until just before its public release.
Finally, sitting on this report for months would’ve gone beyond dirty pool; it would’ve been risky. Had IES believed that its independent work was being delayed for political reasons, it could’ve leaked the study. Also since this was a congressionally mandated evaluation, delaying its release and presentation to Congress would’ve gotten the Department in hot water.
I can’t speak to the other related charges being made—that the Department was avoiding the WSJ’s requests for comment or that departmental staffers were forbidden to discuss the report. And there is of course the possibility that I’m wrong and that the report was inappropriately buried. If that were the case, we’d be within our rights to seethe.
But at this point, I think that’s unlikely, and until we have clear evidence of the Department’s misbehavior, let’s argue this case on the merits.
Kerri and I worked together at the Department, and she’s a great choice for this position. As Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, Kerri oversaw the work-horse office of the Department. In addition to working closely with state departments of education every day on accountability issues, Kerri’s shop was also in charge of lots of important policy matters, like the NCLB regs, the differentiated accountability pilot, the growth models program and more. She also held various other positions in ED over the years, so she’s very well-suited for this new job. I wish her well.
But given the importance of the Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, it’s more than a little curious that the current administration still hasn’t picked someone for this post. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they certainly have been busy, and let’s assume that they’ve identified someone and they’re just waiting for the vetting process to play out.
But if they haven’t made a choice yet, here’s my two cents: With NCLB/ESEA reauthorization looming, OESE’s broad scope of work and daily contacts with state chiefs, Secretary Duncan’s relative newness to the DC scene, and the general benefits associated with placing a recognized reformer in a senior, Senate-confirmed post, they ought to choose someone with DC standing and savvy, state policy experience, broad K-12 expertise, and a track record of pushing innovative solutions. Hmmm...
This weekend’s Washington Post offered an anecdotal look at DC’s Capital Gains Program, aka Washington’s own pay kids for performance system. The program has its logistical issues, but one of great significance has cropped up: theft. Apparently some students at one DC middle school have made a habit of stealing checks from backpacks and lockers. Capital Gains partners with SunTrust Bank, which puts on money management classes for students. But where’s the accompanying ethics curriculum? The pay for performance experiment intends to teach students the value of working hard. But do these programs do enough to close the door on the other options, like, say, stealing from someone who worked just a bit harder? Students might not be gaining an appreciation of learning for learning’s sake, but they could be learning larger life lessons about good citizenship. I suspect that KIPP schools that employ a reward structure don’t have issues with theft. After all, the schools promote a general honor code and high standard of good behavior. KIPP strives to produce students who are both good learners and productive members of society. Public schools are often a far cry from KIPP, but if they’re already paying students to learn, why not turn check distribution into a teachable moment about ethics?
It’s short on details, but yesterday’s White House press briefing transcript offers a tidbit about President Obama and the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program:
Q: Robert, what does the President think about the D.C. scholarship program? The spending bill zeroes out and cuts the money for it.
MR. GIBBS: The President—as I’ve said I think last week, the President doesn’t believe that vouchers are a long-term answer to our educational problems and the challenges that face our public school system, where the vast majority of students are educated in this country. The President laid out a fairly robust education reform plan yesterday. But the President I think understands that there are—it wouldn’t make sense to disrupt the education of those that are in that system, and I think we’ll work with Congress to ensure that a disruption like that doesn’t take place.
Q: So will he propose in his full budget to restore that funding for those kids already in the program?
MR. GIBBS: I’d certainly look through the budget stuff, but I think, whether it’s in the budget or in the appropriations process, that we look for a way to work with—work with Congress to ensure, as I said, that disruption doesn’t take place.
The Senate passed its $410 billion budget bill yesterday and rejected an amendment that would have restored funding for the DC voucher program (vote was 58-39). This means that the 1,700 students enrolled in the scholarship program will likely have to return to the failing schools they left. Sen. John Ensign (R) offered the amendment, while Sen. Richard Durbin (D) provided the anti-voucher rhetoric. Durbin’s justification for shutting the program down?
“Those on the other side” have “completely given up on D.C. Public Schools” and Mr. Ensign’s amendment “would further the schools’ destruction.”
Oh please. Giving 1,700 poor kids the option to leave their failing schools means destruction for DC public schools? I’d say we need to be more worried about destroying kids than institutions. If anything, high-quality choices strengthen the DC system. Forcing students to return to dismal schools that don’t meet their needs is hardly right by them. Patricia William, parent of a voucher student, understands this all too well: “It’s not a competition between public schools, charter and private. Not all schools work the same for all children and we, as parents, should have the right to choose the school that works for them.” Mrs. William, let’s hope you get to continue exercising that choice for your child. But unless Congress steps in to reauthorize the program—which some say is highly unlikely—your choices will dwindle quickly after this year.
The Fordham Institute is unique in the school reform sector in that we have offices 
With all of the attention directed toward the DC voucher program, we could be misled into believing that this represents the current and future of the private school choice debate. Not so.
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