DC Charter School Performance “Almost” Matches Public Schools

By T. Ultican 9/8/2019

Washington DC charter schools did not significantly outperform public schools or even match them on the last two years of PARCC testing. These disappointing results for the charter school industry come almost a quarter-century after Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich teamed up to bring neoliberal education reform to Washington DC. As their “reforms” accelerated, residents were assured that innovative privatized schools would bring better outcomes and performance gaps would close. None of that happened. Instead, public schools have been disappearing; democratic rights have been taken away; “segrenomics” has motivated change and corruption is rampant.

It is important to note that standardized testing data has only two legitimate outcomes. These tests are not capable of measuring school or teacher quality but they do provide a huge revenue stream for companies like the testing giant Pearson Corporation and they create propaganda for disrupting and privatizing public schools. No group has put more stock in standardized testing data than the charter school industry. Since many charter schools are known to center their curriculum on preparing for tests like PARCC, it is surprising that for the last few years, Washington DC’s public schools have outperformed charters.

The PARCC testing consortium claims that on their 5-point scale, “Students who performed at level 4 and above have demonstrated readiness for the next grade level/course and, eventually, college and career.” The Washington DC, Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is in charge of PARCC testing. OSSE reports the data in terms of percentage of students scoring greater than or equal to 4.

ELA Data from the OSSE Report

Math Data from the OSSE Report

In the data above, DCPS indicates the District of Columbia Public Schools; PCS indicates Public Charter Schools and State indicates the sum of the two. The inappropriately named Public Charter School Board which oversees charter schools in the city asserts, “Public charter schools serve a student body that is equally or at times more disadvantaged, while outperforming traditional public schools.” The data shown above highlights the board’s bias.

Sociologists point out that testing reliability is undermined when employed for accountability. Donald T. Campbell famously observed, “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” The National Assessment of Education Progress (NEAP) testing does not have any high stakes associated with it. The following NEAP data looks at education performance gaps between races.

Red Numbers Indicate the Performance Gaps in 2005 and 2017

The chart above shows that DC performance gaps have shrunk, however, they are still the largest in the nation and more the twice the National Average. An interesting side note; another portfolio district, Denver, also has very high student performance gaps.

The other school choice initiative forced onto DC by Congress is vouchers. In 2003 the Opportunity Scholarship Program was sneaked into an omnibus bill. It authorized $20 million yearly to be spent on vouchers in the district. That means all taxpayers are paying for DC students to attend religious schools.

A recent Center for American Progress report on vouchers observed:

“This analysis builds on a large body of voucher program evaluations in Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio, and Washington, D.C., all of which show that students attending participating private schools perform significantly worse than their peers in public schools! especially in math. A recent, rigorous evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program from the U.S. Department of Education reaffirms these findings, reporting that D.C. students attending voucher schools performed significantly worse than they would have in their original public school.”

With public schools outperforming charter schools, academic performance gaps being the largest in the nation and voucher students falling behind their peers, Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post asks a pertinent question,

“When are school reformers nationwide who have had a love affair with the D.C. model going to give it up?”

Why Don’t Washington DC Residents Merit Democracy?

The US Census Bureau estimates that on July 1, 2018 Wyoming’s populations was 577,737; Alaska’s population was 737,438 and Washington DC’s population was 702,455. Alaska and Wyoming both have two senators and a congressman representing them. Washington DC only has one congressman with limited voting privileges.

In 1968, the US congress gave the residents of Washington DC the right to vote for an 11-member school board. In 1996, the President appointed DC Financial Responsibility and Management Board (the “Control Board”) reduced the school boards power and claimed the authority to appoint the superintendent. In 2000, a DC referendum reduced the school board to 9 members and gave the Mayor the right to appoint 4 members. Finally, in 2007, the DC District Council passed the Public Education Reform Amendment Act (PERAA). This act transferred almost all management authority to the mayor and created the present school system organization.

There are four main Components of the Washington DC school system:

1. The State Board of Education (SBE) which has the city’s only publicly elected school board. It sets some standards but has little actual power.
2. The Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is in charge of testing, data reporting, transportation, and athletics.
3. Public Charter School Board (PCSB) is a 7-member board appointed by the Mayor. It was created in 1996 and is the sole charter school authorizer in Washington DC. It also has the power to rescind a charter.
4. District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) is the public school system serving more than half of Washington DC’s students.

The Mayor has almost dictatorial control over the school system with very little input from teachers, students or parents. When Muriel Bowser was elected Mayor in 2014, she inherited DCPS Chancellor, Kaya Henderson. Bowser appointed Jennifer Niles as her chief education advisor with the title Deputy Mayor for Education. Niles was well known in charter school circles having founded the E. L. Haynes Charter School in 2004. Niles was forced to resign when it came to light that she had made it possible for DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson to secretly transfer his daughter to a preferred school against his own rules.

Bowser has an affinity for education leaders that have gone through Eli Broad’s unaccredited Superintendents Academy. She is a Democratic politician who appreciates Broad’s well documented history of spending lavishly to privatize public-schools. When Kaya Henderson resigned as chancellor in 2016, Antwan Wilson from the Broad Academy class of 2012-2014, was Bowser’s choice to replace her. Subsequent scandal forced the Mayor to replace both the Chancellor and the Deputy Mayor in 2018. For Chancellor, she chose Louis Ferebee who is not only a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, but is also a graduate with the Broad Academy class of 2017-2018. Her new Deputy Mayor choice was Paul Kihn Broad Academy Class of 2014-2015.

With the control Mayor Bowser has over public education, the DCPS webpage now looks more like a vote for Bowser publication than a school information sight.

Image of the DCPS Home Webpage Taken on 9/7/2019

Corruption and “Segrenomics” Infest DC Schools

Noliwe Rooks’ book, Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation and the End of Public Education, says uplifting all children requires racial and economic integration. It warns against separate but equal education. In the book, Professor Rooks defines Segrenomics:

“While not ensuring educational equality, such separate, segregated, and unequal forms of education have provided the opportunity for businesses to make a profit selling schooling. I am calling this specific form of economic profit segrenomics. Segrenomics, or the business of profiting specifically from high levels of racial and economic segregation, is on the rise.”

In the 2018-2019 school year Washington DC had 116 charter schools reporting attendance. Of that number 92 or 82% of the schools reported more than 90% Black and Hispanic students. Thirty charter schools or 26% reported over 98% Black students. These are startlingly high rates of segregation.

Of the 15 KIPP DC charter schools, all of them reported serving 96% or more Black students. According to their 2017 tax filings, seven KIPP DC administrators took home $1,546,494. The smallest salary was $184,310.

In addition to charter school profiteering, the seven people Mayor Bowser appointed to lead the Public Charter School Board seem more like charter industry insiders than protectors of the public trust.

The PCSB Board:

Rick Cruz (Chair) – Chief Executive Officer of DC Prep Public Charter School; formerly worked at the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Teach for America and America’s Promise Alliance. Currently, he is Executive Director of Strategic Partnerships at The College Board

Saba Bireda (Vice Chair) – Attorney at Sanford Hiesler, LLP, served under John King at the U.S. Department of Education.

Lea Crusey (Member): Has served at Teach for America, advisory board for KIPP Chicago, StudentsFirst, and Democrats for Education Reform.

Steve Bumbaugh (Treasurer) – Manager of Breakthrough Schools at CityBridge Foundation.

Ricarda Ganjam (Secretary) – More than 15 years as Management Consultant with Accenture; consulted on KIPP DC’s Future Focus Program.

Naomi Shelton (Member) – Director of Community Engagement at KIPP Foundation.

Jim Sandman (Member): President of the Legal Services Corporation.

It appears that charter schools in DC are starting to cannibalize each other. A relatively new company called TenSquare is using its connections at the PCSB to advance its charter school turnaround service. Last year Rachel M. Cohen wrote “Behind the Consulting Firm Raking In Millions From D.C. Charter Schools; Is TenSquare effective—or just connected?” Cohen’s lengthy article stated, “TenSquare is the brainchild of Josh Kern, who graduated from Georgetown Law School in 2001 and founded Thurgood Marshall Academy—a legal-themed charter high school—immediately afterward.” TenSquare started operating in 2011. Cohen reported:

One common criticism of TenSquare is that its business model is, in a sense, circular: It can effectively hire itself. When TenSquare is brought in to assess a charter’s alleged deficiencies, it is well positioned to recommend that the charter correct those deficiencies with TenSquare’s own turnaround services.

“It’s a racket,” says Jenny DuFresne, a former charter principal whose school contracted with TenSquare. “It’s a bunch of good old boys who are talking to each other and scratching each other’s backs. Like honestly, that’s all it is.”

A disturbing quote concludes Rachel Cohen’s article:

‘“If you talk to charter people off the record around the city, you’ll find most are afraid to speak honestly about TenSquare,’ says Donald Hense, the now-retired founder and CEO of Friendship Public Charter School. ‘But they’re also afraid if they don’t hire the company then their charters will be revoked.”’

End Notes

Well known national foundations that spend for school choice and market reform of education send multiple millions of dollars yearly to advance school privatization in Washington DC. These include the Edythe and Eli Broad Foundation, the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. Locally, David and Katherine Bradley, owners of Atlantic media, have established the CityBridge Foundation. They are also spending seven figures to privatize the city’s public schools.

Spending to Privatize Public Schools in 2017

With all this spending, surprisingly, the expansion of charter schools in Washington DC has slowed or possibly stopped. The promised benefits from privatization have not materialized but community disruption has.

Twitter: @tultican

Tags: CityBridge, DCPS, District of Columbia Public Schools, Eli Broad, KIPP, KIPP DC, Muriel Bowser, PCSB, Public Charter School Board, TenSquare, testing, vouchers