A Plan for Evaluating the District of Columbia's Public Schools From Impressions to Evidence (2011) / Chapter Skim
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3 The District of Columbia and the Reform Act: Historical Overview
3 The District of Columbia and the Reform Act: Historical Overview
Pages 31-46
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From page 31... ...
Two changes during the 1990s significantly altered authority patterns in the city's public schools. In 1995, the DC Public Charter School Board was established, which led to rapid growth in the number of charter schools: 2 in 1996, 19 more in 1997, and 10 more in 1998 (Hart, 2000)
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From page 32... ...
Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that while some past governance structures may have turned out to be ineffective, parts of their reform agendas mirrored those being implemented under PERAA. Virtually all of the changes were prompted in part by the publication of myriad reports, commissioned by civic groups or other third parties, which were critical of the public schools.
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From page 33... ...
Despite the consolidated board, the district had two superintendents, one for the white and one for the black schools. The District's public schools remained segregated for the next 80 years, until the 1954 Brown v.
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From page 34... ...
However, that policy did not substantially change the racial composition of schools that had been part of the all-black system. Enrollment for these schools averaged 97 percent black students for each year between 1954 and 1960, and nearly two-thirds of the schools that had been legally restricted to white students before 1954 became predominantly black by 1960, as white families moved out of both the public schools and the inner city (Henig et al., 1999)
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From page 35... ...
Skelly Wright ordered major changes to equalize educational opportunities, including integrating teachers and busing students to relieve overcrowding in majority black schools.2 Parents United, an advocacy group organized in 1980 by the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, initially worked to mobilize parents from around the city to rally in support of additional resources for the public schools. Over time, Parents United depended less on mass mobilization and more on research and legal action.
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From page 36... ...
SCHOOL POLITICS AND THE LEGACY OF CONGRESSIONAL CONTROL Washington, DC's unique status as the nation's capital limited local political power and authority for most of its history, with Congress determining how the city was to be governed and appointing its leaders. In the years before the Home Rule Act of 1973, the local government was essentially an agency of the federal government.
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From page 37... ...
. Subsequent investigations found that the school district had been able, through accounting techniques, to obscure hiring in excess of what 4 The newly elected school board became involved in what professional educators would see as micromanaging or even meddling in administrative affairs, such as calling on principals to reassign teachers or to accept a particular student transfer (Henig, 2004)
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From page 38... ...
Early in its tenure, the Control Board issued a report whose assessment of DCPS sounded eerily like others issued over the past 30 years (District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority, 1996, para.
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From page 39... ...
The Control Board also replaced the superintendent.7 Once again, tensions between local political focus as well as managerial effectiveness were evident, and at least part of the reason lay in the District's unique jurisdictional relationship with Congress. WEAK CENTRAL OFFICE LEADERSHIP AND CAPACITY Although it is not possible to empirically demonstrate causality, the racial history of DCPS and its changing governance models at least partly explain a major characteristic of the system's evolution, the limited administrative capacity of the central district office.
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From page 40... ...
In 2005, 20 percent of DCPS students were enrolled in special education.8 In comparison with other jurisdictions, DC identifies significantly more students as having emotional disturbance, multiple disabilities, and mental retardation, and is much more likely to educate them in segregated public and private 8 Nationwide,13 percent of public school students received special education services in 2007-2008 (Aud et al., 2010)
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From page 41... ...
Individuals and groups concerned about the district's problems offered a variety of solutions, including attempts to achieve a more equal distribution of resources to schools, filing of lawsuits, and efforts to elect or appoint members to the school board who would focus on DCPS as a whole and seek to implement reforms that reached into the classroom. However, by the late 1990s, as the Control Board era was coming to a close, a number of reformers concluded that the problems of DCPS went considerably beyond feuding school board members and superintendents, that they were structural in nature.
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From page 42... ...
Fenty had made improving the public schools a primary 9 The move to change the board structure gained momentum because of the impending changeover from the Control Board, but also partly because of the very public bickering among board members that included public insults and a move to replace the sitting board president, who then threatened to take her opponents to court (Wilgoren, 1999)
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From page 43... ...
Passed by the Council of the District and then ratified by Congress, the Public Education Reform Amendment Act: • established a Department of Education, led by a deputy mayor for education; • redesigned the State Education Office, converting the position of chief state schools officer to state superintendent of education; • converted the position of DC school superintendent to DC chancel lor, now appointed by the mayor with the advice and consent of the city council, and granted the chancellor responsibility for the overall operations of the public school system; • tasked the new Department of Education with various planning, promotion, coordination, and supervision duties, along with over sight of the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and the Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization; • established the Office of the Ombudsman for Public Education to provide parents and residents an entity to which they could express their concerns; • created the Interagency Collaboration and Services Integration Commission to coordinate the services of all agencies that serve children and youth; • significantly altered the duties and authority of the former Board of Education, which was renamed the State Board of Education, and removed it from the local, day-to-day operation of the school system; • authorized the Public Charter School Board as the sole chartering and entity in the District of Columbia; and • mandated a 5-year independent evaluation to determine, among other things, whether sufficient progress in public education has been achieved to warrant continuation of the provisions and requirements of PERAA or whether a new law and a new system of education should be enacted. We turn in Chapter 4 to an examination of the city's responses to this legislation.
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From page 44... ...
. A Curriculum Audit of the District of Columbia Public Schools.
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From page 45... ...
D.C. schools called a failure, control board blasts system as it readies takeover plan.
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