Today the GAO released an evaluation of District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Long known as one of the worst-performing districts in the country, it has been the site of radical change in the last two years ever since Mayor Adrian Fenty took over the schools and hired Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Today’s GAO report is [...]
All Posts Tagged: 'DCPS'
Standards
The DC Board of Elections publishes a voter guide that includes brief statements from each of the candidates. Here’s one from a Ward Eight candidate for the State Board of Education. Ward Eight is the poorest area in the city.
The statement of a candidate that declares my information deemed necessary to protect the qualified experiences [...]
Helping
A couple of weeks ago, Eduwonkette wrote a long snarky post about job openings in the NYC and DC school chancellor’s offices, challenging her readers to propose absurd titles like “Senior Finder of Efficiencies,” “Senior Blackberry Correspondent” etc. It included the following:
Do all superintendents of big districts get drivers? I had no idea. But just [...]
Birth of the Cool (New Teacher Pay Policy)
One of the fun things about living in Washinton, DC is watching the Fenty/Rhee school reform juggernaut in real time. After decimating the bloated central office bureaucracy, closing low-enrollment schools, and generally bringing a sense of urgency, leadership, and strategic thinking that DCPS has long lacked, the chancellor is now moving directly to the teacher [...]
Worth Repeating
Matt Yglesias makes a point that can’t be made often enough (we make it here at least once a year): when you compare urban school districts on a common measure (the NAEP) and break the numbers out by socioeconomic status, some are much better than others. Which, to my mind, suggests that it’s reasonable to [...]
Noted Without Comment (Okay, Some)
In complaining about the recent firing of 98 employees from the DCPS central office, which will save the taxpayers some $6 million per year and increase the school system’s phenomenally low student-to-bureaucrat ratio from a pre-firing level of less than 50-to-1, City Councilman Harry Thomas, who voted against giving Chancellor Rhee the authority to lay [...]
Grover Norquist is Right
So I’m sitting at home last night catching up on Tivoed episodes of The Daily Show, and come upon Tuesday night’s interview with uber government-hater Grover Norquist, who was flogging his new book. He tried to be funny–a fatal mistake when you’re a guest on a comedy show–and then offered a bunch of lame generalities [...]
Dancing Lemons in the D.C. Central Office
According to an article in today’s Washington Post, D.C.’s new Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is looking to restructure the D.C. school system central office, including firing many central office employees. If you read the Post’s series of articles back in June about the jaw-dropping poor management and bad behavior in the D.C. central office, this [...]
Too Few Teachers, Too Many Consultants?
The Post ran two education stories yesterday, both unsatisfying, albeit in different ways. (Although it’s possible that my mood was altered after reading that great/scary profile of the Vice President…)
The front-page piece, about teacher shortages, reads like the prologue to a good article about big-picture teacher policy issues. I just wish they had written the [...]
Voucher Use in Washington Wins No Praise from Students
The title of this entry is a wordplay off Cato’s Adam Schaeffer’s latest post, where he criticizes the NY Times and Washington Post coverage of the recent DC voucher program study, arguing the media outlets made too much of the report’s conclusion that voucher students fared no better than public school counterparts in the first [...]
Still More on the Progessive Solution
This back-and-forth between James Forman and Leo Casey, picking up on the conversation Sara and I started last week on the lack of progressive solutions to dysfunctional urban school systems, includes some worthwhile posts on both sides. Leo’s distinctions between corruption, patronage, and incompetence are legit, and he’s right to disparage silver-bullet free market solutions–although [...]
Priorities
Even as D.C. politicos and residents are trying to decide what they think about Mayor Fenty’s new pick to run the schools, Michelle Rhee, today Fenty’s office announced his pick for another important position: D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission CEO Allen Y. Lew will head up a new, independent facilities authority created by the school [...]
The Absent Progressive Voice
Thanks to Sara for bringing a much-needed historical perspective to the question of the progressive role in education reform. Her post about Jonah Goldberg’s blindered anti-public education rant, keyed to the Post series about DCPS incompetence, underscores my point–while conservatives like Goldberg may have foolish things to say about this problem, liberals too often have [...]
Let’s Not Do Away with Public Education
It’s hard to know where to start on conservative pundit Jonah Goldberg’s recent column arguing that the U.S. ought to “do away with” public schools. Goldberg comes to this conclusion based on the Washington Post’s recent series focusing on the horrible state of the District of Columbia Public Schools–which is sort of like concluding we [...]
Where’s the Progressive Solution?
Day two of the Post’s exhaustive series on the decades-long failure of DC Public Schools traces the history of constant leadership turnover and unfulfilled reform efforts. It also features more examples of corruption, recalcitrant bureaucracy and mind-boggingly inept management, such as this from former superintendant Arlene Ackerman:
Ackerman obtained extra federal money and pressed ahead with [...]
Nightmare on the Potomac
A few years ago, I took a tour of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s castle outside of Prague (if you’ve seen The Illusionist, a lot of the scenes were shot there). After a while, it became apparent that our tour guide, while friendly, polite, and knowledgeable, was also completely insane. Not “kind of eccentric” insane but “I [...]
Hot for Mayors
Edspresso, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and the Chalkboard all have the vapor’s over Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s hopes to take over that city’s troubled schools and expand school choice (specifically, vouchers and recruiting a KIPP school) there. Booker is indeed dreamy, but he does seem to face a daunting uphill battle on [...]
D.C. Governance Reform
The D.C. Council is holding hearings today on Mayor Adrian Fenty’s proposal to take control over governance of the District of Columbia Public Schools. If you’re a real school reform geek, you can watch the hearings here.
You can sense from the hearings that many of the council members are very frustrated with the current system [...]
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.