Back to Erich Martel’s main page
|
Major Areas Calendars Columns Directories |
WILL VOUCHERS AND A MAYOR-APPOINTED SCHOOL BOARD IMPROVE THE DC PUBLIC SCHOOLS?by Erich Martel
After several years of talk, the pro-voucher alliance of Mayor Williams, Board of Education President Cooper-Cafritz, Council Education Committee chair Chavous and members of both parties in Congress has built up a momentum putting it on the verge of Senate approval. If enacted and funded, the D.C. Scholarship Bill, as it is called, will fund approximately 1300 vouchers worth up to $7500 each for eligible students to attend private schools. This past week, the mayor proposed another school reform, replacement of the current hybrid elected-appointed Board of Education with one entirely appointed by the mayor or entirely eliminated with the position of school superintendent turned into a cabinet-level position directly responsible to the mayor. Both proposals are responses to continuing and extensive deficiencies in the DC schools. Changes in the governance structure have been instituted in a number of cities, including Chicago, Detroit, New York, Houston and Milwaukee. In Pittsburgh, PA, Mayor Tom Murphy is supporting the recommendation of a blue ribbon panel of business and university leaders ("Keeping the Promise: The Case for Reform in the Pittsburgh Public Schools"; see http://postgazette.com/neigh_city/20030923schoolreport0923p1.asp) to replace its elected Board with an appointed one. DOES IT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE FOR STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT WHETHER A BOARD OF EDUCATION THAT IS APPOINTED, ELECTED, A HYBRID MIX - OR ELIMINATED?The DC Public Schools has experienced all but the last. From 1968, when an appointed board was replaced, until 1996, an 11 member elected board ran the schools. It was replaced in late 1996 by a Board of Trustees, appointed by the Control Board, which was replaced in January 2001 by the current hybrid of five elected and four appointed members. While some improvements have been made, such as the weighted school funding formula, largely the result of research and lobbying by Parents United, substandard education results in vast numbers of students graduating from high school several years behind their peers in reading, math and academic content knowledge. In order to get a truer picture of city-wide DCPS statistics, one must imagine what they would be like if the top three high schools, top three middle/junior high schools and top eight or nine elementary schools were excluded from the system-wide average. WHO REALLY RUNS THE DC SCHOOLS?The Board of Education, regardless of how its members are selected, does not run the schools; the central administration, from superintendent on down, runs the schools and sets policy. Although the Board is charged with the legal authority to make policy decisions regarding teacher certification requirements, standards, curricula and standardized testing requirements, with rare exception, these policies are drawn up by the superintendent's staff and submitted to the Board for approval. When administration staff members claim that an educational program will produce dramatic improvements, they are rarely met with Board members' skepticism or demands to provide documentation of a proposed program's purported success. The purpose of schools is to educate students in the basic skills of reading, writing, grammar and arithmetic/mathematics and the mastery of a core of content knowledge in the sciences, literature, history, geography and civics. The most important links between students and the mastery of prescribed skills and bodies of knowledge are teachers, curricula and learning materials, such as textbooks. The quality of these links depends on the effectiveness, consistency and objectivity of systems of accountability that link the student and the teacher in the classroom to the superintendent and Board. In DCPS, with notable exceptions of some schools and many individual classrooms, there is no accountability. Responsibility is delegated. Those to whom it is delegated rarely face follow-up oversight. The SAT9 standardized tests have become the all purpose ersatz accountability instrument - with principals allowed to take significant blocs of time away from subject area instruction without central administration consequence. Reforms in many school systems, such as DCPS, tend to be limited to a reshuffling of top administrators. When school boards actually question administration staff about curricular matters and demand changes, except for the rare member who actually reads research journals and can tell the difference between anecdotal claims of success and documented research, they are at the mercy of central administration specialists and staff who gather their information from marketing brochures, vendors or consultants. Not only are many of them unaware of what works, they are disinterested in finding out. WHY AN APPOINTED SCHOOL BOARD WON'T CURE DCPSAlthough the mayor apparently believes he can bring about change by appointing people knowledgeable about education or willing to educate themselves about curricular and academic issues, his. Although he considers the Board useless, fit only for reduced authority or entire elimination, he still considers it good enough to be responsible for "policy and curriculum matters"!! In other words, as his offhand comment reveals, the most important factors affecting educational achievement in DCPS, "policy and curriculum matters," will be handed down the chain of mismanagement. The mayor's view is typical of many influential members of the business community who believe that those who have risen to high levels in the field of education have done so on the basis of thorough knowledge of how students learn, what a good curriculum should include, what makes a good teacher, etc. In other words, they assume that rising to the top of the educational leadership ladder is much the same as the process of becoming a skilled physician, attorney or business manager. This is a false and disastrous analogy. Rising to the upper levels in the world of education depends much more on political prowess and managerial expertise than on actual knowledge of what works. Furthermore, public education is dominated by feel-good fads that are accepted by those who have risen to the top and are found in widely circulated education journals. So, when public minded members of the business or professional communities seek to influence public education, in too many instances they end up promoting policies that have no evidence of success. There is also a tendency to take education leaders at their word without realizing that deception and dishonesty is all too common in the world of education. It's a world where failure and incompetence aren't seen as obstacles to advancement. DCPS STANDARDS, CURRICULA and FALISIFIED STUDENT ACADEMIC RECORDSThe responses of the mayor, members of the Board of Education and top DCPS officials to explanations and analyses of the deficient state of DCPS standards and curricula and to reports of falsified student records and ineligible students certified for graduation support my conclusion that the critical elements of learning and achievement do not interest them. What would you do, if you received detailed reports showing that history standards documents (the basis of written curricula) were full of historical gaps, contradictions, meaningless generalizations and grammatical mistakes, failing to give a clear outline of the content to be covered? What would you do, if you received detailed [redacted] reports that roughly 40% of a 50% sample of a high school's 2001 graduates was formally certified for graduation without having met DCMR mandated requirements? The reports on deficient standards were sent via email and hard copy to the superintendent, chief of staff and all members of the Board of Education. Ms. Cooper-Cafritz met with me to review my comments. Ms. Mikuta, co-chair of the Committee on Teaching and Learning, acknowledged receipt of them. No one else responded. And the deficient history standards, that received a grade of "F" from the Fordham Foundation, this past week (and also in 2000), remain in place. Reports on falsified records were sent to all members of the Board of Education, members of Education and Libraries Committee of the Council and the mayor and, of course, each of them is presumed to have read the report published in the Washington Post (6/9/02). Ms. Cooper-Cafritz called that day to enquire; Ms. Mikuta met with me, at my request. At no point was I asked to testify. Neither the mayor nor his staff ever responded to the reports they received. Council members were the only officials to show interest. At the request of At-Large Member Carol Schwartz, Committee Chairman Chavous called a hearing into the reports of grades falsification; active questioning of me and the DCPS Chief of Staff by Members Schwartz, Patterson, Fenty and Chavous. No member of the Board of Education or the mayor's staff attended. If deficient standards (as a result of external evaluations), falsified student records and students falsely certified for graduation do not provoke their concern, what will? What does the mayor think needs to be fixed in order to improve DCPS education? And how likely is the mayor to nominate people for the board or choose a superintendent who will go to the heart of the teaching and learning deficiencies and demand that students and teachers get the best curricula, textbooks and instruction in basic skills and core content? And how likely is the mayor going to institute oversight measures to ensure that those responsible for education are actually doing their jobs? It is precisely this pass-the-buck curriculum policy that is now in the process of wrecking Mayor Bloomberg's promised education reforms in New York City (see the website of the New York City parent activist group HOLD; look for the columns of Andy Wolf and Sol Stern: www.nychold.com). Mayor Williams unwitting comment in the Washington Post and the disinterest of his appointed school board members in examining the deficiencies in the basic teaching mission of the schools suggests that, after his changes in school governance are made, the critical elements needed for improved student achievement will still be in the hands of the same old crowd. VOUCHERSIn the current issue (9/26/03) of the Washington City Paper, journalist Stephanie Mencimer highlights the accountability loopholes in the proposed voucher law:
She correctly points out that the expectation that the "power of the marketplace" will close down bad schools is weak. Parents are unlikely to realize that something is wrong until well into the school year, by which time a lot of learning ground will have been lost. Many of the parents whose children will be eligible for vouchers are the least sophisticated in differentiating well-planned curricula and knowledgeable teacher from glowing but empty promises, the same obstacles in DCPS that they were hoping to escape. |
Send mail with questions or comments to webmaster@dcpswatch.com
Web site copyright ©1997-2003, DCWatch