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Separate and Unequal: The State of the District of Columbia Public Schools Fifty Years After Brown and BollingA Parents United for the D.C. Public Schools Civic Leader Advisory Committee Report March 2005 PrefaceThe following report was prepared for Parents United for the D.C. Public Schools (“Parents Untied”) and a special Civil Leader Advisory Committee by the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the pro bono assistance of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, Foley & Lardner, Fulbright & Jaworski, Steptoe & Johnson, Michael H. Dardzinski, and the Education Project at the Washington School of Law of American University. Parents United is a citywide parent organization established in 1980 to support quality public education in the District of Columbia. Over the years it has collaborated with the Washington Lawyers’ Committee to issue a series of reports on a range of school finance and school reform issues. The most recent analysis, Per Student Cost Figures for the District of Columbia Public School System, was presented to the Mayor at his annual budget hearing in February 2005. The Washington Lawyers’ Committee serves as counsel to Parents United. Mary Levy of Parents United, and Ronald Flagg, Patrick Linehan, and Andrew Fausett, of Sidley Austin Brown & Wood LLP, are the primary authors of this report. Other contributors include Leslie Turner, Allison Binney, Fani C. Geroff, Shannon McManus, Mary Kathryn Meacham, Debra Millenson, Jennifer Saunders and Melissa Sembler of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, Sandra Hanna, Joel Sandler, and Jeff Sullivan of Foley & Lardner LLP, Rena Scheinkman of Fulbright & Jaworski, Barbara Kagan and Linda Stein of Steptoe & Johnson, Michael H. Dardzinski, and Rebecca Freedman and Meagan Christiansen of the Education Project. Parents United would like to express its deep appreciation to the following individuals who served as members of the Civic Leader Advisory Committee: Barry Coburn -- Mr. Coburn is a partner at the law firm
of Coburn & Schertler, LLP SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL: THE STATE OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS FIFTY YEARS AFTER BROWN AND BOLLING
EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThe year 2004 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bolling v. Sharpe invalidating segregated public schooling in the District of Columbia. The Bolling decision came on the heels of the historic decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which held that “separate but equal” had no place in the field of public education, “perhaps the most important function of state and local governments.” Indeed, as the Court in Brown recognized, public education is “a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment.” And by eradicating public school segregation in the District of Columbia, the Court in Bolling hoped to open the door to opportunity through educational excellence for generations of D.C. schoolchildren. Unfortunately the long overdue promises embodied in Brown and Bolling have not been fulfilled for the children of the District of Columbia. The promise of an end to racial isolation remains unrealized. The overwhelming majority of African-American students in District of Columbia public schools attend schools populated almost solely by other African-American students; 78% of African-American students attend schools where African-Americans comprise 90% or more of the student body. Nor has the promise of educational equity been kept. Schooling in the District of Columbia is still separate and unequal. The resources and facilities provided by the public school system to serve the children in our Nation’s capital are considerably well below resources and facilities available in most of the surrounding suburban school districts. With a few notable exceptions,1 educational programs in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) fall woefully short of preparing our children for the challenges they will face as adults in our diverse, highly competitive and increasingly technology-driven global economy. This report highlights the following areas of failure: Funding. The conventional wisdom is that the District spends more money per student than any other school system in the country. This oft-repeated assertion is baseless. Indeed, although DCPS enrolls a far higher percentage of students with special educational needs, such as low-income students (64%), than surrounding school districts like Arlington (36%), Alexandria (47%), Fairfax (19%) and Montgomery (23%), the District spends less per student than most of its neighbors. The District spends over $3,800 less per student than Arlington, $2,100 less per student than Alexandria, $500 less than Montgomery County, and only $500 more than Fairfax County, where the percentage of low-income students is less than one-third of that enrolled in District schools. Programming and Course Offerings. In many fundamental respects, the programs and course offerings of the District’s public schools have deteriorated since the decisions in Brown and Bolling. For example, 50 years ago honors students were required to take four years of foreign language, and all comprehensive high schools offered either three or four different languages. Today, only five of the 16 regular high schools even offer a full four-year foreign language curriculum; most offer only two and some only one. In the pre-Brown system, junior high school students were offered annual courses in art and music, physical education, and vocational education in addition to French, Spanish or Latin in 8th and 9th grades, as well as English, math, science and social studies. Today, seven of the 27 schools that service 8th graders offer no foreign languages; half of these schools have no vocational education teacher, one-third of these schools have no art teacher and one-third of these schools have no music teacher. John Phillip Sousa Middle School, named for America’s most famed band composer, has no band and, in fact, no courses in music at all. Of the District’s 100 elementary schools, 21 have neither a music teacher nor an art teacher; 30 have no physical education teacher; and almost none has foreign language teachers. Vocational education is a shadow of its former self at all levels. Teacher and Principal Salaries. Attracting and retaining high-quality principals and teachers is essential to providing the children of the District of Columbia a high-quality education. However, the District is severely hampered in attracting and retaining good principals and teachers because salaries continue to be less than in surrounding jurisdictions. For example, although D.C. teacher salary levels are now competitive with those in the surrounding suburbs for new teachers, maximum salaries for teachers are 10% lower than in surrounding districts. Similarly, while D.C. principals’ entry-level salaries are competitive, at the levels of seniority that most principals have, the District’s principal salary levels are 20% lower than those of their suburban counterparts. Facilities. According to an assessment conducted by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in 1998, 70% of the District’s school buildings were in poor physical condition. As DCPS itself described the situation, the state of public school facilities “had reached an all-time low.” Although a small number of new schools have been constructed in recent years thanks to a facilities “Master Plan” approved by the Board of Education four years ago, facilities improvement and repair have made little overall progress because the District’s funding of this project has fallen far short of the levels set forth in the Master Plan. As a result, as shown in the pictures accompanying this Report (Appendix D), most of the District’s school buildings remain rife with leaking roofs, broken windows, cracked ceilings, and faulty heating and plumbing systems. The situation is so dire that students often avoid the use of the bathrooms altogether. Faced with the apparent lack of funds necessary to carry out the Master Plan, District officials are now considering instead a plan to spend the smaller amounts available on fixing or replacing those components in each school in greatest need of repair. Surprisingly, in the recent debate over this issue there has been relatively little advocacy for the basic requirement that broken school buildings must be repaired and brought into immediate compliance with building and fire codes to assure the safety of our schoolchildren. The District’s spending priorities must be changed to include funding for the replacement of buildings that are crumbling and adequate and permanent repair where possible. Special Education. The District’s special education program suffers from outdated facilities, insufficient and uncertified staff and a lack of adequate programming. As a result, the system is clogged with more adversarial due process hearings than the state of California, which has over six times the special education student population of the District. DCPS’ failure to address adequately the needs of its special needs students has resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in spending for private school tuition and transportation costs for many of its special education students. Athletics and Extra-Curricular Activities. DCPS offers far fewer opportunities for participation in athletic and other extra-curricular programs than its suburban counterparts. Neighboring school districts spend a staggering 65% to 90% more on each high school athlete. And the few athletic opportunities that DCPS offers its students are compromised by health and safety risks, with malfunctioning showers in locker rooms, outdated and shopworn equipment, lack of air conditioning in gymnasiums, and fields with no grass or poorly maintained lawns. Three of the 13 athletic trainers in DCPS’ once nationally recognized program have been dismissed for lack of funding, leaving the remaining trainers running among multiple simultaneous sporting events. School Health Services. Although the District government has taken steps to comply with the D.C. law requiring a school nurse at each school for at least 20 hours a week, school health suites continue to lack adequate running water, beds or cots, and refrigerators for storing medications. Only fifteen schools have computers with access to the Internet, forcing nurses to spend hours maintaining student immunization records manually and to rely upon information that may not be current or readily available. The Blame Game. One of the primary reasons for the perseverance of these problems has been the inability of District parents and other concerned community members to hold governmental leaders accountable for their policymaking and budgetary decisions regarding DCPS. Under the District’s current system of school district governance, the District’s independent Chief Financial Officer, and not the Superintendent or the Board of Education, controls the DCPS financial systems. The Mayor and City Council provide funding and exercise oversight over expenditures, while the Board allocates the funding and also oversees the approved expenditures. In other words, the Superintendent reports to a committee of officials and does not control his own financial operations. This has led to a “blame game,” in which the Board of Education, the Mayor’s Office and the City Council continually fault each other for the failures of the school system, including its financial failures, with no entity ever being held fully accountable for developing and implementing solutions to address the current crisis in DCPS. Moreover, this treatment of the public education budget as just another CFO-controlled agency budget – like roadwork and garbage collection – gives little credence to the Supreme Court’s proclamation in Brown that education is “the most important function of our state and local governments.” The Immediate Need For Action And Accountability. The status of public schools in our Nation’s capital begs a whole host of questions, including “Where is the outrage?” and “Where are the leaders and community groups demanding that sufficient resources be committed to fix the undeniable problems plaguing our schools?” No responsible person would disagree with the premise that public education is one of, if not the most, important function of state and local governments. No knowledgeable person would argue with the conclusion that the District’s public schools are failing most of our children. Nor can anyone reasonably argue that the problems facing District public schools are beyond solutions. While all large urban school systems confront substantial challenges, many have dealt with those challenges better than has DCPS. Demands from the D.C. community for solutions are long overdue. It is within our power and control to make a difference, but we must choose and make it a priority to do so. It is time for all interested stakeholders in public education in the District – students, parents, teachers, public officials, administrators, businesses and professional firms whose ranks are filled and will continue to be filled by DCPS graduates – to demand that in every one of the key areas of education, from course offerings to facilities, solutions be promptly identified and the resources necessary to implement those solutions be committed. As a starting point, in view of the significant problems facing DCPS and the inability to effect change through the current system of school district governance, consideration should also be given to amending District of Columbia Charter to include a right of all children attending D.C. public schools to receive an adequate and meaningful public education. A charter amendment that provides a right to an adequate education similar to the provisions found in nearly every state constitution would serve to reinforce the fundamental principle of the importance of education in a free society and affixes the obligation to provide for it squarely on the shoulders of the D.C. government. It would ensure not just the necessary resources, but also accountability and ultimately the delivery of an adequate education for our children. As it has in many other states, a charter provision enumerating a right to an adequate education would help focus citizen, community, and government efforts to ensure that all of the District’s children receive the quality education that they deserve. I. D.C. PUBLIC SCHOOLS THEN & NOWSimply stated, the promise of Brown v. Board of Education and Bolling v. Sharpe is that every child will have equal educational opportunities. Fifty years ago, that meant desegregating public schools so that African-American and white children could attend school together. Today, African-American and other minority children are not legally barred from attending school with white children, but increasingly, other factors, including discrimination and higher levels of poverty, prevent them from doing so. Most African-Americans in our area live in the District and Prince George’s County and attend under-funded, low-achieving schools. Conversely, most white students live in the suburbs and attend well-funded, high-achieving schools. A half-century after Brown, African-American children attending the schools in and around Washington, D.C. are largely segregated de facto and have far more limited educational opportunities than their white counterparts in affluent suburban districts next door. A. The Unrealized Promise of Brown: An End to Racial IsolationUntil 1954, the District’s public schools were segregated by law. In Bolling v. Sharpe, a companion case to Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court declared segregation in D.C. schools unconstitutional. The District, unlike its suburbs, desegregated immediately. Shortly after desegregation, only 20 out of 170 schools had all African-American student populations and only five were all white.2 Today, 29 of 155 schools and centers are all African American. Over three-quarters of African-American students are in schools over 90% African American. Because white students constitute only five percent of DCPS enrollment, what little diversity most African-American students in the District experience is provided by other minorities, Latino and Asian-American students, mostly from immigrant families. When Brown and Bolling were decided, the trend in white enrollment was heading downward and African-American enrollment was increasing sharply, but the twelve years immediately following Brown brought a dramatic change in DCPS enrollment and de facto residence. Whites, who were 43% of enrollment in 1954 pre-Brown, sank to only 9% by 1966, while African-Americans rose from 57% to 91% of total enrollment. Today, 5% of DCPS students are white and 84% African-American. The remaining 11% are Latino or Asian-American, groups whose numbers only became significant in the 1980s.3 50 YEARS AFTER BROWN: THEN AND NOW DCPS Enrollment: White and African-American
D.C. Population: White and African-American
African-American Students in Predominantly African-American Schools
DC Population and DCPS Enrollment 1930-2003
To some extent this change followed a general movement of whites out of the District, but the shift in enrollment demographics was significantly sharper than the change in the District's overall population. Suburban schools integrated slowly and in some cases not until years after Bolling and Brown.4 Whites are now 32% of the population and 22% of the population ages 5-17, but only 5% of DCPS enrollment.5 For decades African-Americans have had more children in public schools than in the total population (as opposed to whites, who had fewer), but the differences increased greatly after Brown and Bolling, and they have never been greater than at present. Contributing factors include the presence of more whites without school-age children, a lower white birthrate, and high rates of white private school enrollment. But another key factor is the concentration of white public school enrollment in the suburbs surrounding the District. This area has four large districts – the District and Prince George’s, Montgomery, and Fairfax Counties. Three-quarters of the African-American public school students are enrolled in D.C. and Prince George’s County, while these two districts enroll only 9% of the whites in this area. In contrast, 85% of the white students are enrolled in Fairfax and Montgomery Counties.6
Racial and ethnic composition differs strikingly by district: DCPS and Prince George’s County are heavily African-American, with few whites and low ethnic diversity. Arlington and Fairfax Counties have substantial white enrollment and ethnic diversity, with low numbers of African-American students and Alexandria and Montgomery fall somewhere in between.
Explaining the underlying causes of these differences is beyond the scope of this Report, but whatever the reasons, public education for the District’s African-American children is largely separate. Comparatively speaking, it is also unequal. B. The Unrealized Promise of Brown: EquityEquity can be measured on two axes: providing similar levels of resources for all students is “horizontal equity” and providing higher levels of resources for students with greater needs is “vertical equity.” District schools have a high percentage of students with greater needs, particularly low-income students; DCPS has three times the poverty rate of Fairfax and Montgomery County schools. Rates are higher in other neighboring districts, but nowhere near the District’s rate. Although D.C. has a relatively low percentage of students needing special services because of a lack of English proficiency, it enrolls one-third more special education students than Fairfax County, and 50% more than Montgomery or Prince George’s Counties7:
Shortly before the Brown and Bolling decisions, a detailed study documented the unequal treatment of the District’s “colored” school division: “its classrooms were considered more crowded, its buildings older and shabbier, its curricula narrower, its counseling services less adequate, its supplies more scarce.”8 The same is largely true today – except that the contrast is now between the 95% minority DCPS and its affluent suburbs where almost all the area’s white students are enrolled. The discussion below starts with per student funding, but then proceeds to some of the specific kinds and quality of resources and educational practices of concern, comparing them with D.C. schools of 50 years ago. Because distribution of African-American and white students in this area is so skewed by school district, comparisons with surrounding suburbs are included where data are available. 1. Funding If District children had “vertical equity,” their higher levels of need would bring significantly higher spending per pupil than in the District’s advantaged suburbs. But even without taking account of differing needs, the District spends less than most of its neighbors – over $3,800 less per student than Arlington, $2,100 less per student than Alexandria, $500 less than Montgomery County, and only $500 more than Fairfax County. The only district that spends significantly less is the only other heavily African-American district – Prince George’s County, which is 46% low-income. 9 In other words, on a regional basis, the District’s public school population, the great majority of which are African-American students, does not enjoy even basic horizontal equity. Per Pupil Operating Budget: DCPS and Surrounding Suburbs
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| Schools with 8th grade | 27 |
| No art teacher | 9 (33%) |
| No music teacher | 8 (30%) |
| No vocational ed teacher | 13 (48%) |
| No foreign language teacher | 7 (26%) |
John Phillip Sousa Middle School, named for America’s most famed band composer, is the school to which Spottswood T. Bolling sought admission in the District’s companion case to Brown. Today, the school has no band, and in fact no courses in music at all. The schedule shows a beginning French course with a handful of students apparently taught by an itinerant teacher and a single course in vocational education (mechanical drawing).23
Elementary schools. Elementary school classroom teachers are supposed to be qualified to teach elementary art, music, and physical education, so lack of a teacher certified in these subjects does not necessarily mean a lack of instruction. Nonetheless, special-subject teachers are much better prepared to provide effective instruction in these areas. DCPS has 100 schools that serve sixth graders or younger. Of these, 21 have neither a music, nor an art teacher even part-time, 30 have no physical education teacher, and almost none has a foreign language teacher.
Staffing gaps in elementary schools
| Number of elementary schools | 100 |
| No art and no music teacher | 21 |
| No physical education teacher | 30 |
| No foreign language teacher | 95 |
3. Teacher and principal salaries
D.C. teacher salary levels are competitive with those in the suburbs only in starting years. Maximum salaries for teachers are far lower than in surrounding districts.24
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D.C. principals’ salaries are likewise competitive at the entry level, but not at the levels of seniority of most principals. A principal in Montgomery County can make over $20,000 more than a District principal, a differential that can attract and retain a principal with great experience and education, the qualities needed most by DCPS schools.
4. School facilities
Facilities are an important factor in a child’s education. Walls falling apart, lack of heat and air conditioning during seasonal changes, and electrical systems unable to support technology make teaching a struggle and dull the student’s educational experience. Research has found that poor school facilities degrade learning and academic outcomes.25
In 1948, the Strayer Report used the Strayer-Engelhardt index to scrutinize DCPS’ buildings to determine their adequacy. Out of 140 school buildings surveyed, 71 -- or 51% -- were in unsatisfactory condition.26 In 1998, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assessed the facilities of each of the District’s operating public schools; subsequent analysis determined that 84% of the schools were in poor physical condition.27 As the DCPS itself described it, the state of public school facilities “had reached an all-time low.”28 Specifically, “[r]oofs were leaking, windows needed to be replaced, boilers were failing, plumbing, wiring and heating systems were old and unreliable. Many of the floors, walls and ceilings were in poor condition, and people often avoided the use of the bathrooms altogether. There were very few schools in the District of Columbia with working science laboratories.”29
The public schools in the District of Columbia remain in terrible physical condition today, with the average D.C. public school building being over 65 years old.30 A recent report, prepared by Parents United for DCPS and a special Advisory Committee of Civic Leaders, documents the poor physical condition of schools in the District and the proposed cutbacks in capital budgeting that will permit the problems evident in school facilities to continue.31Condition of facilities: Then and Now
| 1940s: Percent of buildings below "adequacy score" | 51% |
| 1998: Percent of buildings in poor physical condition | 84% |
After the Corps of Engineers’ 1998 assessment, DCPS spent two years developing a facility master plan (“Master Plan”), which sought to modernize, not just renovate, the District’s public schools. The Master Plan was approved by the Board of Education in early 2001. Under the Master Plan, modernization of the District’s school buildings was to occur in successive groups of 10 schools over a 10- to 15-year period.32 Modernization of several schools in the first round, including Key, Miner, Oyster, and Kelly Miller, has been completed. Those modernized schools were operating at capacity within months of reopening.33
However, the District of Columbia government’s 2005 Budget and Financial Plan provides far less funding for the D.C. public schools over the next five years than the Master Plan says is needed to rebuild the city’s schools. As the following table shows, the District of Columbia budget for each year is well below the amount requested by the D.C. public schools to implement the Master Plan and, indeed, calls for no capital at all in FY 2008 and 2009.34
| FY05 | FY06 | FY07 | FY08 | FY09 | |
| DCPS Request | $401m | $372m | $294m | $314m | $320m |
| Mayor’s Proposed Budget | $173m | $149m | $21m | $0 | $0 |
| Difference (shortfall) | ($228m) | ($223m) | ($273m) | ($314m) | ($320m) |
If approved, Option D would be incorporated into a so-called “Master Education Plan” (“MEP”) to be developed by the Superintendent, which would allow the Superintendent to ensure that the facilities budget is allocated in the most productive manner.38 It is not yet clear, however, whether the program will be adopted at all. The D.C. Board of Education has postponed a vote on the plan until March of 2005, and three of the seven members present at the Superintendent’s presentation of Option D expressed concern over the Superintendent’s suggestion that they scrap the Master Plan.39 Either way – modernize a handful of schools or replace component systems individually in more – the great majority of public school buildings will continue indefinitely to suffer leaking roofs, rotted window frames, antiquated plumbing, crumbling walls, dysfunctional ventilation, and failure-prone boilers.
The decrepit conditions in D.C. public school buildings not only adversely effect educational outcomes, but also create serious safety and health risks. In March 1992, Parents United filed a lawsuit in the D.C. Superior Court alleging that the District was in repeated violation of the D.C. Fire Code. Following a bench trial, the court issued an order in June 1994 finding thousands of life-threatening violations, including defective fire doors, exposed wiring, breached ceilings, defective alarm systems, and serious electrical problems.40 The court found 5,695 total fire code violations throughout the D.C. public schools and deemed the vast majority of them to be life-threatening.41 The Court ordered the D.C. government to fix these violations and ordered the D.C. Fire Department to inspect all the D.C. public schools periodically and file reports detailing the department’s findings. As a result, temporary and sporadic fixes of the fire code violations were undertaken in individual schools. Indeed, the entire school system was shut down due to the failure to make the fixes in a timely fashion.42 In 1997, Parents United and the D.C. government reached an out-of-court settlement of the lawsuit, under which the City promised to provide the D.C. public schools with a consistent share, namely 27.5%, of the city’s capital funding.43
Despite the lawsuit, despite the clarion call of the 1998 Corps of Engineers Report, and despite the 2001 Master Plan, the physical conditions of D.C. Public Schools remain a critical problem. As shown in the photographs in Appendix D, D.C. public schools are still in need of significant repairs to bathrooms, doors, windows, walls, roofs, playgrounds and heating and cooling systems.44 It is simply unacceptable that District of Columbia students endure these unfit and unsafe conditions every day. The District’s decades-long failure to correct decrepit conditions raises serious questions as to the City’s budgetary priorities. Crumbling public school buildings have not just garnered the attention of Parents United: a group of concerned parents and students have posted on the Internet dozens of pictures taken in many of the District’s public schools that display broken windows, ceiling leaks, cracked floors, and other examples of disrepair. Although they tell only a small part of the more widespread problem, these images, which can be found at www.fixourschools.net, effectively convey the magnitude of the need to rectify immediately the intolerable physical conditions that our children must face in school every day.
5. Special Education
Of the 65,099 students enrolled in DCPS for the 2003-2004 academic year, 12,970 (20%) had various disabilities and received special education.45 The District’s obligation to provide special education services arises from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”), which requires that students with disabilities have access to a free and appropriate education designed to meet their individualized needs, in the least restrictive available environment, and preferably in their neighborhood school. Under IDEA, DCPS is required to have a system in place for the identification of students with disabilities and the development and implementation of a comprehensive individualized education program that identifies the student’s needs and the services to be provided, as well as a mediation process and due process hearings for the resolution of special education-related disputes.
While DCPS has incorporated the basic mandate of IDEA into its educational structure, its special education program suffers from systemic deficiencies, including a lack of DCPS-operated programs, outdated facilities, and inadequate and uncertified staff. One significant problem plaguing DCPS’ special education program, however, is the extent to which the already strained special education budget is diverted away from the delivery of substantive services in order to cover the legal and administrative costs associated with the large number of disputes concerning its compliance with IDEA.46 As of 2003, DCPS was spending over $13 million per year on these disputes.47 While formal due process hearings are a tool of last resort within most school districts, such hearings are the norm in the District. The District of Columbia has both a higher ratio of disputes per special education student than any other state and the highest percentage of disputes that are resolved through due process hearings. In 2002, for example, DCPS, which had 11,492 students with special education needs that year, conducted more due process hearings regarding those students than did the entire state of California, which had a special education enrollment of over 67,000.48
Largely as a result of these hearings, $158 million – over half of the DCPS special education budget – is used to pay for private school tuition and transportation costs this year.49 While any given public school system may be unable to provide all the services to which its students with disabilities are entitled, the diversion of such a significant portion of the DCPS special education budget for private school placement is far from the norm. Moreover, although large urban school districts like DCPS are expected to have larger numbers of special needs students, other school districts in comparable urban, high-poverty areas and with similar special education enrollments have been able to address their special education needs without undue resort to costly and time-consuming hearings and without the high subsidization of private school placements.50
Many of the issues surrounding the special education budget relate to the process of identifying and assigning students to appropriate special education services, without even reaching the nature of the services DCPS provides to these students. Areas of deficiency, according to a report issued by the D.C. Appleseed Center in 2003, include the inability to ensure early resolution of special education disputes and a persistent mistrust between parents and school personnel throughout the decision-making process. Exacerbating these problems are the unethical practices of a number of plaintiff’s attorneys that take advantage of these failures by bringing cases on behalf of low-performing (but not necessarily learning disabled) students and insisting that these students need to be placed in private schools at DCPS expense.
Some improvements to the system have been made recently, including better attendance at hearings by DCPS personnel and an improved mediation program. Unfortunately, however, many of the deficiencies in DCPS special education continue to persist, and the school system has struggled to address them. Most recently, David Gilmore, the court-appointed special master overseeing transportation of special education students as part of a 1995 federal lawsuit, reported that he will need $14 million more than what the Board of Education and D.C. Council originally allotted, in order to bring the special education transportation system into compliance with the consent decree and federal special education laws. According to Gilmore, although significant progress has been made in the transportation program, there has been no discernable movement toward the goal of shifting more special education students from outside schools to in-house services. DCPS officials respond that they have created 1,800 additional in-house placements in new and expanded programs but that the ever-increasing numbers of students newly identified as needing intensive special education services are filling the new slots.51 They add that once a hearing officer or judge orders a private placement, it is difficult to secure a child’s later return to DCPS.52
6. Athletics and Extra-Curricular Activities
Historically, DCPS’ athletic programs were so robust as to be completely self-sustaining. Each school budgeted for equipment and purchased it itself. Congress first passed a bill authorizing external funding for athletics in 1951.53 Fifty years ago, every high school had a student council, a school paper, and a variety of intra-mural and inter-scholastic sports.54 Today intra-mural sports are a rarity in the secondary schools, few junior highs have school newspapers, and the inter-scholastic athletics program suffers from player-short teams, poor attendance, low coaching stipends, and insufficient equipment. At John Philip Sousa Middle School, there is no marching band.
Virtually all facilities for African-American students in 1954 were inferior to those for whites, including athletic facilities. For example, Armstrong, a African-American public high school, had a gym floor composed of asphalt. The best facilities among the African-American schools at that time were at Cardozo -- because it had recently moved into Central High, previously a white school.55
Today, athletic facilities in the DCPS are inadequate for all students, and are vastly inferior to the facilities available in surrounding school districts. Cardozo now plays home games at Roosevelt because its gym bleachers have been condemned for years; its swimming pool, a small mid-century period piece, has been empty for a decade. In June 2001, Parents United released a comprehensive report on the state of athletic programs in the D.C. public school system entitled “Unlevel Playing Fields: A Comparative Study of Athletic Programs, Facilities and Funding in the District of Columbia and Suburban Public School Districts” (“Unlevel Playing Fields”). The report found that participation rates, per student funding, and community and business support for DCPS athletics are far inferior to those of its suburban counterparts.
Parents United reexamined this issue in July 2002, and, aside from some nominal improvements in certain school facilities primarily due to private sponsorship, found continuing glaring inadequacies in athletic facilities and opportunities for District of Columbia students, particularly female students. Despite these findings, the city allocated $235,000 less for athletics and activities in 2003 than it did in 2001. The funding for athletics for 2004 was equally abysmal.
The sparse funding for athletic programs in DCPS is even more troubling when compared to that of its suburban counterparts. Schools in suburban areas adjacent to the District spend a staggering 65% to 90% more on each high school athlete than their District counterparts. DCPS coaches make less than half the pay of suburban coaches. A typical large suburban school fields around thirty-three separate athletic teams; one of its District counterparts fields only thirteen. Another District school offers only two sports for girls, including cheerleading. And the revenue generated by such ancillary activities as booster club activities, gate receipts, and concession sales in Fairfax County and Montgomery County equal the total budget available to the District. As the Unlevel Playing Fields report notes, “[t]he suburban icing is the entire cake for D.C. student-athletes.”
Athletic programs in the District are also compromised on matters of student-athlete health and safety. Many school facilities cannot even be used by students because they have fallen into desuetude and are not trustworthy. For example, students at Cardozo High School do not use the locker room showers at their school because the showers do not regulate temperature properly and regularly scald the students who use them. Other problems include defective lockers, outdated and shopworn equipment, and a lack of air conditioning in offices and gymnasia. Absent an influx of funding to rehabilitate current facilities, these health and safety problems will only worsen.
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any effort to correct the numerous problems afflicting DCPS athletics. Only a small increase in the athletics budget was realized in FY 2005, raising the total athletics budget to $3,079,345. Further, the Proposed Budget for FY 2006, released on January 12, 2005, contains just a nominal increase ($1,650) for athletics. Absent an immediate effort to correct the core funding problems, DCPS athletic programs will continue to suffer.
5. School Health Services
School health services have been a chronic problem for the D.C. public schools for the past two decades. The District of Columbia passed the Nurse Assignment Act in 1987 (“Act”). D.C. Code §31-2421 et seq. The Act required District health officials to staff schools with registered nurses at a minimum of twenty hours a week, and also guaranteed medical services at inter-scholastic school sponsored athletic events.56 By 1988, it was apparent that the D.C. government had failed and would continue to fail to comply with the Act, forcing Parents United to sue for enforcement of the statute. Parents United prevailed and was granted summary judgment and a permanent injunction mandating compliance with the Act.57
DCPS nurses are currently funded through the D.C. Healthcare Alliance, a public-private partnership between the Department of Health and several private sector partners designed to provide the uninsured with healthcare. In 2001, the Children’s National Medical Center, a private sector partner, was contracted to provide school nurses in all public schools. Although the Alliance to our knowledge funds the statutory minimum hours of nursing at each school through a Department of Health grant, many cash-strapped schools need more hours of service and pay for an additional twenty hours of nursing services from their already thin budgets.
Moreover, the health facilities and equipment that DCPS
provides are substandard, to put
it mildly. A recent report notes that:
[o]ne third of nurse suites had inadequate running water (“adequate defined as having hot and cold). . . . [m]ore than half had inadequate screens, beds or cots, and pillows [and] . . . 60% of nurse suites did not have a separate refrigerator for medications. And lastly, it was reported that only 15 schools at the time had computers and internet connectivity in the health suites.58
The lack of computers forces nurses to spend many hours maintaining student immunization records by hand; time that is unavailable for health instruction and medical services. Furthermore, D.C. parents face significant challenges in trying to gather information about the DCPS nursing program. Public information sources, such as the DCPS website, contain virtually no information about school health programs or the availability of school nurses in the community. This near complete lack of transparency muddies communication between parents and schools and further diminishes the ability of the nurses to provide the services that children need.
Perhaps the most important promise of Brown v. Board of Education was not just that children would receive education on equal terms, but that they would be educated. In today’s parlance, legislatures and courts are asking whether the education provided by states and localities is adequate to enable students to meet state and national standards.59 Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), states must adopt standards acceptable to the U.S. Department of Education, create assessments to measure student performance and progress, and take action to improve schools where students, within various subgroups, fail to make “adequate yearly progress.”60 Under both approaches, the measure of adequacy looks to student outcomes.
Information on the state of student outcomes at the time of Brown is scarce: the public judged school quality at that time by inputs, not student achievement; and student test scores were not reported in the press.61 The descriptions available indicate that District students as a group were one year, sometimes more, below national norms as measured by standardized tests both before and in the years immediately following Brown.62 For example, in 1947 African-American eighth graders were significantly behind in reading and math, while white eighth graders were one year behind in math and at the norm in reading. African-American tenth graders were a semester behind in both subjects.63 In 1957, scores demonstrated that a typical District fifth grader was working at the national fourth grade level in math and the third grade level in reading comprehension. Ninth graders tested a year earlier were two or three years behind the national norm in math and one to two years behind in reading. Twelfth graders averaged slightly above the national norm in science, equal to the norm in English expression, and fell slightly below on social studies.64
| 1947/48 | 1956/1957 | 2004 | |||||
| African-American Students Behind Norm | Behind Norm | Below Basic | Basic | Total | |||
| Grade 5 | |||||||
| Reading | 2 years | 29% | 48% | 77% | |||
| Math | 1 year | 41% | 34% | 75% | |||
| Grade 8 | |||||||
| Reading | 3 years | 1 year+ | 29% | 48% | 77% | ||
| Math | 2 ½ years | 1 year+ | 60% | 27% | 87% | ||
| Grade 9 | |||||||
| Reading | 1-2 years | 48% | 38% | 86% | |||
| Math | 2-3 years | 59% | 27% | 86% | |||
| Grade 10 | |||||||
| Reading | ½ year | 55% | 33% | 88% | |||
| Math | ½ year | 78% | 15% | 93% | |||
The above test scores cannot be compared directly, since they use different benchmarks, but they suggest that DCPS students as a group probably test further behind norms and standards than they did at the time of Brown. Today’s tenth grade scores are certainly not as good as those of African-American tenth graders alone before desegregation. The scores certainly, however, show that DCPS academic achievement levels for most students are unsatisfactory. Almost half of ninth graders have little or no mastery of grade level reading skills and about 60% have little or no mastery of grade level math. When the percentages for “Basic” and “Below Basic” achievement levels are combined, over 85% of DCPS students are not up to grade level. SAT scores today for DCPS students are 200 points below the national average.
The severe problems in the areas described above (and others) since Brown and Bolling have been allowed to persist under a woefully ineffective system of governance, including external control of financial management within the school system. Budget and finance have been beset by a fractured and irrational separation of powers that de-links the substantive policymaking authority and operations from the budgetary decision-making authority governing DCPS. As discussed in more detail in Parents United’s December 2001 Report “The Blame Game: Searching For Financially Accountable Schools in the District of Columbia,” vesting authority over DCPS finances in the Office of the Chief Financial Officer while leaving substantive policy-making in the hands of the Board of Education has allowed both of these governmental entities, as well as the Mayor and Council, to point fingers at each other as the school system they all oversee continues to fail its students. This fragmentation of responsibility deviates from the time-tested accountability structure of linking budgetary authority to educational policymaking authority in place in the rest of the nation’s school districts. Left unchanged, this flawed system will continue to undermine both the fiscal soundness and educational quality of what is an already struggling public school system.
In 1996, intended as a temporary measure, Congress enacted a law charging the Office of the Chief Financial Officer of the District of Columbia (“District CFO”) with responsibility over the fiscal operations of DCPS through the installation of a school district CFO (“DCPS CFO”), who reports directly to the District’s Chief Financial Officer. In 2001, the D.C. Council made this arrangement permanent, mandating that the CFOs of each governmental agency (including the Board of Education) be appointed by the District CFO, with the approval from the heads of those respective agencies. With the power to appoint these agency CFOs, the District CFO, for all practical purposes, also has the power to remove them. Moreover, under this law, the Board of Education is responsible for evaluating the DCPS CFO’s performance from an operational perspective, while the District CFO is responsible for evaluating performance from a financial management perspective.
This split in governance severely constrains the Board’s ability to implement its policy initiatives, and indeed to obtain basic fiscal information, because it lacks any meaningful control over its own CFO, its own financial systems, and ultimately its own budget. This arrangement has had dysfunctional consequences, both fiscally and educationally. Unforeseen multi-million dollar budget deficits emerged in 1998 and 2001. Frustration with divided loyalties between the Board and the District CFO and an inability to satisfy each entity’s needs simultaneously has led to high turnover and a lack of continuity in school fiscal leadership, including at least nine DCPS CFOs and ten budget directors over the last nine years. School system managers and officials have been unable to make informed policy decisions because they lack the ability to track cost categories wrapped up in broader categories within the District CFO’s financial systems and because financial systems provide information weeks out of date. Most significantly, important decisions of educational policy made by the Board have often been stymied by the Mayor’s decisions, justified and implemented through the District CFO, not to provide the Board with the necessary funding.
This system not only hinders effective educational policymaking in the District, but also permits a “blame game,” in which each of these entities escapes political accountability by blaming the other for the school system’s failures. The system provides little incentive for these entities to take necessary action. And as this finger-pointing persists, the District’s children continue to stagnate in low-performing schools. Indeed, as long as this disjointed system of educational governance is in place, the promise of educational opportunity embodied in Brown and Bolling will remain out of reach in the District of Columbia.
As this Report illustrates, 50 years after Brown and Bolling, racial separation and inequitable education remain critical problems in the District. Putting equity aside, the D.C. Public School system today fails in a myriad of ways to provide the District’s children with the education they require and deserve. To a large degree, the conclusions in this Report will be neither surprising nor controversial. No one disputes that public education is among the most important, if not the most important function performed by the District government. No one disputes that DCPS has to a substantial degree failed in carrying out this critical function. Nor can it be reasonably argued that the problems facing District public schools are beyond solutions; while all large urban school systems confront substantial challenges, many have succeeded in dealing with those challenges better than has DCPS. Indeed, the solutions to many of the problems facing the District’s schools are relatively straightforward. For example, broken doors, electrical systems, roofs and walls need to be replaced or repaired. Other city systems have curricula and far more effective teacher evaluation systems than the District. Effective information and management systems are widely available and in use throughout the country. The Superintendent could be given control over his own financial operations and relieved of having to report to five independent government entities with conflicting and overlapping missions.
What is surprising, indeed appalling, is the seeming lack of will among the leaders in our community to demand that sufficient resources be committed to fix the undeniable problems plaguing our schools. Demands from the D.C. community for solutions are long overdue. It is time for all interested stakeholders in public education in the District – students, parents, teachers, administrators, residents, businesses and professional firms whose ranks are filled and will continue to be filled by DCPS graduates – to demand that in every one of the key areas of education, from programs and course offerings to facilities, solutions be immediately identified and the resources needed to carry out those solutions be committed. The need to devote additional financial resources to fix the District’s schools cannot be understated. The conventional wisdom that DCPS is spending more money per student than any other school system is patently false. The intense needs of the population served by DCPS and the concomitant need for relatively greater funding to serve that population are undeniable. The budget reprioritization required to steer additional dollars to public education in the District will require a sustained advocacy missing today -- advocacy not just by students, parents and teachers, but by community leaders both inside and outside the government. Failure to advocate for such change will ensure that DCPS continues to fail.
We recognize the recent formation of the DC Education Compact (DCEC), a group of foundation, civic, university, and business leaders, parents, teachers, principals, social service providers, school officials, and elected officials seeking to improve student achievement. It promises some of the collaboration and commitment that have been sorely lacking in recent years. But DCEC will necessarily focus on development of action plans and areas of consensus – of which money is not one. The need to devote additional financial resources to fix critical aspects of the District’s schools now cannot be understated.
In view of the significant problems facing DCPS and the inability to effect change through the current system of school district governance, consideration should also be given to amending District of Columbia Charter to include a right of all children attending D.C. public schools to receive an adequate and meaningful public education. Nearly every single state constitution in the United States contains a provision providing, in some way, for the establishment of a system of free public education. The District of Columbia Charter does not. Citizens throughout the United States have agreed that the establishment and maintenance of a free, public school system is an essential responsibility of their state governments. These state constitutional provisions serve as statements of fundamental principles that both affirm the importance of education in a free society, and affix the obligation to provide for it with the state government. Education is a priority for all D.C. residents, and the District Charter should be amended to create a governmental obligation to provide for a system of free public schools in the District. An amendment to the D.C. Charter would be a first step toward reflecting the firmly held belief of D.C. residents that education must be a fundamental priority for the D.C. Government and would help focus the efforts of citizens, community groups and the city government around one of their most fundamental obligations: preparing our children for their future – something we are currently failing to do.
1. DCPS has been a national leader for years in early childhood education, offering full day prekindergarten and kindergarten to almost all families seeking it. In addition, DCPS has adopted Massachusetts’ academic standards, the nation’s most highly rated. However, the system has yet to adopt and implement system-wide curricula to replace those abandoned over ten years ago. For a full exposition, see Restoring Excellence to the District of Columbia Public Schools: Report of the Strategic Support Team of the Council of the Great City Schools (December, 2003), available on the DCPS website, www.k12.dc.us.
2. Mid-1950s statistics from Erwin Knoll, The Truth About Desegregation in Washington Schools (“Knoll”), The Turnpike Press Inc. (1959); current statistics compiled by authors of this report.
3. Enrollment numbers prior to 1950 from George D. Strayer, Schoolhousing in the District of Columbia, A Section of the Report of a Survey of the Public Schools of the District of Columbia, conducted under the auspices of the Subcommittees on District of Columbia Appropriations (“Strayer, Schoolhousing”) (1949), Table 12. 1950-60: Hobson v. Hansen, 269 F. Supp. 401, 409 (D.D.C. 1967). 1966: A. Harry Passow, Toward Creating a Model Urban School System, Teachers College, Columbia University (1967), p. 86. 1979 and later years: DCPS Annual Membership Reports. See Appendix A for precise numbers.
4. An oral history, along with citations to considerable literature on this subject, appears in Washingtonian Magazine’s May 2004 article “The Decision That Changed Everything” by Drew Lindsay. See www.washingtonian.com.
5. Percentage by age derived from spreadsheets available from the U.S. Bureau of the Census website, www.census.gov. The enormous growth of public charter schools is not a factor: Of 14,000 charter school students in 2003-04, 92% were African-American, and only 1% white.
6. This information is based on a survey of suburban district websites reviewed in January 2005. See www.acps.k12.va.us (Alexandria); www.arlington.k12.va.us (Arlington); www.fcps.k12.va.us (Fairfax); www.mcps.k12.md.us (Montgomery); www.pgcps.org (Prince George’s).
7. Washington Area Boards of Education (“WABE”), WABE Guide FY 2005, compiled by Fairfax County Public Schools, Dec. 2004. See www.fcps.k12.va.us.
8. As summarized in Hobson v. Hansen, 269 F. Supp. 401, 407 (D.D.C. 1967)
9. Suburban figures and methodology from WABE Guide FY 2005, adjusted herein to exclude transportation. D.C. figures calculated herein using WABE’s methodology. Differences in recent past years have been similar. For example, in fiscal year 2003, DCPS placed 3rd among the same six districts/counties for per pupil spending. Arlington spent the most with $12,716, followed by Alexandria with $11,914, DCPS with $9,827, Montgomery with $9,741, Fairfax with $9,388, and Prince George’s spent $6,554.
10. The exceptions are four small elementary schools without 6th grades (which are lower funded). All receive lower per pupil funding than predominantly black schools with similar total enrollment. The factors correlated to higher per pupil allocations are school size, with small schools receiving more, and percent of low-income students.
11. Marie M.B. Racine, Influences on Curriculum Development in the Public Schools of Washington D.C. 1804-1982, University of the District of Columbia (1982) (“Racine”), pp. 5758. Knoll, pp. 22-28.
12. Racine, p. 57.
13. Ellington High School offers ancient and medieval geography this year, and all high schools do offer World History, then an elective, now a required course.
14. This figure excludes programs for returning dropouts, which are more limited, and combines staff of schools within schools with their parent school. Statistics on numbers of subject area teachers compiled by the authors from DCPS Schedule A (comprehensive listing of positions) as of November 13, 2004. Statistics on course offerings are derived from DCPS master schedules as of January 2005.
15. George D. Strayer, The Report of a Survey of the Public Schools of the District of Columbia, Government Printing Office (1949) (“Strayer Report”), p. 573.
16. See Appendix B for a summary of the Fairfax County foreign language program.
17. Strayer Report, pp. 574, 602-05. The authors praised music courses as providing “opportunities … for practice, performance, listening, and composing” and “show[ing] high regard for a combination of the literature and theory of music” Despite a breadth and depth far beyond today’s program, they also found that “both art and music are treated like ‘stepchildren,’” pp. 603, 605.
18. Strayer Report, pp. 573-83. “Industrial arts” included preparatory courses for college engineering and architecture, as well as auto mechanics, printing, woodworking, and the like.
19. See Strayer Report, pp. 573-74.
20. See Appendix C. The schools were Anacostia, Ballou, Coolidge, Eastern and Spingarn. Vocational high schools are no longer an alternative, since the District has closed all but one, specializing in health services, and relocated remnants of their programs to various comprehensive high schools. There are small “academy” programs at most high schools, including the five whose schedules we surveyed; apparently they do not offer much breadth or depth in vocational offerings. Vocational education is typically more expensive than general education because of the need for costly equipment and small class size needed to provide safe and adequate levels of supervision of hands-on work instruction.
21. Racine, pp. 32-33; Strayer Report, pp. 570-72; see also “8th Graders to Study Language, Business,” The Washington Post (“WASH. POST”), January 23, 1950.
22. See Appendix B for a summary of the Fairfax County foreign language program.23. Derived from printouts of DCPS master schedules as of January 2005.
24. Teacher salaries: WABE Guide FY 2005; principal salaries: Internet survey of suburban districts. See supra note 5.
25. Mark Schneider, Do School Facilities Affect Academic Outcomes (2002), concludes that spatial configurations, noise, temperature, daylight, and air quality have an effect on students’ and teachers’ ability to perform in the classroom. See also studies listed in Schneider, Public School Facilities and Teaching: Washington, D.C. and Chicago, and Jack Buckley, Mark Schneider & Yi Shang, The Effects of School Facility Quality on Teacher Retention in Urban School Districts (2004), which concludes that the quality of school facilities is an important predictor of the decision of teachers to leave their current positions. The first and third are publications of the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, www.edfacilities.org. All may be accessed through the 21st Century School Fund, www.21csf.org.
26. Derived from Strayer, Schoolhousing, pp. 39-66.
27. Derived from DCPS, Educational Facilities Master Plan, 4-7, 4-13.
28. PARENTS UNITED FOR THE D.C. PUBLIC SCHOOLS, Leaving Children Behind: The Underfunding of D.C. Public Schools Building Repair and Capital Budget Needs (July 2003) (the “July 2003 Report”) p. 3.
29. Id.
30. Id., p. 2
31. Id., p. 3
32. Id.
33. Id., p. 4
34. Id., p. 21.35. V. Dion Haynes, “D.C. Schools Revisit Capital Spending,” WASH. POST, Feb. 15, 2005, at B1.
36. District of Columbia Public Schools Briefing to the Board of Education, Facilities Master Plan Option D (Jan. 2005) (copy on file with author).
37. Id.
38. Id.; see also supra note 26.
39. “Vote Postponed on School Capital Plan,” WASH. POST, Feb. 17, 2005.
40. Parents United v. Kelly, Civil Action No. 92-3478 (D.C. Sup. Ct. June 10, 1994).
41. Id.
42. July 2003 Report, p. 3.
43. Id.
44. Id., pp. 7-15.
45. Testimony of Dr. Raymond Bryant, Associate Superintendent for Special Education Reform and Student Services, DCPS, District of Columbia City Council, Committee on Education, Libraries and Recreation, November 10, 2004 (“Bryant Testimony”), p. 5 and Att. 1.
46. Id., p. 13.
47. Id., pp. 57-58.
48. Id., p. 17.
49. See PARENTS UNITED FOR D.C. PUBLIC SCHOOLS, DCPS Funds: Where Does the Money Go? (Feb. 7, 2005) (analysis of DCPS budget printout).
50. DCPS Special Education: Five Year Plan (Aug. 21, 2003), available at http://www.dcpswatch.com/special/030821c.htm.
51. Bryant Testimony, pp. 1, 9.
52. Personal communication to the authors.
53. In 1951, $110,000 was appropriated for sports in DCPS, of which, $82,000 went to reorganizing the athletic departments, with the remaining $28,000 used for new equipment. The plan called for an assistant school superintendent to buy equipment for all the schools and for athletic directors and several assistants. “If Truman Signs Bill DC High Sports Get $110,000 from US,” Washington Daily News, August 2, 1951, p. 48.
54. District of Columbia, Committee on the White House Conference on Education (1955), p. 69.
55. Dave McKenna, “Preserving the Sanctity of Segregation,” Washington City Paper, March 5, 2004.
56. The statute also bars cutting service levels in force at the time of its enactment; at that time, most junior high schools had three days of service per week, and most high schools fulltime nurses.
57. Kelly v. Parents United for the District of Columbia Public Schools, 641 A.2d 159 (D.C. 1994), amended on reh’g in part, 648 A.2d 675 (1994).
58. School-Based Health Care and the District of Columbia Safety Net: Medical Homes DC Report, 21ST CENTURY SCHOOL FUND., p. 16 (revised November 5, 2004), available at http://www.21csf.org/csf-home/publications/MHDC_Nov_2004.pdf (last viewed January 30, 2005).
59. Most education finance cases in state courts now focus on the resources needed to provide the opportunity for an adequate education to all students, and this court emphasis is connected with the standards-based reform movement now being implemented in virtually all states.
60. 20 U.S.C. § 6301 et seq. The legislation requires, inter alia, that states and local education agencies develop plans to ensure that by the 2013-14 school year all students score at the proficient or advanced levels on state tests aligned to state standards. Schools and districts that fail to make adequate yearly progress towards this objective may receive technical assistance or be subject to corrective action. Adequate yearly progress must be achieved by each of the following groups: low-income students, students from major racial and ethnic groups, students with disabilities and students with limited English proficiency. The U.S. Department of Education has information on the legislation and its implementation at www.ed.gov.
61. Steven J. Diner, Crisis of Confidence, University of the District of Columbia (1982), pp. 7-22. The predominant concerns in the years before Brown were facilities, recruiting and retaining adequate teaching staff and addressing the “blatant inequality” in facilities and staff between African-American and white schools. There were problems with reading ability, test scores, promotional standards and discipline, but these became public issues only after desegregation.
62. See generally Knoll; “DC School Standards Unchanged, Corning Says,” WASH. POST (Feb. 3, 1956); John McKelway, “Student Gains Indicated in Achievement Tests,” WASH. POST (Jan. 22, 1958); Diner, Crisis of Confidence, pp. 18-19 (citing the Strayer Report, pp. 461-63, 552-53) and pp. 26-27 (citing “Do Mixed Schools Lower Classroom Standards?,” U.S. News & World Report, Feb. 3, 1956, pp. 38-40).
63. Strayer Report, pp. 553-55.
64. McKelway, “Student Gains Indicated in Achievement Tests.”
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