Just a year on the job, District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has shuttered 23 schools, fired more than 30 principals and given notice to hundreds of teachers and administrative workers. <\/p>\n
She\u2019s \u201cmaking bold changes as she tries to accomplish what six would-be reformers in the past decade could not,\u201d The Washington Post reported last week: \u201crescue one of the nation\u2019s most dysfunctional school districts.\u201d <\/p>\n
So far, Ms. Rhee has streamlined Washington\u2019s central office by firing nearly 100 employees. She dismissed 36 principals she considered ineffective, including one at the elementary school her two daughters attend. She also sent termination letters this summer to 750 teachers and teacher\u2019s aides who missed a certification deadline. <\/p>\n
Although the district is \u201camong the nation\u2019s highest-spending school systems,\u201d The Post reports — we\u2019ll examine that understatement shortly — \u201cits students rank near the bottom in reading and math proficiency. Schools have leaky roofs and broken fire sprinklers. Bathrooms are decrepit, with broken toilets and missing stall doors. Not surprisingly, enrollment in the 49,000-student system is shrinking as parents move their children to charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently operated.\u201d <\/p>\n
Curiously, this was the only reference in The Post\u2019s report to the capital\u2019s once-ballyhooed experiment with school choice. <\/p>\n
Just a week earlier, Post staff writer Bill Turque filed a report which the paper\u2019s editors headlined \u201cSchool Choice Program Offers Few Options.\u201d <\/p>\n
Back in August of 2004, the first ever federally funded school voucher program was launched in Washington, D.C. Eligible students would be able to attend a private school of their choice in the District of Columbia, proponents declared. Each participant would receive up to $7,500 for school tuition, fees, and transportation. In addition, the D.C. Public School System (DCPS) and D.C. charter school system each received $13 million in federal grants to improve their programs. <\/p>\n
But for all its promise, \u201cschool choice\u201d in the nation\u2019s capital is now largely dismissed as a bad joke. <\/p>\n
\u201cEarlier this month, parents of students in 81 low-performing D.C. public schools — almost two-thirds of the District system — got a packet in the mail announcing that federal law entitles them to transfer their children to a stronger school,\u201d Mr. Turque of The Post reports. \u201cThe notice goes out every August, required under the federal No Child Left Behind law. But in a system filled with failing schools, parental choice can be a hollow proposition. Perhaps that\u2019s why officials reported Friday that they had received just 34 applications for transfer. The deadline is tomorrow.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a joke,\u201d LaCrisha Butler told the city daily. <\/p>\n
Ms. Butler wants to pull her nephew, Travis, out of Coolidge High School, which this year failed, for the fifth time in a row, to hit math and reading test benchmarks required by the law. <\/p>\n
But the eight other \u201cmainstream\u201d high schools he might attend also are under federal mandate to restructure and improve, which means they would offer no improvement and are thus \u201coff the table.\u201d That leaves the District\u2019s five \u201cspecialty\u201d high schools, including the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, all of which have admission requirements that pose significant obstacles for Travis, a special-needs child who has an individualized education plan. <\/p>\n
\u201cYounger students face a similarly narrow band of choices,\u201d The Post reports. \u201cAlternative schools must be academically sound and sufficiently secure so they are not deemed \u2018persistently dangerous,\u2019 as defined by D.C. law. That leaves the nearly 5,000 children in the District\u2019s 11 floundering middle and junior high schools have just two choices under the No Child Left Behind option.\u201d <\/p>\n
Needless to say, two schools, already operating at capacity, can\u2019t take 5,000 new students. <\/p>\n
Add to that the fact that the number-crunching required to decide which kids can (theoretically) change schools, and which few other public schools might be allowed to take them, delayed mailing of appropriate notifications till Aug. 5 this year, giving families less than three weeks to make decisions and apply for transfers before classes begin. <\/p>\n
In the case of special tutoring available for kids who stay where they are, notices of available programs were received by parents ONE DAY before the deadline to sign up. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe notices generally come so late that, practically speaking, they don\u2019t mean much,\u201d The Post reports. \u201cThe most desirable public charters are full.\u201d <\/p>\n
The best solution? <\/p>\n
On April 6, The Post ran an op-ed submission from Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute\u2019s Center for Educational Freedom, headlined \u201cThe Real Cost of Public Schools.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re often told that public schools are underfunded. In the District, the spending figure cited most commonly is $8,322 per child,\u201d Mr. Coulson wrote. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut total spending is close to $25,000 per child — on par with tuition at Sidwell Friends, the private school Chelsea Clinton attended in the 1990s.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mr. Coulson added up all sources of funding for education from kindergarten through 12th grade, excluding spending on charter schools and higher education. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor the current school year,\u201d he found, \u201cthe local operating budget is $831 million, including relevant expenses such as the teacher retirement fund. The capital budget is $218 million. The District receives about $85.5 million in federal funding. And the D.C. Council contributes an extra $81 million. Divide all that by the 49,422 students enrolled (for the 2007-08 year) and you end up with about $24,600 per child. <\/p>\n
\u201cFor comparison, total per pupil spending at D.C. area private schools — among the most upscale in the nation — averages about $10,000 less. For most private schools, the difference is even greater. <\/p>\n
So why force most D.C. children into often dilapidated and underperforming public schools when we could easily offer them a choice of private schools? <\/p>\n
\u201cSome would argue that private schools couldn\u2019t or wouldn\u2019t serve the District\u2019s special education students, at least not affordably,\u201d Mr. Coulson wrote. \u201cNot so. <\/p>\n
\u201cConsider Florida\u2019s McKay Scholarship program, which allows parents to pull their special-needs children out of the public schools and place them in private schools of their choosing. Parental satisfaction with McKay is stratospheric, the program serves twice as many children with disabilities as the D.C. public schools do, and the average scholarship offered in 2006-\u201907 was just $7,206. The biggest scholarship awarded was $21,907 — still less than the average per-pupil spending in D.C. public schools. If Florida can satisfy the parents of special-needs children at such a reasonable cost, why can\u2019t the District? <\/p>\n
\u201cThe answer, of course, is that it could.\u201d <\/p>\n
Instead, Mr. Coulson concludes, the failure to \u201cthink outside the box\u201d leaves Washington\u2019s parents, students, teachers, and even well-meaning reformers trying to \u201cmanage a bureaucracy so Byzantine it would give Rube Goldberg an aneurysm. … <\/p>\n
\u201cDoes anyone worry that Chelsea Clinton will become a threat to society because she attended a private school?\u201d he asks. \u201cWas Barack Obama unprepared for public life because of his time in a Catholic school? The District should give every child the educational opportunities now enjoyed only by the elite.\u201d <\/p>\n
Mr. Coulson is right. They should close the District of Columbia public schools. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just a year on the job, District of Columbia Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee has shuttered 23 schools, fired more than 30 principals and given notice to hundreds of teachers and administrative workers. She\u2019s \u201cmaking bold changes as she tries to accomplish what six would-be reformers in the past decade could not,\u201d The Washington Post reported […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-1F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}