Group critiques Catania education proposals

A coalition of education activists from across the District has released a critique of legislation now before the DC Council. This guest post by two of those activists highlights the group’s goals and examines whether the proposed legislation supports them.

Debate about education in the District is almost as old as the District itself. Now, spurred in part by a package of bills proposed by DC Council Education Committee Chair David Catania, we are entering a critical new chapter in that ongoing conversation.

The discussion comes in the context of dramatic changes flowing from the advent of mayoral control in 2007, which is just now beginning to be evaluated, and the growth of charter schools.

The size of the charter sector in DC has increased from 160 students when launched by Congress in 1995 to well over 40% of the students now served by public education. Virtually all of these students come from east of Rock Creek Park.

Some parts of the District face wrenching closures and consolidations of neighborhood schools. Others confront the challenges of overcrowding and the prospect of difficult decisions about changing boundary and feeder patterns. Many worry about an overemphasis on standardized testing and the erosion of programming in schools, particularly those serving low-income communities.

In June, after working with the law firm of Hogan Lovells, Councilmember Catania leapt into this fray rolling out a package of seven bills on education, touching on:

• Funding
• Grade-to-grade promotion
• The shape of a unified DCPS and charter lottery
• Parent engagement
• The disposition of buildings
• The rules by which schools can be closed or subject to transformation, and
• The governance structure for the management of education in the District.

The package is far-reaching and its potential implications enormous.

Until recently, no one had conducted a rigorous outside analysis of the bills to assess their implications and how they might be improved. To fill that void, a group of education community leaders teamed up to develop such an analysis, as well as a summary of principles and recommendations. We are proud that that analysis was signed by a diverse group of leaders from across the District.

The signers support many aspects of Chairman Catania’s bills and hope we can work with him to ensure the enactment of legislation that can make a positive difference. That said, and as outlined in our analysis, we think important changes should be made to accomplish what we hope are our shared goals.

For example:

• We believe it is imperative that we provide successful matter-of-right neighborhood schools from preschool through high school in every community. Chairman Catania’s accountability bill works against that goal by encouraging the transfer of neighborhood schools to citywide charter and innovation schools. Similarly, his facilities bill aggressively transfers public school buildings out of public control.
• We recognize that to provide all of our children a great education will require devoting more resources to communities where the students come to school with the greatest needs. We applaud Chairman Catania for taking the lead in pressing this point, but are concerned about the efficacy of some of the mechanics of the current draft of his proposal.
• We are convinced that to achieve and maintain great schools, we must embrace a culture of planning and fully engage our communities. Catania’s facilities bill is styled as a comprehensive planning bill but does not meet that description. It has no provisions for public engagement.
• As the recent controversy over DC’s test results has underscored, schools should be measured by multiple metrics including the achievement growth of their students, not predominantly by percentages of students achieving proficiency. (Chairman Catania has recently indicated he too questions the heavy weight that has been placed on tests). The accountability bill, however, potentially places great emphasis on percentages of students achieving proficiency as measured by one test.

Issues like these can and should be addressed as we go from drafts of bills to the enactment of laws.

But first, we, the larger DC community, must decide where we want to go with our education infrastructure and then make a plan for how to get there. The alternative is that we continue to drift where the river takes us, which in this case is further toward a system in which access to a strong education requires either living in the right zip code or winning a lottery.

We can do better.

DC’s Office of Planning has issued a prediction, ironically cited in a DCPS report on neighborhood school closures, that our school-age population will grow by close to 50% by 2022. Our current baby boom is both a challenge and an opportunity, further underscoring the need for us to do better.

The debate this fall —on Catania’s bills and other major initiatives in the education space—will be critical. As we enter that debate, a central question is whether we are committed to having great matter-of-right schools in every neighborhood.

Without such a commitment, the internal logic of the laws on the books and some of the ones so far proposed by Councilmember Catania, will result in further erosion of the matter-of-right system, and even its potential demise. If that is the path we choose, we should do so consciously and with our eyes wide open.