Amount of money that DCPS is paying this school year to a private charter entity to sublet a DC-owned, former DCPS school in which DCPS is operating a DCPS school that used to be a charter school: $904,166.69 Number of leases of DC-owned, former DCPS school buildings rented out to charter entities available to the … Continue reading Happy 2019! Continuing Odds & Ends From 2018

Silence. That was the response on a sunny afternoon several weeks ago, in a 12th floor DCPS conference room with sight lines to the hills of Anacostia, when three DCPS officials (Sarah Parker; Claudia Lujan; Eli Hoffman) and Jennifer Comey, a staffer for the deputy mayor for education (DME), were asked who made the decision … Continue reading Failing High School, DC Style

As with the revelation last week that DCPS is not providing required science and social studies at some of its middle schools, yesterday's City Paper investigation about generally unregulated interim education providers was met with a lot of silence from city education leaders. The City Paper report detailed how a 5th grade child with special needs, … Continue reading Prediction: Erecting Roadblocks To Educating Our Kids Will Not End Well

Soooo, in addition to a new chancellor apparently selected against the wishes of the chancellor selection panel (and who comes with both scandal and ed reform kudos), we have his new supervisor, Paul Kihn, who as deputy mayor for education stated the city must “look at [the] role” of schools of right (which I guess … Continue reading The Week In Review: Just Like The Year In Review, Only More So

So, a DC education agency makes mistakes--a lot of them, turns out--in determining who is a resident of DC at one DCPS high school (Ellington). Then, in the wake of several lawsuits, the agency quietly issues an (undated) report that shows (but doesn't admit) how the agency made a lot of mistakes, and then--well, read it all … Continue reading Why DC Needs Independent Education Data: Ellington Edition

This Wednesday November 28, from 6 pm-8 pm, the DC State Board of Education (SBOE) and teacher advocacy group EmpowerEd will hold a joint forum on staff retention in DC’s publicly funded schools. The forum will be held at Walker-Jones Education Campus, 1125 New Jersey Ave. NW. RSVP here. The idea is to brainstorm how … Continue reading Forum On DC Teacher & Principal Retention: November 28

Each fall, DCPS is mandated to hear from the public concerning the DCPS budget. The exercise for 2018 was supposed to have happened back on November 7--but an electricity outage at Phelps forced the event to be postponed. Now, the budget hearing is slated to happen this coming Tuesday November 27, starting at 5:30 pm, … Continue reading Second Time’s The Charm: DCPS Budget Hearing

[Ed. Note: The following is by Ruth Wattenberg, Ward 3 state board of education representative, on a pending vote (as early as this coming Tuesday November 27) on city council legislation (B22-0776) to establish a research collaborative for education data in DC. In the wake of multiple education scandals involving data, the legislation provides for … Continue reading Save DC’s (Truly) Independent Education Collaborative!

At last week’s November 15 council hearing, on the plan to build a new Banneker high school at the site of the closed Shaw Junior High, dozens of public witnesses testified, advocating for either Banneker or a Shaw middle school of right on the site. But after more than four hours of their testimony, it … Continue reading This Is What Democracy Doesn’t Look Like: Banneker/Shaw Edition

Into the deep well of overlooked news dumped on a Friday evening before a long holiday weekend, the office of the deputy mayor for education (DME) this past Friday released its report on the work of 2+ years of the cross sector task force (CSTF). The somewhat triumphant press release avoids discussing the group's failures, while … Continue reading Cross Sector Task Force Releases Report; Members Resign