In addition to this letter signed by every ward education council, asking the mayor to keep in mind important qualifications for the next DCPS chancellor, the Washington Teachers' Union (WTU) recently put out a survey to members, and parents, asking for feedback on the importance (or lack thereof) of qualifications and experiences in/of a new … Continue reading Qualifying Chancellor Qualifications

In taking some weeks away from this blog to attend to summer, I didn’t realize that I might miss the entire DCPS chancellor selection process. As it is, the mayor’s chancellor selection advisory committee (announced just last week) might not even have time to hear much public input, as the mayor has indicated she wants … Continue reading DCPSSpeeding: Selecting the Next Chancellor

Today, July 12, the city council will vote on the new contract for food services for DCPS. This is a fascinating exercise, given that the contract was months late, with hardly any time for review, and that food will be served to students starting on August 8 (yeah--even earlier than I thought before). The council … Continue reading DCPS Food Contract Approval (or Not): Today

As someone with a young child in DC during DC’s lead in water scandal of 2004, I thought my reactions to lead in water were pretty, well, reasonable. That is, I think I know the science and the possibilities both in remediation as well as damage. But I was wrong about my reasonableness. Because as … Continue reading Lead in Water: Getting Angry

In DC, the legislation that delivered mayoral control of public schools (the Public Education Reform Amendment Act, or PERAA) also specified a clear process for the mayor selecting the head of the by right system, DCPS: "[The mayor shall] "(A) Establish a review panel of teachers, including representatives of the Washington Teachers Union, parents, and … Continue reading School (Chancellor) Choice

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about the (generally unknown) fact that different DC public middle schools administered different PARCC math tests to their students last year without any accurate or obvious public acknowledgement of this. The lack of sunshine is extensive: test scores reported on all four publicly available websites for DC public … Continue reading When Standardized Testing, and Its Reporting, Are Not Standardized

Now that we are in July, it’s instructive to see how many issues of public education in DC in the last calendar year have simply, well, disappeared from public view. Here are a few--feel free to chime in with others, since the darkness is expansive: 1. An independent entity to assess public education in DC. … Continue reading Oh, The Places You’ll (Not Be Able to) Go . . .

The NY Times recently ran a story on what school choice means in Detroit. If you have not yet read it, I urge you to do so, because the parallels between DC public schools and those in Detroit are eerie. Let's count just a few ways: Poor students comprising the majority; a history of poor … Continue reading Must Read: The Eerie Parallels of Detroit’s Public Schools

So, in a kerfluffle of activity last week, the city council received two proposed food contracts from DCPS for next school year (yes, the school year starting in, oh, 7 weeks), for which the council would have had 10 days to review and approve the contracts (or not). That meant a deadline of July 4--after … Continue reading July 6 Hearing on DCPS Food Contracts–Sign Up NOW

As previously noted, there is a constitutional convention ongoing today about DC statehood. There is also a draft constitution being circulated. Comments on this draft are due by midnight tonight, Saturday June 18. You can comment on the draft constitution here, and learn more about statehood here. This relates to DC public schools rather intimately, … Continue reading Sign Up TODAY for Local Control of Schools