Just a week from today, on April 1, more than 20,000 DC school kids will find out whether they have “won” a seat at one of up to 12 schools they might have selected. Despite David Grosso’s recent attempts to elucidate from the deputy mayor for education (DME) what, exactly, lottery data say about why … Continue reading Fun with Numbers, Lottery-Style

Below are some (OK--many) items that particularly struck me from the recent performance oversight hearing for the deputy mayor for education (DME) before the education committee of the council on 3/2/16. I have boldfaced the themes, which relate to all public schools in DC. The DME position, directly under the mayor, now has a bewildering … Continue reading Performance Oversight Tidbits: Deputy Mayor for Education

So, here are my (of necessity, idiosyncratic) take-homes from performance oversight hearings by the council’s education committee for the charter board (PCSB; 3/3/16) and for government witnesses for DCPS (3/4/16). (An earlier blog post covered public witnesses for DCPS’s performance oversight hearing on February 18 here.) Note: all agencies also submit written responses to questions … Continue reading Performance Oversight Tidbits: DCPS and PCSB

Even though a data warehouse for all DC public schools was supposed to have been under way by December 2015--per the report last year on mayoral control of schools (the PERAA report) and promises to the council (see especially page 15)-- our education leaders (including the deputy mayor for education, DCPS's chancellor, council member David Grosso, … Continue reading Let’s Talk DC Public School Data: March 29

Perhaps this blog should have a counter of all the petitions, appeals, lobbying efforts, and testimony by parents and students to get people in our city government to act in ways that benefit our public schools. There are many such efforts--witness the 2022 campaign, to fund all DCPS modernizations by 2022 using funds from our … Continue reading Tis’ The Season For Appeals

The DC State Board of Education (SBOE) will vote tonight, Wednesday March 16, at its monthly public meeting on whether students can get high school credits by taking and passing a test in subjects other than math and world languages. The meeting will be at 441 4th Street, NW (Old Council Chambers), starting at 5:30 … Continue reading Board of Education Vote TONIGHT on High School Credits

David Grosso [council education committee chair] to Kaya Henderson, DCPS chancellor and government witness, March 4, minute 28:47 of the DCPS performance oversight hearing: “So middle schools was one of your three priority areas for FY 15 budget and you’ve made the investments . . . [but] DCPS still has not seen a turnaround in … Continue reading No Comment

On February 17, two events happened in DC public education that will have an effect on all public education families for at least the next year: the release of DCPS budgets to individual schools and the first meeting of the deputy mayor for education’s (DME’s) cross sector task force. There are no publicly available minutes … Continue reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being [A Public School Family in DC]: Part 2

It’s springtime for DC--that means cherry blossoms, budget hearings before the council, and our very own public school lottery, whose results will be released on April 1. Starting off the season, WAMU ran a story of parents abandoning DCPS elementaries at 4th grade to opt for charters that start at 5th. (I seem to have … Continue reading Indexing the Lottery

[Ed. Note: Schools activist Peter MacPherson is circulating a petition to use $500 million of the city's reserve funds (which total now over $2 billion) to ensure that 61 DCPS schools that have received only limited modernizations (or none at all) are all finished by 2022. As he notes below, no ward is untouched by … Continue reading Petition to Fund DCPS Modernizations