B2
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KLMNO
EDUCATION
JAY MATHEWS
His strategy was startling, but he raised the bar
never seek me out. Journalists are poison to them. We only want to write about bad stuff. Anything they say can be held against them. So I was surprised when Charlie
O
Thomas, principal of Crossland High School in Prince George’s County, began sending me e-mails. His school has been one of the worst in a low-performing district for a long time. But Thomas, who arrived in 2004,
was trying to improve his school and didn’t care about that. He was even willing to deal with a fault-finding columnist, if it would help. Nearly 66 percent of his students were low-income, but he was not going to let that slow him down. I confess he has gotten my
attention with some unusual moves. For instance, he quickly discovered that close to 800 of his 1,800 students were still in the ninth grade.
“I asked for a list of every ninth-grade student that was 16 years old or older with a grade-point average of less than 1.0 [a D average],” he told me. The list had 330 names. Some had been there four or five years. “As soon as the school year began,
we met with each of these students and informed them that they were being placed on academic probation,” he said. “They were informed that they had one quarter to raise their grade-point average to at least 1.0. If they failed to do so, they would be withdrawn from the school due to lack of interest or transferred to the evening school program. . . . At the end of the first quarter, only 50 students remained on the list.” Several of his teachers needed to improve. He created performance plans and focused on absenteeism. Some left. Seventy percent of the faculty at the school today were hired by Thomas. Some got better. His state test scores improved, the passing rate in English going from 51 to 78 percent and in algebra from 25 to 64 percent, in the past three years. Then he got a disturbing letter
from Pamela Stuart, whose daughter, Destiny, had passed all the state tests and won many school honors. College was going well for her, the mother said, except that “Destiny felt as if her academic courses really didn’t prepare her for what she was to face. . . . Her roommate comments on how her college calculus class has been so much easier for her because she learned all that stuff in high school.” So Thomas raised the standards
even higher. Every ninth-grader reading at or above grade level was placed in at least one honors course. Every 11th- and 12th-grader who had taken an honors course was placed in an Advanced Placement course, with a new International Baccalaureate program on the way. In the past two years, the number of AP tests taken has grown from 164 to 687, a 319 percent increase. “For many, it is frightening,” said
AP government teacher Brian Ford. They are getting academic challenges that many “have not had to face before,” he said. But senior Grace Bolompe said she appreciates how this will help her in college. “Personally, these classes have opened my eyes,” she said. Now Thomas’s goal is to raise the
school’s AP test pass rate from an abysmal 2.3 percent. Some critics say principals such as
Thomas are wrong to use college-level courses to revive their schools. Start with something easier, they say. Thomas says, “When they go to college, EVERY class they take will be an AP class. I tell them that NOWis the time to learn how to be a college student.” Sounds right to me.
For more Jay, go to
washingtonpost.com/class-struggle.
ne of my education reporting maxims is that principals of schools in troubled districts
MONDAY, APRIL 19, 2010
BOB HERBERT/THE NEWS JOURNAL
Tennessee and Delaware won funding in Race to the Top’s first round. Above are Georgetown, Del., fourth-graders Keenan Melvin and James Velasquez.
D.C. area schools make cases for federal funding
education from B1
those goals are often incompatible. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told Dun- can in a budget hearing last week that her state had been penalized in the first round for proposing an overhaul of teacher pay and evaluation that many union affiliates and local districts would not support. She said that obtaining statewide backing would force officials to water down the plan. “There are obviously many en- trenched interests,” she said. “This is a battle. It’s not a waltz.” In Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist’s veto
Thursday of a bill that would have abol- ished core tenure protections for new teachers and expanded performance pay showed that the reform movement Oba- ma has unleashed might be hitting polit- ical limits.
Florida, with a Republican governor and legislature, is widely regarded as one of the most aggressive states in de- fining the effectiveness of teachers on student academic performance. The state finished fourth in the first round of Race to the Top, with a plan that union leaders assailed. Now the question is whether teachers will have more influ- ence in Florida’s reforms. These national currents are shaping how officials in the Washington region
approach the second round. The District could win $20 million to $75 million. At stake for Maryland and Virginia are po- tential prizes of $150 million to $250 million each. D.C. officials face two challenges.
They must whittle their initial $112 mil- lion grant proposal to $75million. And they hope to obtain endorsement from the Washington Teachers’ Union, which had withheld backing for the city’s re- form plan in the first round during con- tract talks with Schools Chancellor Mi- chelle A. Rhee. The announcement this month of a
long-awaited labor agreement, pending ratification from teachers, could smooth the way. The deal includes a voluntary performance-pay program, with bonus- es tied to growth in standardized test scores and other academic measures. “We’re hopeful that we’ll get union
support this time around,” said D.C. State Superintendent of Education Kerri L. Briggs. That might not be easy. Debate con- tinues over whether teacher layoffs in the fall were justified. Union leaders asked a judge last week to reopen a law- suit that seeks to reinstate 266 teachers who lost their jobs. Maryland could benefit from its deci- sion to skip the first round. The state re- leased a draft proposal last week for
Race to the Top in an effort to obtain lo- cal endorsements. In addition, the legis- lature approved a bill backed by Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) to extend probation for new teachers to three years from the current two. The Maryland plan does not appear to
go as far on performance pay as propos- als in the District, Florida, Louisiana and other states. But the plan indicates that the State Board of Education is ex- pected next month to approve a rubric that would link teacher evaluations to gains in test scores. The rubric would be tried in four to eight school systems in 2011 and launched statewide the next year. State Schools Superintendent Nancy S. Gras- mick wants half of the evaluations to be based on growth in student learning and half on teacher skills and knowledge. “We have to be competitive,” Gras- mick said. “We’ll never get [a grant] if we’re not bold.” She said the state must flesh out re- cent legislative action that calls for stu- dent achievement growth to play a “sig- nificant” role in evaluations. Grasmick said Maryland could be pe- nalized if contest judges ask what “sig- nificant” means and if state officials are forced to reply that interpretations vary from place to place. “That isn’t strong,” Grasmick said. “We have to be more pre-
cise.” However, state Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-
Prince George’s) said that elements of Grasmick’s proposal appear to conflict with the legislation. “My feeling is that some sections of it have to be redone,” he said. Like Maryland, Virginia ranks highly
on national student achievement meas- ures.
But Virginia’s first-round bid was panned by contest judges who found its reform proposals too modest. The state’s application received 325 points on a scale of 500, placing it ahead of Wyo- ming (319) and behind New Mexico (325). Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) pushed the Virginia legislature for changes in the law to promote expansion of charter schools, but the measure lawmakers ap- proved was not far-reaching. There also appears to be reluctance in Virginia to replace the Standards of Learning with academic standards common to many states. That position also could hurt Vir- ginia’s chances. State officials are weighing whether to
reapply. “We have not made a determi- nation yet on how we’re going to pro- ceed with Race to the Top,” said Charles Pyle, a spokesman for the Virginia De- partment of Education.
andersonn@washpost.com
The Answer Sheet
VALERIE STRAUSS
Blogging at washingtonpost.com/answersheet
figure out who is going to be paid what, and how, in District public schools before the budgeting process becomes a comic farce. Some would say it already is. Is there a $34 million surplus in the public schools budget? Is there not?
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Who said there is? Who says there isn’t? Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) — whose signature initiative, school reform, under the chancellor he appointed, Michelle A. Rhee, seems to be lurching from one controversy to another — should bring
THE DAILY QUIZ
past year? (The answer can be found on today’s Washington Business page in Main News.)
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nough already. Somebody has to
intervene, and fast, to
together the parties involved to sort this all out, and fast. His reelection bid this year could be affected.
Rhee seems to be in a slugfest with Fenty’s chief financial officer, Natwar M. Gandhi, over how much money is in the budget to pay teachers. I thought things couldn’t get more ridiculous. Then Rhee landed in hot water with teachers — again — just when it seemed she had climbed out. Rhee had reached a historic
contract agreement with teachers, who have been angry with her since she arrived three years ago with a take-no- prisoners attitude about reform.
Things escalated last year, when she laid off 266 teachers because, she said, there was a budget deficit. Teachers protested, but a judge sided with Rhee.
When the contract, which required compromise on both sides, was announced, she seemed to be on the start of a fresh relationship with teachers. Then last week, Rhee told the Council that, in fact, there was not a deficit after all but a surplus, and that’s how teacher salary increases would be paid.
Au contraire, Gandhi said in
a letter Thursday to Rhee that essentially says she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
POINTS & REWARDS
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He was “incredulous,” he wrote, that she said there was a surplus because there isn’t. Gandhi, being the city’s chief
financial officer, seems to have more credibility in this argument. But because school and city officials are not exactly transparent about where money comes and goes, it’s hard to know what is going on. It seems that no one has an authoritative handle on the budget, and that raises questions about how Rhee sets priorities and funds schools. If, in fact, Rhee has been operating on faulty
assumptions about how much money she has to work with and how much teachers are paid, we don’t really know whether schools have been getting what they should be receiving. Budgeting issues have plagued Rhee since she became chancellor in 2007. That was the year the Fenty
administration paid $4 million to consultants to find savings and re-prioritize school system spending. In less than a year, Rhee was seeking more money, raising questions among education advocates about how she was spending funds. Advocates complained that budget details were kept secret and that Rhee sometimes made conflicting statements about how money would be spent.
And so, here we are again, with Rhee in the middle of a budget controversy that threatens the pact she reached with teachers. I don’t know anybody who wants Rhee to fail in her effort to improve D.C. schools, but if she can’t keep herself out of this kind of trouble, it’s hard to see how she can succeed. If Fenty wants to keep reform
efforts alive, he must find a way to get this fixed, and fast.
straussv@washpost.com
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