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District Extra Thursday, July 16, 2009

6

District News

DISTRICT NOTEBOOK

NOTEBOOK, From Page 1

from highlighting his middle name, but he used it when he was sworn in to office).

Graham said he hopes Obama will visit the park if it gets renamed in his honor.

“It has a great basketball court,” Graham said. “Hopefully the new president will use it.”

Test Preview Doesn’t Pay Off

An unspecified number of stu- dents at a District school have had their DC-CAS test scores invalidat- ed because they apparently got an advance look at the test, according to a June 18 letter from Kerri L. Briggs, acting state superintendent of education. The letter, from which all names and other details have been redact- ed, says multiple school staff mem- bers were dismissed after an in- vestigation. The document appears as a public notice of a “test security violation” on the “Assessment and Accountability” page of the Office of the State Superintendent of Edu- cation’s Web site.

PHOTOS BY HAMIL R. HARRIS — THE WASHINGTON POST

Phyllis Cureton, at chaplain for St. Elizabeths Hospital, sings at a service last month to dedicate a national memorial.

St. Elizabeths Dedicates Memorial

CEMETERY, From Page 1

ing brought to visible attention,” said A. Kathryn Power, director of the Center for Mental Health Ser- vices for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “The importance of this memorial is that it is a national symbol of the fact that people with mental illness, at all times, should have the opportu- nity to live where they choose, to get the treatment they choose and to be in partnership with the peo- ple who are helping them with their journey to recovery.” During a memorial service in the chapel of St. Elizabeths, a marble marker was dedicated. It reads, “I must fight in the open,” the words of Clifford W. Beers, a young Yale graduate who in 1908 published an autobiography about the abusive practices of a mental hospital in Connecticut. He later founded Mental Health America, originally known as the National Committee for Mental Hygiene. Stephen T. Baron, director of the D.C. Department of Mental Health, said that, for too many people, “when you checked into a state mental hospital, you didn’t check out until the time of death. And in this facility, if you were not in the military, there was a high likeli- hood that you would have been in an unmarked grave.”

Baron said St. Elizabeths was se- lected as the site of the national consumer memorial in recognition

Stories of cheating, many impos- sible to confirm, surface every test- ing season. This looks like the real deal.

Briggs’s letter, addressed to “Name Redacted,” said the office “commends the leadership” of Name Redacted “for promptly re- sponding to the allegations of a test security breach during this year’s administration of the DC-CAS. The [office] further commends Name Redacted’s leadership for conduct- ing a thorough investigation of the allegations and producing a de- tailed report. . . . Finally, I wish to express my support for the swift

and decisive actions imposed by terminating the parties found guilty of test security violations.” Briggs said it was “unacceptable for teachers to copy and share as- sessment forms with students be- fore the testing window has be- gun,” adding that “the scores for the students who were provided with practice test materials and/or who participated in instructional activities using these materials have been invalidated. This means that these students will be counted as performing Below Basic in the computation of the Adequate Year- ly Progress for School Name Re- dacted, the Local Education Agen- cy, as well as the District of Colum- bia.”

Officials to Hit the Road

Nothing brings city officials to- gether like a road trip. Tomorrow, Mayor Adrian M.

Fenty (D) and D.C. Council Chair- man Vincent C. Gray (D), who have been at odds over the budget, are scheduled to travel to New York to meet with credit-rating agencies. Leading them on Wall Street will be Chief Financial Officer Natwar M. Gandhi and council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), chairman of the Committee on Finance and Revenue.

Gandhi and Evans have been the consistent faces before representa- tives of Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch. When Fenty was on the campaign trail in 2006, he was criticized for being unable to name all three agencies. He could name one, Moody’s, when he was put on the spot during a forum.

Staff writer Nikita Stewart contributed to this report.

D.C. COUNCIL AGENDA

At press time, no public meet- ings of the D.C. City Council had been scheduled for today and tomorrow. For updates to

Flags mark some of the thousands of graves at St. Elizabeths. The memorial will include metal markers surrounded by gardens and a pool of water.

of its historic leadership in moral treatment for people with mental illness. “The Gardens at St. Eliza- beths — A National Memorial of Recovered Dignity” will be woven into the cemetery on the hospital grounds, where more than 4,500 patients are buried, along with sev- eral hundred veterans of the Civil War.

The memorial will include metal

markers surrounded by gardens and a pool of water representing those buried in hospitals from throughout the country, including in the District.

During the program, Phyllis Cu- reton, chaplain for St. Elizabeths, sang “We Are Standing on Holy

Ground,” and Pam Thomas, who has been treated at St. Elizabeths since 1972, read a poem that moved some people to tears:

Every one of us, with dignity and respect, would want the world to bury us, when life’s end we’ve met. That is why this call goes out to rally around this quest. Let’s give these souls what they deserve. This really means our best. And if the voiceless peo- ple happen from the grave to cry, are given a voice by those who live we never could deny. For we too have had no voice, we have suf- fered much as well, we’ve come to- gether on this day, and this is oh so swell.

District Postings

HEALTH CODE VIOLATIONS

These food establishments were closed because of health code violations. The list, compiled from health department reports, reflects actions taken by the departments.

The District

Crepeaway

2001 L St. NW

Closed July 7 for operating without a permit. Reopened July 8.

House of Philly

2311 Calvert St. NW

Closed July 6 for operating without hot wa- ter, a gross unsanitary occurrence and fail- ure to minimize pests. Reopened last Thurs- day.

— Compiled by TERENCE McARDLE

the council’s schedule, call the 24-hour information line at 202-724-8554 or go to www.

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