DCPS Snow Make Up Calendar

February 26, 2010

Dear Parents and Families of DCPS Students,

Our back-to-back snow storms earlier this month made history, and caused our children to miss numerous days of instruction. In figuring out the snow make-up calendar, we have consulted with the Office of the State Superintendent, DCPS instructional staff, the Washington Teachers Union, and a number of parents. Thanks to many of you who offered suggestions about how best to maximize instructional time, preserve family vacation time, and meet the state attendance requirements.

We explored a variety of options that included extending the school day, converting previously scheduled vacation days into school days, changing the dates of DC-CAS testing—but none of these proved workable. In order to make up the lost snow days, the school calendar will shift as follows:

Friday, March 19th will be a regular school day. This was previously scheduled as a Professional Development Day for teachers, with no school for students.

Monday, May 17th will be a regular school day. This was previously scheduled as a Parent-Teacher Conference Day, and we will work with schools to ensure that teachers and parents schedule time to talk about summer learning and end-of-year topics during late May.

Friday, June 18th will be a full regular school day. This was previously scheduled as a half-day for students. It is now a regular full school day.

Monday, June 21st and Tuesday, June 22nd will be regular school days. The last day of school for students and teachers is June 22nd. These were the designated “make up days” built in to the calendar last year.

Monday, June 28th is the first day of summer school.

We appreciate your patience and flexibility. We understand that schedule changes can cause difficulties for families and it is our hope that these specific adjustments will cause the minimum amount of disruption.

Sincerely,

Michelle Rhee

Chancellor

The Kojo Nnamdi Show: Interview with President George Parker

Washington Teachers Union President George Parker said that the union is "very close" to reaching a contract agreement with the DCPS. Howard University Law School Dean Kurt Schmoke has acted as a mediator throughout the negotiation process. Though Parker declined to name a specific timeframe for signing, he said that the terms of the contract as it stands now will "...give [teachers] what they need in order to do the job they've been asked to do."

Here's the link to the podcast.

Battling for the Top Spot at the Washington Teachers' Union

Dues and Don’ts: Parker says Saunders is more interested in running for office than serving the union. (Darrow Montgomery)

Rancor in the WTU ranks threatens to explode in upcoming election.
By Mike DeBonis

Posted: February 17, 2010

News flash: It’s campaign season, and there’s a big-time election coming. The fate of our city is at stake—it’s a race that stands to impact big-time issues: education reform, relations with the city workforce, ongoing financial pressures.

No, LL does not speak of the mayoral race. What’s he’s talking about here is the presidency of the Washington Teachers’ Union.

An internecine battle that’s been brewing for the better part of three years is threatening to explode this spring, as WTU President George Parker runs for a third term as chief of the high-profile union. His only declared opposition thus far is Nathan Saunders, who has spent both of Parker’s terms as general vice president, a post that, in recent years, Saunders has used to assail Parkers’ leadership at near every turn.

If you thought relations between the mayor and D.C. Council are bad, they’ve got nothing on the rancor within the WTU executive ranks. As Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has embarked on her mission to overhaul the D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) in no small part by improving the quality of teaching, Saunders has repeatedly sought to undercut Parker. At one point, Saunders filed a federal lawsuit against Parker, accusing him of conspiring to oust Saunders from union affairs and covering up financial mismanagement to boot. A judge tossed Saunders’ lawsuit out of court, but that has hardly put a muzzle on the man.

“I’m of the ilk that a union represents its members’ interest, not as a communications funnel for management’s interest,” he says by way of slamming Parker.

“Nathan’s pretty much been running for office for the last three years,” Parker retorts, with good reason. While Saunders has been tossing verbal bombs in Parker’s direction since 2007, he’s been engaged in the tough slog of negotiating a teacher contract with DCPS—a process deeply intertwined with the union campaigns. (Continue reading Loose Lips)

Problems with D.C. teacher evaluation featuring WTU Task Force Chair Marni Barron

Blog posting by Washington Post writer Jay Mathews on the problems with the Impact evaluation system featuring an interview with WTU Impact Task Force Chairperson Marni Barron. To view the entire article and comments click the link below:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/02/problems_with_dc_teacher_evalu.html



Problems with D.C. teacher evaluation

Marni Barron, an innovative educator, shares my discomfort with many Washington area school districts that rate nearly 100.percent of their teachers as satisfactory. (I’m not kidding: Alexandria says 99.percent, Fairfax County, 99.1.percent, Montgomery County, 95, Loudoun County, 99, Prince George’s County, 95.6, and so on.)

But we disagree over the region’s most daring effort to assess educators honestly, the D.C. schools’ IMPACT program. I think it is a worthy experiment. Barron thinks it needs to do much more than it is designed to do to train teachers in its intricacies and demands.

Barron, 38, has been teaching, or coaching teachers, for 15 years. She works with the IMPACT system daily as the instructional coach assigned to help 15 teachers achieve and maintain excellence at Phoebe Hearst Elementary School in Northwest Washington. I (age withheld) have never taught a day of school in my life, and know no more about IMPACT than what I have read and heard from teachers.

Which of us are you going to believe?


I sense that the kind of evaluation the District is attempting will eventually reach other area districts, at least in underperforming schools. So we suburbanites should listen to what IMPACT experts such as Barron have to say.

I will offer some evidence of the program’s good effects soon, but first consider Barron’s critique, rather courageous given that she is working for IMPACT’s creators.

She likes tough, deep assessments that measure student progress in many ways, such as portfolios and behavior. “I am actually kind of a fan of stuff like this,” she said, “but do it right.”

Like any good teacher, she has visual aids for slow students like me. With some strain, she lifted a milk carton filled to the top with books, syllabuses and planning schedules. Beside it she placed a two-inch stack of papers. The milk carton material was what teachers waded through during their three years of training to establish No Child Left Behind measures in Michigan, where Barron once taught. The two-inch stack was what D.C. teachers were required to digest during three days of training for IMPACT and the new Teaching and Learning Framework.

Ready or not, the D.C. program is underway. Most teachers have had at least two of their required five annual observations: three by their principal or other school administrators and two by outside evaluators, called “master educators.”

In that rush forward, Barron said, supervisors are changing the rules. Barron interviewed last year to be a master educator. When she asked whether those evaluators could provide extra advice and support to teachers who needed it, as was done by coaches in Michigan, she was told no. When she was asked at the end of the interview whether she thought she would be a good fit for the job, she said no.

Recently some master educators told Barron those were the old rules. They now encourage teachers to meet with them after hours to discuss their weaknesses.

Barron was told to observe and fill out a classroom visit form for each of her teachers identical to the one used by the official evaluators. This was to get them in tune with the process. But Barron concluded it was a violation of the D.C. teacher contract, which bars teachers from evaluating their peers. (D.C. officials disagree). She declined to do that. Instead, she invites teachers to fill out the form themselves and see her to discuss improvements they want to make in their classroom methods.

Barron said the IMPACT guidebooks are too vague and too subjective. An assessment system will work only if it includes a major effort to show teachers how to improve through evidence-based instructional strategies, she said. There isn’t enough time for that in the five or six days set aside each year for professional development and the spare moments she has to talk to them during the regular school day.

This strikes me as a soluble problem. Barron said her principal, Bill Kerlina, is a fine educator. Whatever IMPACT’s flaws, she said, he does his best to be fair in upholding IMPACT by backing his ratings with evidence.

That says to me that good educators, including Barron and Kerlina, are making the necessary adjustments in this new system.

Barron hears that and gives me the patient look she uses with confused 10-year-olds. It will be a while before we know whether IMPACT works. But Barron thinks D.C. schools are trying to build this ship when it is already at sea, without involving the crew.

mathewsj@washpost.com

D.C. Schools Chancellor Rhee's approval rating in deep slide

Approval rating of Chancellor and Mayor are on the decline.
See full article at the link below:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/31/AR2010013102757.html?hpid=moreheadlines

D.C. Schools Chancellor Rhee's approval rating in deep slide

By Bill Turque and Jon Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 1, 2010; B01

D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's job approval rating has dropped precipitously over the past two years, alongside Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's, despite sentiment among District residents that conditions in the city's long-troubled public education system are starting to improve, according to a new Washington Post poll.

Rhee's performance was viewed favorably by 59 percent of residents in January 2008, with 29 percent disapproving. Now, there is a near-even split: 43 percent approve of what she's doing, and 44 percent are dissatisfied. Those with children in D.C. public schools have nearly reversed their opinion of Rhee. Two years ago, 54 percent of those parents approved of her; now, 54 percent disapprove.

Support for Rhee has eroded most dramatically among African Americans. Two years ago, 50 percent of black residents backed Rhee, while 38 percent disapproved. Now, just 28 percent approve, with 62 percent dissatisfied. The intensity of African Americans' unhappiness with Rhee's leadership has also grown. The percentage who "strongly disapprove" of her performance has doubled over this period, from 22 percent to 44 percent.

Yet as residents grow less supportive of Fenty's designated change agent for the schools, they still approve of some of the changes. The proportion of parents in the city who see violence or crime in schools as a "big problem" has declined from 78 to 65 percent. Those with children in public schools are more favorable, with 57 percent calling it a big problem. The quality and availability of books and other instructional materials is viewed as less of a major problem by all parents, dropping from 67 percent to 48 percent.

In follow-up interviews, parents aimed some of their frustration with the system at Rhee.

Keisha Warner, 40, who lives in the Michigan Park community of Ward 5, said she was especially concerned about the city's struggling neighborhood high schools. Her daughter attends seventh grade at a Landover parochial school, Warner said, and unless she can enroll her in one of the city's specialty high schools, where admission is by application only, there isn't much of a future for her in the city's public system.

"The expectation is for my daughter to go to college," Warner said. "Unless she goes to Banneker or School Without Walls or even Wilson, I don't know how prepared she'd be," Warner said.

The poll results underscore how closely Fenty and Rhee are linked in public perceptions and how much of the mayor's political future might be staked on the chancellor's success in turning around the school system. Fenty's approval rating has dropped 30 points to 42 percent since 2008. During the same period, the proportion of residents who say he has done a "good" or "excellent" job in improving schools has declined from 52 to 42 percent. The segment of residents evaluating his school performance as "poor" has grown from 18 to 24 percent.


For full article click here.