The D.C. Cross-Collaboration Task Force was created to let D.C. Public Schools and public charter schools tackle the city’s educational issues together. But on a mutual concern of students leaving schools mid-year, the two sectors are struggling to find common ground for a policy recommendation for the mayor.
A study conducted for the group had determined that 8 percent of students were leaving schools mid year in the 2013-14 school year. Evidence shows that such departures are linked to academic performance; students scored lower on math and reading standardized tests in schools with high mobility.
Student mobility occurs in district and charter schools, yet they are on opposite sides of the fence in terms of entries and exits.
Task force research shows that student intake is a bigger concern at DCPS. In the 2013-14 school year, 1,819 non-D.C. students entered DCPS mid-year, while 289 entered public charter schools.
Student exits to the other sector are more common among public charter schools. Only 49 students from DCPS went to charters, and 620 left charters for DCPS.
APPLES AND ORANGES: The D.C. Cross-Collaboration Task Force seeks to find a common policy to address students’ mid-year school changes, but district and charter schools have distinct methods of enrollment.
Enrollment policies drive these trends. Most DCPS schools have no cap on enrollment for children in their respective neighborhoods. All public charter schools choose students through a lottery drawing and have enrollment caps.
“We literally have two different systems within our city,” said Shantelle Wright, founder of Achievement Prep Public Charter School, at a task force meeting on July 26. “I don’t know how we get past the wait lists, how we enroll, the lottery, the enrollment ceiling.”
Two competing sectors: the elephant in the room
A policy establishing common intake practices and procedures across schools received the most support among task force members, but some pointed out that it would be hard to navigate admission differences between DCPS and the charter sector.
Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, said he wants public charter schools to take in more students mid-year. But that might dislodge students who were on wait lists even before the school year began. “It would help address this issue, but I don’t want to tell the parent who’s number one on the wait list that now they’ve lost their chance to get into this school and instead it’s going to be given to a random kid from out-of-state,” he told the task force.
PUSH AND PULL: Mid-year student mobility is a mutual concern at D.C. Public Schools and public charter schools. A policy solution would have to account for DCPS getting more student entries, and charters having more exits, and for charter school wait lists.
“There are elements to each school intake process that will always by definition be different, both between sectors and within each [Local Education Agency],” said Irene Holtzman, director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools. “I think it’s important to identify elements that we think make transitions easiest.”
Pearson suggested, for example, that a citywide counselor could transfer all of a student’s paperwork between schools.
That service could reverse a disconnect between the sectors on sharing disciplinary information. Kaya Henderson, chancellor of DCPS, told the task force that there is an absence of communication between schools on the nature of expulsions. She said there have been numerous cases where a school enrolling a student expelled from another school did not know the seriousness of the students’ actions.
In one case, a student was expelled at a public charter school for throwing a desk at a teacher. DCPS took the student without knowing about the behavior, and the student repeated the offense.
“The school that they were coming to had no idea. The child repeated the behavior where we could have mitigated the behavior,” Henderson told the task force about some of these cases. “We didn’t even know we had a behavior problem coming because the sending school did not release the severity of the discipline infraction.”
Pending citywide policies
There might be no need for the task force to develop a transfer policy until city government addresses the school payment structure and residency fraud, Pearson said.
More than 2,100 students, or 34 percent of citywide mid-year mobility, entered the D.C. school system in 2013-14. Pearson said a portion may relate to residency fraud, which was recently brought to light by reports of Maryland and Virginia families enrolling in D.C. public schools.
MUTUAL CONCERN: The D.C. Cross Sector Collaboration Task Force is tackling mid-year student movement between schools with input from the traditional public and charter sectors. In 2013-14, math and reading testing scores were lower among schools with high mobility.
The Office of the State Superintendent of Education is working to clarify the residency requirements while streamlining current students’ paperwork by verifying information directly from agencies.
The payment policy could change the way traditional public schools and public charter schools receive the uniform per-student funding formula and help funding follow students as they change schools. Proposed changes could expand enrollment audits to multiple times a school year rather than just in October, allowing for payments to move with students.
For the new school year, the city’s fiscal year 2017 budget ensures charter schools receive more funding at the start of the school year. Schools with at-risk students, who receive more funding to achieve better academic outcomes, can now receive funding for new students even after the annual enrollment audit in October. Schools are eligible for mid-year, supplementary payments for special education and English language learner students.
The Deputy Mayor for Education’s task force is a two-year effort aimed at developing education recommendations for the mayor with input from both public school sectors. Created in January, the group has 26 members made up of school and district agency staff, parents and community members.
The task force had anticipated finalizing policy options for student mobility in July and moving on to the topic of facilities in September. The group will not meet in August.