D.C. Public Schools Superintendent Clifford Janey descended Tuesday from the fortified walls of his downtown offices to deliver this pronouncement, which I shall annotate:
Janey: “We have not delivered on quality education here in D.C. … ”
Dude, are you just discovering this?
Janey: “both with respect to the charter schools and to DCPS.”
Dude, are you sure you want to compare the two?
Janey: “That’s why I want to advocate a moratorium [on charter schools].”
Dude, can’t you find a less ham-handed way of killing the competition?
Janey wants the city to quit authorizing charters to groups that want to set up public schools under the 1995 law that permits them to establish schools that use public funds to operate beyond the reach of D.C.’s central administration.
Who sits atop DCPS? Janey. Who looks like General Motors trying to kill competition from Japan? Janey.
Janey hopes to gain advocates for his moratorium at Wednesday’s Education Compact meeting of public school activists and officials. Fat chance. What his request does invite is a comparison between DCPS, the system he nominally runs, and the charter school system, which he would like to hobble.
Students are streaming from his school system to the charters. In the past decade, an estimated 20,000 students have chosen charters. That’s a third of the District’s public school students.
Test scores are a matter of controversy and interpretation, but it is safe to say kids are doing as well if not better at charter schools. The schools and classes are smaller and more intimate; the curriculum is tailored to the students.
Oversight? Lousy charter schools are closed; poor DCPS schools stay open to kill young minds.
Let’s compare bureaucracies.
Most of the charter schools are under the Public Charter School Board. Its five — volunteer — members are appointed by the mayor. Most are Democrats with direct experience in charter schools. Staff: 12. Annual budget: $2.6 million last fiscal year.
DCPS is under the D.C. School Board. Its 11 members are all paid. Most have some experience with schools. DCPS does not know the size of the board’s staff nor the number of people working in the central administration. A good guess is the board employs at least 30; central administration has at least 370. Cost estimate: $53 million. Which comes from textbooks, teachers and toilet paper.
Janey, since you invited the comparison and chose the words, why do we need the board, the bureaucrats, the entire system that has “not delivered on quality education?”
Some charter schools are monitored by the D.C. school board as opposed to the independent public school charter board. Guess whose offices were raided by FBI agents looking for funny money deals? The DCPS side.
At next week’s Education Compact meeting, activists will aim another question at Janey: Why do you keep putting off your report on how many schools to close?
I would add: Why won’t you let successful charter schools move into your empty buildings?
Too scared?
Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at [email protected].
