Predictably, D.C. Superintendent Clifford Janey is delaying the release of his master facilities plan until later this year. The plan was to have been made public last month.
Meanwhile, the D.C. Board of Education launches its series of public hearings on Janey’s proposal to close or consolidate this summer a puny number of the system’s 144 buildings. And outgoing board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz last week on WAMU’s “D.C. Politics Hour” endorsed the Rev. Carolyn Graham to replace her. Graham’s tenure as deputy mayor for children youth families and elders was ineffective and bland.
The watchword for education in the District is pusillanimity.
Will tens of thousands of young people ever be saved?
Maybe. If the culture and bureaucracy of D.C. Public Schools that embraces the status quo is deliberately targeted and destroyed; if a comprehensive community revitalization plan focuses on the socioeconomic conditions facing public school students that impede their academic performance; and if the District’s State Education Office is empowered.
The current office is as useful as the Capitol Police’s handling of the auditory deficiencies of congressional representatives. (Where is Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison when we need her? A woman who keeps a pistol at her bedside knows the sound of gunfire. But I digress.)
The office, when originally conceived, was to be the big stick in the city’s so-called education reform movement. Legislation passed by the D.C. Council made it a twig: It counts students, creates rules to verify students’ residency, serves as a licensing agency for institutions of higher education and manages a feeding program.
Its counterparts in Maryland and Virginia are muscular operations — receiving and managing federal grants, defining academic standards and assuming control of poorly performing districts and schools.
In this city, the power, and thus the ability to be effective, are diffused. Janey is called the state education officer; the authority normally reserved for state departments of education is vested in him. And let’s not forget the state education office at the University of the District of Columbia, headed by C. Vanessa Spinner. If I keep looking, there’s bound to be another.
These multiple operations where people wear conflicting hats, defend fiefdoms and protect pots of taxpayer money do much for the adults who run them and nothing for the children.
In 2001, the SEO recommended assuming additional responsibilities comparable to its counterparts in other states: establishing licensing standards for instructional staff; establishing teacher certification requirements for all schools; and establishing rules for governing academic credits at all schools, among other things.
Years later, none of the city’s leaders has taken action. The mayor is busy closing up shop. Council members are trying to move to the mayoral suite, retain their current seats or rewrite the Home Rule Charter in the name of improving education.
Don’t you just love a farce?
Jonetta Rose Barras is the political analyst for WAMU radio’s “D.C. Politics Hour with Kojo and Jonetta.” Reach her at [email protected].
