D.C. Council Member Adrian Fenty can look at today’s report from the State Education Office and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to understand a takeover of D.C. Public Schools means more than ensuring widgets are ordered, the bathrooms are cleaned and textbooks arrive on time. It certainly extends beyond whether the superintendent is supervised by the D.C Board of Education or a deputy mayor.
The Bridgespan Group, working at the behest of the SEO and the Gates Foundation, looked at 4,300 ninth-grade students in the 2001-02 school year. Based on research, the group found that most do not graduate from high school; 32 percent do not enroll in college; and 69 percent do not graduate from college in five years.
“The majority of public school students are simply not prepared for college,” says Deborah Gist, head of the SEO. Her office and DCPS have pledged to double the number of students completing college in five years from 9 percent to 18 percent by 2010.
The Bridgespan study is as disturbing as the one released nearly a decade ago by the financial control board; it indicated the longer a child stayed in DCPS, the worse that child’s academic performance became. Six superintendents and billions of local and federal dollars later, not much has changed.
When Mayor Anthony Williams sought to seize control of DCPS, council members put on the brakes. They were more enamored of an antiquated governance model than the tens of thousands of children caught in a poorly performing system that too often graduates functional illiterates.
Mayor-controlled schools have been in operation for years in cities such as Boston, Chicago and New York. When executives in those municipalities took over, their systems suffered, quoting President Bush, “a culture of low expectation.” In the District, this is exacerbated by a deficient teacher corps and under-educated parents, who often run households without libraries, let alone state-of-the art computers.
If Fenty does move to take over schools, attracting and building a superior teacher corps and educating parents will be his most difficult challenges. Succeeding would guarantee the Gist 2010 goal.
Tax credits could be provided to landlords for making units available at reduced rates or free of charge to young teachers ages 25 to 35 who hold master’s degrees and agree to work three to five years in DCPS. As for parents: The business community could help install computers and create libraries in every low-income home; it could use the census tract to decide where to start.
Fenty could refocus his considerable political machine, launching a campaign to educate parents and galvanize the community, duplicating what occurred in 1950s and ’60s when residents rose up against deteriorating, segregated schools. The race of the culprits may have changed, but children are still the victims.
Jonetta Rose Barras is the political analyst for WAMU radio’s D.C. “Politics Hour with Kojo and Jonetta.”
