Comments on the DC Board of Education

When I sent out that email yesterday, in which I called the DC Board of Education pathetic and speculated that they might have deliberately approved lousy charter schools to sandbag the movement, I'd forgotten that one of my friends, Julie Mikut, used to be a member of that very Board from 2000-04 (Julie was a Rhodes Scholar, a teacher for Teach for America and then head of Alumni Affairs for TFA, among her many extraordinary credentials). 

 

Julie didn't exactly dispute my use of the word "pathetic" (note that I was referring to the current Board, headed by a guy who wants a moratorium on new charter schools, not the Board she was on) -- here's what she had to say:

The majority of the board was always a really good group that kept the best interests of the kids foremost in our minds. Quite impressive individuals, but this didn't translate into moving the school system ahead academically. We also had 4 superintendents during my 4 years on the Board; it's tough to see a consistent reform agenda through when the person steering the ship kept changing. Regarding the Board, I'd say poor performance by a group of committed, smart people.

But Julie vehemently disagreed with my hypothesis that the DC Board of Education might have deliberately approved lousy charter schools.  Her full email is below, which concludes:

One thing I can very confidently say is that we did NOT open schools that we thought were going to fail kids. There's too much of that happening already in DC. It's really quite a cheap shot to say that we did.

So my speculation was incorrect in the case of DC, though I will say that I suspect an awful lot of big-city school boards WOULD in fact do everything in their power to sandbag charter schools...

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Email from Julie Mikuta:

 

Hey Whitney, I enjoy reading your emails, but as a member of the so-called "pathetic" DC Board of Education that you accuse of "DELIBERATELY approving a bunch of lousy charter schools to undermine the movement" I've gotta tell you are way, way off base and, frankly, offensive in this remark. It's just so inaccurate. In fact, while I was on the Board we:

1- Closed 4 low-performing charter schools-- count 'em 4. How many authorizers in the country have closed nearly one-quarter of their charters based on their poor performance?  These were low-hanging fruit, granted, and we were cleaning up the mess left by the previous Board of Ed. Still, it wasn't easy to get them closed.

Picture this scene--as an authorizer, you're poring over financials of a charter school where you see very few purchases of educational materials but line after line of expenses at fancy restaurants for staff meetings and purchases of flowers for who knows what reasons. The same school is "graduating" students who haven't earned enough Carnegie units to actually be graduates in DC, so these poor kids gotta sit through DCPS's summer school in order to get the credits they need to get a real high school grad certificate. After the school fails probation and you vote to pull the plug, you are confronted with parents and students who are crying as they argue passionately to keep the school open. A school that doesn't really graduate kids, even on paper? How cruel! 

Or, another charter school where the founder/school leader calls the cops when parents show up at the school, doesn't order books, and forces the boys and girls to use the same bathroom. Yet, they got an injunction from the courts and stayed open for a year after we voted to close them. Thanks to the Washington Post, who published an editorial demanding that the courts move, the school had to close before it was able to waste a second year of the children's lives.

The other 2 schools we closed were equally lousy. And, our votes to close them were met with pleas from parents and children who had been brainwashed into thinking that they were getting a good education because the environment of the school was welcoming. (For the record, I'm not defending the school environment of many of the public schools in DC--that's a different conversation.)

2- As a Board, we raised, not lowered, the bar on approving charters. The charters we opened while I was on the board had strong teams in place that included educational experts as well as folks who could tend to the legal and operational needs of the school. Nothing like the experience of closing charter schools to make you do your homework before approving new ones.

Look, I'm a charter fan but only if they are going to provide a quality education and that's what guided my votes on the Board. I was able to influence several other votes. DC's got some excellent charter schools, and I want to see them expand. The Bd of Ed gets a very bad rap as an authorizer. It's well deserved in some regards, including the fact that the person who was in charge of the charter school office is now being investigated (her hiring was a political nightmare and I couldn't get the votes to not hire her). On the other hand, the Bd doesn't get the respect it deserves (again, which other authorizer in the country has closed almost one-quarter of their charter schools? Low-performing charters exist across the country and need to be weeded out.)

One thing I can very confidently say is that we did NOT open schools that we thought were going to fail kids. There's too much of that happening already in DC. It's really quite a cheap shot to say that we did.