OPINION:
Many greeted Mayor-elect Vincent Gray’s election as a defeat for education reform. I disagree. I’ve known Mr. Gray for many years. I believe he cares deeply about our children. I also believe he understands the need to reform all of our city’s educational institutions and practices.
Mr. Gray understands that education reform in Washington is not only about addressing issues in the traditional public school system. Nearly 40 percent of the District’s students are educated in publicly funded charter schools independently of the traditional system.
I welcome the fact that the city’s traditional public schools are now accountable to our mayor, but charter schools like mine are no less significant in our city’s effort to deliver a quality public education to all students.
Mayor Adrian M. Fenty’s defiance of D.C. law - which requires that students attending public charter schools receive public funds equal to those for students attending city-run schools - was hardly mentioned by many self-styled education reformers during the election. Mr. Gray’s strong support for equitable funding for charters and the city’s pro-education reform law received scarcely more coverage.
My own charter school educates about one in 15 children enrolled in Washington’s public schools - about one in seven in the District’s charters. All six of our charter campuses are located in underserved Northeast and Southeast communities. We also partner with D.C. Public Schools and Baltimore City Public Schools to turn around failed regular public schools. We serve more than 6,500 students, most of whose families have low incomes.
To best serve our children, we constantly monitor and analyze data to evaluate teachers and principals. As a charter, we can hire and reward outstanding educators.
We pioneered Early College in D.C., enabling our high school students to take college courses for college credit. We also encourage them to take Advanced Placement courses, favored by selective and private schools as college preparation.
Friendship also helps students earn Gates and Posse scholarships, providing financial and emotional support through college, and offers pre-kindergarten, preschool and after-school programs. We think we make a significant difference for our students and our city, entitling us to equal funding and attention with the traditional school system.
I headed Friendship House, which served low-income families. Mr. Gray ran Covenant House. We struggled with the same issues in different quadrants of the city. We know that good public schools are necessary if we will ever turn the corner to providing equal opportunities to all D.C. residents.
We both know that the belief that one person can deliver, in no time at all, the reforms needed to bring quality education to every student is a media fantasy. Washington’s Michelle Rhee and New York’s Joel I. Klein have left to much the same fanfare as accompanied their arrival, yet most students in those school systems are not where they need to be.
The District’s recent test scores have gone down as well as up. Worse, citywide test scores conceal alarming disparities. In 2007, just 27 percent of elementary school students in the city’s disadvantaged Ward 8 read at grade level. After three years of school system reform, 29 percent did so. Yet in affluent Ward 3, reforms pushed reading proficiency up eight percentage points, from 78 percent to 86 percent. The achievement gap between Ward 3’s predominantly white students and Ward 8’s overwhelmingly black students has widened.
In a tragically divided city like ours, it may be hard for some to comprehend the challenge involved in bringing students who are several grade levels behind to grade level. We want those students to graduate from high school and complete college. If we fail, Washington’s achievement gap will continue to grow.
The stakes for our children are high. A Ward 3 student leaving education without a high school diploma or a college degree has multiple safety nets: resources to return to education, abundant learning opportunities outside school, and the more generous assumptions society makes about them compared to their Ward 8 peers.
In Ward 8, where unemployment is 30 percent, a similarly underqualified adult might at best hope to work at the cash register of a grocery store or drugstore. Such jobs may soon be automated, and even those are beyond the reach of adults who lack basic literacy and math skills.
The District’s disadvantaged children need both the traditional school system and charters to provide quality education choices like those the District’s privileged residents enjoy. We can achieve the education reform they so desperately need. But to get there, we need help from a mayor who truly understands the problems and will fund all public schools fairly.
Donald L. Henseis chairman of Friendship Public Charter School in the District of Columbia.
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