Shallal criticizes D.C. school reform efforts, saying he would chart a different course
The District’s high-profile efforts to improve public schools have largely failed, according torestaurateur Andy Shallal, the first mayoral candidate to challenge the fundamental policies that have driven D.C. education reform under Mayor Vincent C. Gray and his predecessor, Adrian M. Fenty.
“Education reform is just not working in Washington,” Shallal wrote in a white paperreleased Friday, criticizing the city’s emphasis on using standardized tests to judge educators and schools as a “war on teachers” and a strategy of “intimidation and punishment.”
(Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) - Mayoral candidate Andy Shallal talks about what he what do if elected mayor at Turner Elementary School in Washington on Jan. 18.
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Gray (D) has highlighted education as a strong point in his campaign for reelection, citing national standardized test results that show the District — while still performing far below average — has made larger gains over the past two years than any state or other large city.
But Shallal — who has made the city’s growing income inequality a central theme of his campaign — argues that the citywide figures mask a large achievement gap between the city’s low-income and affluent students, and between black, Hispanic and white students.
Poor black students in the continue to trail their counterparts in other cities; only 9 percent of those students scored high enough in fourth grade to be considered “proficient” in reading, compared with 78 percent of white students.
“If we keep harping on this idea that the schools are doing great, we are misleading people,” Shallal said in an interview Monday.“We should not be married to an ideology at the expense of our children.”
Gray spokesman Pedro Ribeiro said that black students made statistically significant gains in all grades and subject areas on the most recent national exam and that the bottom-performing 10 percent of students made some of the largest gains across the city.
While some of Gray’s challengers have criticized him as moving too slowly on improving