Independent Evaluation of DC Public Schools Too Little Too Late to Impact Plight of Teachers
Somebody dropped the ball. Who’s to blame for the eight years we waited for an independent evaluation of mayoral control? Well accountability is reserved only for us peons (teachers, school personnel, principals, vice principals and; central office staff). Right? Not for mayors and other elected officials.
Under a 2007 law, known as PERAA (Public Education Reform Amendment Act) gave control of DC Public Schools to the Mayor (Former Mayor Adrian Fenty) as well as other changes in school governance. The purpose of the law was to give leaders more flexibility in making changes in light of the school systems history of failed fix it plans and floundering student achievement.
The reform law required the mayor to submit an independent annual evaluation of our public schools annually on academic achievement,personnel policies and business practices. The law also included an option to skip annual assessments and deliver a five year independent assessment by September 15, 2012. Obviously that deadline was not met.
There was much ado on the road to selecting independent evaluators. In 2009, Fenty eliminated funding for an independent evaluation. Then there were two evaluator names that initially surfaced including Frederick Hess, of American Enterprise Institute and Kenneth Wong, of Brown University who were proponents of mayoral control and made many uncomfortable about their objectivity including former Chairman Vincent Gray, who raised concerns, to his credit.
Eventually funding was restored for the independent evaluation in 2009. A total of $325,000 was included in the DC government budget to hire the National Research Council (NRC) to conduct the evaluation. NRC is one of four non-profit organizations that operate under the National Academies. It was estimated that DC government would provide 20 percent of the funding, with NRC raising the remaining cost from private donations.
The road to this independent assessment has been a rocky one. Let's count the three mayors who presided while we waited for a glimpse of this assessment. Let's see first there was Adrian Fenty, then Vincent Gray and now Muriel Bowser.
At long last, members of the evaluation committee reported their findings and recommendations on June 3, 2015 at a public round table at the Committee on Education held at the Council of the District of Columbia. Tweets were rampant on June 3rd from inside DC City Council chambers as the committee unveiled its report.
The report findings are in excess of 300 pages and for purposes here, I will try to dissect this information in The Washington Teacher: Independent Evaluation of DC Public Schools Too Little Too Late to Impact Plight of Teachers:
