Janey Suggests Plan To Lift Achievement
By V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 3, 2005
D.C. School Superintendent Clifford B. Janey yesterday released a three- to five-year plan to tackle dismal academic achievement, proposing that a team of outside educators intervene to help the lowest-achieving schools in the system.
School officials would establish a team of "distinguished educators" by fall and dispatch them to under-performing schools to coach principals and teachers, according to Janey's plan.
In the most extreme cases of low achievement, the management of schools could be turned over to such outside groups as universities and companies operating successful charter schools, the plan says.
At senior high schools, Janey proposed modifying the traditional four-year calendar starting in the fall. Students could opt to complete their studies in three years or take up to five years to finish, a change that Janey said could persuade more students to stay in school.
Janey's plan is based heavily on recommendations from the D.C. Education Compact, which is a consortium of school advocacy organizations, foundations, business leaders and elected officials who have been working for a year to find solutions to the system's most intractable problems. School board members said they have not determined what sections of the plan would require board approval.
"These initiatives can't be seen as come-and-go initiatives," Janey said in announcing the plan last night at a news conference at Kelly Miller Middle School in Northeast. "Sustaining the work and implementing it in quality fashion will for me be a defining point from here on in."
Janey was joined by several other city leaders, including Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D), school board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz and D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), who chairs the council's education committee.
"I'm throwing my full support behind this man and his plan for the schools," Williams said of Janey. "I look forward . . . to being a partner in this compact and making all the dreams come true."
In the blueprint released yesterday, Janey reiterated his plans to implement new learning standards, curricula and textbooks this fall and to administer a new standardized test in spring 2006. The school board has approved the new learning standards, which are adapted from Massachusetts.
The strategic plan calls for schools to administer annual math and English tests to students in grades three through eight and grade 10, as required under the federal No Child Left Behind law. The school system tests at every grade level.
For senior high schools, Janey proposed increasing the number of high school credits required for graduation from 23.5 to 27.5 hours and introducing more International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement and vocational programs. His plan noted that under the goals set by the No Child Left Behind law, the percentage of D.C. high school students scoring at the level of proficient or higher on annual standardized tests must rise from 31 percent to 57 percent in English and from 37 percent to 60 percent in math by 2008.
In addition to boosting performance in core academic areas, Janey proposed restoring art and music classes to all elementary, middle and junior high schools this fall, although he did not explain how that would be funded. About 49 schools lack music teachers and 44 are without art teachers, mostly as a result of budget cuts.
In describing how outside management companies could take over low-performing schools, Janey's plan cited the example of KIPP, a company that operates 38 charter schools nationwide, including a middle school in Southeast Washington. KIPP has been praised for helping low-income students score at the highest levels on standardized tests.
But a KIPP official said in an interview yesterday that the company would not be interested in running a struggling traditional school, explaining that it prefers to start new schools and hire its own staff.
"KIPP will not go into a middle school and take it over. That is not how KIPP operates," said Susan Schaeffer, principal of KIPP DC: KEY Academy. Instead, she said, she has discussed with Janey the possibility of locating the school in an underused traditional public school building.