Few Schools Meet Goal on New Tests
Problem Will Require Major Intervention to Solve, D.C. System Officials Say

By V. Dion Haynes and Theola Labbé
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, September 8, 2006

Only 28 of the District of Columbia's 146 public schools last year met academic benchmarks on a new city test, a situation that will require massive intervention efforts to reverse, school system officials said yesterday.

School officials consider the test a more accurate gauge of student performance than one used previously. Seven secondary schools -- including one middle school, Hardy -- and 21 elementary schools scored a passing grade. The widespread poor performance pushed the number of schools failing to make adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law from 81 in 2005 to 118.

Parents who want to move their child to a better public school now will have almost no place to go. Until now, the school system's main remedy for students in failing schools was a provision in federal law that allows them to transfer to a higher-performing school in the city.

Moreover, school system officials said that charter schools, which took the same exam, fared just as poorly. Only a small number of the 51 charter schools that administered the test made adequate yearly progress, according to William Caritj, an assistant superintendent. He did not provide the names or the number of failing charter schools.

"We're in a poor state of affairs in the District. This shows that we as parents have no options," said Jackie Pinckney-Hackett, a parent advocate and a candidate for the Board of Education. "Parents who can afford it will put their kids in a private placement," she added. "But others will simply suffer."

Experts, though, cautioned that such results are typical when a school system switches to a new test. They said the results marked a base line that can be used to measure future progress.

Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of large urban school systems, said this year's results are a sign that the District will have to invest more in getting students to perform at a higher standard.

"This says that the school district has a lot of work to do. It's a tougher assessment but it's a more honest assessment about the kids," Casserly said. "It falls on the school system to figure out a way to give them the extra help they need.

"This is a completely different kind of test, and it's hard to compare it to any other test that the District has done before," Casserly said.

In April, the school system replaced the Stanford 9 test, which had been used for eight years, with the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System. The No Child Left Behind law requires school systems to administer exams that are tied to their own academic standards and classroom instruction; the Stanford 9 tests students according to nationwide standards.

Also, the Stanford 9 was made up mainly of multiple-choice questions, while the new test includes numerous questions requiring students to provide short answers.

The federal law requires school systems to have all students proficient in reading, math and other subjects by 2014. Each school system sets its own benchmarks, raising the scores every few years, to ensure that its students meet the requirement.

Under the Stanford 9, students were considered proficient if they scored at the 40th percentile. But the scale has been raised under the new exam. For instance, elementary students must now score in the 54th percentile in reading and the 78th percentile in math to be considered proficient.

"We see universities banning kids if they need remediation. We see businesses cutting back on the amount they spend on remediation," Superintendent Clifford B. Janey said yesterday at a community meeting to discuss the results. "It's up to us to make sure our students are gainfully employable . . . and able to finish college."

But officials at some schools, while praising the new exam, criticized Janey for not giving schools more time to adapt to all the changes.

"It would have made sense to stagger the changes over time," said Susan Schaeffler, executive director of the D.C. Knowledge is Power Program, which operates three charter schools in the District.

One KIPP campus, six-year-old KEY Academy in Southeast Washington, which had the highest math scores last year, made adequate progress. But a KIPP campus established last year, AIM Academy, also in Southeast, did not. Officials of the D.C. Public Charter School Board said results of other charter schools will be released later.

AIM's scores on the new exam do not reflect significant progress students made last year, Schaeffler said. On another exam, students scored in the 16th percentile in math -- meaning they scored better than 16 percent of students across the country -- in the fall and in the 77th percentile in April.

Janey said the system has hired a company to retrain teachers and provide academic enrichment programs for students. The system is planning to hold year-round classes at five schools and experiment with innovative ideas at 20 others. In the next few weeks, Janey will send letters to parents at the 118 schools giving them options to transfer to the 28 schools that made adequate yearly progress. Although in the past tens of thousands of students qualified for the transfer, only about 250 did so.

Iris Toyer, chairman of Parents United for the D.C. Public Schools, said the transfer policy is like shifting "the chairs on the deck of the Titanic." She said the latest test results should spur the system to focus more on improving schools.