D.C. School Choice Program Offers Few Options

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 18, 2008

Earlier this month, parents of students in 81 low-performing D.C. public schools -- almost two-thirds of the District system -- got a packet in the mail announcing that federal law entitles them to transfer their children to a stronger school.

The notice goes out every August, required under the federal No Child Left Behind law. But in a system filled with failing schools, parental choice can be a hollow proposition. Perhaps that's why officials reported Friday that they had received just 34 applications for transfer. The deadline is tomorrow.

"What a joke," LaCrisha Butler said.

Butler is one of the few who is pushing ahead. She wants to pull her nephew, Travis, out of Coolidge High School, which this year failed, for the fifth time in a row, to hit math and reading test benchmarks required by the law.

The eight other mainstream high schools he might attend also are under federal mandate to restructure and improve. That leaves the District's five "specialty" high schools: the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, McKinley Tech, Banneker, Phelps and School Without Walls. All have admission requirements that pose significant obstacles for Travis, a special-needs child who has an individualized education plan.

Younger students face a similarly narrow band of choices. Alternative schools must be academically sound and sufficiently secure so they are not deemed "persistently dangerous," as defined by D.C. law. The nearly 5,000 children in the District's 11 floundering middle and junior high schools have just two choices under the No Child Left Behind option: Deal and Hardy.

For the nearly 20,000 children at the 48 elementary schools under some kind of federal sanction, there are 11 alternatives. None is located in wards 7 or 8. The schools are Cleveland (Ward 1); Hyde (Ward 2); Mann, Hearst, Key and Janney (Ward 3); Barnard and Shepherd (Ward 4); Langdon and Noyes (Ward 5); and J.O. Wilson (Ward 6).

"This is a problem that school districts across the country face," D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said in a statement. "That's why the administration is focused on increasing school achievement levels, hiring strong teachers and principals. . . . All in an effort to prevent this type of predicament in years to come."

The scant choices are not the only problem, parents and school activists say. The notification packets were mailed Aug. 5, giving families less than three weeks to make decisions and apply for transfers before classes begin.

Rhee's spokeswoman, Mafara Hobson, said the information could not have gone out earlier because results of the District's annual standardized test, the DC-CAS, needed to be "crunched, analyzed and verified" to determine which schools were failing. The data weren't available until mid-summer, she said.

"We mailed the packets as quickly as possible," Hobson said.

The city's public charter schools, about half of which are subject to some form of No Child Left Behind action, also are required to send advisories in early August. But the notices generally come so late that, practically speaking, they don't mean much. The most desirable public charters are full. The only guaranteed spot for a charter family is in their traditional neighborhood public school.

Families that choose to stay where they are can get free tutoring for their children under the No Child Left Behind law. But federal funding for the program, called Supplemental Educational Services, is limited, and parents are annoyed because the informational packets they received this month did not include a list of service providers. That list, compiled by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, will not be available until today, a day before the deadline.

But some parents and school activists caution that No Child Left Behind's by-the-numbers view of the school world is limited and overlooks hopeful things at some schools tagged as failing.

"That designation doesn't tell the whole story," said Cathy Reilly, chairwoman of SHAPPE, the Senior High Alliance of Parents, Principals and Educators. "People have a desire to invest in their neighborhoods even though the school may be in restructuring."

Ron Hampton, head of the Roosevelt High School PTA, said he and his wife talked about transferring their daughter a couple of years ago but then decided not to, even though the school is going through an overhaul mandated by the federal law. He said improvements in teaching and other programs, spurred in part by parental pressure, have been encouraging.

"We just figured the best thing to do was leave her there and struggle to try to get it fixed," he said. "In my opinion, it's coming along."

For Rhee, however, the dismal conditions -- academic and physical -- of the city's mainstream high schools are a particular source of angst. Although her message is usually one of unshakeable optimism about the future, she acknowledged during a recent panel discussion with aspiring young educators that the high schools keep her up at night.

To walk into virtually any of those schools, she said, is to "just be incredibly jarred into facing reality."

"It's astonishing to me, and completely unacceptable," Rhee said.

It also leaves parents and guardians such as Butler deeply frustrated. She's hoping to get Travis into School Without Walls or the technical theater program at Ellington, but it will be a long shot.

"I am very disappointed with the quality of his education," she said.