jonetta rose barras: Star tricks from DC leaders

District leaders seemed pleased with themselves last week when they released the DC School Report Card, which features a star rating system that, for all intents and purposes, looks and feels like education shaming: A school with a highly traumatized student population, struggling without sufficient resources to meet academic, attendance or graduation expectations, gets a one-star rating. Another school with fewer social and emotional barriers to academic success receives a four- or five-star ranking.

“We have incredible things happening in public schools across all eight wards of the city, but we also know that we have more work to do to ensure that every child who goes through our schools is getting the social, emotional, and academic supports that they need to succeed. The DC School Report Card is going to help us do just that,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said in a statement as she announced the School Transparency and Reporting (STAR) framework and school rankings.

“The report cards will not only allow us to better support our schools, but they will also allow us to celebrate them,” said Hanseul Kang, DC state superintendent of education, upon the release of the report card.

Same movie, different venue: DC parents and education advocates have heard that promise before. They have heard it each year after the release of standardized test scores when some of the same institutions seemed perpetually stuck at the bottom, with most of the students performing far below proficient. They heard it when the DC Council passed a budget with millions of dollars added to support at-risk students. They have heard it ad nauseum from the revolving door of state superintendents, school chancellors and elected officials, all hoping to stay in their positions or touting a public policy that supposedly will turn things around for low-performing schools.

Am I the only person sick of empty promises?

DC government and education leaders don’t need any report card to identify schools that need help; they have known about them for at least the past 10 years. What they need are imagination, dedication and political willpower in order to create an innovative public education system that rallies low-income families while retaining those in the middle class and enticing some from the upper-income tier.

Instead, what local officials have presented is a set of worn parlor tricks, passed off as the latest elixir, hoping to satisfy parents and appease the federal government.

Who can forget the Obama-era Race to the Top education proposals advanced by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) or former DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson’s Proving What’s Possible grants? Now comes the school report card that city officials describe as necessary to meet mandates under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA.)

It’s true the law requires rankings, but many states didn’t choose star ratings. For example, Iowa chose to offer categories like “exceptional,” “high performing,” “acceptable” and “needs improvement.” California chose a color-coded dashboard.

Data-hungry parents among us may be satisfied by the report card and STAR framework. However, it erects permanent barriers to the growth and improvement of many schools.

OSSE said it has incorporated over 150 data points, including attendance, academic achievement, college readiness, English language proficiency, enrollment, parental engagement, school environment, graduation rate, and discipline. That last category seems counter to the spirit of the recent law passed by the DC Council that was designed to reduce suspensions and expulsions, which help feed the school-to-prison pipeline.

Notably, the release of the report cards came just days before the District opened its citywide lottery enrollment process. Undoubtedly, some parents will use the star ratings to line up their options and choices. That could end up worsening the big squeeze that top-performing schools have experienced in the past due to high demand.

The flip side of that equation is that other schools could see their names fall off the list of schools of choice. Since the city uses a system in which the money follows the student, a drop in enrollment could harm a school’s financial ability to improve its ranking.

Truth be told, the most significant factors parents need to know have been available to them for years, particularly for schools within the DCPS system. School profiles generally include test scores, attendance, a breakdown of the student population, a list of courses and extracurricular activities, and community partnerships. Charters, as independent public schools, have had some flexibility in choosing what information they share — although many have made the same data available as DCPS, and the Public Charter School Board has sorted schools into three tiers annually in conjunction with its publicly available School Quality Reports.

I am not alone in having doubts about the new ranking system. Opponents aplenty can be found. Just one example: A. Lorenzo Green, a Ward 7 advisory neighborhood commissioner who provided feedback to OSSE on the development of the report card, tweeted that “the end result is as problematic as I expected it to be. I’m already bothered by a STAR rating system for schools, but how some information is presented is very disheartening.” Many of the schools that received one-star rating are in the east end in wards 7 and 8.

According to Kang, a federal grant of $11 million is expected to be divided among the 10 lowest-ranked schools over the next three years. Do the math; that’s a pittance.

What’s more, the problem for a $2 billion system isn’t money; it’s the dearth of skilled, imaginative leadership with determination.

A better use of the star system might have been applying it to the mayor, the state superintendent, the DCPS central administration, and the charter school board for their stewardship of public education in this city. What rating should they receive?

jonetta rose barras is a DC-based freelance writer and host of The Barras Report television show. She can be reached at thebarrasreport@gmail.com.