 So hello and welcome. I'm Conor Williams. I'm a senior researcher here in the early education initiative at New America I'm also the father of a two and a half year old who's about to enter DCPS in the fall So this is a book Our school by Sam Chaltain, which is for sale right there That it came right on time for me. We we've just gone through the unified lottery process We've been thinking about this as a family a lot It's been an interesting confluence of my personal life and my professional life It was exactly what I needed to because you know, we were going to the open houses We were having these tortured conversations on playgrounds with with other parents's and about the you know ways of keeping up with the Joneses By gaining various lottery systems and were you doing enough for your kid? Well, I didn't know and so then I came across Sam's book and There are many things About education writing that Sam does well, but the thing that this book does best of all is it's it's obviously a pursuit of clarity This is not a book to confirm your ideological biases. It's not a book to make it simple To think about school choice or charter schools or about how neighborhoods are connected to the schools that are within them This is a book. That's about presenting a clear picture and if you're not familiar with it Here's the general idea is Sam spent a year in two DC elementary schools one district one charter and As I can tell he can confirm this for you It was a case study is to show what it's like in a district school right now in Washington DC and What it's like to start up a charter here in DC. There wasn't a lot of ideological freight being carried This wasn't to to make some sweeping and very simple generalization about whether charters work or charters don't It's not about whether they are the angels to save public education or whether they're a demonic pox on public education It was a clear book. It is a clear book and That virtue comes again with with a sort of discomfort as part of it. It's not a book. That's going to make you Make your thoughts on charter schools easy So with that in mind This event I think is is it's not a book event in so far as we're trying to tell you what's in the book But this is a book event that's designed to cash the check or start cashing the check that Sam wrote in that book Just to say we're here to have a more thorough and a more thoughtful conversation about school choice here in DC Based on some of the things that he's written based on some of the experiences that we've this really distinguished panel we have has had and and To get towards a better vision for DC that works for everyone and the one that's balancing the value of choice with virtues like neighborhood community educational equity And hopefully success for all students. So with that in mind There are a lot of things as most of you know to think about in terms of school choice in Washington DC There's we have rapid gentrification going on here. We have Shifting school boundaries perhaps in the next year or so we have all sorts of Complicated Issues around a diversity that are racial that are ethnic that are socioeconomic that are in so many ways very interesting All this and more is coming for you on our panel It's going to be moderated by an outstanding moderator Covers public schools here in DC for the Washington Post is Emma Brown So I hope you'll join me in enjoying this panel and in welcoming me here with a round of applause Thank You Connor and thank you all for coming for what I think is going to be a really timely Conversation with a great group of folks. So before I introduce the panelists today I want to take a minute to just set the stage a little bit with a few numbers About DC so here in DC 44% of our public school students are in charter schools Which is huge when you look across the country only two Studies have a greater percentage of kids in charter schools But it's not just charter schools that have given Families choices DCPS our public school system More than half of students in the school system aren't going to the school They're assigned to when you look out across the district You've got only about a quarter of students who are going to the school that they are assigned to the school down the block The way that we think about it. And so that's there's a there's a sort of scattering that happens and Abigail Smith the deputy mayor for education has her team recently put out some pretty incredible data that shows what that scattering looks like in our neighborhoods So for example, there's a neighborhood east of the river around a ton elementary school that attendant zone has somewhere around 550 students Only about a hundred and fifty of them actually go to a ton the school They're assigned to and the other 400 kids go to 83 different schools across the city public and public charter schools So it's an 8-ton is not really even all that weird The average if you look at one attendance zone is 64 different schools So so that's kind of the reality in which we're having this conversation today The in which the city has had sort of a long Long simmering debate if you will about what that means for neighborhoods and communities and that debate was kind of blown up in a few Weeks ago to an even broader and more intense discussion when Abigail Smith released some proposals for not just overhauling school boundaries Which is anybody who's been around education knows is like already sort of a third rail But but also changing the way students are assigned to schools And so and those range from sort of tweaking the system we have now to really fundamentally Changing it in a way that you know neighborhood schools as we think about them wouldn't necessarily exist anymore And so if it's in some cases given the proposal so Here that's the context in which we're talking and I think people around the city have been talking about so much Of what we're gonna be discussing today Including how and whether choice is a strategy for improving DC schools about the value of neighborhood schools and the tension in a segregated city between Neighborhood schools and diverse schools and about whether school choice is even really a fair term Given given what some parents call school chance though the low-twit chances you'll get into that really sought after school So with that here's some introductions at the end is Sam Chaldein and we'll come back to you Sam Abigail Smith is sitting next to him. She is the city's deputy mayor for education as I said And has taken the lead role on these student assignment proposals and other other initiatives that I bet will come up today like our common lottery for Ford Charter and Traditional schools she started her career at Teach for America and was there for a dozen years before coming to DC PS first under Chancellor Michelle re and then under Chancellor Kaia Henderson as the chief of transformation With a bunch of issues in her portfolio Immediately before coming to great administration last year She was an independent consultant and chair of the board at E. L. Haynes public charter school Sitting next to her is Laura Moser Laura is a writer and a parent of two young children who lives in northeast Washington She had a recent piece in Washingtonian magazine entitled how not to get your kid into kindergarten which I think was Echoed so much of what I hear from parents when I when I talk with them about what it's like to go through the Ritual of the lottery here in DC She's a former editor at Harville Press in London and now as a regular contributor to the Wall Street journals off-duty section But her writing has appeared in a whole bunch of other publications Including the New York Times and Slate and on top of that. She's written the biography of Betty Davis Sitting next to her is Scott Pearson Who's the deputy I'm sorry executive director of the DC Public Charter School Board? The entity here in DC that authorizes new charter schools and closes those that aren't meeting their accountability measures Scott had a long career in business at America online and bathing company has also worked in federal government including as a trade Negotiator for the Clinton administration and more recently for the Obama administration in the education department as a deputy in the office of Innovation and Improvement and Evelyn Boyd Simmons to my right has lived in DC for 32 years. She is known in her neighborhood in Logan Circle as a force And community organizer. She's also the mother of two DCPS students chairs the Education Committee for her local Advisory neighborhood Commission and is a founding member of the work to education Network a group of activists who have come together To make their voices heard in citywide debates about schools Evelyn's professional background rages from volunteering in Senegal to working for the US Senate and State Department and Fortune 100 companies these days. She also does occasional consulting for individuals and organizations Finally Sam all the way at the end is a former high school teacher who translated his interest in education To a career as a writer and strategic communications consultant He previously worked as a national director for the forum on education and democracy and an education advocacy organization And he was the founding director of the five freedoms project a national program that helps k-12 educators create more democratic learning communities His writing has appeared in the Washington Post and ed week and us a today and of course in the book. We're here to talk about For which sam did what a lot of education Reporters wish they could do and do not do which has spent a lot of time sustained time in the same school in the same classroom in sam's case two two classrooms And so without further ado sam what can you talk before you before we read from the book? What were you setting out to do in this book? Sure? Thanks, Emma, and hi everybody Thank you all for coming. I I think I set out with both self less and selfish Reasons for writing this book and the self less part I don't know that I could put it any better than Connor So Connor's really nice to hear the way that you framed it because my hope Was to Tell a story that would help us at least start to pivot away from the current tenor of most conversations about school reform Which if you're here, you're probably interested in conversations about school reform And so you know that they're usually very contentious and two-dimensional So the first thing you have to do is pick your side Are you four against the unions? Are you four against teach for america? Are you four against school choice? and for any of us that Have worked in and with schools. You know that it's more complicated than that So the the self less Thing that I set out to do was try to put a human face on the modern landscape of school reform as seen It's not even really through two schools as as emma says. It's really two classrooms It's a kindergarten classroom in a then first year charter school mundo Verdi and a third grade classroom of a 90 year old neighborhood school in mount pleasant Bancroft elementary and so my hope is exactly that we would be able to start to have conversations like this That take that those stories as a jumping off point for larger questions And then it was selfish because As as emma said I started my career as a teacher in new york city Um, I was the statistic I taught for five years and then I I laughed and I've been in education my whole career but um I've been very lucky in that I get to work With and in schools all around the country. So I get to see a lot of schools I get to be in them, but it had been a while Since I had really Been embedded in a school been deeply invested and so I felt like as somebody that tries to be Public voice and advocate on issues of schooling I needed to to get my hands dirty again and really experience over the course of an entire school year What is it like to be a teacher in a startup charter school? Environment what is it like to teach third grade in a city? Um that has a new teacher evaluation system And that's a part of the larger movement towards test based accountability And what's it like to be a parent who's trying to negotiate this brave new world for the first time? And and make a a choice about a school when so much Of the information that we have about schooling is still so incomplete So that was the main thing that that I set out to do and what's exciting about the book being out is now It's for the the rest of you to tell me to what extent I was successful and In the places where I stumbled where and why and I hope you will I mean you you spent all that time there you talked to There was a lot in your book about teaching and how very hard teaching is and I think anyone who has been a teacher Known a teacher watched a teacher can relate But what can you talk a little bit about what you learned? with particular eye towards this world of choice that we live in and You you very explicitly wrote that you didn't go in looking to compare charter schools and traditional schools But I'm curious what what lessons you came away with About those two different worlds Sure. So the the first thing it really was confirmed for me that Still teaching is Heroic underappreciated and largely unsustainable work It is almost impossible to be A really effective teacher who is still able to nourish the personal sides of themselves in the current climate and part of that is because we're still Perfecting our ability to succeed in a system that no longer serves our interests But part of it is also because we're in the midst of the largest paradigm shift in what it means to be a teacher in 100 years and the simplest way to put it is For almost everybody in this room when we were students The expectation was that we needed to adjust to the needs and the norms of the school And now the expectation is that the school must adjust to the needs and the norms of each student And personally, I think that's right. I think that's the way we should be going And it's a lot harder to do as a teacher. So there's this There's a capacity gap for almost everybody in the field whether you're a first year or a 30 year teacher The expectation is that you will be differentiating your instruction to each and every student 180 days a year six hours a day five days a week But the preparation that most Professional teachers have received is not fully in line with that. And so when you read the book, you'll see that There's really four teachers that I spent time with and the two principles of the schools were also former teachers And everyone describes these experiences of going home at night And having to basically construct your own crash course In all the things that you need to know in order to meet the needs of your kids that you'd never learned before So That's a problem and it's something we all have to wrestle with and the chance to wrestle with it in conversations like this Is really important the last thing to your point about choice So to me what's interesting is as connor said i'm i'm not out to To to speak purely for or against either traditional districts or charter schools I think there's clear values to both but what was interesting to me was seeing that in a way The primary strength of each sector is what the other sector is most in need of So charter schools by definition are kind of making it all up as they go and sure enough in mundo verdi's first year You see the excitement and the insanity of that of having to construct your professional development calendar a report card means of evaluating teachers norms cultures ways of being And that creates space for a lot of innovation and it's also a recipe for Imploding if you're not careful, so there's clear value and peril in the charter model by itself On the other side districts have the advantage of scale So they they don't need to wait until the fifth year to hire an art teacher They're not having their kids cross connecticut avenue in order to use a neighborhood park But and they have report cards But at the same time it can have a stultifying effect, you know, sometimes watching professional development unfold in dcps It was like a game of telephone, you know So an idea that that takes place in central office is then translated into powerpoint slides that's sent to principles That then present those to their teacher. So there's there's peril in that also So I guess one of the questions for all of us is in what ways can districts Better harness the creative the regenerative power of charters And in what ways can charters not have to reinvent every wheel And start to discover some advantages of scale without losing the autonomy that makes them what they are Awesome. Well, that is a good good set of questions to jump off on with our other panelists and I think So let's start maybe with avgail and work our way down this way Um, can you respond? I mean one of the promises of the school choice movement was that charter schools would be laboratories of innovation Sort of like sam just said that then districts could harness What charter schools learned put that to use and that that would you know, that would Create faster improvement sort of across the board you talk about how To what extent that has happened in dc, I mean we're coming up on 20 years of the charter school movement here in the city To what extent has that happened? Is that still a goal and and and how do we see that happening if it is? Um, first of all for those of you who are standing in the back There are a number of seats up front and I know no one likes to be in the first row But please do feel free to come up. There are seats and you might be more comfortable Um, sorry, that's my I was gonna say that too So so I think this question of the role of charter schools in In encouraging innovation within within traditional public schools And sharing of best practice. It's it's a good question. And I think that That there are examples sort of across the board on this So in some ways people might look at dcps and say well dcps hasn't Fundamentally changed in every way and we now have 44 percent of public school students in dc and charters So obviously the the part about charters affecting the system hasn't worked on the other hand um, I can point to and I'm sure scott can chime in as well with this a lot of specific examples of charter schools and dcps schools working together on on A whole number of things in sort of a community of practice kind of approach So in terms of of curriculum and professional development, there's actually been Been a lot of that kind of interaction, which I think has been of value to to to both sectors Even in terms of some of the the actual curriculum programs So the common core is is you know from a standards perspective is one place that's happened But even in terms of some specific curriculum programs, I was just reading a story today somewhere about how Charter some charter schools in addition to dcps schools have adopted the tools of the mind curriculum at pre-k Even as we also have a charter school network in dc That has its own pre-k curriculum that they have developed locally And have you know begun to to spread beyond that so I think there are actually lots of examples at at a school level where that has Really happened I also think that the sense of entrepreneurship that charters bring to the space really has Infected in a good way dcps. So part of that is around how you market your own school So when you have an all neighborhood school system where everyone just goes to school where they're assigned You don't think about marketing your school in that way just that's you know our traditional systems Didn't didn't have to do that and didn't do that charters have done a really good job of that in many many cases And I actually think dcps has learned a lot from that How do we talk about what our school is who our school is What our sort of brand is so that we can attract parents who are excited about what we have to offer at this particular dcps school And I think that's a positive thing because even if it's parents who are assigned to that school and are going because it's their neighborhood school There's a sense of of investment and ownership that this is our school and this is how we define ourselves But I think it's actually very valuable to the school community So those are those are a few of the of the things I think we've seen on that front But you have a different perspective as a parent Well, I just sort of have a less informed perspective. I just um my son is now in his second year at a Decent dcps school and we really love it and when I Interviewed a bunch of people across the city for this article my love kind of deepened because I realized wow We really have a good thing my son loves his friends. He can read Learning multiplication and we pass 30 people we know on the four block walk to school every day How could life be better? So of course the problem is that people leave this particular school and there's this Kind of insecurity that runs through the whole community that well if we stay what if everyone else leaves and what if we're the only people left And you don't want to be left behind it's sort of it feels similar to applying for colleges in some insane way so This year I I applied to two charter schools After doing a lot of thought about it and then Unlike the other two years when I did the lottery we actually got into our first choice Charter school and I was kind of horrified rather than being overjoyed So I have spent the last three weeks in this kind of lather of indecision and I was I was talking to my son's dcps Teacher who were really close to in love and respect and I kind of thought and we only applied to language immersion Schools and another thing I was going to say about well. Anyway, um, that's for later But I said so and I thought she'd say oh, he'll be great. This is perfect He loved Spanish is great and instead she said well what school is I've never heard of that school And I said oh, it's probably it's it's moondo verde I'll just say um, I just one of the better known schools in the city and she said Oh, it's a charter. Oh, we shouldn't go there. They don't even train their teachers properly And that was kind of the end of the discussion um, and so And in a way that did not um That did make me think I mean, I think we are going to go But I just thought wow these two communities and I also interviewed An executive director of a very popular charter school about and I mentioned that you know Hey, my school is in the neighborhood about six blocks away and she said oh your school you like it's there How interesting you know and so I feel like there is a division between these two groups and that they're not Going out for beer after work every night basically So that's God are they going up for beer? Well, I go out for a beer with the chancellor of dc public schools once a month We make that we have we don't go out for a beer but we make a point to have lunch once a month because there is so much opportunity to collaborate and and to respect the fact that yes our schools are in some way in competition with each other, but we're also Um here to serve the entire city and there's ways that we can do that at the granular level For example, abby was referring to communities of practice. There's there's a there's a group of schools That are working together to charter and dcps working together To prepare for the common core and to think about how they can use the data from interim assessments that they get To inform their instruction and and improve their instruction for the common core All the way up to you know, if a school if a charter school isn't Succeeding in the charter environment. Maybe it can succeed in a dc dcps environment or vice versa And then the collaboration on the common lottery this this year my school dc where rather than having to apply to You know dozens of individual lotteries And dozens of individual application processes We put it all together into a single one where you ranked your schools and Finally, there was an opportunity where the preference of which school you preferred could have an impact on which school you got into So there is um, there is a lot of cooperation and the cooperation is important because when you have a city That's almost 50 percent charter and 50 percent dcps if you don't do that The result is fairly chaotic for the parents and families who are trying to navigate the system So there's cooperation, but that's a little different than like lessons learned about pedagogy and and teaching and learning in the classroom And is that do you think that that's happening? Is that still part of when you're looking at you're about to tonight think about Or take applications for new charter schools here and when you're thinking about sort of the community you're building Are you thinking about creating laboratories of innovation that then Can produce lessons for other people to learn from or are you thinking about making schools that work for kids? And and and not so much about the lessons that you know that can emanate from that school Yeah, first and foremost we're thinking about creating schools that work for kids The innovation side of charter schools has probably not fully lived up to its promise I mean, you don't see these radical new approaches that are now sweeping the country but um, but but there are several innovations innovations that are being tried and adopted at dcps that It may be going too far to say charter schools invented them, but charter schools certainly Were at the forefront of using them. So extended school day extended school year The use of blended learning an example i'll give is that dcps just recently Put out an announcement advertising for a position of somebody who would be the I think the term was the chief operating officer of a school And the idea was that they were going to this person was going to take all the administrative burden From the principal so that the principal could truly be the principal teacher be focused exclusively on teaching and learning That's a model that we see in many charter schools That that bifurcation you have an executive director and a principal and so um at that level of innovation I think you're seeing charter schools uh being pioneers and and seeing that disseminate into the traditional public school system Evelyn is this even the right question to be asking about schools You know, I think it's an interesting question. I think from the perspective of accountability and revisiting the rationale for Um, creating the system in the first place. I think it's appropriate Um, I think that it needs to be more systematic Um, you know capturing those innovations and capturing that value and I don't see Uh, I don't see it happening in a very systematic way And I certainly don't see it happening in a way that gets visibility To the end users us the parents Um, it's interesting. I'm sitting I was sitting here thinking You know, I was thinking about Laura and about how she said some inconsistent things that I hear a lot I love my neighborhood school But I did enter the lottery and we are leaving And I wish more people asked why I wish we lived in a world where Uh, the lauras And people like me who left their neighborhood school were actually Interviewed and what we had to say about our experience was considered valuable From the perspective of you know informing dcps about how to be a better system DCps has a couple of advantages They do have scale They have a connection to neighborhood and they have the ability At least at present to offer preschool to 12 end to end education. That's predictable That's high quality for every single neighborhood that that was the proposition that was the standard And now I think we're backing into a situation where There is a disturbing amount of flexibility about what dcps dcps is and does But I think you cannot be you know kmart and have walmart move in two miles away And have the same price point and have the same goods on the shelf and expect to do the same things the same way And that oh you're shocked when half your customers have moved two miles away I just think dcps needs to It's not even dcps. It's really at a leadership level within the city needs to decide what they want dcps to be Do we still want a preschool to 12 system of schools that is capable of being self-contained and self-sustaining? I think that's a fundamental question that gets danced around We get stroked we get reassured But again, I see inconsistencies about where I think we're headed And the fundamental assumption that that's where we're headed. I spent the first 18 months of being active on education Assuming that that was in place and unassailable and I no longer assume that You've given us a lot too that I think we're going to touch on but since you raised the question of why Well, can you talk a little bit about why you're Well, I mean I think because everyone else leaves and you don't want to be the one left holding the bag I mean, but in our case no one else is leaving and that's what's made it Really hard like finally I think our school has reached the turning point Where people are staying and now I'm probably the most involved on the pta of anyone in our cohort And yet they're staying and I think I'm leaving and but that's I mean that's because everyone lotteries Because that's what you're supposed to do because we have this lottery and hey sw s is down the street Don't you want to you know? Everyone is always kind of aspiring for the next great thing even if it doesn't work for their kid and it is There is this element of peer you know Insanity that I mean that's the only reason I can I mean besides some issues with the principal but But really it's like you don't want to be there, you know, you don't see because that's what she talked to me about But it really is that we lost half our class last year And that was fine But what if you lose the other half and what if there's a new group of kids every year? Then that defeats the purpose of the continuity of a neighborhood school And that's also what happens when there are 18 schools within a one mile radius of your house Which in my case is pretty much true, you know I mean there's just a lot of places you can go if you get in which nobody does So that's what I mean the mobility in dc is huge. It's really huge So is that just a consequence like an unavoidable inevitable consequence of school choice that we need to learn to sort of live with This is for abby and scott. I don't think it is because when we look at our highest performing charter schools One of the things we track very closely is their reenrollment rate and our highest performing charter schools have reenrollment rates in the High 80s, you know to to low 90 percent, which is about the rate at which families are moving So it's I don't I don't believe it's inevitable No, what about an abby? I know you're abby is not the chancellor of dc public schools But given that you're um representing kind of the the administration What what about dc ps? Is this a problem? I mean that that sort of churn Is that just an inevitable consequence for dc ps for the neighborhood school system of of having so much choice? well, I think there's no question that the culture of um of school choice and recognizing that that word choice is is a loaded one for for many understandably Um, but but that culture which is now absolutely pervasive in our city I mean we can't can't deny it. So as you know, as you pointed out at the beginning, Emma We're not just talking about choice within Within charter schools. Um, where 44 percent of our kids are we've got kids who are going to schools in dc ps that aren't their neighborhood schools We've got dc ps has selective high schools and we've got a chunk of kids who choose At the high school level not to go to their neighborhood school Not necessarily because their neighborhood school isn't isn't good But because they want something different and are willing to travel for that across the city So so there's an immense amount of that and I do think that the mindset that that has put parents in of of you know, it's not You you shouldn't just assume that your neighborhood school is going to work You always should be asking yourself this question I think that's what Laura's referring to and I do think that that that can be a little much And you know, I I've experienced as a parent Have been through various lotteries both dc ps and public charter schools with my own kids and and it does create some instability in school communities and I think a Sort of Transients among people who have options I mean you often have transients in cities among People who don't have good options and who are you know, I have trouble finding housing that they can afford and move around Schools as a result of that This is actually people at the other end of the spectrum people who do have lots of options who are exercising them Is that a bad thing? You know, I think there's some downsides to it for sure in terms of of sustainability of programs and Neighborhood stability and all of that I think that there are a lot of positives including the notion that until relatively recently the only way you could access Guaranteed quality was if you could afford to buy a house in a certain part of town period That's how it is in most places in our country still And the notion that now in dc both in dc ps and in public charter schools There is the possibility that you can get around that limitation Even if it's not a guarantee for many many many people in the city that opens a door that simply was not open for them And I think that in the in the discussion that you know We're having right now around around school boundaries and student assignment policy We hear a lot from sort of the other end of the spectrum Of people who currently have a guarantee of something that is really good and it's a right for them And they're of course very very happy with that and should be and And so as I say they're they're pluses and minuses But I think that understanding the complexity of that picture is just really really important as we approach this There was I interviewed a mother recently for a story who said you know if there were fewer choices If there were fewer escape hatches was the term she used I think our neighborhood school would be stronger And this was a woman who like Laura what had just gotten into her dream charter school and was leaving her neighborhood school And felt very conflicted about it So it is it is attention. I think that that you are not alone in grappling with And sam sam you you wrote about this part of of dc in your book about parents choosing and kind of the You know the sense that you're you're out there choosing based on the information you have But is it the information you need to make the right choice? And how do you do that and you wrote about that In a scene in your book in which a parent goes to a brand new not even open school yet to consider it You want to introduce that and sure so As I mentioned before this the book is primarily about Educators and children at two schools, but it's also about two parents who are on the outside of either system Who are searching for a school for the first time and so So this scene is second half of the book and really the only thing you know is this is one of the two parents Her name is Karen Copeland By the time Karen Copeland received the postcard in the mail saying her daughter had won a preschool seat at one of dc's newest Charter schools. She had just about given up hope Every other school had drawn Leah's name so far after the cutoff as to become comic She hadn't even attended an open house for the school whose promise of admission she now held in her hand But as she thumbed through her folder of handouts from the charter school expo She started to remember being impressed by the school creative minds international and by its charismatic founding principle She found the school's glossy handout Opening fall 2012 it read alongside the color images of two children's faces New international public charter school with arts foreign languages and hands-on project-based learning Creative minds international public charter school is a new tuition-free school for children in washington dc creative minds international offers an engaging diverse international curriculum with project and arts based activities That foster creativity self motivation social and emotional development as well as academic excellence How can a school say it offers something she thought if it doesn't even exist Then she read more about the school iMacs in every classroom an emphasis on the arts And a founding principle with a phd and a deep understanding of how children learn and in spite of herself Karen Copeland started to feel the fortune of her winning number She also had no other options a fact that tempered her enthusiasm when she attended a special open house for admitted families the following week This is the actual reality of school choice. She told me as we entered the school's facilities to pick up leah's enrollment pack It's school chance The most established charter schools have basically stopped being anything other than a true lottery ticket for families Because most of the spots for the younger grades are taken by siblings That means for those of us who still want to play the game The best options are the unproven schools the ones that sound great on paper And that may actually become great, but which don't yet exist in any real form You're buying low and hoping the stock will jump As karen walked in the school's first year front doors just off a busy stretch of 16th street in columbia heights She saw other families coming in to submit their enrollment materials The foyer still featured the mottos and posters of the building's current tenant a charter high school that was about to move across town One set of parents brought their son with them I don't like it. He said moments after entering at which point his father knelt down beside him This isn't the school yet. He said the boy stared back blankly. What is it then? Nearby another parent handed over her daughter's materials and gave the young female teacher on the other side of the table a bear hug If you all need help getting ready for the fall, let me know That gives me goosebumps. The teacher responded. I think I might cry Karen moved through the entryway and into a large room where creative minds principle was addressing a semicircle of prospective families I'm wondering how much balance you'll be able to maintain once the school year actually starts karen said arms crossed Leah's got 17 plus years of schooling ahead of her. I don't want her to get pushed too quickly into an academic focus I know exactly what you mean the principal responded I started this school out of the same frustrations. I'd felt when I was searching for a school for my son several years ago That's why we want to make sure our teachers are just as focused on addressing the social and emotional needs of your children As they are on their academics Karen watched the other parents around her nod in affirmation at what they heard Are these future friends Will leah be spending time at these people's homes? Should I believe what this principal is telling me? We left shortly thereafter Karen thumbed through the enrollment package outside the school's front doors Request for records race and ethnicity data collection home language survey emergency contact information residency verification I get excited every time I learn more about the school. She said but at the same time Did you see how young those teachers were in there? I worry that's what's happening is that the rising expectations of the parents and the increased understanding of the research Has outstripped the ability of teachers to actually deliver the goods Some of what I heard in there sounded like an election speech. It all sounds so good in theory But what will it look like in practice and do I want leah to be part of the experiment? The more I think about it. Karen continued as new arrivals brushed pastor I'm not as concerned that they're a new school. It's preschool By the time she gets to first grade they'll have worked out the kinks I go back and forth on where my priorities are On one level I say let's try this and I'm okay with her switching schools a few times But I also can't help but think about the tumult down the line It's a leap of faith, but I suppose that's true anywhere She unlocked her car to drive back home two miles to the east I think we'll still move out of the city. She mused just not right away Thank you, Sam. So there's so much in there and it just looked at the clock and want to have time for you guys to ask questions as well But I think I want to jump off from that into this question of I mean There's so much risk taking as you just said for parents, especially with a new school But really when just in choosing I think right and in trying to make the right choice I think that can feel like a risk to parents And the you know one of the one of the promises of of choice is equitables this equitable access to good schools Or to quality schools. And so I'm wondering and What is equitable access to good schools and this is a question that's come up a lot with these student assignment Proposals like what are we trying to achieve? What is equitable access? So Sam, I don't know if you want to take a stab at that and what you've seen Through your reporting and through being a parent here like how do you how do you define that and are we on the track to that? Well, so so so the the title of the book is our school But the subtitle is searching for community in the era of choice And I hope that in that passage I read you hear some of the The tensions the possibilities and the redefinitions emerging So for me when I think about it Um, so I've written about this in the past where I've said I support school choice, but it's complicated Um, my son attends a charter school. I helped found a charter school and unquestionably Charter schools unleash a unique kind of Generative energy and really strong senses of community. It's a different sense of community. It's not neighborhood community But there's real power in any organization where everybody From the staff to the families has opted in to something And at the same time you hear Karen's own ambivalence and the fact that There's a sense of well, all right, I got the winning numbers I'll do this for a little bit, but I don't know that I'm actually investing in it for the long haul I might just kind of dip my toe in it and then as she says We might not still stay in the city and I think if we think about questions of equity One of the things we have to wrestle with is, you know, to what extent Are we in dcps and in the charter school community? really explicitly wrestling with the the the historic tension in our country, which is the balance between the me and the we so Clearly the my child my choice mantra has a lot of Cache and really speaks to the me and in a country that's founded on these dual principles of liberty equality I think we all know that we tend to err on the side of liberty and not on equality So how can school choice also lead us back to a deeper Commitment to the we even if the we is in charter schools and in dcps Starting to take a different form than the traditional Neighborhood school that's That's an unresolved tension. It's one of the ones. I hope we'll explore But you know as I've said before the thing about democracy is it um It doesn't require that we live in equality But it does require that we share pretty significantly in a common life And I think one of the most interesting unresolved questions here in dc Is to what extent is school choice in dc bringing us closer to and or farther away from Really sharing in a common life in ways that will improve other aspects of Our lives our social fabric in our communities So that that that notion of a common life Can be expressed in different ways. So does does Creating a community Mean that you're going to school with the same people who live within 10 blocks of you Or does it mean that you're going to school with people who live all over the city So that you're actually creating a community Of the district of columbia all eight boards I'm gonna actually pass out A map that we do we do this for each school we show the school and then we put a dot For where every student lives and and you can um Thank you. Emma, you know, you can see this is for mundo verde, which was the school that was that was covered in sam's book and You can just see that this is a school. Yes There is a cluster near the school But it's serving the entire city and isn't there a value certainly post brown versus board of education isn't there maybe even a higher value For a community that embraces the entire city across socioeconomic regional racial boundaries Evelyn, can you can you talk about your experience in your neighborhood and how you you know, how you view this question through the lens of of your own experience Well, my neighborhood school is garrison and i've spent a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to support the school even though we left the school after my daughter was in preschool because She got a spot in the school that my son was in that he had been placed in administratively by dcps Um, you know garrison is a school that has kids from all eight wards as well I think it's a misperception that neighborhood schools only serve the kids in their neighborhoods. It's just not true Um that that half of the dcps student body that does not attend its inboundary school is going somewhere Uh to some other dcps school. So I think increasingly Schools are are a reflection of the city. I think what's getting lost is the value of the neighborhood school for those of us who are interested in In bringing our neighborhoods together. I live in a in logan circle, which is an extremely rapidly gentrifying area And there's a perception that you know schools exist along the poles So you're either in ward three in an affluent, you know, mostly white area Or you're in ward seven eight and some other areas of the city that are unfortunately You know socioeconomically and racially segregated, but then you've got A whole other swath of the city that is changing really quickly And doesn't really without a neighborhood school has no way of knitting together the disparate People who are now part of that community physically um the fact that on average Students go to 64 different schools I think is damaging to physical neighborhoods neighborhoods as as distinct from communities communities Are places where people share common interests neighborhoods or places where people share common interests and are likely to run into each other You know face-to-face So I really again I what I ponder and what I try to notice is What is it that's getting plugged? What is it that's getting sold to us? Is it this concept of Sort of a utopian sense that schools can have it all they can be democratic. They can be diverse. They can be high quality And we don't have to sacrifice anything. Well, it's it's not true. I feel what we're sacrificing is that neighborhood component And because the neighborhoods that really really value their schools are ones that are affluent and have that end to end preschool to 12 um You know privilege of of having great schools that that they do want to hold on to and that they do want to Send their kids to Ignores the fact that there are areas of the city that very much want to recreate Uh a system of community schools to serve Their community where it does not currently exist So I think charters are a good way of bridging the gap. I think they're necessary. I appreciate them um, I think it would be uh very difficult for families if charters and quality dcps schools did not exist somewhere in the city But what concerns me is This notion that neighborhood schools are almost bad now It's almost a negative to be and want to be a neighborhood school And I find a um a lot of resistance on the part of dcps to to being more Customer friendly, I guess You know, it's interesting to think that teachers are expected to differentiate instruction But principles, I don't think are expected to differentiate Engagement based on what their neighborhoods need from them In order to feel confident and interested in that school and to see their future tied up with that school And I'm not sure why that is But it could be that there is just a notion that you know, we're throwing up our hands and we're so Afraid of this idea that zip code equals destiny When 75 percent Of the students in our public school system Have already escaped their disc their their zip code somehow one way or another So I'm just I spend a lot of time trying to read the tea leaves because I just feel like there's no declared There's no declared destination for us as a school system Take us to the edge of questions about the School assignment proposals, which we will do in a minute, but I want to hear from Laura about how the notions of community and neighborhood Play into your decision and into the thoughts and sort of perceptions of the parents you've talked to and you're reporting on this Well, our schools Is a bit different because there's there's a very overt Conflict between the gentrifying immediate neighbors and people who used to live in the neighborhood Who still send their kids to school some of whom don't live in the district? Which is a frequent subject of discussion But that's what the tension between the parents and the principal and it's like kind of unpleasant After you know, I'm like I just want to drop my kid off at school. I don't want to get involved This is a little heady, you know for 8 12 in the morning. Um, but that's um But we also feel like I mean one reason we are leaving is because we feel like we already have The community of our neighborhood both our neighbors who don't go to our school because we um live near a popular charter Half of my neighborhood goes to this charter and it is sort of like it feels like a neighborhood school And because we already know them we already have the relationships. It's not the same as seeing people every day But so why not try to do something that you might think is better for your kid and that is the The conflict between you know, like yeah, I would like to stay and make this school better But there are these barriers that you can't you know that I don't Personally have the energy to confront. I just kind of want my kid to get a good education and and that does Contribute greatly to the problem. I understand that but you know There are these things in neighborhood schools in dc in 2014 that are You know difficult As a parent, I mean I you know And they're very exaggerated in our particular school. I feel like I don't think that's as uncommon though. I really don't think that that dynamic of You know new parents you get labeled. You're a new parent because you're not a legacy part of of of dcps population that's been Served for the past decades So even though I've been here for three decades. I'm a new parent Um, which is kind of interesting right because your uncle didn't go to the same school I mean that's how it is in our school. It's like well, you know increasingly. I find that it's actually it's it's not so much that As it is that I have different expectations I have an expectation of being involved in school governance So when I got to garrison and there had been no pta for the past seven years Even before I went to garrison I supported the woman who restarted the pta there and was sort of a shadow vice president because I do whatever she needed me to do that um local school advisory team is actually the more on the more stressed a school is the less likely it seems that's actually To be functional and have meaningful represent meaningful opportunities for input um, they're just expectations that I think new parents have that are annoying and resisted by Certain principles and certain teachers and it turns a lot of parents off Well, it I think sam's book Very well illustrates just how hard it is at a traditional dcps system to To change the culture and to I mean the focus there is is more less on the parents and more on the teachers You know that you've got a principal and you've got a leadership That really wants to shift the way instruction is done and you have a few teachers that are on board But there's a sea of teachers that aren't and and so it's it's just It's harder to change and and I sam opened the Discussion by talking about how you know dcps and charters each have something they can they can benefit from the other You know charters can benefit from scale and dcps can benefit from The innovation and the the nimbleness But you know it strikes me that it's it's easier for charters to fill that To fill their gap they can you know, we have groups now like ed ops that does all the back office for a charter So they don't need to build that scale We have charter management organizations that provide all sorts of things We have the special ed cooperative that allows charters to pool their special ed resources That that's an easier thing to fix than to You know than to move On entrenched culture and it's it's really hard work and I have tremendous admiration for the For the progress they've made at dcps to to move as far as they have Abby before we go to questions in a couple minutes I do want to ask you to talk a little bit about the these proposals that you You and your team and the committee that evelyn is on have put forth So here we are 60 years after brown v board of education We still live in a city that while gentrifying quickly Many of our schools are still very segregated and many of our neighborhoods are still very segregated By race and by class and so i'm wondering to what extent you see choice as a way to To help integrate our schools and to what extent you see choice as a way to help improve the quality of schools Or how you think about the role of choice as you are trying to do to You know design a framework that's going to improve schools in the coming decades um, so I think that the the You you've touched on a number of themes that intersect in all this So one is just school quality generally where Although people define school quality in different ways and one parent might Think one school is a terrific school and another parent might feel differently about it However, we all define it. There's I think General agreement as a city that not all of our schools are at the level of quality that That all parents are satisfied with the schools that they have, you know, certainly a right to or access to Um And and at the same time this issue these issues of race and class that that you point out emma You know in some way and and this morning a number of us were at the groundbreaking for munduverde's new building That is groundbreaking as a misnomer because the construction was well underway, but And it is directly across the street from two schools that that sit right next to each other And you think there are two schools there one across the street one a block away emma in washington That has since closed done bar two blocks away and why are there all these schools there? Well, when you look at those two that are right next to each other across the street There's an african-american school in a white school and you see this all across the city, right? Still like the most, you know, usually at least one of the buildings is is no longer operating as a school But we have all of these markers of the pre brown v board passed in in the city And yet today there are many many schools that we could walk into in this city today That are 100 percent african-american You know zero kids that are not black in that school latino white asian, you know, it is a single race school and Some of those schools are very high performing schools So they are serving their kids very well on many fronts and kids are going to college And are set up to succeed in life um, and some of those schools are not Seeing those kinds of outcomes with kids and are arguably not setting their kids on a path that is likely to you know To set them up for success So is race the the differentiating factor there? No, we actually have more than one and we've got, you know a bunch of examples where where it's working and um, and so You know, we're we're in a different place in some ways than 1954 The you know the resources that go to school is a beautiful school buildings that are serving kids of all races All of that kind of stuff. It is different. We have made a lot of progress I think we can we can confidently say and at the same time I do think it is worth asking ourselves this question of whether we think it is A good goal for us as a city to have more diversity across our schools And if so, how do we get there? So choice is one way that you that people can opt into schools that that look more diverse And we do have schools both dcps and charter schools It tends to be schools that are more clustered in the middle of the city where our housing is more diverse but we do have schools that are Very diverse both racially and socioeconomically as a parent I I think that's a very good thing So that's something that you know, I think for my own children is just is something that I value highly Some parents will value it more highly than others Is it as a city? You know by definition a good thing like is it something that we as a city And and as a government should be designing things around You know, I think that's a much more complicated question So I can say what I value as a parent and I'm seeking that out You know, I'm not sure that you know that's saying that choice In order to to drive diversity As a value over the kind of predictability or or neighborhood focus that Evelyn has talked about You know whether I can say that as a city that is the value we should drive over the other So I mean, I know that I've answered that sort of as clear as mud but but but I think it's because This stuff is really complicated and and I think the most important thing is that We address these kinds of issues head on and and talk about how complicated it is and figure out whether there are ways I mean, we're not the choice genie is not going back on the bottle You know, like I think whether we want it to or not It's not going to it is This is the culture of certainly our city at this point And so the question is how can we use it in ways that we think get us towards The kind of quality that we want for everybody and the kind of equity of access that we want for everybody And I think there are myriad different combinations of policies that can help move us towards that There's no one silver bullet But I challenge us to ask that question And and to be open to a range of ways that we can get there. What about the question Evelyn asked which was What about the people who would love to have the predictability and the everybody has predictability right now? No, no, no, but the predictability of a good school But they just they they had they choose now We we have so much choice now and so many people not going to where they're assigned because their schools kind of Don't live up to what they what they want, but they would really like that school too So how do you like tease apart those questions of what would you put your energy into channeling the choice? Or do you put your energy into like figuring out whether to you know make schools across the city for every kid? Better well, I mean in my view you got to do both and And I don't I don't really see any way around that So should we be working to improve every school in the city working really hard and really smart? Yes Absolutely, and I I I believe we are At the school level at the district level at the city level. I really do believe that that work is happening We're making some mistakes and missteps along the way for sure, but I I see the progress and that work has to happen At the same time because we have created this environment of choice People are going to value different things differently So, you know if what is most important to someone is predictability Well, everybody has that right everybody has a school of right that you can know that you're going now We may be shifting some of those boundaries. I'll grant you that but but you know everyone's got that right now and and People are happy with it to different degrees and at different points And I would also you know, even within charters I mean scott's right that you look at reenrollment rates and they're pretty high At most of of the certainly the high performing charters However, if you look at in in my school dc, you know, which the the common lottery just did There's still lots of people who are trying their odds even from Some of those high performing charters and saying well I'm just going to throw my hat in again this year in the lottery It's like I mean it is you know, I think what Laura talked about in our article is true there's a lot of just kind of shopping around because of that culture and You know, you can't you can't fault parents for Always asking themselves am I doing the best I can by my kid, right? Like that's what we're supposed to do as parents now It can make us a little bit crazy If you know, you you sort of get caught up in this choice environment And different people choose to do it to different degrees But I think part of this is that it's what you said about expectations everyone is You know, if we each if we all are rationing up our own expectations To some degree we're setting up all of our schools for failure, right? Because you're always thinking well this other school does this particular thing better than this school Right? Yes, this is constant one one ups and that's so that's just life You're never going to have cookie cutter exact quality the same everywhere Um, so the question is are there ways to to get people to invest in their communities? However, they define that so that all of our schools can get better and some people are going to invest geographically Some people are going to invest, you know in in opting into communities in different ways Right on that note. I'm love to open it to you guys for questions And there's a microphone coming around so if you've got a question to ask just give a raise of the hand How about in the blue in the front and one last thing before you take questions? This is a topic on which soap boxing is really easy if you have a question I'll hand over the mic, but if there if you start wandering Beyond question into commentary I may come back and just take it Thank you Connor I think there's a hand in the blue shirt in the front Hi there, um, I'm kelly field. I'm actually a higher ed reporter So I'm educating myself on these k12 issues as a dc public school parent or a prospective parent Um, and I was wondering if the goal is to increase equity and diversity to what degree and what evidence is there The choice sets will accomplish that Um, you know given that some of the the wards are very Um, undiverse as you mentioned some are more diverse How will sending kids to other schools within their ward affect The goals that we're trying to achieve So I think that's fine So so the policy that um Kelly did you say that was that Kelly was referring to is one of the so what we've done at this point with the work of the advisory committee is we've we've put out a whole set of of policy examples We're calling but they include lots of of individual policies that can build up into a student assignment policy To start engaging the community and some of the different kinds of options that we could we could look at So one is this notion of what we're calling choice sets at the elementary school level And the idea is that rather than have a school boundary for a single elementary school You would have a larger school boundary that encompasses multiple elementary schools and then you would have A way of accessing so you'd have a right to one of those schools within your choice set But not necessarily any any particular one Um, and and there's been a lot of discussion around well What is choice that's add to this and and it's one that I think has been I'd say of of the whole range of things probably the hardest people to wrap their minds around about what would be the event of that I think that the the notion in some ways is to try and balance this piece around Um close to home access And building community, you know close to home with the opportunity to exercise some choice So essentially what it would do is it would give families that are relatively close to a school A higher likelihood of being able to access A school that might not be the one that's closest to them But that they're particularly interested in without having to travel across the city So it probably works most effectively in situations where that cluster of schools might include a school that's got some kind of specialized program You know like an ib program or you know a stem program in a school that that That a parent is particularly interested in accessing but then has a likelihood chance of getting there um If you've got three schools that are very similar racially so economically in terms of student performance and they're in the choice set Then it's given you you know some variety of location You might there might be something you like about the school. That's um, that's different But if in those ways the choice set is very similar, you're right. It doesn't really you know add anything there Yeah, but just just one point about equity Versus diversity. We just looked at um the performance of the dc charter schools um by How socioeconomically diverse they are And what's interesting is is that there's a there's a the the highly diverse schools do pretty well with uh education with economically disadvantaged students But there's a cluster of schools five or six charter schools that do exceptionally well with um low-income students and they are almost all Exclusively serving low-income students They they appear to have cracked the code to produce these um, actually achievement gap closing results and they're not doing it in a diverse setting they're doing it in In what we would call a segregated setting You know what this doesn't get to is quality. I mean I was itching to respond to abby's Earlier comment about predictability Yes, predictability is great But only if you like what you predictably will get And that's what I don't find enough focus on that's what I find not enough attention is paid to I wish there were panels across the city at think tanks and foundations and All kinds of smart people came together on a daily basis to try to figure out how to improve quality in every neighborhood because as scott just pointed out There's no one recipe for achieving quality. There are schools that are 60 female You know, it's kind of like reading the bible depending on what you believe you can find almost anything that can be You know, you can point to a verse that justifies what you believe Um, so I could make an argument for same gender education based on the success of some schools Cleveland elementary near where I live is mostly african-american not terribly diverse bannaker high school Not terribly diverse both african-american and predominantly female But knocking it out of the park I think parents are pretty flexible about diversity actually. It's not a It's not the trump card for us. I think quality And then we want to be able to lock it in Um, and that's what I find a lot of dancing around I you know, it's like yes dcps is doing it. They've made great progress, but What else do we need to do to really make it happen? And I don't see enough I don't hear enough discussion about that question the role of choice Is not the question for dc public schools It's how do we make sure that the underlying legacy system Actually functions as it should so that choice can do its job So so I just want to end Edel and I have had this conversation before as you might imagine But now we'll have it in front of all of you So so I think I think that's absolutely right and the the work is Improving the quality at all schools and at the same time I think it is important that we also have a student assignment Policy and process that is workable There's all I mean I'm not getting into like all of the sort of technical issues with our current boundaries and feeders because that's a whole nother thing But that's workable and that's fair And with the goal that quality across the board absolutely is where We we need to be and and and I do believe are working hard to get there And I think there are actually lots of conversations and think tanks and elsewhere about it But but in the meantime Without the magic wand to get to a hundred percent fabulous quality, you know everywhere We need to have systems that are both, you know, workable and sort of technically manageable But also are as fair as as we can can have Take another question about Hi, my name is Rob Lippincott. I work for a company called i2 capital group Which i2 means impact investing and a lot of the discussions We're having are where private investors would like to improve school Would like to improve education and they want to put their money to work somehow But they don't want to be philanthropists or to sort of second-guess taxation They want to invest in something. It's going to be positive Help me understand where private investment could help What's the most positive role of private investment in Schools, especially to promote the power of choice Let's take that sam I'll start so To me, uh There are the two things that are most important to crack in schools are Finding better ways to recruit retain support evaluate and And equitably distribute high quality teachers And that's not what i'm going to say to invest your money in although that's important And the second is cracking the code of assessment So right now We still to a large degree pretend that we can speak intelligently about which schools are successful And which are unsuccessful based on reading and math scores Which are valuable and overvalued So I'm an educator and also an MBA and the most valuable thing I learned in business school Which the private sector has been doing for a while was the innovation of the balance scorecard and the idea that Companies figured out a while ago that if we're only looking at net profit We might be in trouble. So what is surprising to me that hasn't yet really taken form in any way is A framework a tool an instrument that helps people better quantitatively represent The largely qualitative and non-linear aspects of teaching and learning there are individual Schools that have done it that I've written about elsewhere and we don't have enough time to talk about it now but so there's already a lot of Individual site innovation that's happening But what would be really exciting to me as somebody who writes about schools To see would be somebody that really Helps schools because so much of what is happening whether you're at the district level or certainly at the charter level is You you see these ideas of what you want to do but frankly you need somebody else To get you almost all the way there and then you can just plug in your best Wisdom and observation into something that isn't just potentially Down the line for purposes of more intelligent accountability, but is fundamentally about diagnostic Quality improvement so that we can better improve what we're doing and I don't know why that hasn't happened yet But to me that's a great opportunity For private dollars With all modesty, I think we have built a balance scorecard For charter schools in washington dc. It's called the performance management framework. It looks at growth proficiency uh, reenrollment rate attendance college acceptance rate graduation sat ninth grade on track I mean it looks at a lot and it condenses it down to a single score in this book that we left on the chair Shows you the score for each of those schools if if I were Investing I would I would focus on education technology We've talked on this panel about just how difficult it is for teachers to differentiate And yet that is the expectation And I think we're in the you know the second inning at best of the promise of this technology Not to replace teachers, but to enable them to serve all students So I just want to ask Laura real quick if she agrees that the p not to put you on the spot that the pmf The performance management framework or the tier one two three system for charter schools Whether that works for you as a parent as a sort of gauge of what's what's a good school? I mean I I have no idea. I one of the two Charter schools I applied to after applying because I am not a great researcher except for For work. I was like, oh god, it's tier two. We'll forget it. I won't go Which like I don't I have no real sense as a parent of what that entails that sounds compelling But that doesn't sound like a lot of categories. I mean three. There's only three categories So I don't know whether that would we score them from zero to a hundred and then for people who have trouble with that We put them into three categories I think a lot of people may I did it. Yeah I just want to say real quick. I think I think scott is partly right and we've talked about this publicly I think there there is some real positive movement made of taking some important existing data points like reenrollment rates Um And using them more in concert, but here's the biggest issue, right? So one of the other big paradigm shifts. Where's my phone? Right? This this this has changed everything about education And and let me sum it up this way. It used to be that content was seen as the end goal of schooling Now content knowledge when we do it right is merely the means by which we reach the end goal, which is a set of Skills habits and dispositions that can guide young people through life I think scott would agree. We have not yet cracked the code of helping Helping put together a framework that is Partially painted enough to be useful and to steer people towards some um Something that they can plug themselves into but that is fundamentally about Evaluating schools based on the extent to which they are measurably helping young people acquire those skills And that to me is where the innovation still has to happen. And one thing I will say at the great schools I have no dog in the fight or anything, but I find it Which I know is a privately run company I find it to be like completely random and to not have much bearing on what parents I know what I think, you know, like it's like a yelp review Assessment of schools, which unfortunately yelp is taking over the world But I don't think that that is helpful because it just doesn't seem to have much of a correlation between what schools are actually doing And what kids are learning there and how parents feel about them. So that was we actually had this discussion with great schools because They rated one of our tier three lowest schools. They rated it. I think an eight or something And we said you're you know this a it's wrong and b you're confusing people. So so they built into So they built into their algorithm that if we rate it a tier three, they wouldn't give it a score of over a six Which is pretty yeah pretty random. Yeah Other questions How about over here in the middle Hi, my name is Rachel Venetia. I'm a current DCPS teacher and formerly worked in education policy One of the biggest critiques I heard When I was in policy regarding charter schools was that they would cream the dc or The public schools in the area taking You know the the parents who tend to be most highly motivated who often have high performing students Are the ones who In some cases tend to go to these charter schools But in DC We have a lot of schools who like kip actively recruit in these low low sds areas And as we've seen an increase in charter schools, we've seen An increase in test scores on the dc cast to what extent do you think and this question is Mainly for I'd like to hear from miss smith and mr. Pearson To what extent do you think that competition from the charter schools is driving? This improvement in dc ps schools and are we going to see a leveling off of parents and students deciding to leave their Neighborhood schools for charter schools as the improvement continues in dc ps So that was a lot a lot of questions in one. I'll take a crack at some of this So so one one of the things I think is important to note in dc now is for for many years the total pie of students Of public school students was was not increasing and basically what was happening was the there was a shift between from dc ps DC ps enrollment was going down and charters enrollment was going up or it would look different from the direction that you are That has changed in the last couple of years and I think that's a very significant Data points. So both public charter schools and dc ps are increasing their enrollment. So the total pie is getting bigger Charters are not in increasing at the expense of dc ps I think that's I think that's um, you know important and notable and because I think that at the end of the day The the single biggest proxy for you know, how people feel about the schools is what main parents voting with their feet, right? So as schools improve on on all sides I think parents will choose to stay in schools that they feel good about Scott has done a really good job at the public charter school board of identifying public charter schools that are not delivering for kids and Feesing them out in various ways. So I think that's important too that you know that it's not just You know that the quality focus is is across the board. Um I lost the other piece Did charter have charters spurred improvement? Ah, so I think that There are a whole bunch of different factors that have spurred in improvement in dc ps So it is I think good news for the city that as charter schools, you know scores are going up. So are so are dc ps is The enrollment piece as a proxy as well. I certainly think that some of what we talked about in terms of the environment That charters have created. I do think that has helped in terms of you know from a culture perspective in terms of dc ps um I also think there are a lot of very specific things the dc ps has done that you know may well have been totally independent of charters um I do think that one thing that is It was in the beginning of your question We have a lot of charter schools that are serving lots of of low-income kids as you mentioned and it's got talked about earlier We still do have a situation where at the extremes um dc ps is Still running the schools that have the very highest concentration of at-risk students And the very lowest concentration of at-risk students. So if you look at the tails It is largely dc ps serving the tails You know, there are lots of different reasons. I think that that are are potentially behind that But I think it's just another piece of this picture to look at Yeah Charter certainly demographically there's no evidence that charter schools are are skimming Charter schools serve higher percentages of low-income students higher percentages of african-american students And now serve essentially the same percentage of special education students And achieve higher results But I I would concede that there is probably a Psychographic benefit that many charter schools get because people have chosen to be there And so there's something somebody in that family cared enough to send their students there We have a few schools who very self-consciously target the most At-risk challenging students students who've been incarcerated students who are in foster care students who Have dropped out of school So that may counterbalance that to some extent but but I I think it's it's a complicated picture and and By no means are charter schools serving a privileged population So it's a little after 5 30 and we need to wrap it up But I want to ask the other three panelists who didn't just speak if you have anything burning that you want to Leave the audience with Or get off your chest before we say goodbye I will cede my time if there's someone out there that has a burning question So my name is Joseph Quinn and I actually teach at a choice blue ribbon school in dc And uh, we I guess my concern with the the point that you just you just proposed is that we do effectively do that I know that About 30 percent of the freshman students every year are Uninvited because they don't reach the standards of of the 2.0 minimum that the school expects retains I would not maybe like to mention the school's name specifically it isn't dcps But I also have Co-workers who have worked at kip who worked other yes examination entries. Yes. Yes, so which charters don't have but there are But I am familiar with with logistically How some charters work with students that are are if students don't fit into or incorporate into Certain charters cultures. I know teachers that work at Charter schools such as kip and other institutions in dc that are deemed highly effective that Remove students who don't incorporate into the culture well who might not be performing And their numbers the numbers that they post their sophomore year during the dc cast Actually demonstrate students that might have been not doesn't don't demonstrate the population that the school received Based on actual lottery numbers. So I guess my question for you is this should the Should How can we address that issue if that is an issue? How can we Look at numbers and make them more comparable more equitable so that we can actually make sure that charters and and dc public schools are able to Compare themselves in a way that's measurable in a way that's that's very very meaningful for both of those those communities Or is that not necessary? I guess and should charters attempt to work with students that are best for their communities because it's serving those students best So one is the the notion of schools of any type sort of You know counseling kids out or somehow, you know repelling certain kids And and I I think there are probably examples of well you talk about example of that in a dcps school There may be examples of it in charter schools. I mean it may be very school specific I think the dcps and public charter schools Did a really important thing this year in coming together around something that we call the equity reports Which pcsb was very involved in And among the things that it looks at is what the change is over the course of a school year in terms of kids coming In or coming out of a school and one of the things that that you know, I think is Um About the equity reports is you can now see that data for every school in the city And you can compare it across the board and you can take away a lot of different things from it So, you know, and and some of them are maybe evident and looking at the data and some of you'd have to dig into But there's a transparency around it that I think is really really important And while it is true that as a general rule as a sector dcps tends to pick up kids during the year and and public charter schools tend to lose as a sector during the year I think that those changes are not quite as dramatic as some people would suggest They are and you can actually look at the data on a school by school basis Um another thing that we've done that I think is important in terms of Of being clear that everybody should be playing by the same rules is My school dc this common application and lottery that we put in place this year Which is in part intended to take out of the hands of schools both dcps and public charter schools the sort of intake and And you know sorting that that some schools are accused of at the intake level So schools that are supposed to be accepting by a random lottery We have now taken that lottery centrally and are doing an audit of the data So that if something like what you just described where it doesn't look like the people on the roster Were really the people who were accepted in a lottery that is something that will be you know evident to to everyone And almost every charter school signed up for my school dc Understanding that that was part of the deal and I think part of the reason for that is that almost every charter school Has been playing by those rules and to the extent that there have been some bad actors It will be easy to identify them Through this process But I think that the fact that so many people stepped up to the plate would suggest that most of them Were probably playing by the rules all along On on that note I think I mean it's so clear that we've just begun to scratch the surface of all of the issues and questions and unresolved kind of Issues that we have around these around school choice and around making better schools in dc So Thank you for coming to begin the conversation And uh connor do you have anything you need to say all right? Thanks so much for being here Thank you