Results tagged “education”

The Board of Trustees of the University of the District of Columbia are proposing a tuition increase at the David A. Clarke School of Law for the 2010-2011 school year. The proposed increase would see residents paying $4,425 per semester, and $8,850 per semester for non-residents. Currently, UDC law students pay $3,675 per semester, and non-residents $7,350.

Both President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle have been known to stop by local D.C. schools to visit with area students over the last year, but today was the first day the President visited a school in Maryland, according to the Post. Obama made a surprise to the lunchroom at Viers Mill Elementary School in Silver Spring today. He reportedly spent about 30 to 45 minutes chatting with 3rd and 5th graders at the school about what books they were reading.

Surely even Michelle Rhee must feel like her profile is way overblown after this. The journal Education Next, as part of its entry in the virtual parade of profile articles that've already been done on the D.C. Schools chancellor, has created this ridiculous graphic depicting Rhee as a knight in shining armor (City Desk also takes note).

              

As promised, here are some images captured by DCist photographer Francis Chung during Thursday afternoon's Washington Teachers Union-organized protest outside the John A. Wilson Building.

News broke late last week that Hawk One, the company that was responsible for providing security guards at the District of Columbia's 127 public schools, had gone belly up. The timing couldn't have been worse, as D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee handed out 388 pink slips to teachers and staff on the very day that the Hawk One guards didn't show up to work. The combination may well have exacerbated a skirmish that broke out at McKinley High School on Friday in reaction to the layoffs, during which two people were arrested.

This afternoon, DCPS released final details of the budget reductions that have caused an uproar in the schools community since probable staff cuts were first announced last month.

Non-profit job search web site Idealist.org is hosting a Graduate Degree Fair for the Public Good tonight at the Washington Convention Center. Prospective graduate students will have the opportunity to meet with graduate admissions representatives and attend a free information session offering advice on graduate degree options for people who are looking to make a difference. The event runs from 5 to 8 p.m., and registration is free. A list of participating graduate programs can be found here.

Over at his blog, D.C. Council member Kwame Brown is pimping the new fall classes available from the city's Workforce Development Program. These are free job training classes available to D.C. adults, most of which start later this month. You can download a list of classes and registration materials from the CCDC web site. The types of classes offered include carpentry, pre-apprenticeship construction, hospitality industry, computer basics, medical billing, Spanish in the workplace, and more. To apply, residents need first to take a screening test to determine reading and mathematics levels. Testing is available Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5 p.m. at the Hospitality Public Charter High School at Roosevelt High School (13th and Upshur St. NW) or PR Harris (4600 Livingston Rd. SE) Monday - Thursday at 1 p.m. or 5 p.m.

In case you hadn't heard already, Southeastern University in Southwest D.C. lost its accreditation on Aug. 31, the Washington Post is just reporting now. A message on the school's web site simply states, "Southeastern will not be offering a Fall Session. We are not accepting students at this time."

Earlier this week, the D.C. Double the Numbers Collation launched a new website, doublethenumbersdc.org, featuring interactive tools and advice aimed at guiding D.C. students through the college application process. Many D.C. students are woefully uninformed about how to apply and pay for higher education, and a 2006 report found that only 9 percent of D.C. 9th graders graduate from college within five years of earning their diploma, less than half the national average. D.C.'s College Awareness Month runs from September 9th to October 9th.

D.C. Public Schools confirmed yesterday that student enrollment in its 127 schools was at 44,397, up from the roughly 37,000 who were registered when classes resumed on August 24. Enrollment counts typically fluctuate at the start of the year, as parents enroll children late, and transfers are finalized.

We mentioned Montgomery College President Brian K. Johnson's troubles in yesterday's roundup, and now today comes word that Johnson has been fired by the school's Board of Trustees. Here's the statement from the board:

"We, as a Board, have decided to make a change in the leadership of the College. The Board voted not to renew Dr. Johnson's contract. We also voted to place Dr. Johnson on administrative leave, with pay, effective immediately so that the Board can consider further action.

Continue reading "Montgomery College President Ousted"

Remember the early allegations of cheating on the DC-CAS (the standardized test that determines school progress under NCLB)? Bill Turque has done some digging, and reports in the Post that two teachers and one administrator at Howard Road Academy Public Charter School in Southeast have been fired after realizations that the two teachers were given advance copies of the exam so students could have "extra practice." The scores of 27 4th and 6th grade students at the school have been invalidated, and the campus will lose $10,000 of Title 1 funding in order to cover the costs of the tests. How did the teachers get caught? An exam proctor was suspicious when a student finished the exam's math section extremely quickly and said, "We did this yesterday. I know all of the answers."

After collecting feedback ( i.e., complaints?) from staff, students, and parents for more than two years, DCPS has finally launched the redesign of its web site, and our first impression is that it looks pretty darn good.

Bad news for D.C. charter school teachers: you may not be getting paid on Friday, according to a story just posted to the Post's website. D.C. missed a $103 million payment to its 60 public charter schools this morning, thanks to some kind of tax revenue shortfall or delay, Bill Turque reports. The District is facing at least a $190 million deficit in the current fiscal year, thanks to shrinking tax revenues due to the recession. The Post story says that charter board officials are negotiating with the city to make some kind of partial payment from contingency funds to help them meet immediate payroll needs.

D.C. Public Schools will release its summer reading list for students Friday, and some local librarians have alleged that gay titles under early consideration were removed.

A new study out today by Education Week researchers has found that the on-time graduation rate for D.C. public school students fell to an appalling 48.8 percent in 2006, a drop of more than eight percentage points from the previous year. In other words, in 2006, more D.C. students had dropped out of high school than graduated.

Today, graduating seniors at Washington Mathematics Science Technology Public Charter High School will hear advice from First Lady Michelle Obama at their commencement at Howard University. Student Jasmine Williams first wrote to Obama asking her to speak, and has been chosen to introduce her to the students. "I am probably going to practice hundreds more before Wednesday," Williams told WJLA about her introduction. The charter school is D.C.'s only open enrollment public school to meet Adequate Yearly Progress targets under No Child Left Behind in both math and reading for the last two years.

We have to admit, when we first started watching this C-SPAN video of RNC Chairman and D.C. native Michael Steele talking to students at H.D. Woodson Senior High School, we were ready to scoff. Really Michael Steele, we wondered, do you actually want to tell students in DCPS, where only one out of ten students ever graduate from college, that while at Johns Hopkins, "I partied my behind off," and "I heard there were classes" and then mock the letter announcing that you had been kicked out?

D.C. Wire reports that this morning, the D.C. Council voted to strip $27 million from the DCPS budget for next year, on the grounds that that the original funding projected that school enrollment would grow by 3,000 students, an estimate that's obviously unrealistic. The Council says it will not spend the money now, and voted to place it in escrow, to be released in the fall only if an enrollment audit confirms growth. "Given the enormous budget challenges facing the District in 2010," Chairman Vincent Gray argued, "there needs to be a justification why this increase is warranted."

The Post is reporting that the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education accidentally emailed personal information belonging to roughly 2,400 D.C. high school students out to about 1,000 people last week. The mistake reportedly happened when an employee who works in the Higher Education Financial Services Program, which administers the District's Tuition Assistance Grant Program that helps eligible college-bound D.C. residents pay the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition at state universities across the country, inadvertently attached a spreadsheet to an email she was sending out to applicants. What kind of information was in that spreadsheet? "Student names, e-mail and home addresses, phone and Social Security numbers and dates of birth." Major drag, and major mistake.

Welcome back to the Commencement Speaker Scouting Report! Last time, we brought you news of Gwen Ifill, Vernon Jordan and New York City police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly all heading to District universities to dispense platitudes and receive honorary degrees. Now it's on to the rest of D.C.'s illustrious institutes of higher learning. Ready, set, graduate!

We already told you that Project Runway's Tim Gunn would be delivering the commencement address at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, but what about all the other traditional colleges and universities within the District? It's time once again for our annual Commencement Speaker Scouting Reports, now with 80 percent more post-college recession-related job market panic than last year!

Robert Bobb isn't a name you hear around the District much anymore, even though the man affectionately known as "Bob-squared" served as City Administrator during Mayor Anthony Williams' second term and was elected to serve as president of the D.C. School Board in 2006. After having pretty much all of his authority pulled out from under him when Mayor Adrian Fenty gained control of the city's schools, Bobb pretty much disappeared from everyone's radar screen.

The Washington Post's Bill Turque first reported this morning that State Superintendent of Education Deborah Gist has resigned and taken a position as Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education for the state of Rhode Island. Gist's decision to leave doesn't come as a huge surprise, given how she'd been largely relegated to a background role in the restructured DCPS system under Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Gist was appointed by former mayor Anthony Williams.

DCPS teachers who supported D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s contract proposal from the beginning have got to be annoyed. On Monday, Rhee announced that the minimum 28 percent across the board raises offered in July now must be trimmed due to the poor economy. The contract negotiations have reached their 15th month. The District will soon submit a revised offer to the Washington Teachers’ Union, which has thus far resisted the contract. Rhee did state that funding from private foundations for the controversial merit pay provisions in the plan have not been affected.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan went on NPR yesterday and told Melissa Block that his two young kids will attend a D.C. public school. "There are great, great schools (in D.C.)," Duncan said. "We feel very confident they'll be able to get a great education here." There was some criticism lobbed at the Obamas for choosing a hoity toity D.C. private school for their girls, but you could at least make the argument that a desire for continuity prevailed in both families: the Duncan kids attended public schools in Chicago, while the Obama girls were in a private one. Interestingly, though, Duncan made his remarks right after the Obamas stopped by a D.C. public charter school to read to some second graders and sing the school's praises. Think Duncan's promise to send his kids to a "public" school could actually mean public charter?

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama went to D.C.'s Capital City Public Charter School this afternoon to read to a group of second-graders. The White House sent out a partial transcript of the President's remarks:

"You're excellent listeners. And the reason we came to visit, A, we wanted to get out of the White House; B, we wanted to see you guys; but C, the other thing we wanted to tell everybody is that this kind of innovative school, the outstanding work that's being done here by the entire staff, and the parents who are so active and involved, is an example of how all our schools should be."

Local blogger DC Teacher Chic reported today on her blog that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee will host Q&A sessions for teachers this afternoon (Wednesday, January 28) and tomorrow (Thursday, January 29), from 4-6 p.m. at 825 North Capitol Street, NE, in the 5th Floor Board Room. An open teacher Q&A sounds like a great idea, but good luck to the teachers scrambling to get from their classrooms to DCPS, in this weather, only 45 minutes after school lets out.

There's been a lot of back and forth of late between The Washington Teachers’ Union and DCPS about a policy commonly called a 90-day plan. Some within the union have accused Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee of using 90-day plans as a means of targeting older teachers for dismissal. The Washington Post's Bill Turque reported that Rhee spokesperson Dena Iverson denies any age discrimination, arguing that the average age of DCPS teachers who Rhee has placed on 90-day probations is similar to the average age of the total teaching corps (Turque puts that age in the mid-40s.)