SmartStart

A New Vision for D.C. Public Schools

Nurturing Our Children and Paving Their Path To Productive Adulthood In The Economy Of The Future

By Kevin P. Chavous

AUGUST 1998

Chavous for Mayor Campaign
1327 Florida Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009
202/332/7400
Paid for and authorized by the Chavous For Mayor Committee,
Victor L. Reid, Treas.

INTRODUCTION

No democratic responsibility is more sacred than the care of the young. The nurturing, protection and education of our youth has been advocated by every serious American thinker from George Washington to Frederick Douglas to W.E.B. Dubois to John Dewey to Mary McLeod Bethune to John Gardner to James Nabrit. Everybody in the Civil Rights Movement — white and black together — thought that better education for all American children was the key to a far better American future. And so, in 1997, I sought the Chairmanship of the Education Committee because I knew that in our city we had betrayed the best hopes of those who had struggled for that American future.

I worked to find solutions to tragedies we see daily -- lost young adults, men without skills and hope, wandering aimlessly and defeated and in what should be the peak of their working years. We see equally unskilled young women minding their toddlers listlessly in the midst of want and decay. We see promising white and Latino and black youngsters growing up in academic isolation, not learning from books but from the lessons and prejudices passed to them in the streets.

So I was determined to help fix these things. Part of my record as Chairman of the Education Committee is the 42 open hearings I held during the Becton regime — hearings that gave DC citizens their only open view of the school system's sorry performance and actions. But through this experience, I learned that the current system is not just dysfunctional. Many of its parts excel. Many of its teachers and professionals are deeply committed. But as a system, it is utterly broken. It is not even up to the challenges of the 1970s and 1980s much less those presented by the closing years of the 20th century or the beginning of the next.

Over these few months, marked by a Federal take-over, secret decision-making and questionable school closings, I learned that even if we plugged every roof leak and established an impeccable procurement system, we still would not have focused on what is broken in our schools.

• We have not faced the issues of hunger, substandard housing, abuse and neglect that plague so many of our students.
• We have not faced the challenges presented by a knowledge based global economy where people with low level working skills are becoming economically redundant.
• We have not faced the fact that even total command of the three “R’s”, is not enough to be competitive in the 21st Century.
• We are not preparing our students for work in a multi-cultural, multi-racial workplace.

Our profound disappointment in what we have and our fury at the incompetence of the past should make us bold. Only bold and determined and sustained efforts by huge numbers of us will solve these problems. The proposals I put forth here are a first step in a program that will rally parents, citizens, neighborhoods and communities around a serious revolution in the ways we nurture and educate our children. This is nothing less than a test of our maturity and our competence as citizens. We must rise to this occasion.

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THE CORE STRATEGY: REMOVE OBSOLESCENCE AND RE-ENGINEER LEARNING

The proposal I put forth today calls for the fundamental restructuring of our city's child support systems — including schools — to begin public support for children's learning beginning at age three.

The proposal calls for extending school hours and days to provide the critical educational support our children need in their formative years so that by grade six they will attain world class levels of educational achievement.

As Mayor, I will settle for absolutely nothing less. By the end of my first term, all DC elementary-age children will be studying algebra and geometry — and mastering algebra and geometry — beginning in the sixth grade.

My view is to approach children’s issues across agency lines, identifying and merging the often conflicting strategies but common goals of the school system, the police, the courts, the public health system and the foster care system.

My plan is to engage everyone — families, students, teachers, child agencies, employers, churches and all citizens — in recrafting the educational mission of our public schools and rebuilding our system to produce new, competitive results. We have been in the spotlight for failure. I want us to be in the spotlight for success. Here are eight core components of my “SMARTSTART” strategy that will achieve success if they are applied forcefully and consistently as guiding principles for a decade or longer.

1. Support early learning beginning from age three.
2. Provide more time for learning to take place.
3. Provide a rigorous curriculum at the elementary level.
4. Implement rigorous curriculum in all high schools.
5. Create smaller schools.
6. Manage special education for positive results.
7. Respect, train and reward our professional teachers.
8. Collaborate across agency lines to reduce truancy, drug abuse, crime and violence.

This SmartStart strategy is the bedrock of my campaign for Mayor. No credible return to democracy can fail to address the re-building of our education system. No program for economic development can work without globally competitive schools. No promise of hope for all Washingtonians is credible if that promise does not begin with nurturing our children and paving their path to productive adulthood in the economy of the future. Let's focus briefly on each of these eight components:

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1. Provide child learning at a much earlier age.

The core challenge of my administration is to support early learning for our children from age three. This is where we will start. If we can begin on this premise, and work persistently and consistently, every goal we have for our children, our economy and our culture will fall into place.

The latest scientific research on how the brain works informs us that a child’s brain is at its most active stage of growth from birth to age three. For example, a child learns a language by age two. An adult’s potential vocabulary is shaped by the words learned before age five. The neurological foundations for later learning of math and logic are set before age four. Moreover, the experience of the child in the first two years of life largely determines how the brain develops into adulthood, along with its overall level of emotional stability.

Waiting until age five to begin learning is a dinosaur-like practice that should be eliminated. Age five is too late! We must focus on providing a good basic foundation in the early years of life. Under my administration, we will begin educating our city’s children starting from the age of three!

The special summer school our system has launched this year is an admirable initiative. It is, however, an attempt to redress failure. It should spur us to root out the cause of this failure, to make sure our students do not fall behind from the start.

To succeed, we’ll have to start early and drive slowly, but we will get there safely and on time. All District families, particularly those with limited incomes, must have access to this early public learning opportunity for their children. This early start will decrease the cost of successfully educating a student, since the recurring costs for failure would be eliminated. We spend millions of dollars on remediation, compensatory education, security, special education, retaining students, summer school and incarcerating those who enter the juvenile justice system. Funding early learning will cost District tax payers much less than funding the incarceration of so many of these children in later years.

The District provides the resources necessary to supervise every convicted youth offender. Why should it be so difficult to envisage a city that accepts similar responsibility for every child’s learning environment, especially when we know the negative consequences and costs associated with failing to do so?

Actions:

1. Begin learning opportunities for our children from age three.
2. Hire specially qualified early childhood teachers.
3. Add classroom space to accommodate early childhood learning during transition years.

2. Provide More TIME TO LEARN: Longer School Day, Longer School Year

The current school day does not match the 9-to-5 workforce realities faced by most parents, who now work out of the home for longer and longer hours. Most juvenile crimes are committed between the hours of 3 and 6 p. m. The phenomenon of the “latch key” child is a reality that requires the re-thinking of the time of day that our public education system provides its services. In the information age, learning is not limited to the schoolhouse walls, the time of day or the yearly season traditionally designated as the “school day” or the “school year”. The children of the DC Schools need more time in school. The current school year does not provide our students with enough time to learn what it takes to succeed in this world.

The school year in the District is 180 days long. In Europe and Japan, students spend as much as 220 to 240 days in school per year. When our students are shortchanged by up to 33% of the “time to learn” in their school year, they will suffer during their entire life trying to meet international standards of performance.

Actions:

1. Lengthen the school year to 220 days per year.
2. Lengthen the mandatory school day to include after school activities as an integral part of the student’s schedule.
3. Vary the hours that teachers work, utilizing adjunct staff, a successful practice of colleges and universities.

3. Implement A Rigorous Curriculum at Elementary Levels

The student in the DC public school can achieve at much higher levels, if the curriculum content provided were of a higher level, taught by teachers who know the subject matter and engage students in active learning. Higher level content must be taught in the elementary grades.

For example, many public school students in the District begin the study of Geometry in the 10th grade, after completing a course in Algebra in the 9th grade. Geometry is taught in the 6th grade in many American private schools, and in the more successful public schools. It is considered standard for elementary students in Japan and Europe. When the opportunity to engage in higher level content is denied in the early grades, we place limitations on a student’s ability to learn.

Actions:

1. Implement a rigorous elementary curriculum.
2. Begin the study of algebra and geometry and other high level subjects by the 6th grade.
3. Increase attention to the arts as essential higher order skills.

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4. Implement Rigorous Curriculum for All High School Students

The mismatch in the District’s public education system is threatening the ability of the next generation of our children to compete effectively in a global economy. That mismatch becomes tragic in DC high schools.

There is a mismatch between the curriculum taught and the knowledge and skills needed.

And most of all, there is a mismatch in the level of excellence our children achieve and the level of excellence achieved regularly by students in other industrialized nations. Only six percent of America’s high school students study calculus. In Germany, that figure is forty percent. In Japan, 90 percent!

When our students have the opportunity to compete in advanced public and private schools, they do well. It is in our collective self-interest to give every District child such an opportunity. My plan is to provide a high school education for every District student that is competitive with the best in education nationwide — in content, quality and excellence — by the year 2006.

To meet that goal, I propose more specialized high schools, including a math/science magnet school, a computer technology school, and an accredited International Baccalaureate School.

Every graduating student must be college ready. But every student need not complete four years of college. Today's hightech job market requires training and excellence, but not always through a full college degree. Our school system must match the career opportunities that are emerging in the Greater Washington area.

Every high technology center in America was accompanied by a sustained commitment to creating education excellence at the grade school, high school, technical training, and college education levels. North Carolina’s Research Triangle, California’s Silicon Valley, Massachusetts’ Route 128 Corridor, Maryland’s 270 Corridor, and Fairfax County’s Dulles complex are all the result of serious sustained public investments in quality education.

If we are to participate in the world class economy growing at our doorstep, we must do what others have done: We must demand, pay for and manage a sweeping re-construction of our public school system.

It is not a matter of running our current system more efficiently. We cannot settle for producing unprepared adults faster than before. We cannot take pride in our children becoming dropouts more quickly.

Actions:

1. Implement a solid core curriculum that all students must complete by age sixteen.
2. Redesign the curriculum to meet students’ needs, bringing community stakeholders into the design process.
3. Create new specialty magnet Science/Math schools.
4. Create computer technology schools.
5. Begin the process of creating and accrediting an International Baccalaureate School.

5. Create Smaller Schools

I call for an embargo on disposing of school properties until plans for smaller schools are finalized. Construction cannot lead instruction. The trend towards building larger school buildings has been determined by architects, not educators.

Large construction does not provide real economies of scale. Dollars that are saved by constructing large school buildings are almost immediately lost through additional staffing for administration, security, and the academic and social failure that is often the result of the isolation and impersonal nature of the large school. DC schools can lead the nation in re- engineering public education, if appropriate capital funding is structured and remains consistently directed toward the construction of smaller school buildings. The recent trend towards creating smaller schools within schools is a step in the right direction.

Students are alienated and anonymous in large schools. Students are lost in an impersonal setting where very few adults, if any, know their name.

A sense of ownership or belonging is not fostered in a school of a thousand or more students. Students do not know their own classmates, and teachers do not know them.

Appropriate sized schools are much more likely to become key elements of their neighborhoods and communities.

Parents, employers and other stakeholders can become players in the school's support network, providing tangible contributions and visible models and mentors for students.

Actions:

1. Create and staff smaller schools Elementary grades, K-6, maximum 350 students; Secondary grades, 8-12, maximum 700 students.
2. Embargo the disposing of any school properties until a detailed plan to teach children in human-scale environments is in place.
3. Classes will be kept small to enable greater interaction between students and teachers; in no case would class enrollment exceed limits set forth in DC public school regulations.

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6. Manage Special Education for Positive Results

Special education has become a sinkhole for District tax money and troubled children. Spending for contracted special schooling has increased from $6 million in ] 989 to more than $60 million today. The number of students served has remained between 6,000 and 7,000.

The whole concept of student re-entry from Special Education back into mainstream learning has been lost in the shuffle.

Management of special education for the seriously impaired is a serious challenge for the public school system. Children seriously inhibited by learning disabilities should receive appropriate care. Many children simply get behind or fail to get appropriate guidance from teachers or counselors. Too many children with advanced levels of difficulty are in expensive and stigmatized care because our system skills for dealing with problem children are poor.

Re-building our school system must include rigorous professional training to spot and deal with troubled children, timely contact and referral services with parents, and strong, consistent collaboration with community resources, including the faith community. This effort cannot occur without facing the backlog of thousands of children awaiting professional evaluation. Reliance on regular system staffing for assessments will never solve this problem.

I strongly support authorizing payment to assessment resources outside the system, using a competitive case rate by any qualified professional. An experimental program in the summer of 1995 that paid $400 per assessment to qualified professionals was extremely cost effective and made the only serious inroads into the backlog in recent years. This approach lets families act quickly in the interest of their children. It is cost effective and works for everyone.

The District pays for an enormous amount of specialized education services, including separate classrooms, private schools, and residential facilities out of the city. Lack of appropriate management, outdated legal mandates, and failure to coordinate information and care between all of the District’s child service agencies has led to exorbitant costs as well as poor outcomes.

Appropriate and effective care for troubled children can only occur by accepting a District-wide view of public and private services and resources. I will provide the leadership, the focus and the support required to bring child resources in the District of Columbia under a coordinated philosophy and strategy.

Actions:

1. Institute fixed rate assessment payments to private sector assessment professionals for children at risk for learning disabilities.
2. Manage special education dollars to assure appropriate care and eliminate waste and duplication.
3. Collaborate with all District public and private stakeholders in child, youth and family service to produce a seamless and caring service delivery system for troubled children.

7. Respect, Train and Reward Professional Teachers

If the job of teaching is to be more than providing custodial care for children, educators must be helped to educate themselves and to create communities of professionals. incentives must be implemented to encourage accountability, professionalism and performance.

Performance measurements that simply measure inputs, such as time clocks, demean professionalism and do not ensure better outcomes. Businesses that succeed in “high labor” industries facing global competition must pay well, invest heavily in continuing professional development, and make sure working environments enhance entrepreneurial attitudes and performance.

I propose increasing spending on professional development for teachers. Personnel costs represent approximately $460 million a year. This expenditure is wasted if we do not continually invest in the renewal of this human capital. Professional development must be viewed as mandatory, necessary for protecting our investments paid out as teacher salaries.

Actions:

1. Increase investments for professional development for all school staff.
2. Provide ongoing professional development of teachers and facilitate the development of a community of professionals in schools.
3. Demand excellence.
4. Enlist adjunct teachers from community institutions and professions.

8. Collaborate agency lines to reduce truancy, drug abuse, crime and violence

It is a sad reality of our times that school age children use illicit drugs and alcohol. This impacts their ability or willingness to learn, and the level of crime and violence among juveniles. There is, however, a relationship between a student's school experience and their involvement in drugs, alcohol, and crime. Students who are not successful in school are more likely to cut class, be truant or drop out all together. Students who are not successfully engaged in school are at greater risk for illicit drug use, crime and violence. Young women who are academically challenged and engaged in schools are less likely to become teenage mothers and/or enter the juvenile justice system.

Over eighty to ninety percent of our incarcerated juveniles did not have a positive school experience and most dropped out of school. These students are in our schools for most of the day, and we will have to address their needs during the time that they are with us. It serves no useful purpose to blame parents, blame society or blame anyone else, while continuing to maintain the obsolescent practices now offered in our public schools, and which these young people reject as other consumers reject a product that does not meet their needs.

Public education must join forces and collaborate with all other agencies and community-based organizations addressing the problem of illicit drug use by children. Dollars must be put into re-engineering schools so that they become places where young people want to be, where they can learn and become productive citizens.

Re-engineering our schools is essential. But we must go further We must fit school services into a community. School is the largest piece of life for a growing child, but it cannot be all of life. We must integrate our work with the work of parents, churches, businesses and community organizations. We must also collaborate proactively with all agencies charged with responsibilities toward children.

DC schools must link with the police, parole officers, youth agencies, health agencies, housing agencies and welfare agencies. This linkage will substantially reduce confusion, reduce costs down the road, and rescue countless young people.

Actions:

1. Coordinate agencies to combat truancy, and juvenile illicit drug use, violence and crime.
2. Involve students in the re-design of a school that meets their needs.
3. Support engaged reaming in the schools, dealing forthrightly with the issues and problems that youth are concerned about.

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SUMMARY

1 have presented my plan for the restructuring of the District of Columbia's public school system. It is an ambitious plan, and I believe it is a revolutionary plan.

I propose removing obsolete practices that limit a student’s opportunity to learn and a teacher’s ability to teach.

I propose treating students as customers and parents as consumers of an ever-improving educational product.

I propose re-engineering our public schools to meet the unique needs of today’s children and today’s society.

I view public education in the District of Columbia as a system of opportunity for each and every child. 1 pledge that as your Mayor the DC public schools will deliver a far more competitive and quality product than our presently fragmented and poorly functioning system.

My administration will work unceasingly for this vision. Indeed, I stake my mayoralty on it. For I see our school system as the cornerstone of a whole array of public and private support services for babies, children and families; and the system that emerges as costing far less than the one at present, while delivering far better service.

This transition, however, will not come easily and will not be without investment cost. And it will not occur without some of the cries we’ve grown used to hearing from educational “specialists” who aren’t accustomed to collaborative efforts or leveraging resources and who will quickly put an outrageously high price tag on this proposal.

Of course, to immediately implement every proposed action I have made in this statement would be costly — and probably more costly than we can afford all at once even in the best of times.

I propose, however, a phased-in approach to each of the eight core restructuring initiatives. The first order of business will be to implement learning for children aged three and up as soon as possible. We will also expand student class time for next year by at least ten days.

Under my administration, wasteful spending for the current operation will be reduced. School based budgeting, eliminating of duplicate services, tougher controls on non-resident attendance and tuition payments, and other better management practices will be enforced to further bring down cost.

A new investment, however, must and will be made to realize the revolutionary changes we’ve outlined here for our schools. And “cross-agency” bridges must and will be built to leverage additional resources for change. Moreover, as our reforms kick in they will also generate resources in the form of savings. For example, as earlier learning programs replace day care requirements, and reduce the cost of failure and repetition in later years, savings will result. As the extended school year reduces the costs of summer school and summer time social services, savings will result.

I am prepared to target $50 million per year in net new investment for the restructuring of our DC public school system. Leveraged with the additional funds generated by cross-agency financial collaboration and sustained capitol improvements, I believe the actual financial impact of this proposal could total as much as $100 million a year during the early transition years.

The transition to early age education and realistic school schedules will require vigilance, patience and determination. My goal is to see tangible results of improved performance within two years, and net outcomes system-wide in five years. I am confident that we can successfully implement all eight of the core components before the end of my first four year term, and that we will have completely revolutionized DC public school education and essentially realized this vision before the end of my second.

As your Mayor, 1 can and will marshal the city’s will to succeed in an effort of this magnitude. And I believe that there is literally no other alternative but for us to succeed. I cannot conceive of us watching as our system is “cherry-picked” to death, as others with the will and means pry loose dollars, facilities, and talent. What happens then to the rest of us? What of the remaining families and children who would be doomed to live out their future in a city with a collapses commitment to public education but in a world with an increased demand for knowledge and skills?

If we are dedicated to bridging the growing canyon between the classes in our society, then I believe that we must be dedicated to the hard work and the willingness to accomplish the re-engineering of the DC public schools that I have outlined here.

I am so dedicated. And I urge every Washingtonian who cares about our future to join me in making it happen.

Kevin P. Chavous