• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
The public school system in the nation’s cap-ital is failing. Teacher incompetence, bureaucrat-ic corruption, crumbling infrastructure, vio-lence, lax academic standards, and wastefulspending are among the litany of problemsplaguing the District of Columbia PublicSchools. By almost any educational achievementmeasure, the children attending public schoolswithin the shadow of the U.S. Capitol are notreceiving a quality education.While critics of DCPS tend to focus on thefailures of particular superintendents or admin-istrators bedeviled by scandal or incompetence,the failure of the government-run school systemin the District of Columbia is not new. This fail-ure preceded white flight from the District in themid-1950s and has continued despite inflation-adjusted increases in spending, reduced classsize, and attempts to reform the system fromwithin. In short, the good old days of public edu-cation in the nation’s capital never were.Contrary to the claims of defenders of thepublic school system, DCPS does not lack money. Despite having per-pupil spending thatranks among the highest in the nation—$10,550for 1999–2000—public school students in theDistrict rank near the bottom on standardizedtests and in achievement levels. Although spend-ing has almost tripled since the 1980–81 schoolyear and increased 39 percent since MayorAnthony Williams took office in 1998, the sys-tem lacks qualified teachers, safe facilities, andeven basic supplies such as pencils and text-books. The system’s leaders demand moremoney in exchange for more promises of improvement.To improve education in the nation’s capital,we must consider options beyond spendingmore money in a system that even supportersacknowledge is troubled. Change must not belimited to propping up the current system.Public schools that are little more than holdingpens must not be sheltered from private compe-tition. The city must find a way to create compe-tition within the system, with the goals of givingparents power over the education of their chil-dren, fostering an environment that will create aclimate for education entrepreneurs to flourish,and taking education out of the hands of feud-ing politicians.
The Need for Educational Freedom inthe Nation’s Capital
by Casey J. Lartigue Jr.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Casey Lartigue is a policy analyst with the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom.
Executive Summary
No. 461December 10, 2002
 
Introduction
 Let us keep our eye steadily on the wholesystem.
—Thomas Jefferson, February 15, 1821
1
The year 2004 will mark the bicentennialof the founding of public education inWashington, D.C. The school system wasestablished by the city council on December5, 1804, in an act “to establish and endow apermanent institution for the education of youth in the city of Washington.” ThomasJefferson, then president of the UnitedStates, was named one of the trustees as wellas president of the board after he contributed$200 toward the endowment of the schools.
2
A comprehensive report prepared by aselect committee and adopted by the boardof trustees on September 19, 1805, read: “Inthese schools poor children shall be taughtreading, writing, grammar, arithmetic, andsuch branches of the mathematics as mayqualify them for the professions they areintended to follow.”
3
Has the District been successful in fulfill-ing its mission to educate District residents?Unfortunately, it has not. During congres-sional hearings, a U.S. Senator concluded: “Acrisis has been reached in the school systemof Washington. The education of more than60,000 children is involved.” While thatwould accurately describe the situation in thenation’s capital today, those words were actu-ally spoken by Sen. Pat Harrison (D-Miss.) inMay 1920, in a select committee report inves-tigating the D.C. public school system.
4
Harrison’s words were echoed in a reportissued 76 years later. In 1995 Congress passedand President Bill Clinton signed a law creat-ing a presidentially appointed District of Columbia Financial Responsibility andManagement Board (usually referred to as the“Control Board”) to rescue the District fromits financial troubles. A year later in its report,the Control Board labeled the leadership of D.C.’s public school system “dysfunctional,”concluded that children had been cheated outof a decent education, and stripped the D.C.Board of Education of its powers until June2000. The Control Board noted that its assess-ment found that “for each additional year thatstudents stay in DCPS, the less likely they areto succeed, not because they are unable to suc-ceed, but because the system does not preparethem to succeed.”
5
Other reports throughout the past centu-ry have documented failures with the publicschool system:
•
In a 1939 report to the D.C. Board of Education, the superintendent of D.C.schools decried “illiterates”
6
in theDistrict’s white schools and pointedout that principals requested policeprotection from “youthful hood-lums.”
7
•
In 1947, seven years before the
 Brown v. Board of Education
decision, Hobart M.Corning, then the new superintendentof schools, declared that Washington,D.C., had “one of the sorriest schoolsystems in the country.”
8
•
A 1949 survey of D.C. schools byColumbia University professor GeorgeF. Strayer found poor academicachievement among blacks and whites:“All white divisions were retarded inparagraph meaning and word mean-ing, and spelling scores were belownational norms.” Strayer found that“nearly all [white] junior high schoolswere below national norms by approxi-mately one year,” while “the median forall [black] junior schools was 2 ½ yearsbelow norms.”
9
•
An analysis of standardized test scoresin the 1950s reveals that even when one-third of the students in the District werewhite, public school students in theDistrict were trailing the national aver-age on all subjects tested.
10
•
In 1967, a comprehensive 15-monthstudy of the government schools in theDistrict of Columbia by ColumbiaUniversity professor A. Harry Passow
2
Has the Districtbeen successful infulfilling its mis-sion to educateDistrict residents?Unfortunately,it has not.
 
found a “low level of scholastic achieve-ment as measured by performance onstandardized tests.”
11
A few monthsearlier in an editorial entitled “TheSilent Disaster,” the
Washington Post 
said, “The collapse of public educationin Washington is now evident.”
12
Unfortunately, academic underachieve-ment of D.C. public school students has per-sisted to this day. Despite numerous alarm-ing reports, superintendents being fired orforced out, and attempts to reform the sys-tem from within, public education in thenation’s capital has consistently producededucation trailing the national and regionalaverage on every conceivable measure of aca-demic achievement.
•
In the late 1970s at the University of the District of Columbia, the only pub-lic institution of higher education inthe District, it took one year of remedi-ation on average to bring D.C. publicschool students up to speed; today, theaverage is about two years, according tosources at UDC and in the city govern-ment. Eighty-five percent of D.C. pub-lic school graduates who enter theUniversity of the District of Columbianeed remedial education.
13
•
A majority of D.C. public school grad-uates who took the U.S. Armed ForcesQualification Test—a vocational apti-tude exam—got a failing grade in 1994,the most recent year for which resultsare available.
14
•
An estimated 40 percent of studentswho start the 8th grade in D.C. drop outor leave before graduating.
15
This is nota recent phenomenon—a 1976 reportcited estimates from the statistical officeof the D.C. schools that between 30 and35 percent of students who entered the7th grade would not complete highschool. The same report found that 47percent of D.C. pupils who wereenrolled in the 7th grade in 1964–65had dropped out and not finished highschool by the 1969–70 year.
16
•
From 1978 to 1996, D.C. public schoolstudents routinely performed below thenational average on the ComprehensiveTest of Basic Skills.
17
Students in lowergrades often performed at or above thenational average starting in 1983. Incontrast, D.C. high school students con-sistently trailed the national average onCTBS.
18
•
In 2001, D.C. private school studentsaveraged 1200 on the SAT, while D.C.public school students averaged 798.
19
D.C. public school students score 222points below the national average(1020) on the SAT.
20
•
On the Stanford 9 achievement test in2001, 25 percent of D.C. students readand 36 percent performed math at the“Below Basic” level, demonstrating littleor no mastery of fundamental knowl-edge and skills at their grade level.Seventy percent of 10th and 11thgraders performed math at the BelowBasic level.
21
On the National Assess-ment of Educational Progress, D.C. stu-dents scored well below the nationalaverage on the scale score, with morethan 85 percent of students scoring atthe Basic or Below Basic level.
•
Thirty-seven percent of District resi-dents read at or below 3rd-grade level,according to the State EducationAgency, Adult Education, University of the District of Columbia.
22
As reports over the last seven decades haveconcluded, the public schools in the Districtof Columbia have failed to provide childrenwith an adequate education.
DCPS as an AdultEmployment Center
In 1940, the D.C. Board of Educationadopted a statement of philosophy of educa-tion for the public schools of the District of Columbia. Developed by teachers and offi-
3
D.C. studentsscored well belowthe national aver-age on the scalescore, with morethan 85 percentof students scor-ing at the Basic orBelow Basic level.
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...