PP, first of all, I don't think anyone is seriously pursuing replacing the entire system - though if DCPS cannot get its act together, I would not be surprised if someone does propose a new model at some point. As for where they would go, there already are charters that specialize in things like disciplinary problems, special needs and so on - the things that kids might otherwise be "counseled out" for.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe they should start back with a blank slate. Take the model and approach being used by the most successful and effective school districts in the nation, build it to be 100% modernized and transparent, pick a current DCPS school or perhaps a few DCPS schools, and begin a pilot implementation at those schools using the new model in parallel, with a second, separate administrative team, to function alongside the current infrastructure. And then, if it works, have the new model start taking over other schools in a phased implementation until all the old is swept out and all the new is implemented.

To a large extent, that's what the charter movement is about. Charters are separate pilot programs with their own administrative teams that function alongside the current infrastructure.

The funding each charter receives is entirely transparent. How those funds are spent is entirely transparent at some charters and somewhat opaque at others. Nevertheless, the actual cost to DC taxpayers of a given charter school in a given year is known to a degree of certainty that appears impossible to realize at any school run by DCPS.

Hopefully, the successful charters will ultimately expand to the point that DCPS is swept out and all of DC's children are educated by a network of high-functioning charter schools.

If all DCPS schools are wiped out, where will the students who are counseled out receive an education. And please don't tell me the schools don't try to do it. A parent at YY told me that the school tried to counsel her child out, that is, until she threatened to sue. Not all parents would have stood their ground, or known are to take a stance. YY is not the only school that attempts counseling children out. I understand KIPP is famous for kicking, counseling, encouraging kids to leave. So where do these kids go, if there are no neighborhood schools?

Anonymous wrote:Maybe they should start back with a blank slate. Take the model and approach being used by the most successful and effective school districts in the nation, build it to be 100% modernized and transparent, pick a current DCPS school or perhaps a few DCPS schools, and begin a pilot implementation at those schools using the new model in parallel, with a second, separate administrative team, to function alongside the current infrastructure. And then, if it works, have the new model start taking over other schools in a phased implementation until all the old is swept out and all the new is implemented.

To a large extent, that's what the charter movement is about. Charters are separate pilot programs with their own administrative teams that function alongside the current infrastructure.

The funding each charter receives is entirely transparent. How those funds are spent is entirely transparent at some charters and somewhat opaque at others. Nevertheless, the actual cost to DC taxpayers of a given charter school in a given year is known to a degree of certainty that appears impossible to realize at any school run by DCPS.

Hopefully, the successful charters will ultimately expand to the point that DCPS is swept out and all of DC's children are educated by a network of high-functioning charter schools.

Those analysis had add-one such as special need spending and spending on children attending schools in PG, MoCo, Alexandria schools. I assume those are foster children placed in homes in those jurisdictions. I guess DC is required to reimburse the school districts, since technically he children are district residents.

Maybe they should start back with a blank slate. Take the model and approach being used by the most successful and effective school districts in the nation, build it to be 100% modernized and transparent, pick a current DCPS school or perhaps a few DCPS schools, and begin a pilot implementation at those schools using the new model in parallel, with a second, separate administrative team, to function alongside the current infrastructure. And then, if it works, have the new model start taking over other schools in a phased implementation until all the old is swept out and all the new is implemented.

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Folks can try to nitpick all they like, folks can try to shoot the messenger all they like, but none of that is relevant, from a big-picture standpoint.

Bottom line is, there is analysis after analysis out there, whether from conservative, liberal, or non-partisan sources - analyses using official DCPS and OSSE data and ALL showing DCPS spending per student to be well into the high 20,000s per student, if not higher.

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't those figures arrived at by taking the total amount of spending and dividing by the total number of students? Because not all students receive an equal amount of funding, that figure is not particularly helpful -- other than to point out that it is way more than it should be. What I've heard from Catania is that the budget is so opaque that nobody really knows where the money is spent. A more helpful figure would be the number of dollars per student that actually make it down to the schools for the purpose of education.

No, I think those analyses were more fine grained than that, looking at specific pots of money. If you just take overall spending and divide it by the number of students the number goes even higher.

The AVERAGE works out to 25,000, 27,000 or 30,000 - depending on which analysis you want to take.

It's a whole lot more transparent when you consider charters, where there are pre-defined allocations per student, with one add-on being ESL, and another add-on being special needs. But even when charter school allocations are fully topped-out for the most expensive, most extreme case (for example a special needs student for whom english is a second language) that is still dwarfed by the AVERAGE amount of spending per student across DCPS schools. The most expensive charter school student would be allocated maybe half of what is being spent ON AVERAGE per student at DCPS.

Maybe DCPS should consider a similar, far more transparent funding model, comparable to what has been imposed on charters - and Catania should put his frustration over lack of transparency into action. Frankly yes, one does wonder where all the money in DCPS goes - since so very little seems to make it to the students, whereas charters are doing as good of a job if not better for far less money. The money could go to do so much more for our kids, rather than just vanishing into a black hole.

Anonymous wrote:Folks can try to nitpick all they like, folks can try to shoot the messenger all they like, but none of that is relevant, from a big-picture standpoint.

Bottom line is, there is analysis after analysis out there, whether from conservative, liberal, or non-partisan sources - analyses using official DCPS and OSSE data and ALL showing DCPS spending per student to be well into the high 20,000s per student, if not higher.

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't those figures arrived at by taking the total amount of spending and dividing by the total number of students? Because not all students receive an equal amount of funding, that figure is not particularly helpful -- other than to point out that it is way more than it should be. What I've heard from Catania is that the budget is so opaque that nobody really knows where the money is spent. A more helpful figure would be the number of dollars per student that actually make it down to the schools for the purpose of education.

Folks can try to nitpick all they like, folks can try to shoot the messenger all they like, but none of that is relevant, from a big-picture standpoint.

Bottom line is, there is analysis after analysis out there, whether from conservative, liberal, or non-partisan sources - analyses using official DCPS and OSSE data and ALL showing DCPS spending per student to be well into the high 20,000s per student, if not higher.

In the footnotes, the CATO report states that the audit number added the OSSE numbers for DC students attending non-DC public and private schools. Are the students attending non-DC public schools wards of the state placed in homes outside of the District, but the District is still responsible for the children's education?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nearly 30k spent per student by the DCPS system: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/25/d-c-public-schools-spend-almost-30000-per-student/

Heritage, really. Is this the same Heritage Foundation that printed this http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/05/14/heritage-foundation-alleges-gays-in-scouts-would-lead-to-more-boy-on-boy-contact

And this: http://www.heritage.org/issues/immigration

Or this: http://www.heritage.org/research/projects/impact-of-obamacare

Sorry, Heritage has no credibility. That foundation skews the stats to fit their narrative.

Does the Washington Post have credibility, PP? They reported $25,000 in 2008, it's probably gone up since:

We're often told that public schools are underfunded. In the District, the spending figure cited most commonly is $8,322 per child, but total spending is close to $25,000 per child -- on par with tuition at Sidwell Friends, the private school Chelsea Clinton attended in the 1990s.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-04-06/news/36792859_1_private-schools-charter-schools-public-schools

One way to arrive at that figure is described in a 2008 Post editorial:

Mr. Coulson did not use “new math” to come up with $24,600. He used simple arithmetic. Total funding for D.C. Public Schools this fiscal year (including federal dollars) was $1.216 billion. He divided that by the official enrollment figure of 49,422 and the sum became $24,606.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/25/per-pupil-spending-in-dc/

Does the CATO Institute have any credibility, PP? They calculated a figure of $28,000 per student in 2010:

The District of Columbia, at over $28,000 per student, has the highest spending of the three DC–area districts we examined. This real spending figure is 61 percent higher than the official one—the largest gap of any district in the area. Arlington comes in second place, spending just under $24,000 per student. And Prince George’s spends the least of the three, at just over $15,000 per pupil (Table 4).

http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa662.pdf

Is the American Enterprise Institute credible, PP? They released an editorial today arguing that DC spends over $27,000 per student:

When the U.S. Census Bureau released a report last week breaking down per pupil spending across the United States by school district, the spending figure for DCPS (the nation-leading over $18,000 per pupil per year) grabbed headlines both inside and outside the Beltway. Tipped off by a blog post by Andrew Coulson at the Cato Institute, I went digging through the report and similarly found that even the $18,000 figure was a huge under-reporting of the total spending per pupil in DCPS.

Table 15 (on pg. 31) in the report lists both the enrollment and the total expenditure of DCPS. The district enrolled 43,866 students at a total cost of $1.196 billion. Simply dividing one by the other yielded a true per pupil expenditure of $27,263.

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/06/d-c-public-schools-grossly-under-reports-spending/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nearly 30k spent per student by the DCPS system: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/25/d-c-public-schools-spend-almost-30000-per-student/

Heritage, really. Is this the same Heritage Foundation that printed this http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/05/14/heritage-foundation-alleges-gays-in-scouts-would-lead-to-more-boy-on-boy-contact

And this: http://www.heritage.org/issues/immigration

Or this: http://www.heritage.org/research/projects/impact-of-obamacare

Sorry, Heritage has no credibility. That foundation skews the stats to fit their narrative.

DCUM posters have been known to skew the stats:

I'm personally fine with a challenging program, I just think there needs to be another path for students who aren't prepared for it. If 25% of the class can handle the advanced curriculum then it's terrific that it is available for them. However, there needs to be an alternative set of choices for the 75% who are dropping out.

Anonymous wrote:Nearly 30k spent per student by the DCPS system: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/25/d-c-public-schools-spend-almost-30000-per-student/

Heritage, really. Is this the same Heritage Foundation that printed this http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/05/14/heritage-foundation-alleges-gays-in-scouts-would-lead-to-more-boy-on-boy-contact

And this: http://www.heritage.org/issues/immigration

Or this: http://www.heritage.org/research/projects/impact-of-obamacare

Sorry, Heritage has no credibility. That foundation skews the stats to fit their narrative.

Nearly 30k spent per student by the DCPS system: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/25/d-c-public-schools-spend-almost-30000-per-student/