History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Delusions of adequacy in D.C. reform effort
- 08-08-2011
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Blog by Valerie Strauss/Washington Post
As the D.C. schools reform effort launched in 2007 by former chancellor Michelle Rhee enters its fifth year, newly released test scores (Rhee’s chosen measure of progress in closing the achievement gap) still show huge gaps between schools in the city’s poorest and wealthiest neighborhoods. Is anybody surprised? In this story about the continuing achievement gap, my colleague Bill Turque wrote that children in the poorest schools (in Ward 7 and 8) trailed students in the wealthiest (in Ward 3) in reading and math pass rates from 41 to 56 percentage points on this year’s D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams (which are given annually to students in grades 3 through 8 and 10). Though were small signs of forward movement, Turque wrote, the test results show that “students in schools east of the Anacostia River — who represent nearly a third of the city’s traditional public school enrollment — have yet to be lifted” by the reforms that started when Rhee became chancellor in 2007 and continued even after she left the job last October and her deputy, Kaya Henderson, took over. (more...)
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