Public Charter School Board: Find some balance before you rank Preschools and Kindergartens

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The Issue

If it passes, the PCSB's new accountability framework for all charter schools with Preschool and Lower Elementary programs would assign between 60-80% of a school's overall rating to the test scores of its 3, 4, and 5-year-olds. That sort of emphasis doesn't reflect what parents want for their children -- and it doesn't reflect what the research tells us about how children learn.

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Sam ChaltainPetition Starter
Media inquiries

The Decision Makers

Scott Pearson
PCSB Executive Director
Responded
“I appreciate your sharing your concern about assessments in early childhood testing. It’s important to note that the proposed early childhood PMF was developed in close collaboration with charter school leaders who broadly support this proposal. Among most important features of the PMF was to incorporate the very assessments that these schools are already giving to students, and that have been used for years for school accountability purposes. Schools may choose from a menu of over two dozen assessments - a menu that includes virtually all of the assessments already used by our schools. These bear little resemblance to “fill in the bubble” tests. They are administered one-on-one, by teachers. They are authentic and designed to be developmentally appropriate and to feel low-stakes for the child. Let me repeat. All of our schools already use these assessments for accountability purposes. The Early Childhood PMF does not impose new tests. It creates a framework for comparing the results at one school using one test with the results at another school using a different test. Indeed, far from imposing new assessments, the Early Childhood PMF restricts the use of these assessments. For example many schools currently evaluate their youngest students for literacy and numeracy proficiency. The Early Childhood PMF now looks only at whether these students abilities have improved, not at the absolute proficiency levels of students. PCSB has a vital role to ensure that charter schools, which are public schools paid for with taxpayer dollars, are high quality. We seek to play this role in a way that preserves the maximum autonomy and flexibility for school leaders to run their schools as they see fit. While every school is different, virtually all agree that the vast number of students who enter the third grade unable to read or perform basic math is a crisis in our city and that a basic function of a school is to prepare students to be literate and numerate. The core bargain of charter schools is greater autonomy in exchange for greater accountability. This means there will inevitably be high stakes reviews of charter schools. Almost all charter schools prefer to be left alone to develop their own educational programs. High stakes reviews focusing on *how* they run their schools run counter to the philosophy of most of our school leaders. They want the freedom to decide the "how" and to be judged on the outcomes. While it would be hard to find an educator who did not value the social and emotional development of children, most would also agree that valid assessments of social and emotional progress are not yet well-established. For this reason many school leaders are reluctant to have significant portions of an evaluation of their school be based on an assessment of their students' social and emotional development. This concern influenced the work the task force developing the Early Childhood PMF. We take the public comment phase of the process very seriously. The views of those who signed this petition, along with those who submitted comments directly to me and to PCSB, will be taken into account. Beyond this, we recognize that no system of accountability is perfect. For this reason, the committee of schools who designed the Early Childhood PMF will continue to meet to consider ongoing improvements. We continue to discuss this issue on our blog, which can be found at www.dcpcsb.org. Scott Pearson Executive Director DC Public Charter School Board”

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Petition created on August 21, 2013