Behind DCPS Classroom Doors

I often hear tales from Latino Student Fund kids about their classroom environments.

Some of their stories please me—“My teacher said I did the best out of everyone in the class on our science test this week.”

Some scare me—“My friend taught me how to text message in class without getting caught.”

And others (I hope) are slight stretches of the truth—“Last week, one boy in my class was talking, and our teacher banned everyone from recess for the rest of our lives.”

But what is the whole story? As students head back to school in just four short weeks, what kind of classroom will they be stepping into? How attentive is his teacher to his specific needs? Does her teacher find creative and engaging ways to interest her in the material? Does the administration effectively communicate with teachers to help teachers meet their needs and the needs of the classroom?

In a recent Washington Post article, Jay Mathews toys with the question of what would happen if inspections, conducted by third-party experts, were instituted in D.C. Public Schools (DCPS).  The article was sparked by a recent report detailing what happened when professional inspectors were hired to investigate alleged cheating during the 2011 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests. 

These reports revealed some unpleasant and even embarrassing details about the schools in question; however, they also offered an interesting look into classroom environments, teaching practices and administrative effectiveness that non-students and teachers rarely get to see.  If classroom inspections became the norm, report-style evaluations provided by inspectors could give parents (and tutors) a clearer picture of what goes on during a student’s eight-hour school day. This type of report could be particularly valuable when students and parents are on the hunt for a new school. 

While city-wide inspections probably aren’t in D.C.’s near future, Mathews’ article brings to light the lack of clear and comprehensive resources available for evaluating DCPS.  The analysis that is out there, such as Newsweek’s list of the top 1,000 public high schools in the United States, or The Washington Post’s rankings for D.C. public high schools, is primarily based on test scores and graduation rates.  While this type of information is important, it does not tell the whole story. Many factors are at play when students do well or poorly on standardized exams, and some of these factors, such as the number of students with subsidized lunch plans as a measure of poverty in the school, are taken into account in the above rankings. However, a list of numbers does not tell parents how well teachers nurture and encourage their children, how engaged and excited students are to be in the classroom, or how aware the administration is of the problems and successes of their staff.  

In the absence of inspection-style evaluations, we’ll have to be our own investigators. Keeping an ear to the ground for reputations that often precede teachers and schools is one way to do this. Parent-teacher conferences are also important resources to get to know a teacher, see him or her interact with your student and hear about what is going on in the classroom.

And as far as rankings, perhaps the most complete report currently available on D.C. public and public charter schools is the “QualitySchools: Every Child, Every School, Every Neighborhood” (see Appendices B-E.)  Though this report looks mostly at numerical data, it analyzes schools at all levels K-12 and takes into account a number of factors in order to break schools into four tiers, one being the highest performing, and four the lowest.  It also conducts a neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis to see how well schools are performing in various areas around the city.

Using these resources and keeping an open dialogue with members of the community, including other parents, teachers, and the LSF staff, we can feel more confident and knowledgeable about the environments the students are returning to in the fall and the new schools they will attend in coming years.