21st Century School FundComments on Petition of Rocketship DC Public Charter Schoolto Amend its Charter to Add an Additional Campus in Ward 7

Beginning in SY 2017-2018 October 17, 2016

We thank the Public Charter School Board for this chance to provide testimony on Rocketship’s request to expand. 21st Century School Fund welcomes questions and further discussion.

We understand the Public Charter School Board’s difficult position and rely on it to advance the concerns of DC residents and neighborhoods. DC has been used over the years as a laboratory for educational trends because of our unique visibility. For decades, pressure has come from Congress, the Department of Education and a wide variety of national interest groups. Residents rely on the Charter Board to weigh the enthusiasm of LEAs new to DC against the larger, long-term best interests of District children, District neighborhoods and District tax dollars.

A Note on The 21st Century School Fund: The 21 st Century School Fund is a small DC based non-profit that has been supporting the improvement of public school facilities for over twenty years. Nationally, we have collected and studied school facility data, recently completing a “State-of Our Schools” report working closely with The Center for Green Schools, the Center for Cities and Schools at UC Berkeley and the National Council on School Facilities, a new national organization of state school facilities directors that we have incubated.

We have closely followed and been involved with public school planning in the District for over two decades, analyzing school budgeting, siting, modernizations, new construction, school openings and closings as well as District population trends and neighborhood development. We have worked with DCPS and the Deputy Mayor for Education on school closing and student assignment initiatives and testifying frequently before the city council.

21CSF has been involved directly with both DCPS and charter schools, particularly with the development of the public/private partnership for DCPS’s Oyster/Adams Bi-lingual School and the public/public partnership for the modernization of Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS and Savoy Elementary, the adjacent DCPS school where a gymnasium and structured parking are shared.

The materials supporting Rocketship’s request to open a second school at 4250 Massachusetts Ave., SE do not satisfy the requirements of the School Reform Act and therefore Rocketship’s petition should not be approved.

1. Under section 2201(e) of the D.C. School Reform Act (SRA) (D.C. Code section 38-1802.01(e)), “[a] petition to establish a public charter school in the District of Columbia . . . is a public document.” It is impossible for the public to evaluate and meaningfully comment on a request from Rocketship if the request is not in written form and is not available to the public. Because PCSB has not made Rocketship’s specific request available to the public on PCSB’s website, the comment period to date has therefore been meaningless. PCSB should release Rocketship’s specific request to the public and restart the comment period so that the public’s comments can be based on more than a summary of a reported verbal request.

2. Under section 2202(2) of the SRA (D.C. Code section 38-1802.02(2)), a petition to establish a public charter school shall include “a statement of the need for the proposed school in the geographic area of the school site.” Although PCSB may consider Rocketship’s request to open a

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21st Century School FundComments on Petition of Rocketship DC Public Charter Schoolto Amend its Charter to Add an Additional Campus in Ward 7

Beginning in SY 2017-2018 October 17, 2016

new school site as equal to a request to add another “campus” to an existing “school,” it is a request to establish a new school on a new site. To comply with the SRA’s requirement that a school’s geographic site be evaluated as to the appropriateness of adding a school in a particular geographic area, Rocketship must be required to submit a written amended petition including a statement of the need for an additional school in the neighborhood of the proposed site. Rocketship’s original petition in 2012 did not provide this information beyond stating that its desired eight schools would be located in “likely Wards 7 and/or 8” (see Rocketship Education D.C. – Charter Application (Nov. 16, 2012), p. 3).

3. Under section 2202(14) of the SRA (D.C. Code section 38-1802.02(14)), a petition must include “[a] description of how parents, teachers, and other members of the community have been involved in the design and will continue to be involved in the implementation of the proposed school.” No information has been made public that satisfies this requirement with regard to the proposed school at the proposed site.

Any decision by PCSB to approve Rocketship’s request to open a second school beginning in SY 2017-2018 would be premature because Rocketship’s first school has not operated long enough to be assessable as to its performance.

According to PCSB’s notice regarding Rocketship’s petition to amend its charter, “Each additional campus may only open if none of the school’s previous campuses achieve less than Tier 1 status on DC PCSB’s Performance Management Framework.” According to PCSB’s website, Rocketship’s first school (at 2335 Raynolds St. SE) has not yet achieved Tier 1 status. A second school therefore cannot be approved at this time.

Without a base-line year and out-years to compare, the Board cannot make any reasonable and thorough evaluation of Rocketship’s approach to education or the feasibility and long-term viability of its business model which relies on limited teaching staff with substantial time spent in "blended" on-line education using software programming under the tutelage of teacher-aides in learning labs. While the Rocketship innovation promises large increases in test scores and savings in teacher salaries, it is also remains very controversial, with studies that are indeterminate or conflicting since the first Rocketship school opened in 2007 in California. (Please see Appendix I for links to a variety of studies and articles.) Rocketship's curriculum appears meager in scope compared the rich range of offerings at high performing charter and DCPS schools and its provision of space for students falls far short of the norm in the District.

PCSB should not approve the siting of a new charter school so close to the Maryland border because it will not be convenient to a sufficient number of D.C. residents and will likely attract Maryland residents.

The neighborhood of the Massachusetts Avenue site is comparatively sparsely populated due to the proximity of Ft. Dupont Park immediately to the north (please see Appendix II, attached for Google-maps). Further, DC housing near the site is not dense, with single-family houses and only a few small multi-family residences. The population center nearest the proposed school is in the Maryland neighborhood directly to the south which has a large number of single family houses that are closer to

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21st Century School FundComments on Petition of Rocketship DC Public Charter Schoolto Amend its Charter to Add an Additional Campus in Ward 7

Beginning in SY 2017-2018 October 17, 2016

Rocketship's proposed location than to their neighborhood elementary school in Maryland (Bradbury Heights Elementary School at 1401 Glacier Ave.).

A quick review of the 2015-16 population maps for charter schools in Ward 7, where the proposed school is located, shows nine of the sixteen charter schools with very strong neighborhood participation and the rest with what appears to be a majority enrollment from their immediately surrounding communities. Ward 7 families take advantage of nearby schools when they are available including charter schools that can enroll city-wide. However, there is little age-appropriate population available near the proposed site - - unlike the area surrounding Rocketship’s current Raynolds St. location. DC Office of Planning projections of elementary school-age population in Neighborhood Cluster 32, where the proposed school is located, show limited growth expected from 2014-2020. (See population projections for Kimball ES, also in neighborhood cluster 32 at http://dme.dc.gov/node/885242 with the percent change projected 2014-2020 in the number of 0-3 year old's at 0%; for 4-10 year olds at 16% and for 11-13 year olds at 8%.) Moreover, in the aggregate, the DCPS and charter schools in the area currently have capacity to absorb more students if necessary. In light of this, opening another school in the proposed neighborhood is not only unnecessary but would burden the District of Columbia with the costs of an unneeded school.

Under D.C. law, public schools and charter schools are established and funded to serve D.C. resident children, not children who are residents of other jurisdictions. It has always been difficult for DC schools to effectively police enrollment of out-of-state students, especially as DC offers all-day PK3 and PK4 programs that are not income-based as are those across Southern Avenue in Prince Georges County. DC also has some of the best programming in the region in both its DCPS and charter schools and this has proved a draw for out of state parents, especially those with family ties in the District. The site proposed for the school is less than a block from Southern Avenue, on the border with Prince George’s County. Siting the school so close to the county line invites fraud. Proximity to Massachusetts Avenue and Alabama Avenue, both major transit arteries into the District, further exacerbates this possibility as easy transit makes drop-off and pick-up convenient for parents who live just over the state line.

The Proposed site and the proposed building may prove to be too small, too close to private residences, and overly impacted by traffic to be viable.

The site is small for the proposed approximately 50,000 square foot building and may provide for only very limited outdoor play space for early childhood and elementary school students or athletic space for middle school age students. With the expected 730 students, it would provide only about 70 square feet per students, half of the standard for DCPS elementary schools for an elementary school facility, and the plan here is for PK-8th grades. Only if the school plans to coordinate with the nearby church on a wholesale transfer of real estate could outdoor space be sufficient. Even with a more limited church partnership for shared classroom, assembly, parking space, and bus transportation, the problem of limited outdoor space would remain. This is site is particularly difficult because of the decades old water tower in the middle of the block, which covers twice the ground square footage, for instance, as the tower at nearby Stanton Elementary.

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21st Century School FundComments on Petition of Rocketship DC Public Charter Schoolto Amend its Charter to Add an Additional Campus in Ward 7

Beginning in SY 2017-2018 October 17, 2016

PCSB should require Rocketship to describe its plan for developing community support for the new school in a residential area characterized by small single-family homes that would be greatly impacted by the twice-daily arrival and departure of 730 students. While the church’s congregation is huge, church parking, drop-off and pick up are limited primarily to Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. With the school, parking and traffic congestion would be five days a week. Neighborhood opposition could be fierce if Rocketship proceeds to assemble adjacent lots for tear-down and construction. But without sufficient buffer space nearby households will be adversely affected by proximity to the school.

Respectfully,

Nancy HuvendickDC Program Director21sr Century School Fund1816 12th St., NW, 3rd FloorWashington, DC 20009202-745-3745 x 15nhuvendick@21csf.org

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21st Century School FundComments on Petition of Rocketship DC Public Charter Schoolto Amend its Charter to Add an Additional Campus in Ward 7

Beginning in SY 2017-2018 October 17, 2016

Appendix 1Selected Articles and Studies on Rocketship

Fullerton, Jon; Hughes Rodney; Kozakowski, Whitney; Dreambox Learning Achievement Growth in the Howard County Public School System and Rocketship, May 2016http://cepr.harvard.edu/files/cepr/files/dreambox-key-findings.pdfhttp://cepr.harvard.edu/dreambox-learning-achievement-growth

Kamentz, Anya, “High Test Scores at a Nationally Lauded Charter Network, But at What Cost?”, NPR.org, June 24, 2016. http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/06/24/477345746/high-test-scores-at-a-nationally-lauded-charter-network-but-at-what-cost

Lafer, Gordon, Do Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education Than Rich Kids? Evaluating School Privatization Proposals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; EPI Briefing Paper, April 24, 2014, Briefing Paper #375; http://www.epi.org/publication/school-privatization-milwaukee/

Herold, Benjamin, “Growing Pains for Rocketship's Blended-Learning Juggernaut” Education Week, Published on Line January 21, 2014. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/01/21/19el-rotation.h33.html

U.S. Department of Education. 2014. Elementary School Mathematics Intervention Report: DreamBox Learning, Updated. Institute of Education Sciences, What Works Clearinghouse.Note: Link is currently off-line.

U.S. Department of Education. 2013. Elementary School Mathematics Intervention Report: DreamBox Learning. Institute of Education Sciences, What Works Clearinghouse.  http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/EvidenceSnapshot/627http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Docs/InterventionReports/wwc_dreambox_121013.pdf

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21st Century School FundComments on Petition of Rocketship DC Public Charter Schoolto Amend its Charter to Add an Additional Campus in Ward 7

Beginning in SY 2017-2018 October 17, 2016

Appendix IIGoogle Earth Images of the Proposed Rocketship Site at 4250 Massachusetts Ave., SE

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