Question 1:
Age: 55
Occupation: Self-employed Editor, Writer, and Publications/Communications Consultant
Education: magna cum laude graduate, Howard University, B.S., 1978
Qualifications for office sought: I have worked in some aspect of education or scholarship during most of my professional career, beginning in the 1970s as a board and staff member in the early days of a District-based, independent (non-chartered) school that still exists today. Later as a reporter for a magazine focusing on African American and diversity issues in higher education; associate editor of a major education research journal; consultant to a Department of Education-funded center focusing on at-risk youth; director of a university-based book publishing division; and publications director for the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), where I was also responsible for oversight of its teacher education journal, annual meeting and other conference materials, and electronic and web communications. In my concurrent and current roles as an entrepreneurial writer, editor, and publications/communications consultant, many of my clients are teachers, teacher educators, schools, and universities with whom I've established a decades-long reputation as a knowledgeable, objective advisor on academic matters. I also work for a number of federal and local government agencies whose missions address areas relevant to students and schools.
Question 2 - What State Board of Education policies would you advocate? There are a number of basic "calendar adjustments" I'd like to see that I believe will effect significant improvements in DCPS student performance and outcomes. To begin, I have long advocated for a longer DCPS school day and school year as a means of ensuring that more in-school learning and socialization can take place, and I look forward to engaging my future Board and OSSE colleagues and other school stakeholders in serious discussions about how to implement this. It is also my belief that the Board and DCPS must revisit - and in many cases let go of - many of the basic assumptions about parents and families on which it, like policymakers in other jurisdictions, has based many of its previous policies. DC's school population today is diverse across an entire spectrum of criteria. Some of this diversity - particularly that resulting from generational poverty, underresourced schooling, poses significant challenges to teaching and learning; some of it, in the proper welcoming climate, presents exciting opportunities for growth, learning, and sharing. The DCPS School Board should enact or reshape its policies to more adroitly address the changing and future realities, roles, needs, and requirements of its clientele, and not rely on the two-parent, middle-class models or behaviors that shaped the past to shape its clients' futures. Another area for which I will advocate strongly will be to strengthen and make more rigorous the DCPS high school graduation requirements.
Question 3 - What are the major challengers to implementing the common core standards of learning? I believe the greatest challenge to such efforts, beyond ensuring that all stakeholders are on the same page regarding what constitutes "common" and "core" in terns of standards, will be assessing how effectively and fully the new standards are being incorporated at the classroom level - and ultimately, how much of the core material is being learned by the students. My understanding is that the OSSE's effort in this regard is underway, and I am eager to become an active collaborator in that process. Additional areas to be addressed include ensuring that standards and assessments, and the means and resources needed to implement them, will be applied equitably across differently resourced and populated schools.
Questions 4 - Should high school students be required to have a semester of DC history and government? Civic responsibility is not innate or inborn. If left to chance or neglected in the DCPS curriculum, it will falter and fail. If our young people are to emerge at the end of their K-12 experience with both basic and sophisticated senses of their roles and potentials in a democracy at all levels - neighborhood, municipal, state, and national, policymakers and policy advisers today must act to institutionalize pedagogy that will ensure just that. I strongly believe that efforts to imbue young people with critical definitions and understandings of civic responsibility and public civility, along with firm knowledge of the workings of their city government will generate more informed and activist generations of Washingtonians in the future. Additionally, I believe it is critical for our youth to be informed of the many successes, challenges, and shortcomings facing DC's government. I will strongly advocate for the inclusion of a course (or courses) in DC history and government as essential components of future curricula.
Questions 5 - Is there a role for the State Board of Education in making charter schools accountable? I certainly believe so, especially given that OSSE is responsible for managing the federal funding for public charter school facilities in the District and given that DCPS funds follow District students to District charter schools. This for me is a taxpayer-accountability function of the School Board. The School Board should be a major participant in efforts to monitor and enforce charter school accreditation and standard setting to ensure that those funds and the children and families who are "attached" to those funds are put to the best, most productive, and most cost-effective use. As a member of the Board, I look forward to this role. At all times during that process, however, I will do so with a keen eye toward identifying those charter school best practices and policies that can be more efficiently and broadly replicated in or shared by DCPS schools, with the goal of enhancing the value and value-added worth of our public - and principally publicly funded - schools.
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