Ward 3 School Board Rep.: From Here, What?

After 18 months on the job, Ruth Wattenberg makes it clear that her role as the democratically elected Ward 3 representative on the DC State Board of Education comes with handcuffs. (This article originally was published on The Hoe.org, July 4, 2016.)

Does she vote on funding for schools? No.

Is she empowered to oversee administration of education policy? No.

What about asking a question of an uninvited member of the public appearing before the board? Nope.

“I knew it was a messy, mucky governance structure,” said Wattenberg in an interview with me about her tenure. “It’s not an easy place to have major influence.”

The nine-member state board was created out of the 2007 DC Public Education Reform Amendment Act, which remade the landscape around our roughly $2.2 billion, 87,000 students public schools.

BIG STAKES: The 2016 schools operating budget of about $2.2 billion in local and federal money shows, according to DC City Council Education Committee documents, about: $886 million for DCPS; $454 million for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education; $74 million for so-called non-public tuition that covers students with special needs that are not accommodated in public schools; $97 million for special education transportation; $686 million for charter schools; $1 million for the state board of education; and $3 million for the deputy mayor for education. The total, which does not include capital spending on costs such as buildings and vehicles, amounts to about $25,000 per student when divided by total enrollment of about 87,000, with about 48,439 students in DCPS and about 38,905 in charter schools. But serious evaporation and twists in formulation occur in the sluices before the funding reaches schools, where per pupil figures vary considerably based on factors such as levels of poverty among the students. At the other end of the equation, overall results of the standardized testing for DCPS and charter school grades 3-8 for 2014-15 showed for math and English that only about 25 percent of students met or exceeded expectations and were deemed “on track for college and career readiness,” according to the state superintendent’s office. The superintendent’s 2016 approved budget provided for a staff of about 370. The agency’s work includes overseeing federal programs, transportation for special needs students, and awarding higher education financial assistance. The state board’s approved budget that year provided for a staff of about 19. The deputy mayor for education’s approved budget provided for a staff of about 16. Charter schools have their own authorizing board, appointed by the mayor, that approves schools to open, monitors performance, and makes renewal and closure decisions. Photo Design Credit: John A. Bray

The legislation dissolved the existing school board and moved to the mayor’s office extensive authority for school operations.

It also formed an education department under a deputy mayor to integrate citywide education issues and launched an Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) headed by a mayoral appointee. Among other changes, it called for a public education ombudsman to hear complaints and aid resolution. The position, which has no power to make binding decisions, went unfunded for years and was only restarted in 2014, according to an annual report from the ombudsman, a post housed within the state board.

One of the main findings from a system evaluation by a research consortium at George Washington University: “The current governance model has made it difficult for stakeholders to have access to decision-making and has reduced transparency for both stakeholders and officials.” The 2014 consortium report was the fifth and final report of the evaluation required by the law.

Playing The Hand

While Wattenberg’s role is formally limited, it is weight on the scale. And the board seat for Northwest Washington didn’t come cheap. It didn’t come without a fight either. Four people vied for the post in the November 4, 2014 election. Combined spending totaled $67,897.

Wattenberg won with 7,869 of the 20,894 ballots cast for the four contenders. She ranked second in spending, with $22,030, behind the third place finisher’s $31,398, according to government election and campaign finance records. The position, with a four-year term, pays a stipend of $15,000 annually.

Wattenberg said she has used the “bully pulpit” of her post to assert her views and galvanize community action on critical issues, like when DC Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, in spring 2015, cut Wilson High School’s budget $309,600 to $15.6 million, while projecting an enrollment increase of 170 students to 1,878.

(It was announced on June 29, 2016, that Henderson, a mayoral appointee named to the post in 2010, is leaving the job September 30, 2016.)

“What I quickly realized was the extent to which people are really disenfranchised, the lack of responsiveness from DCPS to the needs of schools and parents and kids,” Wattenberg said. “So I feel I was willingly drafted into that role because it was so obviously a vacuum.”

She said she did not feel that she was operating out of her lane in fighting the budget cut because she wasn’t “asking the board to do anything about it.”

It fell to Ward 3 City Councilmember Mary Cheh and her fellow councilmembers to take special action to give DCPS more money to offset the Wilson cut.

Policy Ins and Outs

Wattenberg, with children who have gone through DCPS schools, said her intention upon joining the state board was to pursue education policy. She is a veteran of the field, having held policy positions at the American Federation of Teachers, worked as an education consultant and served as a trustee of the Core Knowledge Foundation, an advocate for diverse curriculum.

But even on matters of education policy the state board appears to be less than what it sounds like, at least traditionally, which is a governing board.

“The big issue is, because we don’t initiate policy, not that much comes before us,” she said. “It’s a spare agenda.”

She said it is up to the state superintendent’s office to develop policy on such matters as school accountability and academic standards, and then get state board approval.

As an example of agenda workings, Wattenberg described serving on a task force — convened by the board — that examined ways to allow students to “test out” of courses based on their competence in the subject. The group included people from the offices of the superintendent and mayor, schools and the community.

The consensus, Wattenberg said, was for the superintendent’s office to develop a policy allowing a test-out pilot for limited subjects with well-specified parameters, such as Algebra 1 and foreign languages. She said the superintendent’s office produced a policy for students to test out of anything.

“You could test out of American history. Based on what level? Nobody knew,” she said. “A basic test?” Wattenberg said the agency wanted to go forward with the pilot and, if it worked, broaden it without returning to the education board for further authority. “I thought that was crazy. Many people agreed. There was a petition drive and OSSE pulled it back.”

Wattenberg said the state superintendent typically attends state board meetings.

Board rules restrict interaction with the public, Wattenberg said, noting uninvited public witnesses can appear before the board, but board members can’t ask them questions. “I have proposed getting rid of it and others, I think, would like to get rid of it,” she said. “But it’s a rule we are bound by.”

Board members are permitted, for example, to ask questions of panelists who are invited by the board to provide information. She said board members have input, but those invitations mainly come from the state board’s president, elected by the board membership, and the board’s executive director.

The Next Round

With Congress and the White House signing off in late 2015 on a new federal law covering elementary and secondary education, a law touted as offering states more flexibility, Wattenberg said the state superintendent’s office will be updating school accountability requirements.

“The state board will have to sign off on it,” Wattenberg said, adding that she hopes to get beyond the focus over the past 15 years on standardized math and reading testing. She called the testing necessary, but also wants broader measures that encourage richer curriculum and school culture improvement.

Standardized accountability testing — with a new system developed with federal support and given via computer being administered for the first time in the 2014-15 school year — has been a sore spot for many students, parents and educators.

For example, in spring 2016, at Wilson High School, administrators tried to pull many seniors from their regular classes to take the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers tests in subjects they were not enrolled in or hadn’t taken in years. School officials told parents that there was no official option not to take the tests, that opting out would harm the school and that students would continue to get reminders to take the test.

“This is a good example of our governance mess,” Wattenberg said. “DCPS claimed that OSSE required them to test that way. OSSE claimed it was DCPS’s doing.”

Parents who pursued exemptions for their children got them, she said. But she added, “that’s the way you provide an extra disadvantage to kids who don’t have squeaky-wheel parents.”

The state board authorizes the testing but doesn’t oversee its administration.

Wattenberg said that “all sorts of process” associated with testing, evaluation of teachers based on the results, and narrow use in accountability creates too much pressure. “It all gets backlogged across the whole year and that’s not a good idea,” she said. She noted that the state board’s advisory committee of students has proposed starting a hotline to deal with standardized testing issues.

Wattenberg said her post represents no small commitment.

“It’s taking a lot more time than I expected,” she said. “It could take your whole life if you let it.”

Phone calls and e-mails are many, and she produces a semi-regular newsletter. It is, however, a substantial undertaking to draw a bead on such rococo matters as school budget-making. “How do you push back on it?” she said. “Is it an unfair budget or not?”

Wattenberg said she’s not sure yet whether she will seek reelection.

The work is “very interesting. The question is, how much can you affect, influence? What can you do from here?”