Testimony Before the Council of the District of Columbia Committee of the Whole OSSE Performance Oversight Hearing
By Noah Dougherty
Director of School Talent and Academic Strategy, DC Charter School Alliance
Good morning Chairman Mendelson and members of the Committee. My name is Noah Dougherty, I’m a Ward 2 resident and the Director of School Talent and Academic Strategy at the DC Charter School Alliance, the local advocacy organization dedicated to supporting DC’s public charter schools who serve nearly half of the District’s public school students.
Thank you for holding this hearing, allowing us to highlight our collaborative partnership with OSSE and share our perspective on ways to strengthen our collective efforts to deliver excellent educational experiences for all DC public school students.
We want to thank Dr. Mitchell for her leadership in building a robust State Education Agency, for setting high expectations, and for engaging public charter schools on a range of topics and issues. We appreciate OSSE’s work to support educators and evidenced-based practices that improve student academic outcomes; for example:
OSSE’s management of the Public Charter Educator Compensation Grant directly supports our educators, values their contributions to school communities, and streamlines reporting requirements for LEAs.
OSSE’s Apprenticeship in Teaching program is strengthening our city’s teacher pipeline and giving valued members of our community, such as paraprofessionals and tutors, the opportunity to grow professionally in the classroom.
OSSE’s administration of the High Impact Tutoring LEA Grant, is directly improving academic outcomes for thousands of DC public school students, including those at fifteen public charter LEAs.
DC is the fastest-improving urban school system in the country. This is a point of both celebration and focus. With a more challenging budget year ahead, our public charter schools want to work in greater partnership with OSSE to focus on the work that will allow us to continue to lead the nation in accelerating student growth. We urge OSSE to prioritize the work that most directly impacts student learning and ensure that work can not just survive, but thrive in LEAs of all sizes and models. There are several areas we would encourage OSSE to prioritize:
In October, OSSE announced that next school year, the DC CAPE standardized test would transition to a new assessment model, Smarter Balanced or SBAC. We want to emphasize how big of a change this is for LEAs. It requires an analysis of the new assessment, its format, question types, timing requirements, and other compliance, implementation, curriculum, and instructional implications. We understand the necessity of this shift and support the choice of SBAC. And we ask OSSE to reconsider how they prioritize other work, knowing this will be a major priority and lift for LEAs.
We appreciate the engagement OSSE has had with our LEAs on the proposed high school graduation requirements, including scheduling opportunities to meet directly with leaders and the Alliance after publishing the proposal. We appreciate how open OSSE has been to feedback throughout this process. We are in strong alignment with several of the proposals OSSE has introduced and are continuing to engage with them on areas where our schools have identified significant policy, budgetary, and staffing concerns that may have unintended negative consequences. As we continue to work in partnership, we ask that OSSE maintain its increased level of direct engagement with our leaders and leverage the Alliance to assist, so we can continue to discuss those pain points, possible alternatives, and ensure all DC public school students graduate ready for postsecondary success.
We appreciate the Office of Teaching and Learning’s engagement with us and our schools on the implementation of a variety of legislated requirements and initiatives including structured literacy training and the math task force. We appreciate their collaboration on flexible ways for schools to meet these requirements. As we move into a particularly challenging budget cycle, we recommend OSSE focus on the biggest levers for improving math and literacy proficiency, while minimizing new requirements. To do this, we urge OSSE to remain closely coordinated with school leaders and their teams; we welcome an opportunity to continue to partner with OSSE on this, as the membership organization representing all 66 public charter LEAs.
To continue accelerating student achievement, schools and educators need to focus more on teaching and learning. We urge OSSE to explore streamlining existing systems and procedures to maximize flexibility and minimize administrative burden on schools that are already stretched thin. This will allow public charter schools to spend more time implementing requirements and less time figuring out how to report on them.
The DC Charter School Alliance values our partnership with OSSE and we look forward to deepening our collaboration with them, in service of our city’s public charter school students, teachers, teams, and families. Thank you for your time and I welcome your questions.
