DC schools of incompetence

Washington Post:

Kelly Miller Middle School opened its doors in a struggling Northeast Washington neighborhood in 2004, a $35 million showcase for the District's public schools, every classroom equipped with a whiteboard and computers. A particular source of pride was a media production room, where students could broadcast announcements and produce programs to be viewed on TVs wired in each classroom.

Three years later, there have been no broadcasts. The room still needs a last, critical piece of equipment, which fell into a bureaucratic chasm. Until a few days ago, the principal had never been told what the part was or when it was coming. For now, the $150,000 production room is a storage closet for unused books and furniture.

As Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) prepares this week to become the first Washington mayor with direct control of the schools, his team promises a clean slate and a rapid turnaround. Yet a detailed assessment of the state of the school system, based on extensive public records, suggests that the challenge is enormous: The system is among the highest-spending and worst-performing in the nation. Kelly Miller is one small example of a breakdown in most of the basic functions that are meant to support classroom learning.

· Tests show that in reading and math, the District's public school students score at the bottom among 11 major city school systems, even when poor children are compared only with other poor children. Thirty-three percent of poor fourth-graders across the nation lacked basic skills in math, but in the District, the figure was 62 percent. It was 74 percent for D.C. eighth-graders, compared with 49 percent nationally.

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Do you need any more proof that money is not the problem? In this case, it appears that the school may have one of the most incompetent principals I have ever seen described. This sentence gives it away, "Until a few days ago, the principal had never been told what the part was or when it was coming."

In three years the principal never asked what part was needed to make the system functional and therefore never told anyone to get it? How could a principal be so incurious? No wonder the kids in this school perform so poorly. If the leaders do not have an inquiring mind, it is difficult to instill that in the students. The problems with this school start at the top and probably trickle down to the teachers and then the students.