It's high school graduation season here in the nation's capital which means two things: ridiculous crowds outside Constitution Hall all day, every day; and the publication of Education Week's graduation issue.  It's the latter that is causing greater concern because contained in the June 11 edition are the results of the magazine's ten-year analysis of public high school graduation rates across the country.  And unfortunately, D.C. Public Schools ranked 50th out of 51 states and territories.  According to the poll, 48.8 percent of public school students in the city graduated in 2006.  So what do we do now?

Read More "Are D.C. Public Schools a Lost Cause?" »

Note to potential D.C. Council witnesses: Best not to diss councilmembers ahead of your testimony. Especially in writing.

Just ask Robert Cane.

Yesterday, the executive director of Friends of Choice in Public Education was among dozens of charter school advocates who showed up at a council budget hearing to plead for a restoration of facilities funding for charters cut in the mayor's proposal.

After Cane completed his testimony, Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray had a couple of questions. He produced an e-mail Cane had sent out to several charter groups ahead of the hearing before Gray, long a critic of certain charter-school practices.

The e-mail, which contained instructions for hearing witnesses, contained this line: "You may be asked policy questions after your testimony. Please understand that these questions are a trap for the unwary, especially if directed at you by [Tommy] Wells, Gray, or [David] Catania. Please do not answer unless you are confident that you have absorbed the talking points we've previously distributed to you."

That led to this exchange (watch it, forward to 2:32:50):

Read More "Watch Council Witness Eat Crow" »

Last month, LL covered the sizable personality conflict between D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray and Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso.

The conflict remains.

On Tuesday, Reinoso showed up before Gray for his office's budget hearing. Among the topics discussed was the charter school facility allotment, which is, rather controversially, being cut by $24 million. Gray and Reinoso discussed the topic for more than 15 minutes, and Gray seemed satisified enough with the answers that he invited Reinoso to attend the hearing on the charter schools budget two days later.

Reinoso, though, had a hard time committing to that date. He kept telling Gray that he'd confirm the next day; Gray didn't understand why he couldn't just give a yes-or-no answer. "Is that a decision you can make independently?" he asked Reinoso, who sheepishly replied that it was. [Watch the hearing, WMV format, forward to 3:07:50]

Fast forward to yesterday's hearing, where, surprise, Reinoso doesn't show.

Read More "The Vince ‘n’ Victor Show Continues" »

This morning, LL was all over Fenty's announced District gov job cuts. Our aggressive political scribe reported: "Of the remaining 776 employees the mayor is proposing to lay off, 250 are in DCPS—mostly teachers aides and support staff, Tangherlini says." This may not seem like scary news, but it is.

I know what your thinking: teachers aides and support staff seem like easy cuts. What the hell do teacher aides do? What does support staff mean? Let me guess what they do: they help handle over-crowded classrooms, offer tutoring, lesson planning and generally help teachers get through the day. I'm not sure about support staff. But it could mean social workers, guidance counselors, secretaries, and librarians.

Do we really want to cut funding for these jobs? These cuts are coming on the heels of all those school closures last year. Catania made the argument today on the Politics Hour that enrollment is down at DCPS and that more and more kids are going into charter schools. But for every successful charter school, there are stories like City Lights Public Charter which recently had to close its doors before the school year even finished.

Read More "Fenty’s Proposed Layoffs Should Avoid DCPS" »

The teacher's lounge has turned into a showroom. Everything wears a Post-It with a price in blue ink. The conference table is selling for $150. The fridge is going for $50. The microwave is a steal at $5. Today is the last day for the City Lights Public Charter School.

Everything must go. Including that microwave.

"This stuff needs a home," explains operations manager Nick Battle. "Everything is at a good deal."

In late January, City Lights, a school for at-risk youth, announced it was closing. There were problems with enrollment and with funding. Now, all the kids have moved on to other schools. All that's left are a few teachers, Battle, the school's principal, and the beloved cook to sort through what's trash, what should be donated to other schools, and what can be sold.

In the hallway by the entrance, there is a box of locks. In the main office, there are more boxes. One box contains extension cords and a modem. In a nearby classroom, empty binders are stacked in threes. Principal Brenda Richards arrived at 9:30 a.m.

There were donuts.

"There's no money for a goodbye party," Richards says, sitting in the main office (she doesn't seem to have an office anymore). It's close to 11 a.m. "That was it---donuts."

Read More "The Last Morning At City Lights Public Charter School" »

LL just caught Tom Nida, the chair of the Public Charter School Board, ahead of the board's monthly meeting tonight.

Asked about Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton's demand that, in the wake of the Washington Post's reporting on alleged self-dealing, he resign his post, Nida said, "I serve at the pleasure of the mayor."

Asked if he would resign should Mayor Adrian M. Fenty ask him to, Nida said, "I'm a volunteer."

Nida said he had no plans to address the Post story at the meeting: "I'm in no-comment mode right now."

Indeed, at meeting's start, David Holmes, an advisory neighborhood commissioner from North Lincoln Park, strongly rebuked the board for various issues, including those raised in the Post report. Neither Nida nor any other board member said anything, and the board moved straight into its agenda.

UPDATE, 8:30 P.M.: In fact, ANC 6A is calling for the resignations of PCSB members and administrators and calling for additional reforms by the council. Letter after the jump.

Read More "PCSB Chair: “I Serve at the Pleasure of the Mayor”" »

On Sunday, the Washington Post dropped a huge investigative report on the many, many intertwined links between officials on the Public Charter Schools Board, their employers, and the schools they oversee.

Now Eleanor Holmes Norton is weighing in on the matter. She wants PCSB Chair Tom Nida and credit enhancement committee chair Barbara Hart to resign, and she wants the system by which board members are chosen to change. Currently, for each vacancy, the federal government draws up a short list of names, from which the D.C. mayor is obligated to make a final selection.

The result has been that, for as long as the board has been in existence (mostly under a Republican president), it has been populated by folks who have or have had vested interests in the success of charter schools from an ideological, business, or other perspective. (LL wrote about this in more depth over the summer.) And many have not been District residents. The concept of having "outside directors," as most corporate boards do, has not been the practice of the PCSB. That has meant that the board has been highly successful at growing the charter system, and somewhat successful at raising levels of student achievement, but undeniably aloof when it comes following well-accepted principles of good government and working as part of a larger body politic.

Whether that's a good thing or a bad think depends who you ask.

Read More "Eleanor Wants Charter Board Changes" »

WaPo Ombo Deborah Howell's got the scoop on how to get more women readers: "Opportunities abound, especially on Page 1, to draw in women with stories about families, relationships and parenting. The Post in print has precious little coverage of those topics outside of Style advice columnists. Washingtonpost.com has a blog, On Parenting, and women gravitate to the Web site's Smart Living page. Women also care about consumer issues, which can get short shrift." The tune-out of young mothers is something that has vexed the Post for some time, so much so that the place created a task force to look into the problem. The group, in Howell's words, urged "top male editors to pay more attention to issues that draw women, to look for female experts to be quoted, for female leaders to be featured and for women to be in photos as much as men."

'Skins are looking dreadful. I watched two or three plays of their 20-13 loss to Cincinnati and decided I'd miss nothing if I kept the TV exactly where it should be: off.

DCist updates us on the disaster that is the Adams Morgan taxi stand. Think about this for a second: This is an attempt to carve an island of order and efficiency out of the late-night weekend scene in D.C.'s most mayheminent intoxication zone. Never was gonna work.

Peter Nickles--picking the wrong fight on spec. ed., according to City Desk.

Charter schools were supposed to provide public schools with some capitalistic competition; they were going to give parents new options, new hope; they were going to revolutionize public education. OK, now, depending on where you stand, they may have done all or none of those things. But one thing's beyond dispute: They're a great way for savvy people to access the taxpayer's money. Examples courtesy of Washington Post.

All your inaug news here.