59

it finds people who are illegally attending the D.C. public school
system on the D.C. taxpayers’ dime? That’s what I want you to tell
people. .

First of all, a whole bunch are going to get out real quick when
they hear that you’re coming after them. But if all we’re doing is
saying, here is an appeal and go to court, then, in effect, that’s an
invitation for people to remain in the school system, very frankly,
until they are found, until they are found and put out. Let me see
if I can stretch my time out until they get me. And then, of course,
I have to go back where I came from, because I'll be darned if I’m
going to give them $7,000, which is why I’m over here in the first
place freeloading.

I want to know—these folks are on our dime right now. Now, I
would not want any child put out of school in March, but we
shouldn’t have one of those children in Dr. Ackerman’s summer
school, not one, not a single one. And we certainly shouldn’t have
a single one of them in September. But if all they think is going
to happen is they’re going to get put out of school, they’re going to
reregister. They’re in eighth grade, and they’re going to come back
for the ninth. I’m asking you what you are going to do to make
sure hat they'll get out, run out as quick as they can before they're
caught.

General BECTON. We will enforce the residential requirements
once the control board approves them, hopefully in the very near
future this will quickly identify who they are. They will not be in
the summer school or next year if we can identify them.

What we need is to have some way to get them to pay fines. We
don’t have that that I’m aware of right now. However, I think the
most important thing we can do is to make sure that—you talk
about massive fraud. We want to make sure that the principals are
doing what they should be doing in the first place. Once we can get
them doing what they should be doing, I think the rest of it will
fall in place.

Ms. Norton. Could I ask you to do this, because, obviously,
you're talking about what you will do in the future. And this was
not done this year.

General BECTON. We’ve—

Ms. Norton. Can I ask you to do this, to submit to this commit-
tee a document indicating how you intend to deter future illegal en-
rollment, what specific steps you intend to take to deter specific—
specifically the illegal enrollment of children in the D.C. public
school system; what penalties you think are appropriate; how you
intend to collect tuitions, present and past; for example, if a child
has been in the school, and now in the third grade, they owe us
for probably preschool on up to the third grade, how you intend to
collect that; what additional legislation may be needed from the
council; what additional action may be needed from the control

We would like—this committee would like a detailed description
of how you intend to combat nonresidential student fraud by deter-
ring it and by collecting back taxes for D.C. residents who have
been paying for these folks to come in here on D.C. taxpayers’
money.


25

count. Staff said that the Authority is in the process of providing for an audit but has not
yet awarded a contract.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my prepared statement. I would be pleased to
respond to any questions you or members of the Subcommittee may have.

(104919)

8 GAO/T-HEHS-98-91


COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. DENNIS HASTERT, Illinois TOM LANTOS, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
STEVEN SCHIFF, New Mexico EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
CHRISTOPHER COX, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida GARY A. CONDIT, California

JOHN M. McHUGH, New York CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California THOMAS M. BARRETT, Wisconsin
JOHN L. MICA, Florida ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia pc

DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

JOHN B, SHADEGG, Arizona ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio DANNY K. DAVIS, Ilinois

MARSHALL “MARK” SANFORD, South JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
Carolina JIM TURNER, Texes

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

PETE SESSIONS, Texas HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee

MICHAEL PAPPAS, New Jersey —_

VINCE SNOWBARGER, Kansas BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

BOB BARR, Georgia (Independent)

DAN MILLER, Florida
Kevin BINGER, Staff Director
DaNiEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director
WILLIAM MOSCHELLA, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian
JupitH McCoy, Chief Clerk
PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida Columbia
STEPHEN HORN, California THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
EX OFFICIO
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

Ron HAMM, Staff Director
Bos Dix, Professional Staff Member
ANNE Mack, Professional Staff Member
ELLEN Brown, Clerk
Cepric HENDRICKS, Minority Professional Staff Member

ab


68

Ms. Norton. If you had gone, could you have detected whether
there was padding, if you had gone to schools, individual school
sites?

Ms. BLANCHETTE. Well, when we did visit the schools, what we
did was looked at what types of documents were being collected
from students, how they were being accounted for, filed. And as we
reported in our August 1997 report, we found a lot of variation in
what was being collected, how it was being maintained in the
school, anywhere from proofs of residency were being thrown into
a file drawer and not even linked to a particular student, which on
the surface at a minimum is very foolish, and the worst case sce-
nario could indicate worse problems, to situations where proofs of
residency were collected, attached to residency verification forms,
and actually forwarded to the central office, which was more than
what was required.

So we found a lot of variation. We didn’t find much control or
monitoring or, even when there was monitoring from the central of-
fice, any result of that monitoring. No reports that we saw from the
central office reported any kind of incidences like the ones we saw.
And so there are things that certainly were questionable and at
best indicated mismanagement and some degree of—to say foolish-
ness, things that didn’t make sense. But whether we would charac-
terize any of those as fraud, we could not do that. We did not do
the work that would allow us to make that assessment.

Mr. GRIER. May I interject something, Ms. Norton? I said New
York City has an automated system, and it’s a beauty, but they
don’t trust that automatic system. I mean that. I don’t want to
leave the impression that they take that for granted. They don’t
trust it. The enrollments are counted in the beginning of October.
It takes them 6 months before they will certify those enrollments
as having been thoroughly audited. It takes them 6 months to go
through the whole system and check out and see whether those
kids are really there. So we have a problem because they want out
projections for next year before we can get the data with which to
prepare these projections. We're saying “You've got to get your guys
working faster.” But it takes them a full 6 months. And I think it’s
worth it. And we’re constantly getting beat upon, you know, Wh;
don’t you have next enrollments ready? But the fact is it’s wort!
it. Because it makes sure the numbers are right. In the long run,
it’s better. But it isn’t easy. They have to check out everything.

Ms. Norton. Yes, General Becton.

General BECTON. I would like for Rich to describe a document
which he sent to all our academicians, subject: accountability for
compliance with student enrollment procedures, dated January 30.

Mr. WENNING. Thanks. And I would like to submit this for the
record as well.

This memorandum describes irregularities in the enrollment pro-
cedures by principals to allow for accountability for the results.

And I would like to speak to the issue of suspected fraud. Indeed,
fraud is something we have to be concerned about and we have to
be vigilant for. However, the errors that I saw in the enrollment
Process did not suggest fraud to me. In many cases, it was neg-
ligence. And, you know, when we speak to the need to change the
organizational culture, we’re on our way to doing that. This memo-


19

attend school. The General Accounting Office, the District of Columbia Auditor, and
independent sources have raised questions concerning the accuracy of the count and have
identified specific problems which raised doubts about the accuracy of previously
conducted counts. The problems with previously conducted counts have included the
number of non-tuition-paying students living outside the District, the uncertainty about
lack of oversight by the central administration over local schools’ counting procedures,
uncertainty about the way information is collected, controlled, and recorded in the
Student Information System (“SIS”), and controls over the handling of transfer and
returning student records. Although the schools have made changes to the enrollment
count process, weaknesses in the student count process still remain. For example, the
schools have not identified the number of students who live outside the District, attend
District schools, and who do not pay tuition. Nor have they improved the methodology
for tracking transfer and retuming students. The independent audit will ensure that
continuous progress is made in improving the student count procedures and determining

the accuracy and reliability of the student count.

Statutory Requirements

Questions about the accuracy and reliability of student count information led to the
passage of the “District of Columbia School Reform Act of 1995" (“Act”). The Act
requires that, no later than October 15 of each year, the schools must calculate the number
of students, including non-resident students, enrolled in each grade from kindergarten
through grade 12 in public schools and public charter schools, and enrolled in pre-school,
pre-kindergarten, and adult education, and the amount of tuition assessed and currently
collected from non-resident students attending D.C. Public Schools. The Act also
requires that the schools submit, not later than October 15th, a summary of the most
recent enrollment calculations to the Authority, the Mayor, the Council of the District of
Columbia, the Census Commission, the Comptroller General of the United States, and the
appropriate congressional committees. The Act requires the schools to arrange with the
Authority to conduct an independent audit of the initial calculations. ‘The independent

audit must include an opinion as to the accuracy of the information, and an identification


15

Mr. Davis. Mrs. Morella, thank you very much. I now call our
first panel to testify. I see they are in place. Ms. Cornelia M.
Blanchette, the Associate Director, GAO; George Grier, principal of
the Grier Partnership; Gen. Julius Becton, CEO of the D.C. public
schools; and Mr. Richard Wenning, the director of Educational Ac-
countability from the D.C. public schools. As all of you know it is
the policy of this committee that all witnesses be sworn before they
may testify. If you would rise with me and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. Davis. I ask unanimous consent that any written statements
that you have are made part of the permanent record. If you could
limit your remarks to 5 minutes and try to highlight what is in
your written statements. The committee members and their staffs

ave read your statements and will have questions. If you want to
highlight certain things I want to give you that opportunity. The
green light is your first 4 minutes, the yellow light is your 5th
minute giving you 1 minute to sum up. When the red light comes
on your time has expired. If you think you have to keep going, try
to sum up as quickly as possible. That will give us more time for
questions. I would ask unanimous consent any written statement
be made part of the permanent record.

Why don’t we start with Ms. Blanchette.

STATEMENTS OF CORNELIA M. BLANCHETTE, ASSOCIATE DI-
RECTOR, EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT ISSUES, HEALTH
EDUCATION AND HUMAN SERVICES DIVISION, U.S. GENERAL
ACCOUNTING OFFICE; GEORGE GRIER, PRINCIPAL, THE
GRIER PARTNERSHIP; GEN. JULIUS W. BECTON, CHIEF EX-
ECUTIVE OFFICER AND SUPERINTENDENT, DISTRICT OF CO-
LUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS; AND RICHARD WENNING, DIREC-
TOR, DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY,
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Ms. BLANCHETTE. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members
of the subcommittee. I am pleased to be here today to assist the
subcommittee in its oversight of the District of Columbia public
schools enrollment count. This afternoon I will discuss the findings
and recommendations from our August 1997 report and actions
that have been reported to us by the District of Columbia public
schools as having taken place as a result of our findings and rec-
ommendations.

In doing the work that led to the 1997 report, we interviewed
and reviewed documents obtained from DCPS administrative staff,
city officials, officials in other urban school districts and their State
departments of education, officials in the U.S. Department of Edu-
cation, and education experts. We also visited 15 DCPS elementary
and secondary schools that represent schools in each of the 4
wards, or 4 sectors of the city, and schools at the elementary, mid-
dle, junior, and senior high school levels. In visiting those schools
we interviewed principals, school administrative *, and teachers
and reviewed selected documents. For this followup, we conducted
interviews with the director of Educational Accountability, Mr.
Wenning, who is part of this Panel, and we reviewed various docu-
ments that he gave us. We did not, however, visit schools or look
at records at the school level as we did for our 1997 report.


74

Mr. Davis. Thank you very much. Just a couple more questions,
and we’re going to let this panel off.

General Becton, I’ve heard the media reports that you're tryii
to get the Corps of Engineers to help with repairs this year, an
I don’t have a problem with that if it works out. But I want to
know what you're doing to get more help from GSA as well. I know
the problems last year between the GSA and the control board, but
I think with Mrs. Norton’s and my assistance, we both sit on the
committees that oversee GSA, we can overcome those problems if
you're willing to make more use of GSA.

General BECTON. Well, Mr. Chairman, the problem last year
with GSA was they required—demanded money up front, which we
did not have available to us. With the Corps, and we have not re-
solved, dotted every “i” and crossed every “t” in an agreement with
them yet we have every expectation that they can do exactly what
GSA has done, and they have much ‘greater expertise within the

corps.

Mr. Davis. OK. Thank you.

Just a question for the record: What do you put out as the official
per-pupil cost in the D.C. schools? I have seen it expressed dif-
ferently in a lot of charts.

General BECTON. The cost is $7,318.

Mr. Davis. What I would ask for you to do for the record, is for
you to submit to this subcommittee under separate cover your doc-
umentation for that number.

General BECTON. We will.

Mr. Davis. When we compare the region’s numbers, this is not
the critical factor if you’re paying more or less because I think each
jurisdiction is different. But I really would like to know, because
I see all these charts on what it costs, and in some cases capital
costs are included, and in others they aren’t included, and it goes
back and forth. So if you could just get that to us, it’s not a hostile
question.

General BECTON. No.

Mr. Davis. But the question is one in the interest of this hearing
of getting all the numbers together.

General BECTON. Mr. Chairman, we’ll be delighted to do that, be-
cause we hear the same numbers. We're charged with the same
pumbers, 10,000 and crazy numbers like that. We will give you the

facts.

Mr. Davis. Exactly. And it may be 10,000 if you throw a lot of
things in. But then are you comparing it to the same variables in
other jurisdictions? I think that’s the question.

General BECTON. That’s correct.

Mr. Davis. We just want to know. Even if you spend more, I’m
not critical of that. I think education is the most important thing
you can do in the city. If we get these things straight, we will get
more efficiency.

Second, do we have any idea, for any of you, in terms of how
many D.C. residents go to private schools either in the District of
Columbia or outside of the District of Columbia?

Mr. WENNING. Yes, we have that. Based on 1996-97 nonpublic
count, approximately 12,200 District residents attended private
schools in the District of Columbia.


32

Enrollments would not be expected to track population changes perfectly, because famnilies with
children sccount for only part of these changes. But enrollments normally reflect the populatida trend
to a visible degree. Here thare appears to be little relationship between the two — at least aftdr 1989.
In that year school officials at first earned of sharp declines in enrollments, exceeding 15 percent at
many schools. These deokines were not revealed until after the school system's budget was sulimitted,
‘but became public earfy in 1990. The resulting uproar caused a downward revision of thel official
figures, and they appear to have tracked population fhirty closely from 1985 through 1989.-

The enrollment curve then leveled out and remained virtually unchanged from 1990 through 1994,
with a dectine of oaly 200 students or a tiny fraction of one percent in that entire ‘Meanwhile
the District's population declined by nearly seven percent. Starting in 1995, the official dumbers
began to decline slowly as school officials identified and corrected various errors in the propedures
for counting and recording students. By fail of 1997 they were down to 77,111. That's a decrease
of 3,600 students or 4.5 percent since 1990. In the same seven years the District's populition as
estimated by the Census Bureau dropped by 78,000 or almost 13 percent.

On the face of it, this would suggest either (1) that the official enrollments are still significantly in
error, (2) that births have been going up (since 1991 they've been dropping even faster than the
population) or (3) that the great majority of children have somehow remained in the Distri¢t while
their parents have been migrating by the thousands to the suburbs. This last sounds crdzy, but
something a bit like it could be going on.

Schoo! officials believe that a large part of the gap results from parents who live in:nearby
jurisdictions (and particularly Priave George's County, MD), and who drive their children into the
city, or leave them for the day with grandparents, in order to take advantage of the high-quality early
childhood education, coupled with all-day mupervised care, thet is available here.

If so, then the impact should be felt largely in the preprimary grades, and perbeps also in the early
elementary grades. In fact, there has been an increase of 1,527 or about 14 percent in reported
Preprimary earoliments since 1990, while enrollments in first through third grades have increased by
688 or sbout three percent. The total for pre-school to grade 3 is 2,215. If earollments have tracked
Bopulton Sst clony sine 1950, they wl have deresed by round 13 presto oughly 10,500
‘students. Increasing enrollments in early childhood programs would offset only a smal] frettion

‘But District residents would not be well served if all or most of the additional students had come from
outside the city, and were not the result of increasing popularity of the early childhood with
parents in the District itself. There is little reason to doubt that some have been suburbanites, :
school system has not been very successful in identifying many of these to date. In scl yer
1994-1995 only 80 students were excluded for this reason.


103

We have got to understand that there are allegations that the
numbers are being kept up deliberately and that this committee is
going to—I hope you will involve yourself with General Becton in
getting the detailed plan to us before school is out. Because some-
times the deadlines aren’t met and since we may be talking about
massive fraud and lots of money, it behooves us all to get out and
find this when we are already behind it.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to say for the record, we are not about
to cutoff our own kids in order to get at incompetence and fraud.
Perhaps, that is bringing nonresident kids in here, particularly in
light of what we know about 0 to 3. If we don’t get these children
when what science tells us their brain capacity for certain kinds of
tasks is being formed, it is much harder to get them later. So that
the most important thing I think you are doing is the early child-
hood. You are probably saving thousands of children who are in
that program.

If you had to make sacrifices anywhere else, that would be the
last place to go. That was before we even knew about the new
science. The new science is devastating. It goes way beyond dis-
advantaged kids. It really has been a wakeup call for middle-class
people who thought they were doing everything right for their kids,
that we just don’t understand that if you pass certain markers in
a child’s development, the child won’t be retarded, the child might
do well, but the child would have done much better had you known
to do certain things at 2 or 3, at 5 or 7.

I know you are going to get ahold of that without throwing the
baby out with the bath water. I just want to track, Dr. Ladner, this
notion, given the multiple layers we have now about these regula-
tions that are finally out. They say the control board has to take
actions now on the residency rule; is that the case? If so, when
would that action be taken?

Ms. LADNER. That will be next week. We received the rec-
ommendation from the emergency board of trustees on March—
probably March 6, since their meeting was held on the 5th. I would
say that these regulations are very, very stringent. In talking with
Ms. Harvey as the other panel was proceeding, some of these were
in the works before we got an emergency board of trustees.

But such things as proof of, at least three of the following items:
Proof of payment of a D.C. personal income tax; a current tax with-
holding statement, which contains the parents’ or guardian’s name
and evidence of residency, of vehicle registration; documentation of
financial assistance from AFDC or housing assistance or whatever
other cash transfer programs; title to residential property or a valid
unexpired lease agreement; and paid receipts or canceled checks for
a period within the 2 months immediately preceding consideration
of residency; payment of rent on a D.C. residence on which an ap-
plicant actually resides; a valid unexpired D.C. motor vehicle oper-
ators permit; maintenance of District of Columbia voter registra-
tion; one or more utility bills paid 2 months prior to the establish-
ment of residency; and if the parent, court-appointed guardian or
custodian cannot provide the above described documents, that is in
the case of a homeless student, superintendent or the superintend-
ent’s designee has the discretion to grant an exemption of the re-
quired icators of D.C. residency to permit attendance in schools.



39

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
. PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Office of the Chief Executive Officer
ALS 12th Street, N.W.. Suite 1209
Washington. D.C. 20004-1994
202-724-4222, fax: 202-727-1516

STATEMENT OF JULIUS W. BECTON, JR.
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
ON THE
DCPS STUDENT COUNT
MARCH 13, 1998

Mr. Chairman, thank you for inviting me to testify before the Subcommittee today. As you
Know, Mr. Richard Wenning, Director of the District of Columbia Public Schools’ Office
of Educational Accountability, is here with me and will testify as well. Therefore, I will
make some general remarks about the efforts we have made to ensure the accuracy of
DCPS" student enrollment count and then Mr. Wenning will discuss the specific steps his
office has taken toward that end.

First, let me say clearly that | recognize the importance of an accurate student count.
‘Obviously, our student count directly affects our “per-pupil expenditure” rate, and this
‘expenditure rate, and the comparable expenditure rates of other school district, are used by
policy makers to evaluate what our funding needs are and whether we are using the funds
we have appropriately.

As you have noted, the General Accounting Office evaluated the process for counting
students used in the September 1996-1997 count (which, was prior to my amival) and
found that process to be “vulnerable to error.” As a matter of fact, the GAO found the
count to be unauditable, because of the process that was used.

We used the GAO report as the basis for changes that we made in this year's count. And, I
should note, we produced an auditable count, and the Financial Authonity recently hired an
Independent firm to audit that count. The audit is underway.

According to our fall 1997-1998 count, the official enrollment of DCPS is 77,111.
According to Our most recent figures, that total includes 33 students who are paying tuition
as non-residents. We believe that there are additional nonresidents in the count, and
recognize that this is a serious problem.

The Board of Trustee recenily approved a new, stricter residency policy and | am hopeful
that this new rule will help us to identify non-residents in our schoo}s and force them to pay
tuition or remove them more quickly. | believe that Dr. MacLaury intends to discuss this
rule in more detail so I will leave that to him.

| do want you to know that we intend to continue working to improve the process by which
‘we count our students. | know that the GAO still believes our count is vulnerable to errors
and, although we did agree with all of their most recent recent findings, we do share their
‘view that there still is room for improvement. | hope you have had the opportunity to
review our February 27 letier to GAO responding to their draft testimony, as it describes
both the areas where we are in substantial agreement with GAO and the areas where we

Children First


64

DISTRICT | OFFICE OF THE CHIEF ACADEMIC OFFICER
OF | Department of Educational Accountability

COLUMBIA | Rabaut Administration Building
PUBLIC | 100 Peabody St. NW. . Room 303, Washington. D.C. 20011

SCHOOLS | (202) $41-6338 FAX: (202) 541-6233

MEMORANDUM

TO: Mrs. Arlene Ackerman
Deputy Superintendent/Chief Academic Officer
Ms. Elois Brooks
Deputy Chief Academic Officer
Ms. Janice Barclay
Assistant Superintendent
Ms. Joyce Jamison
Assistant Superintendent

Ms. Helena Jones
Assistant Superintendent

Mr. Ralph Neal
Assistant Superintendent

Dr. Kenneth Whitted
Assistant Superintendent

FROM:
Richard. Wenning ~
Director

DATE: January 30, 1998
SUBJECT: — Accountability for Compliance with Student Enrollment Procedures

As you know, DCPS implemented new procedures for its official enrollment count to
address weaknesses in internal controls identified by the General Accounting Office. All
principals received written guidance on the new enrollment procedures, as well as follow-
up memoranda and e-mail. In addition, nearly all data entry clerks received training on the
new procedures. These new procedures resulted in an accurate count that was largely
verified by the October administration of the Stanford 9 in which 90 percent of our official
enrollment retumed test booklets. While the majority of schools complied with enrollment
procedures, the noncompliance of a minority of schools, coupled with unregulated student
transfers, resulted in a much more difficult, labor intensive, and time consuming process to
reach an accurate count.


35

havent accused anyone in the District of cheating, and [ won't. But I think thet it’s important that
-we aocept the fact that all human beings are fallible. ‘That's why banks audit their funds very carefully.
Auditing students is more difficult, but it's equally important. Well-run school systems like New York
manage it, and it pays off.

‘Auxting procedures designed for financial purposes will not necessarily catch the kinds of things that
often cause enrollment counts to be wrong, usually on the plus side. A teacher may not have seen
Johnny for a couple of months, or maybe not since last year, but she's hoping he'll come back so she
‘keeps him on the roll. A poorty-designed computer program may be so hard for people to use that
they may delay removing students from the rolls when they leave in the middle of « semester.

Because of fiulty procedures, students who move within the District may turn up on the registers of
two schools at once. For a long while the computer system of the District schools had no way of
detecting this and correcting for it. T understand that Mr. Wenning has been working to fix this, but
the procedures theraselves bave to be bullet-proofed. In other cases, students who move out of the
city may reraaia on the rolls. In a city where 61 peroent of bouscholds are renters, student mobility
is very high, and the errors that result can be substantial unless foolproof procedures are in place.

Even worse, changes people faithfully enter into the computer may not take. I've been told that at
Jeast until very recently, the District's system had a default that put students back in the year after
they'd been taken off the rolls unless the user pushed just the right buttons.

‘The real danger point in the process, however, is at the point where students are actually counted,
and that is in the classroom when the teacher counts them. if that count is not correct, no procedural
safeguards after that point can insure thet it will be caught, Teachers can be told to sign « statement
that the roll is correct, and principals can be told to verify it, but if people don’t believe that serious
‘consequences will result if it isn’t, then the system is not safe. Only if they do, and this is reinforced
by stern actions when errors are found, will it ever be safe. Even in New York, deliberately padded
enrollments were recently found in a large high school. The principal was immediately transferred
to the Chancellor's office, and a legal case is being prepared againat her. The school system made
sure that this was reported in the press es a warning to others, She could go to jail, since earollment
padding is fraud,

New York City is well aware, as the District apparently stil is not, that inflated enrollment counts can
cost real bucks, Schools are expensive facilities to build and maintain, and they're becoming even
more costly with increasing knowledge and conoem about erivironmental hazards to the bealth and
safety of children. Faxing up a school that's seriously under-enrolled may cost much more than
moving the remaining kids to another under-enrolled school

‘Good teachers aren't cheap either, and a teacher who has a class of eight or tea when (s)he could
easily handle 20 or 25 is not being well utilized. There have been a number of reports of situations
like this ftom concerned parents. But let's face it - since student counts translate into jobs, some
people who know thet 8 correct student count could threaten their future well-being may’ not care

7


67

proofs of residency together with their completed residency verification forms and permit
principals to exclude students for failure to rerum their forms. A next step will be to
provide the tuition enforcement office with a list of names suspected as being nonresidents
based on current enrollment information.

In the following 18 elementary schools, 20 percent or more of students enrolled failed to
return residency forms:

Adams Elementary School (22%)
Beers Elementary School (20%)

i:
:
i
eft
~ 3

Clark

Gibbs Elementary School (46%)
Hendley Lotus School-Within-School Chanter Elementary School (24%)
Langdon Elementary School (39%)
Mann Elementary School (67%)

11. Bruce-Monroe Elementary School (50%)
12, Ross Elementary School (42%)

13. Stevens Elementary School (31%)

14. Thomson Elementary School (53%)

15. Truesdell Elementary School (22%)

16. Watkins Elementary School (35%)

17. — Wheatley Elementary School (21%)

18. Young Elementary School (24%)

In the following 10 middle schools, junior high schools, and educational centers, 20
percent or more of students enrolled failed to return residency forms:

Backus Middle School (45%)
Browne Junior High School (27%)
Fletcher Johnson Educational Center (40%)
P.R. Harris Educational Center (21%)
Kramer Middle School (31%)

MacFarland Middle School (51%)

Paul Junior High School (60%)

Roper Middle School (22%)

Sousa Middle School (26%)

0. Sharpe Health School (38%)

In the following 16 senior high schools and alternative schools, 20 percent or more
of students enrolled failed to return residency forms:

Academy Senior High School (95%)
Anacostia Senior High School (68%)
Ammstrong Career Diversion School (28%)
Ballou Senior High School (70%)

Bell Multicultural Senior High School (31%)
Cardozo Senior High School (37%)

Dunbar Senior High School (35%)

Dunbar Pre-Engineering School (37%)
Ellington School of the Arts (53%)
Hamilton Academy (33%)

Coon

ROBNAUEUN

Avaune

eon
See:


104

I may make one point here. I would simply say that in addition
to the fact that the authority—this is currently under review at the
authority and that we will hold a public meeting next week to vote
on—this will be under consideration. One point I would like to
make to the committee is that we have some peculiar situations
here because of geography. That is not to excuse this problem, but
what do we do, hypothetically, for a child whose mother lives
across the line in Prince Georges County and the father lives in the
District of Columbia or vice versa?

Ms. Norton. Who has custody of that child?

Ms. LADNER. I think those are the issues we have to get to.
There are layers. We have to get down to court records of who has
custody.

Ms. Norton. Who has custody, again, this is an important point
you are making because it can get complicated.

Ms. LADNER. Yes, it can.

Ms. NorTON. One way to keep it from being complicated is, we
have mentioned this before, I think you all ought to go ahead and
approve what you have. There needs to be an additional part to
these regulations. The only enforcement in there now are appeals.
That is enforcement for the other side.

As Dr. Grier said, unless people know that there is something to
lose by coming here and not paying your due, they are going to con-
tinue to come. You all should not set up a system where you have
got to put in place another whole bureaucracy for tracing People
down. It seems to me the way to do that is to just have a real clear
rule. You have got to have custody, which means you are the one
that pays for the child as far as the court is concerned, although
you might get some contribution from the father, and the burden
is on you.

If you don’t meet the burden, you're not in. The last thing D.C.
public schools should do should be have to go out and find who has
custody. If they can’t tell you that, can’t tell you in short order,
back to where you came from.

Ms. Lapner. But I think, if I may speak, Ms. Norton, the school
system used to have a division of st members whose job it was
to go out and track down these suspect cases. Those were cut in
a lot of the budget cutting we had to do. I would think that this
would be the proper time for us to consider the restoration or cre-
ation of some such body within the schools. I also think that more
teeth can be put into the legislation by referring such persons to
the Corporation Counsel’s office, and I would hazard to say there
that they may not have the wherewithal to do it in terms of staff,
et cetera, but the U.S. attorneys office is an appropriate place, it
would seem to me, to refer a lot of these cases.

I think the last thing we want the school system to get bogged
down in is tracking down custody, because we have anecdotal evi-
dence of people who actually have transferred custody or guardian-
ship, I uuld say, to a person in the District over their children.

Ms. NorTON. it is legal. That can happen. I don’t think many
people are going to do that.

Ms. LADNER. Superintendent Smith did mention those in some
cases.


45

* WEEKLY COUNTS DURING OCTOBER TO UPDATE AND CLEAN
THE DATABASE.

+ A REQUIREMENT THAT PRINCIPALS AND TEACHERS SIGN
HOMEROOM LISTS AND PRINCIPALS SIGN SCHOOLWIDE
COUNTS.

* INCLUSION OF A NEW FIELD IN THE DATABASE TO RECORD
SCHOOLS' RECEIPT OF RESIDENCY VERIFICATION FORMS.

* AUTOMATED AND MANUAL INTERNAL CONTROLS TO PREVENT
INCLUSION OF DUPLICATE AND INACTIVE STUDENTS IN THE
OFFICIAL COUNT.

THE USE OF THESE NEW PROCEDURES RESULTED IN THE
REMOVAL OF 286 STUDENTS FROM THE OFFICIAL ENROLLMENT
COUNT THAT WERE ORIGINALLY INCLUDED BY PRINCIPALS.
THESE INCLUDED 133 DUPLICATE STUDENTS AND 153 INACTIVE
STUDENTS. IN ADDITION, THE NEW PROCEDURES ALLOWED US
TO IDENTIFY SCHOOLS THAT FAILED TO COMPLY WITH THE
ENROLLMENT PROCEDURES, PERMITTING DCPS TO HOLD
PRINCIPALS ACCOUNTABLE AS PART OF THEIR ANNUAL
EVALUATION PROCESS.


87

AWALTING CONTROL BOARD ACTION
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

EMERGENCY TRANSITIONAL EDUCATION BOARD OF TRUSTEES

NOTICE OF FINAL RULEMAKING

The District of Columbia Emergency Transitional Education Board of Trustees
(“Trustees”), pursuant to the authority set forth in Section 31-101 et seq. of the D.C. Code
and the February 12, 1998, order of the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and
Management Assistance Authority (“Authority”), hereby gives notice of final rulemaking
action taken by the Trustees at their meeting held on March 5, 1998. The purpose of this
rulemaking action is to amend portions of Chapter 20 of Title $ of the D.C. Municipal
Regulations regarding proofs of residency required of D.C. Public School students. This
rulemaking will go into effect following a seven-day review by the Authority.

Notice of proposed rulemaking on this subject was published on December 12, 1997.
Minor modifications were made based on comments received on the proposed
rulemaking.

Amend Section 2000.2 as follows:

2000.2 A student under eighteen (18) years of age who is otherwise eligible for admission
to a D.C. public school shall be admitted, and may continue enrollment, without
payment of non-resident tuition only if the student qualifies for free instruction
under one of the following categories:

(a) A student who is in the custody or control of a parent or court-appointed
guardian (or custodian) who is a resident of the District of Columbia;

(b) A student who is a resident of the District of Columbia and who does not have
a living parent or guardian;

(c) A student who is a ward of the District of Columbia, even if the student
resides outside the District of Columbia;

(a) A student who is living with his or her spouse, when the spouse is eighteen
(18) years of age or older and is a resident of the District of Columbia; or


‘The District’s most recent count (1997) of its student population at 77,111 was nearly
statistically identical to last year’s count at 78,600. Of course, these figures defy recently
released census data that show that in only the last two years the District has lost as many
residents as it lost in the entire decade of the 1980s. In the 1990s, the District is on track to lose
three times as many residents as it lost in the 1980s, and currently, the city is at its lowest
population since the Depression. Population losses have been greatest in Wards 7 and 8, where
most of the District's children reside. There is no way, in the face of these devastating statistics,
that public school enrollment count can remain stable from year to year.

Although the GAO recommendations about how to perform a proper count are important,
they are not my major interest, especially in light of the improvement underway that I believe
will continue, I hope that the school system will give priority to quickly obtaining tuition from

nonpaying, nonresidential parents, including billing them for past services, and returning such
students ts their home jurisdictions absent prompt payment. Many of the freeloading parents
may be city employees, the great majority of whom do not live in the District, who may bring
their children with them as a convenience to take advantage of some of our best school programs
such as early childhood, our special high schools and others. If so, these are the same people
who use other city services as well but get protection from commuter taxes. Some of them were
driving home to suburban jurisdictions on our gas cards until Congress stepped in, and the
recently enacted law, which allows no exceptions, still may not be fully enforced.

Further, we all must be alarmed by the GAO's finding that nearly 60% of DCPS students
have either failed to provide residency verification forms or proof of residency. I can only hope
that this does not mean that anything like this number are illegally entering the District to attend
‘our public schools. However, the discrepancy between the declining population and the stable
school population figures suggests the possibility of massive frand. In years pest, some even.
have alleged that some school officials deliberately failed to address these faulty numbers to keep
budgets high. Current officials need to move quickly to solve the nonresidency problem to keep
this alleged taint from traveling to them.

In point of fact, the school system has now adopted new rules thet will help climinate
residency fraud after the Board of Trustees allowed the regulations to remain on paper
unenforced for a year. Nevertheless, I am grateful that the regulations have been approved and
now ask only that an early date for purging nonpaying nonresidents be sct and that an airtight
srystem for barring nonpaying nonresidents be in effect by the time school opens in September,
1998.

Leaving the count issue unresolved will frustrate efforts to get assistance for the District
for evea its best and most worthy efforts, such as funds for 20,000 children who will attend year-
round school this summer as D.C. eliminates social promotion, or resources needed for the
‘massive backlog of capital improvements that the school system must address. I am anxious to
‘work with the appropriate officials to help speed the necessary reforms.


DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOL
CENSUS AND ENROLLMENT OVERSIGHT

FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 1998

House OF REPRESENTATIVES,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT,
Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 12 p.m., in room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Thomas M. Davis
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Davis, Morella, and Norton.

Staff present: Ron Hamm, staff director; Howard Denis, counsel;
Bob Dix and Anne Mack, professional staff members; Ellen Brown,
clerk; and Cedric Hendricks, minority professional staff member.

Mr. Davis. Now that the key yple have arrived here on my
right and left, good afternoon and welcome. It is fair to say that
this subcommittee has a myriad of issues to deal with. However,
few are as important as the revitalization and stability of the Dis-
trict of Columbia than issues that relate to the D.C. public school
system.

On January 23, this subcommittee conducted an oversight hear-
ing dealing primarily with the 1997 D.C. public schools repair pro-
gram and facilities master plan. Today we are going to address a

ndamental element in the development and implementation of
any successful plan for facilities, staffing and other resources for a
public school system. That element is the process and result of de-
termining a reliable student enrollment count for the D.C. public
8 s.

It has been clearly established that enormous challenges exist re-
lated to D.C. public school facilities. Those challenges include the
need for emergency capital repairs, catching up on deferred mainte-
nance, disposition of properties and buildings determined to be sur-
plus, establishing effective schedules for routine maintenance, up-
grading systems such as electricity, heating and air conditioning,
and addressing the technology and laboratory needs that are criti-
cal to academic achievement, particularly in an Information Age.
An accurate, reliable and credible accounting of student enrollment
is directly related to the ability to determine how many classrooms
are needed, how many teachers, administrators and support per-
sonnel are needed, how much in supplies is needed, and cor-
respondingly what is needed in the way of funding and other re-
sources.

I congratulate all who have been involved in the D.C. school re-
form efforts. Measurable progress has been made in many areas.

(e))


42

However, the fact that nonresident students may be included in
the count does not mean that the count is inaccurate. I want to dif-
ferentiate between those things. The overall count is intended to
reflect the number of students in‘ our schools, regardless of their
residency. Furthermore, DCPS can for the first time target non-
residents, using its automated data base. This data, coupled with
revised and strengthened residency rules, will significantly improve
DCPS’ ability to identify nonresidents and enforce tuition require-
ments.

Mr. Chairman and Ms. Norton, instituting change in a large
urban school system in the midst of a takeover is a complex and
often incremental process that involves both changes in the rules
and changes in organizational culture. We changed the rules this
year on how we count our student enrollment. We were able to
identify errors, correct them, and hold people accountable. Now, we
must follow through with additional improvements and continue to
foster change in our organizational culture. We are about to begin
a process of collecting 3 documents supporting proof of residency
from 77,000 students in 150 different schools while targeting sev-
eral thousand for tuition enforcement. This is going to be a mam-
moth task. Having the revised rule in place with its more stringent
requirements, expedited appeals process, and leverage for prin-
cipals, namely their ability to exclude students currently enrolled
for not returning proofs of residency, was a very important first
step for us. To be successful, however, the effort of combating non-
residents will require the support of all of the school system’s ex-
ternal stakeholders.

This concludes my prepared statement. I too of course will be
happy to answer any questions that you may have.

‘he prepared statement of Mr. Wenning follows:]


73

I’m saying is these delays are what are going to come back to
haunt us.

General BECTON. I’m trying to explain how we got to where we
are. The document that we——

Ms. Norton. And I’m complaining about how long it took you to
get where you are. The reason I am is because this is a dangerous
issue to be out there this long. As I have said before, General
Becton, you have moved on it, whereas the people just let it out
there for years. So you have made progress. The problem is that,
when the Congress holds hearings every year on it at some point,
and you have testimony like Dr. Grier’s testimony, and we look like
we may have a fraud problem, and we don’t have a plan to deal
with fraud, somebody up here is going to deal with it.

General Becton. I understand that. And we will have a plan and
do have a plan. What we're trying to do is point out we’re not going
to go back to start zero and reinvent something. We are going to
purchase our student information system based upon what other
jurisdictions have. We are going to certainly put into effect the nec-
essary mechanisms to hold people accountable.

Ms. Norton. Are you using the student information system that
another jurisdiction is using, or are you using a new virgin student
information system?

Mr. WENNING. The new student information system has not been
selected.

Ms. Norton. I know. I’m asking how it’s going to be selected.

Mr. WENNING. We'll select it among the best jurisdictions and
the best practices.

General BECTON. It’s going to bh——

Ms. Norton. All I’m trying to—what I’m trying to avoid here is
we've got a new system that takes people, you know, 5 years to
learn how to use the new system.

General BECTON. No, that’s not the problem.

Ms. Norton. Is there a system that has worked someplace that
we can quickly put into place before this problem becomes—gets
dealt with?

General BECTON. That’s exactly what we propose to do.

Ms. Norton. Do you know the cost of this system.

General BECTON. I do not have the cost here with me.

Ms. NorTON. When do you expect the system to be purchased?

General BECTON. Between now and the end of the fiscal year.

Ms. Norton. Given the fact that your regulations that by sum-
mer school and by the school year, September 1998, you've got to
get this plan going to bar kids that shouldn’t be in the system,
have you thought about how to do that on the short term?

General BECTON. Yes, we have.

Ms. Norton. Go ahead. Would you elaborate then?

General BECTON. Once the control board approves the request
that we have made for the new role or residency, that will give us
teeth to go out and enforce it. Right now, we don’t have that.

Ms. Norton. When do you expect the control board to approve
it.

General BECTON. I would hope within the next week or so.

Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, thank you.very much.


82

Mr. Davis. Ms. Ladner, thank you very much. Even your yellow
light didn’t go on. That is great.

Mr. MacLaury, that doesn’t mean you have to use her extra time,
but take a few extra minutes.

Ms. LADNER. I was going to say as a sociologist, there were a lot
of points made by the last panel that I, having had a lot of training
in demography, wish I could attack.

Mr. Davis. This is just a fact-finding area. We are not trying to
be critical of anybody but we have got to ask questions.

Ms. LADNER. Not attack but serve to tackle, because the District
does have a lot of peculiarities that other systems don’t have.

Mr. Davis. The biggest problem, frankly, is just getting the infor-
mation to make the right decisions. If you can’t get the right infor-
mation, you can’t make the right decisions.

Dr. MacLaury.

Mr. MacLaury. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. In fact I
take Dr. Ladner’s brevity as a standard to be surpassed and so
therefore, if it is all right with you, I would like to submit my testi-
mony for the record and much of what is in it, you have already
heard from the first panel. Therefore, I will not go through my cur-
rent testimony.

It seems to me that what you should be wanting and what we
should be wanting is an accurate count. The question is how do we
get there, not how do we explain why it isn’t. As I was listening
to the first panel, I made the following small list of actions that
need to be taken.

First, we need that new student information system that General
Becton said was going to be ordered this current fiscal year. We
can’t count things by hand. We have to have an information system
that allows us to do a lot of things, but specifically including enroll-
ment.

Second and most importantly, proof of residency. From my un-
derstanding, that is the issue where the biggest discrepancy lies.
It is not in the total count. It is how you define the people to be
counted. Therefore, proof of residency is critical.

Third, we must hold principals accountable. We can say that ’till
the cows come home but if we don’t do it and act upon it, as Mr.
Grier said, it has happened in New York City, it will all be hot air
and nothing more.

Fourth, we need audits, not just the enrollment count but inde-
pendent audits throughout the year to make sure that the prin-
cipals are adhering to the policies. So I would emphasize both in-
ternal audit, we have to do that as any corporation would, have our
own internal surprise audits, but we also need external audit as
Dr. Ladner has just indicated.

I would emphasize that we need more than an audit of the proc-
esses. We have had audits of processes. I think—I know it is expen-
sive, it is very expensive. But the trustees, for one, would like to
have an external audit of the number, not just the processes.

Last, as General Becton indicated, I think that we should be
moving toward a minimum of some centralization of the enrollment
count, not relying entirely upon the principals as we have done up
until now.


DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOL CENSUS
AND ENROLLMENT OVERSIGHT

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
AND OVERSIGHT
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION

MARCH 13, 1998

Serial No. 105-102

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight

ae

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
48-062 WASHINGTON : 1998

For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office
‘Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office, Washington, DC 20402

ISBN 0-16-056582-0
3



108

Mr. BonHAM. No, I do not. I concur with Ms. Harvey.

Ms. Norton. Yes, Dr. Ladner.

Ms. LADNER. I speak to a related issue. Recently, the authority
has been working with the school administration on a possible sup-
plemental appropriation for summer school. Mrs. Ackerman’s sum-
mer school program, for example, she and her staff are planning
for between 15 and 20,000 children. That is not budgeted. In addi-
tion to which, she expects that if we are to bring these children up
to national standards within any reasonable period of time, we will
have to, commencing in the fall, reduce the class size, offer a lot
of, not enrichment, but augment their education with more reading
teachers, for example, more tutorials in math, a kind of immersion

program.

I would say that while we can allocate on basic per pupil for-
mula, we also are going to see that there will be additional needs
for dollars that cannot be accommodated within the present budget.
I think the long-range question for the Congress will be, and for
the way in which we spend our local funds in the District will be
whether or not we can reallocate or reprogram enough money to
take on what amounts to nothing less than a major, major edu-
cational overhaul in the curricula and 3 immersion for nese gtudents
who are grossly, grossly , grossly pre) and far, far
behind, I should say.

Ms. Norton. I think you raise, perhaps, the most important
question confronting the school system at least in the short term.

ne of the reasons that I want to get this issue off the table, be-
cause I can tell you it will come to bite us if we ask for more
money. They will say, how do we know that there are 15 or 20,000
people? And if we don’t have an answer for that, there goes the ball

game.

What she is doing is very important with this year-round school.
Iam going fo every day on vouchers, because they want to
come forward with $7 million for vouchers. I am sending “Dear Col-
leagues” around saying, “D.C. is getting rid of social promotion.”
That is exactly what the Congress asked it to do.

Unless you want this to devastate the kids and really throw us
back, give us that $7 million, to put this year on this year-round
school. It is the most important thing they could do. I think it is
one of the most important things that the schools could do. It is
something that I must say I applaud very much and believe that
it must be successful. If it is not successful this first year, then kids
and parents are going to say that social promotion has indeed—
that they want to go back to social promotion. You know what will
happen. So it is very important that you be successful. I would like
to try to get some more money, but you can see the difficulty I
would have now with this count.

Ms. Lapner. Also, Congresswoman Norton, another area that I
think you and the chairman of the committee are perhaps aware
of, if not, it would be very important to become aware of, and that
is the tremendous escalating cost for special education. We have
some initial projected figures for the cost of transportation next
year for special ed that exceed $20 million. The costs are growing
astronomically because, first, we are getting more children diag-
nosed, and, second, we are processing them now.




109

Lois Brooks, Mrs. Ackerman’s assistant for special ed, has
brought in teams of people who are processing almost 7 days a
week because we have typically fallen far behind the number of
days mandated to process the children. I might say that our 45
days, 50 days, is far behind the national norm of 120 days. We
need legislation from the council to bring us into conformance with
the national norm on the number of days for processing.

Ms. NorTON. General Becton has brought this to my attention.
Has the control board and the board of education made a rec-
ommendation to bring us into sync with the surrounding jurisdic-
tions?

Ms. LADNER. We are working on that now, but I may defer to Mr.
MacLaury, because he has been closer to it than I am.

Ms. NorTON. This is outrageous. What is happening is that the
district is spending money, some of which would not and should not
be spent simply because of the time period allotted. Of course,
these were sins of the past. But why shouldn’t we be brought to
the position of others rather than in some super fast, jet age stand-
ard that nobody else has to follow?

Mr. MacLaury. General Becton has spoken with Council Mem-
ber Chavous about introducing a bill that would change this. I
don’t know whether we are asking for 120 days, but that is, as Dr.
Ladner said, I believe the national average. We are uniquely held
to a 50-day rule and the parents just wait us out. They know that
with their lawyers that if they can wait for 50 days and we can't
process their application in that period of time, day 51, they get the
entitlement to private school at outrageous cost to the District and
the District taxpayers.

We have legislation proposed through the council. The point
made by Mr. Chavous is that I want to be sure that the District
has the processing capability. If we introduce 120 days or 90 days
or some other variant, that you will, in fact, meet that schedule.
I think that’s a fair request and we will demonstrate that we can.

Ms. Norton. Yes, Ms. Harvey.

Ms. Harvey. Yes. Let me just indicate that this 50-day time line
has been an ongoing issue in the District of Columbia. The board
of education, prior to the board of trustees entry, had tried on
many cases to have the 50-day time line brought into compliance
with the other jurisdictions.

The legal counsel within the school system has always brought
up the issue around the backlog in the courts. So I think we really
need to do some internal investigations around those issues as we
begin to really bring us into compliance with that.

Ms. Norton. Dr. Ladner.

Ms. LADNER. Mrs. Brooks, as I said, has her staff working and
has brought in a large number of consultants and they are process-
ing at a rapid rate. I would hope that we would be successful in
getting this legislation, because I do believe we could fill it by now.

Ms. Norton. General Becton did the right thing. He came to see
me about it, recognizing that this was a home rule matter. He men-
tioned some shilly shallying, that is all I can call it, by Council
Member Chavous, because the notion of can you guarantee that
you can do it in twice or three times as much time as you now are


30

Discrepancy Between Public School Enrollments as Reported by

School Systems to NCES and by 1990 Census of Population
Major Central Cities of United States

Dist. of Columbia

Atlanta, GA|
Baitimore, MD}
Boston, MA|
Chicago, IL|
Dallas, TX|
Detroit, MI]
Houston, TX}
Los Angeles, CA)
New York, NY}

Philadelphia, PA| : 44%
10% -5% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%

Percent

Source: National Center for Education Statistics
‘The Grier Partnership

Part of the discrepancy in the District, but only part, may result from misclassified enrollment
numbers. ‘The Census Bureau figures for all the cities are for elementary end high school. They
exchide what the Bureau calls "preprimary school,” which includes kindergarten, pre-kindergarten,
and pre-school or nursery school. The District, much to its credit, has one of the most comprehensive
early childhood education programs of any major city and is nationally recognized as a leader in this
eld, ‘Aly cid car isin aking the program expel hep to working parents oflow
10 moderate income. The children enrolled in this program were, however, reported as part of the
elementary enrollment in the figures assembled by the National Conter for Education Statistics.

‘The Census Bureau counted 5,532 students in the preprimary categories in spring of 1990, while the
D.C. Public Schools reported 10,611 (558 in pre-school, 3,646 in pre-kindergarten, and 6,407 in
Kindergarten) in fall of the same year. It is possible that the school system may have incotrectly
‘Teported these children to the federal government as enrolled in the elementary grades rether than in
the preprimary grades. It is also possible that the federal agency classified them incorrectly. If this
‘were to happen often, however, large discrepancies would result in many more cities than we found.


89

GB

A vehicle registration showing the parent's or guardian’s name and
evidencing District of Columbia residency;

4)

Official documentation of financial assistance from the District
Government including, but not limited to, Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC), housing assistance, etc.

Title to residential property in the District of Columbia, or a valid,
unexpired lease agreement and paid receipts or canceled checks (for a
period within the two (2) months immediately preceding consideration
of residency) for payment of rent on a District residence in which
applicant actually resides;

(6) A valid, unexpired D.C. Motor Vehicle Operator's Permit, or non-
driver's identification;

(5

Q
(8)

Maintenance of District of Columbia voter registration;

One (1) or more utility bills, and paid receipts or canceled checks (from
a period within the two (2) months immediately preceding consideration
of residency), showing the parent's or guardian's name and a District of
Columbia residence.

(b) If the parent, court-appointed guardian or custodian cannot provide the
above-described documents (e.g., in the case of a homeless student), the
‘Superintendent or the Superintendent's designee has the discretion to grant an
exemption to the required indicators of District of Columbia residency to
permit attendance in a D.C. public school.

Amend Sections 2009.2 - 2009.7 as follows:

2009.2 In any case where a student has been denied admission on the grounds that
the student is not a resident of the District of Columbia for the purposes of
tuition-free instruction pursuant to the provisions of section 2000, the adult
student or minor student's parent or guardian shall be given written notice of
the denial and notice of the procedures for review of the claim of residency,
as provided in this section,

2009.3 Requests for review of contested residency cases must be filed in the
required time period, within ten (10) school days of the issuance of the
decision, by an adult student, or minor student's parent, guardian, or other
responsible adult with the Superintendent or the Superintendent's designee.
If a request for review is not filed within a timely manner, then the decision
by the Superintendent or the Superintendent's designee is the final
administrative decision of D.C. Public Schools.

2009.4 Upon receipt of a request for review of a contested residency case, the
Superintendent or the Superintendent's designee shall notify the claimant of
all rights and procedures applicable to the conduct of the review.



84

Testimony of Bruce K. MacLaury
Chairman
Emergency Transitional Education Board of Trustees
before the
Subcommittee on the District of Columbia
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight
United States House of Representatives
March 13, 1998

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee:

For any public institution, nothing erodes confidence more than the feeling that numbers
have been manipulated. Since assuming responsibility for the DC Public Schools in
November, 1996, Gen, Becton and the Emergency Trustees have worked hard to assure
integrity in personnel, finance, facilities, and academic operations ~ not only to serve
children better, but also to restore public trust in this school system.

The enroliment question has been around a long time, and it’s hard to settle. People want
to know the bottom line - but the bottom line is the product of intricate and sometimes
arcane processes.

1 believe that DCPS has made a serious attempt to improve those processes this year. The
numbers you have heard are based on bottom-up, school-by-school, cross-referenced
reporting. Unless someone can produce a different number - based on hard data rather
than mathematical inference — | am prepared to accept Mr. Wenning’s overall figures

But in addition to questions of definition -- for example, our count includes preschoolers
and students over the age of 18 -- itis quite true that among the count of 77,111 students
in District schools, some number do not belong there. We are apparently educating, free of
charge, several thousand students who are properly the responsibility of other

jurisdictions. Ata time when the entire city is undergoing budget austerity, when our plans
for academic renewal require an increase of more than $70 million in the budget level
requested for FY99, we simply cannot afford unintentional largesse. We have to do a
better job of verifying that children in our classes are legally entitled to be there

In pan. this is a matter of better enforcement. That’s why the Emergency Board approved
last Thursday new regulations that will strengthen considerably the school system's
residency verification capability.


12

address the needs of the City’s children if we cannot
even determine how many children attend the

District’s public schools?

As Congress debates issues involving school
reform, one proposal that is being seriously considered
is how to reduce class size. It is essential that we know
how many students comprise the D.C. Public School
System. An accurate account of the number of
students enrolled in the D.C. Public Schools is
essential to determining the number of classrooms
needed, the number of teachers, and the number of
administrators and support personnel.

Recently, I met with General Becton about matters
affecting the D.C. public schools. At that meeting, we
discussed roof repairs as well as the student enrollment


54

I don’t expect you to get there in 6 months to a year, but over
a 2- to 3-year period, I think we could get effective information so
we can make effective decisions.

Let me ask Mr. Grier, what do you think about that?

Mr. GRIER. I even talked to New York City about this and said,
I think the District needs help, and you guys might be able to help
them. Would you be able to do that?

Mr. Davis. This could be possible over a 2- to 3-year period.

Mr. GRIER. Sure.

Mr. Davis. Why wouldn't you do that?

Mr. Grier. I can’t think of a reason why not.

I think one thing is important to understand about all the eval-
uation and all the audit procedures we can make. The real danger
point in the process is the point at which the students are actually
counted, and that’s in the classroom when the teacher counts them.

Now, the teacher may submit something that’s signed, and the
principal may countersign it. That doesn’t ensure tt a student
that really wasn’t there will be found. The only way to make it safe
is to make sure that teachers and principals know that if they get
caught, things are going to go very badly for them. And they might
get caught at any time because New York City does random head
counts.

Mr. Davis. You talked about that, and you talked about setti
an example. The deterrent effect, I think, is what Mrs. Norton said.

Mr. Grier. Yeah. This is the first time in many years they found
somebody cheating. They sure made a big case out of it.

Mr. Davis. It seems to me, and please respond, if I were put in
a position where you are, and somebody said you have to get this
up to snuff, you would want to get a system that’s going to be accu-
rate over the long term—I’m not going to sit here and take issue
with your numbers. I think the GAO and Dr. Grier have done a
good job of that without me having to say anything. But to get
credibility over the long term and to even enhance on the numbers
you had earlier, if you could say, we have a system, and this is
where we're working toward, we would all feel a lot more com-
fortable with that.

I don’t expect you to get it overnight. This is complicated, and
you're changing a lot of things. But you have a system that works,
and you put the investment there, and at the end of 1 or 2 years,
you're there, instead of struggling day to day, which right now it
ap] is where we've been, trying to reinvent the wheel.

t me give General Becton an opportunity to respond. Do you
have a problem with that?

General BECTON. I have no problem with that. But I would re-
mind Mr. Chairman that we are purchasing a student information
system so that we can have it completely computerized, which we
do not have right now. I will personally contact Rudy Cruz in New
York and ask for assistance and find out what he’s doing.

But I also want to point out that our principals understand that
part of the evaluation is based upon several things. Fifty percent
of it is based upon student scores, but also a part of it is based
upon personnel administration, based upon logistics, based upon
community and parental involvement. So they know they’re next on
the chopping block if they put in an unauthorized or illegal count.


96

who advocated for maintaining these schools feel that the DC public schools overlooked
the obvious indicators that Ward One will continue to experience student growth. I know
that during that school closing process the system did not have adequate information of
student enrollment and of the conditions of school facilities across to the District. Asa
result I continue to believe that mistakes were made. It is not suprising thet charter
school proponents attempting to respond to unmet demand are now seeking to use these
same closed schools.

A similar problem emerged around the draft facilities master plan prepared by the DCPS.
Hampered by lack of creditable current and projected enrollment data, the plan failed to
give a vision of the kinds of schools and their geographic distribution that we will need to
support community revitalization in the District. I believe the City Council was correct
to reject this plan.

I strongly believe that until we have a complete picture of current and projected
enrollment, we should not proceed with additional school closings. We must be able to
plan for success and mect the needs and demands of families returning to our improving
schools, I believe that it is highly plausible that over the coming years the number of
schools children may increase significantly.

Again, let me emphasize: we need good data to make good policy decisions.

© Our city budget is capped and we can not request additional money just because we
have not planned well;


15

Mr. Davis. Now that would not include suburban kids going to
school in the District?

Mr. WENNING. Correct.

Mr. Davis. It would just be the District of Columbia.

Mr. WENNING. It would be D.C. residents only.

Mr. Davis. That’s a fairly high percentage, just judging from my
experience in Fairfax, where even in affluent areas like Langley
High School, the number that are going to private schools was well
below what the number was in the city, given your current docu-
mentation for number of students you have. That number strikes
me as a very high number in private schools compared with the
number you have given for public schools. I ask Dr. Grier if you
have any reaction to that.

Mr. GRIER. Well, I didn’t check that out. The census had a figure
for that, too, and I could get you that figure later if you would like.

Mr. Davis. That’s fine. I just wanted to get it in the record.

[The information referred to follows:]

The 1990 Census found a total of 16,307 District of Columbia residents three
years old and older attending private schools below the college level, including 3,425
at the “preprimary” level (kindergarten and earlier) and 12,882 in elementary or
high schools. These figures include those attending schools outside the District.

Mr. GRIER. In any event, it does seem quite high.

Mr. Davis. This is a fact-finding hearing only. It’s not meant to
be critical. We want you to succeed and give as much assistance
as we can, because we do have an oversight role under the Con-
stitution. We appreciate the efforts that you’re making in the testi-
mony here today, and I think it puts us a little closer to under-
standing where you are, and hopefully we can disseminate some in-
formation and ideas, and you can go back and continue to be effec-
tive in what you're doing. So I want to thank this panel very much
for your contribution toda:

Our second panel will consist of Dr. Joyce Ladner, who is a mem-
ber of the control board; Dr. Bruce MacLaury, who is the chairman
of the emergency board of trustees; and the Honorable Wilma Har-
vey, who is the president of the District of Columbia Board of Edu-
cation. As they come to the table and we switch the name tags, if
you would just remain standing, I will swear you in, because it is
this committee’s policy that all witnesses be sworn before they tes-
tify. That is not the policy in every committee, but because of the
investigatory role that this committee plays in Congress, we just
apply it to all witnesses.

Thank you again to the previous panel. That was very helpful.

(Witnesses sworn.]

Again, we have a 5-minute rule we try to adhere to so we will
have time for questions. We have read the statements; our staffs
have read them. We have a set of questions, but I would like you
to take up to 5 minutes to highlight what you would like to high-
light. Then during the question and answer period, if at the end
of it you wanted to add something and did not get it in, kind of
raise your hand and we will give you an opportunity.

But we want to move this along and try to have the meeting over
in the next hour. That should give us plenty of time for questions.
Let me start with Dr. Ladner, and then to Bruce MacLaury, and
then to Wilma Harvey, and then we will move to questions.

VA


36

‘much about whether the numbers are right or not, or whether they/re teaching #s many es they could.
‘They won't unless they know that serious consequences may follow.

Until we are reasonably sure that we know the precise enrollment of the D.C. Public Schools, broken
down exactly by school and grade, it will be impossible to project what the enrollments will be five
‘of ten years from now with any reasonable degree of certainty. Without knowing that, it will be
impossible to develop @ sound and affordable plan to improve and maintain the schools for the coming
‘century -- which will be upon us in less than two years.

The problem isnt solely ove ofthe fr, however owe. Tt isn't even possible to determine with
‘any certainty right now which schools are seriously under-utilized, and could be shut down
immediately in order to re-direct scarce finds to places where they are really needed. Effective

allocation of human resources becomes impossible too. Too many half-empty buildings and too fow
people fully employed will quickly mount into many millions of dollars of taxpayecw’ money wasted.

| think is significant thet the District's schools ae the only system in the nation where the Board and
doatt have to report to a higher authority ~ or at least hadn't until the Control Board

came along. The Superintendent is his own State School Officer. There is no independent oversight,
and hence no incentive to make meaningful changes.

‘With that higher authority now in charge, there is an opportunity to impose the discipline necessary
to make the schools in effective mechanism for the education of the District's flnure citizens and
workers. Over time, that discipline can beoome internalized.

‘That will take time and effort, and both will be substantial. But many other things will then become
‘easier. It will be possible to plan ahead, and to foresee the future consequences of present actions
with some reliability. But if the opportunity is lost, it may never be regained. In that case, the D.C.
Public Schools may remain forever a system: out of control.


48

SUPPORT OF ALL OF THE SCHOOL SYSTEM'S EXTERNAL
STAKEHOLDERS.

THIS CONCLUDES MY PREPARED STATEMENT. I WILL BE PLEASED
TO RESPOND TO ANY QUESTIONS THAT YOU OR THE OTHER
COMMITTEE MEMBERS MAY HAVE.


53

plies with the School Reform Act of 1995. It requires us to count
students in each of the categories in which we report them and
that, regardless of whether other school systems count them the
way we do, we comply —.

Mr. Davis. You have different rules than other States.

Mr. WENNING. We comply with the statute. .

Mr. Davis. I just wanted to get that on the record. I think that’s
important. We're comparing apples to oranges versus apples to ap-

les.

P Ms. BLANCHETTE. Mr. Chairman—

Mr. Davis. Yes.

Ms. BLANCHETTE [continuing]. I would raise an issue, and this is
not something that GAO really looked into, and it’s really a legal
issue. It is true that there is a requirement for separate reporting
of these categories. Whether or not that means including them in
the official total count and then using that number as a basis for
funding decisions ——

Mr. Davis. It’s a different issue.

Ms. BLANCHETTE. It may very well be.

Mr. Davis. That’s fair. I just wanted to get that on the record.

Let me just ask General Becton and Mr. Wenning, did the school
system do a baseline enrollment by making all current as well as
new students prove their reside:

General BECTON. We try.

Mr. Davis. You wy

Mr. WENNING. let me explain the process. We used the
basic proof of residency. And again we're trying to focus on account-
ability for parents and for schools and for principals. The basic
proof of residency is a signed document by a parent certifying that
they are a resident of the District of Columbia, understanding that
committing fraud is punishable by law. That was the basic proof
of residency we requested.

In addition, we encourage principals to obtain proofs, additional
proofs, as permitted by the current board rules. We did that for all
of our students. And as the GAO has reported, about 12,800 of our
students did not return that basic proof of residency; 83 percent of
our students did.

Mr. Davis. OK. You have a model of something that appears to
work with New York City. Will you agree with that?

Mr. WENNING. Apparently, yes.

Mr. Davis. Have we looked at that model and said, how can we
get to that model in the next year or 2 years if we automate and
get our systems up?

Mr. WENNING. I personally have not looked at the New York City
model specifically, nor have I——

Mr. Davis. Having headed a government that was at least a pop-
ulation larger than the city, that’s something that would be just off
the shelf, that if you wanted to do something right with something
that was totally screwed up, take something tt works like the
New York model. You may want to tailor it a little bit for some
local concerns and statutes, but it seems here we have something
that we know works, that has been a model for other areas. Why
don’t you take it off the shelf, see if it works, and try to implement
it.


49

Mr. Davis. Thank you. Thank all of you for your testimony.

The first critical issue is how many students are in the D.C.
schools. Is it the 77,000? Is that figure accurate? How comfortable
is everybody with the figure? Let me start over on the left and
work my way down the row.

Ms. BLANCHETTE. I have no idea how many students are in the
D.C. public school system. As I stated, because of concerns that we
have about the process used to count those students, we would
similarly have concerns about the result of that process.

Mr. Grier. I would concur with Ms. Blanchette. In addition, I
would say that while I have no idea how many they have either,
the magnitude of the gap between other figures and figures pro-
duced by the schools is such that I don’t think that the figures are
anywhere near correct. They may be off by thousands.

Mr. Davis. Mr. Wenning, how do you react to that?

Mr. WENNING. My reaction to that is I believe there are 77,111
students in the D.C. public schools.

Mr. Davis. In October at least?

Mr. WENNING. As of October 30. One of the ways—of course the
audit is ongoing, but a way we validated that is we administered
our standardized test a week before counting our students; 90 per-
cent of our official enrollment returned test booklets. Unless there
was some awfully widespread systematic fraud——

Mr. Davis. Why is 90 percent the figure? It could have been 82
percent. It could have been 94 percent.

Mr. WENNING. We had 90 percent of our official enrollment re-
turning test booklets. The average attendance for that month was
about 90 percent. What I am sug esting is that is strong validation
that the bodies are in the schools. So I am satisfied that the count
is accurate.

Mr. Davis. What you are saying, let me understand this, 90 per-
cent returned tests. Presumably authors, the people that are in
school that day that are taking the test.

Mr. WENNING. Right.

Mr. Davis. That is to say on a given day 90 percent of the kids
are in school. That is your number.

Mr. WENNING. Correct.

Mr. Davis. General Becton.

General BECTON. I support what Rich says.

Mr. Davis. I hope so.

Let me ask, 90 percent returning test scores versus 85. Is 90 per-
cent a figure you find in other jurisdictions for average attendance
ona day?

Mr. Grater. In many high schools, particularly in urban districts,
it is well below that. As many as 25 and 30 percent. In some of
what the District has called audits of its own over the years they
have found a lot of high schools are down around, oh, two-thirds
to at most three-fourths of their enrollment on any given day. And
I think about the lowest absentee rate they got was about 10 per-
cent at the elementary level. I am really astonished by that figure.
It is hard for me to believe that that many kids showed up on that
particular day.

Mr. Davis. Any comment from the GAO? You are not as much
of an expert in that particular area?


78

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

Iam Dr. Joyce Ladner. I am a Member of the District of Columbia Financial
Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority (“Authority”), and 1 am the Board
Member with lead responsibility for public education in the District of Columbia. 1
appreciate the opportunity to testify on the D.C. Public Schools’ student count.

For many years, the number of students who attend the District's public schools has
been in question. The persistent questions and concems about the student count were
among the reasons the Authority took aggressive action to change the governance
structure and management of the District of Columbia Public Schools. Our October 1996
report entitled, Children in Crisis: A Failure of the D.C. Public Schools, states “one of
the most serious data problems is the lack of credible information on the number of

students.”

Introduction

Having an accurate student count will contribute to restoring confidence and
credibility in the management of the D.C. Public Schools. The Authority is committed to
that goal and ensuring that the public schools achieve tangible improvements in the
education of our children. As the public schools move to increase accountability at the
local school level, the accuracy of the student count becomes even more important. At
the urging of the Authority, the D.C. Public Schools are moving toward the development
of school based budgets, which will identify the staffing and resource requirements of
each focal school. The student count will be used to determine the equitable allocation of
resources to that Jocal school. If the schools cannot substantiate those numbers, then the
local school may not obtain the appropriate allocation of resources needed to support the

programs aimed at improving the educational achievement of students.

‘As the Authority and others have reported previously, the District of Columbia Public

Schools need to improve the methodology used to count the number of students who


88

(c) A student who has been granted an exemption from the requirement to pay
luition by the Board of Trustees pursuant to the provisions of D.C. Code 31-
602(d).

Amend Sections 2002.10 as follows:

2002.10(a) The Principal or other person responsible for admission and enrollment
procedures shall require the submission of at least three (3) documents
indicating District of Columbia residency as defined in section 2099, in order
to determine whether the student is eligible to attend a D.C. public school or
program without payment of non-resident tuition, pursuant to the provisions
of section 2000.2 and 2000.3.

(b) The principal or other person responsible for admission and enrollment
procedures has the discretion to require, upon demand, the parent, court-
appointed guardian or custodian to provide verification of District of
Columbia residency for both current and initially enrolling children/adult
students.

(c) The documents that shall be accepted for verification of residency for current
D.C. Public Schoo! students shall be the same indicators of residency required
to be submitted for a child/adult initially seeking admission to a D.C. public
school.

(d) The parent, court-appointed guardian or custodian shall have ten (10) school
days to provide the indicators of residency requested. If the required
information is not provided in the requested time period, which can be
extended at the discretion of the Superintendent or the Superintendent's
designee, arrangements must be made to enroll as a non-resident student and
pay all non-resident tuition, as set forth in Section 2007.

(e) Failure to provide the requested information or pay the required tuition will
result in exclusion from D.C. Public Schools, subject to the tuition waiver
authority provided in Section 2000.2(e) above.

Amend Section 2002.11 as follows:

2002.11 District of Columbia residency shall be established through the use of
satisfactory documentation as follows:

(a) Three (3) or more of the following items shall be required to establish
District of Columbia residency:

(1) Proof of payment of D.C. personal income tax for period closest in time
to the consideration of District of Columbia residency;

(2) A current (issued less than forty-five (45) days prior to consideration of
residency) tax withholding statement which contains the parent's or
guardian's name and evidence of District of Columbia residency;


43

STATEMENT OF RICHARD J. WENNING
DIRECTOR OF EDUCATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS
BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT,
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

MARCH 13, 1998

MR. CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE:

1 WELCOME THE OPPORTUNITY TO APPEAR BEFORE YOU TODAY
TO DISCUSS THE ENROLLMENT COUNT OF THE DISTRICT OF
COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

AS YOU KNOW QUESTIONS ABOUT THE ACCURACY OF DCPS'
ENROLLMENT COUNT HAVE EXISTED FOR MANY YEARS. THE
OCTOBER 1996 REPORT OF THE CONTROL BOARD, CHILDREN IN
CRISIS: _A FAILURE OF THE D.C. PUBLIC SCHOOLS, STATES "ONE
OF THE MOST SERIOUS DATA PROBLEMS IS THE LACK OF
CREDIBLE INFORMATION ON THE NUMBER OF STUDENTS." IN
AUGUST OF 1997, THE GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE (GAO)
RELEASED ITS AUDIT OF THE METHODOLOGY USED BY DCPS FOR
ITS OFFICIAL ENROLLMENT COUNT OF OCTOBER 1996. THE GAO
IDENTIFIED A NUMBER OF MAJOR WEAKNESSES, INCLUDING:

* INADEQUATE USE OF AUTOMATION--THE COUNT WAS DONE
MANUALLY BECAUSE THE DATABASE INCLUDED INACCURATE
INFORMATION.


113

Ms. NorTon. Well, what was the result of that meeting, Dr.
Ladner?

Ms. LapNeER. Well, nothing. There was no result.

Ms. Norton. Because I think it’s almost unfair to the parties
that, you know, to—I know what you were doing. It made sense.

Ms. LADNER. We were trying——

Ms. Norton. You were trying to get them in the room and talk
things out. But, after that, you would have thought that the law-
yers, having heard what they say——

Ms. LADNER. I’m sorry.

4 Ms. NoRTON [continuing]. Then there was an order that came
lown.

Ms. LADNER. No, there were a lot of things that interceded in be-
tween. I think the fact is that we never got back from those two
people an agreed-upon, a mutually agreed-upon list of things to do,
period.

I got a memorandum back from Mr.—Dr. MacLaury. Dr. Harvey,
I don’t know what her views were.

But suffice it to say that the sequence of events that you have
just stated were a bit abbreviated. Let me simply say that I hope
that’s water under the bridge. I, more than any—as much as any-
one I can imagine would like for this to be settled. I believe very,
very strongly that we have to begin to put in place a process that
looks forward to the return of the board of—elected board of edu-
cation to office.

I have to say that we worked with a number of constraints that
I really would not like to, you know, deal with here, that were al-
most beyond our control; and, at some point down the line, I would
be able to discuss those with you. But we tried eve: ing we knew
how to get back to work as quickly as possible, and sometimes the
best efforts really do not yield fruitful results. I don’t think that we
could say that it was not for a lack of trying, but I hope that the
next round of discussions are more fruitful.

Mr. MacLaury. Since I’m the one who seems to have put this fox
in the chicken coop, if that’s the right phrase, let me say that we
should accentuate the positive; and that’s what we have been—
that’s what I really intended to do.

Dr. Harvey and I are working together. We intend to continue to
work together. The lawsuit will take whatever course it takes. It
is not inhibiting us. It’s a distraction in some ways. But it’s not in-
hibiting us from going forward on behalf of the children. I think
that’s the bottom line, as far as I’m concerned.

Ms. Harvey. I would like to say one thing, that the initial meet-
ing between Mr. MacLaury and I, in my opinion, was to be a dis-
cussion and to open the doors of dialog; and from the advice of my
attorneys and the board’s attorney, we went into the room with
that understanding.

Once again, you know it does weigh very heavy. I think you
know, as a member of the board of trustees, it does weigh very
heavy for me. I have 11 other—10 other people that I have to deal
with; and there is some, you know, little human, what I call con-
cerns, that exists in an environment like that.

But, once again, we're trying very hard to, as a board of edu-
cation, to stay focused on the prize, and the prize is the children


CONTENTS

Hearing held on March 13, 1998 ..
Statement of:

Blanchette, Cornelia M., Associate Director, Education and Employment
Issues, Health Education and Human Services Division, U.S, General
Accounting Office; George Grier, principal, the Grier Partnership;

Julius W, Becton, chie executive officer ‘and superintendent, Biotic
f Columbia Public Schools; and Richard W , director, Depart-

ment of Educational ‘Accountability, District of” Columbia meats
00)

Ladner, Joyce, member, District of Columbia Financial Respi
‘and Management Assistance Authority, District of Columbia; Bruce
K MacLaury, chairman, Emergency Transitional Education Board of

Trustees, Disizict of Columbiay ana Wilma Harvey, president of the
Board of Education of the District of Columbia .
Letters, statements . submitted for the record by:

Becton, Gen. Julius W., chief executive officer and superintendent, Dis-
trict of Columbia Public Schools, prepared statement of.

Blanchette, Cornelia M., Associate Director, Education and Employment
Issues, Health Education and Human Services Division, U.S. General
Accounting Office:

Information concerning accountability for compliance with student
enrollment procedures
Prepared statement of .

Davis, Hon. Thomas M., a Representative in Congress from the State
of Virginia, prepared statement of ..

Grier, George, principal, the Grier Par

Information concerning 1990 census .
Prepared statement o
Harvey, Wilma, president ‘
Cohimbia, prepared statement of ..
Ladner, Joyce, member, District of Colum Sp
‘and Management Assistance Authority, District of Columbia, prepared
statement of
MacLaury, Bruce mergency Transitional Education Board
of Trustees, District of Columbia, prepared statement of ..
Morella, Hon. Constance A., a Representative in Congress from the State
of Maryland, prepared statement of ..
Norton, Hon. Bleanor Holmes, a Representative in Congress from the
District of Columbia, prepared statement of ..
Wenning, Richard, director, Department of Educational Accountability,
District of Columbia Public Schools, prepared statement of .

(ab

16

76

39


106

Don’t talk immigrants in this city. It is a two-bit town when it
comes to immigrants. New York City has people from every country
in the world in huge colonies that are in and out of the country,
in and out of the city. You heard the man say, these folks know
how to count people. Anything we have pales beside what they
have in Los Angeles, what they have in Chicago. You are not doing
it. Don’t go there. We are telling them do it. We don’t want any
excuses about immigrants or grandmothers.

You think they don’t have grandmothers in New York? Let me
tell you something about grandmothers. They've got grandmothers
in Haiti. They've got grandmothers in Bosnia. They've got grand-
mothers here who don’t even know what custody is because a child
just landed here and with nobody to take care of them. Those, we
don’t want to hear it. You are not responsible for it. You shouldn't
start down that road because you all are going to get it back.

If we don’t want to hear it from them, we certainly don’t want
to hear you in advance tell us about the kinds of things that all
these other cities have, too. Atlanta has it. You he: what Dr.
Grier said.

What we are saying is that the District of Columbia is full of
competent, intelligent people, and if you put your minds to it, take
somebody else’s system, look at how they do it, how they deal with
grandmothers, how they deal with custody, that will keep us from
making our mistake, then we won’t have to say we have anything
such as—we don’t have one single thing, not a single thing that
other large cities don’t have manifold. We just want to get it right

ere.

The way to handle this is to say, “Look, we're going to get it
right. We’re going to find out how the other people do it.” If Con-
press even begins to hear that stuff is where we all get in trouble

ere.

Ms. HaRVEY. I’m just saying that we need to create a system that
encompasses all of this, Congresswoman Norton. That was my
point.

Ms. Norton. That is exactly what we expect, Ms. Harvey. I am
sure it can be done. I am sure it can be done.

Could I ask what each of you all think about what I understand
the city may be going to, that the Education Committee may be
working on a real per pupil funding formula that they will be put-
ting in place by legislation, and what you think of such a formula
for the schools as a new way of doing business beyond the fact that
you, of course, are counting and measure the budget by the schools.
I am talking about the kind of formula they now have in the
States. Ms. Ladner,

Ms. LADNER. I would like to speak to it. In fact, I believe that
Councilman Kevin Chavous, chair of the Council’s Committee on
Education, Libraries and Recreation, has a working group that is
currently trying to devise such a formula because it was mandated
in the Education Reform Act of 1995.

Having said that, I think that the authority fully expects that
the school administration will continue its effort in moving toward
school-based budgeting and providing more autonomy to the local
schools. That is under way now with regard to the planning. I am
in favor of a per pupil expenditure, especially once we clean this


66

While 38 schools had at least one student removed from their enrollment counts as a
duplicate, the following 10 schools had 4 or more students removed:

Hart Middle School (4 students)
Anacostia Senior High School (11 students)

Ballou Senior High School (11 students)

Eastern Senior High School (4 students)

Luke C. Moore Academy Senior High School (4 students)
M.M. Washington Career Senior High School (9 students)
Phelps Career Senior High School (4 students)

Spingam Senior High Schoo! (4 students)

Spingam Stay Senior High School (14 students)

Wilson Senior High School (4 students)

Counting Smdents with Blank Residency Codes

DCPS included a new field in the SIS to record whether or not a student had retumed his or
her residency verification form. The addition of the new field in the SIS allowed
identification of inactive students that otherwise would have been counted in the official
enrollment as well as students that had not retumed their residency verification forms,
allowing i improved targeting of nonresidents. All residency fields were blank at the
beginning of the school year. Written guidance instructed principals that all actively
enrolled students needed to have a code in order to be counted. Principals were to enter a
code of "P” if a student was actively enrolled but had not retumed a form. Before the
Department of Educational Accountability removed students from the official count because
they had a blank residency field, principals were given the opportunity to claim students

with blank residency fields as actively enrolled by providing a written certification.
Following this process, the Department of Educational Accountability cut 153 students with
blank residency fields that were originally counted by principals in 16 schools. Among
these schools, the following 8 schools had 4 or more students removed from the count:

meOIAWALNE

S

Bancroft Elementary School (10 students)
Moten Elementary School (11 students)

Rudolph Elementary School (6 sudents)

Thomson Elementary School (28 students)

Paul Junior High School (5 students)

Eastern Senior High School (71 students)

Luke C. Moore Academy Senior High School (4 students)
Roosevelt Senior High School (6 students)

4, Failure to Obtain Residency Verification Forms

A total of 12,878 students out of our official enrollment of 77,111, or 16.7 percent, have
failed to return their residency verification forms, according to data input by schools in the
SIS. While the majority of schools had some students that failed to return residency
verification forms, a smaller number of schools had high percentages of students that failed
to return forms. Some of these schools may have significant numbers of nonresident
students. In other schools, failure to return residency verification forms may be atributable
largely to uncooperative resident parents or students. As you know, the proposed
amendments to the rules governing the admission and registration of students and the
establishment of District residency will provide DCPS with a greatly enhanced posture for
tuition enforcement. These rules will require all students to provide copies of specific

SNOB RON


52
robably do have a few kids coming in from the suburbs on the

ringes of the system but they do not think that it’s a big problem.
r. Davis. My question, I guess to everybody, is why would
somebody come in from Prince Georges or Fairfax or anywhere else
to go to a D.C. public school. What is the rationale? Is it day care?

Mr. GRIER. Day care.

General BEcTON. You have day care and prekindergarten; and
we have some magnet schools that are very fine programs. We note
that most of them we believe are in schools located on the periph-
ery of the District. We have ways of tracking down license plate
numbers and working with the various jurisdictions when we find
that.

Any other areas?

Mr. WENNING. Indeed, in all-day kindergarten.

Mr. Davis. That is really what would fuel this, it would seem to
me.

Mr. WENNING. If I may, when we look at exit data to see when
students leave the school system for private schools, that often oc-
curs after the early grades, at third grade, for example. Moreover,
now with the new residency field——

Mr. Davis. Let me ask a question of you if I could.

Mr. WENNING. Certainly.

Mr. Davis. Do you think the abuse, if there is abuse, I think we
have conceded there are some people from outside the jurisdiction
bringing their kids into the puplie schools. Is it fair to say these
abuses are where you have before and after school care, and all-
day kindergarten instead of at the high school level?

neral Brcron, Not in large numbers, but we have noted that
certain schools have athletes who come in who seem to be living
outside the jurisdiction.

Mr. Davis. We have that problem in Virginia. I think that is a
nationwide problem. You get extra competition, 2 years extra in the
District of Columbia, is that right?

Mr. Davis. What I’m asking is, for kids coming outside the juris-
diction, is it more likely to occur at third grade and below?

General BECTON. Earlier ages, yes.

Mr. Davis. Earlier ages.

General BECTON. Probably up to grade six.

Mr. Davis. Let me ask the GAO representative, are students that
are included in the 77,111 count, are there students there who are
not ordinarily included in such counts?

Ms. BLANCHETTE. Yes.

Mr. Davis. OK.

Ms. BLANCHETTE. Students that are younger than the age for
compulsory public education, students that are above that age in
the District of Columbia, 20 years old and older, Head Start par-
ticipants, if they are housed in D.C. public school buildings are in-
cluded. They are not—there’s no way of separating out the Head
Start students that are funded from a separate source.

Mr. Davis. OK.

Mr. WENNING. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Davis. Yes, please.

Mr. WENNING. If I might comment on that, we count our stu-
dents as mandated by the Congress. Our report of enrollment com-


101

in taking leadership on some of these tough issues like closing
schools that were not addressed before, that had to be done.

I just want to note one other thing, this is just an opinion, and
T will give you a chance to react to it. I think if it had been up to
me, I would have probably closed a few more schools. I know it is
a painful undertaking, but given the fact that the average age of
the schools and their condition was so bad, you were spreading a
lot of money into your facilities that could be spent elsewhere, and
if you can close them and consolidate, that is a more cost-efficient
way. When McDonald’s buys Roy Rogers they don’t keep everything
open, they consolidate and sell and do those kinds of things. I think
the city had to face some of that.

However I am cautioned by what Ms. Harvey says in terms of
the school Population going back up. It has gone back up in New
York City with a vengeance. It is even going up inside the beltway
in northern Virginia, which for a long time had remained stable.
I don’t pretend to predict what the development patterns in the city
are going to be, or the demographic patterns or the birthrate pat-
terns over the next decade or two. But we are hopeful that with
the first-time home buyers discount we will bring the flight of the
middle class back into the city. We hope parents will have con-
fidence to send their children to the public schools.

That is a cautionary note we need to look at. I don’t know where
it sets at this point. I just offer that as an observation of somebody
who is not intimately involved, but has been involved in a subur-
ban jurisdiction where it has gone through patterns of baby booms
in areas where it doesn’t go as well. I will give you an opportunity
to respond to that and then I will hand it over to Ms. Norton.

Ms. Harvey. I just want to respond in relationship to the state-
ment about the Board of Education. In its reorganization this year,
the Board of Education has indeed begun to look at, first of all,
how we can regain the confidence of our own constituents.

First of all, we have added to our committee structure a parent
advisory group. We are going to start taking our stated board meet-
ings back out to the community so we can get a good thrust of what
the communities are feeling as we are going through this transi-
tional period, so as we begin to plan for the transition of the Board
of Education to take its rightful power back in a year and a half
or so, that we will be in a position to do that. We look forward to
being cooperative with all entities that are concerned with the
quality of public education for the children in this district.

Mr. Davis. Mr. MacLaury.

Mr. MacLaury. A couple of points. First, on your injunction that
we work together with the board of education. Dr. Harvey and I
were cochairing last evening a jointly sponsored meeting, public
meeting, to talk about some of the most important issues; that is
to say, summer school, the gates for promotion and bring that story
to the public, the public that really needs to know. We were walk-
ing hand in hand.

Mr. Davis. We need to know here.

Mr. MacLaury. It does not help, the fact that the board of edu-
cation still is in courts vis-a-vis the control board on this issue. But
we are trying and Dr. Harvey and I are going to find ways to work
together.


26

Mr. Davis. Thank you very much.

George Grier.

Mr. Grier. I am a principal in the Grier Partnership, which is
a statistical consulting firm that works with school systems, among
other clients. In that capacity back in 1995 we were asked to help
develop a plan for improving and maintaining school facilities so
that they would serve into the next century. That plan had been
requested by Dr. Franklin Smith, who was superintendent at that
time.

Whenever we start working with a new school system client, we
first review the basic data on the students themselves, whatever
we can find out, the system’s own enrollment figures, census data
on the child population, et cetera. When we did this for the District
we found a startling discrepancy. The D.C. public schools were re-
porting an enrollment of 80,694 to the National Center for Edu-
cation Statistics in the fall of 1990, while the Census Bureau had
found only 67,278 students enrolled in public, elementary and high
schools in the spring of the same year, a big discrepancy there.

I could use my first slide now, please, if you would, Anne.

We compared that discrepancy to other cities. We found out that
there was a huge difference. It was 20.6 percent for the District
and in no other school system in the 10 major systems with large
minority populations was there any more than an 8.8 percent dis-
crepancy. That was Atlanta. All the rest were considerably less
than that. The average discrepancy was 2.5 percent. The District’s
was 20.6 percent.

Mr. Davis. Could I ask, what does the negative mean?

Mr. Grier. I'm sorry?

Mr. Davis. The minus 0.03 percent and minus 3.6 percent?

Mr. GRIER. The positive means that the schools have more stu-
dents reported than the census does. Negative means that they
have fewer.

Mr. Davis. An undercount, OK.

Mr. GRIER. Some of them actually come out fewer.

There are some technical questions here as to what that means.
I won’t go over those. I think Delegate Norton and Congresswoman
Morella did a great job of stating some of the problems and ques-
tions that are raised. The fact that most of the differences between
the school system and census figures were positive suggest the
Census Bureau may have undercounted, and the census does tend
to undercount minorities and that has been raised as a possible
reason for the District’s problem. But in all but Atlanta these dis-
crepancies were so much smaller than the District that we have to
conclude that it couldn’t possibly have been a result of any signifi-
cant degree of census undercounting. Otherwise, it would show up
in other places, too.

A lot of figures have changed since 1990, a lot of change has
taken place in the District. My second slide shows what has hap-

ned to the total population and the school population. The solid
line shows the total population as shown by the census, and the
dotted line shows the school population as reported by the schools.
The sharp drop close to the beginning of that curve is due to the
fact that the schools were found to have over stated their enroll-
ments, a big hullabaloo resulted and they reduced their enroll-


22

-  Ciarity, document, and enforce the residency verification requirements for students
and their parents.

- Institute internal controls in the student information database, including database
Tanagement practices and automatic procedures and edits to control database
errors.

- Comply with the reporting requirement of the District of Columbia School Reform
Act of 1995.

We further recommended that the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility and
‘Management Assistance Authority comply with the auditing requirements of the District
of Columbia School Reform Act of 1996.

In commenting on a draft of our report, DOPS' Chief Executive Officer/
‘Superintendent stated that DCPS concurred with our major findings and
recommendations and would correct the identified weaknesses. He also acknowledged
thatthe enrollment number for school year 199687 are subject to question forthe

we cited-especially because the enrollment count credibility hinged almost
entirely on the writen verification provided by local administrators. He said that no
substantial checks and balances, no aggressive central monitoring, and few routine
reports were in place. In addition, he said that virtually no administrative sanctions were
applied, indicating that the submitted reports were hardly reviewed.

‘The Authority shared DCPS' view that many findings and recommendations in our
report will help to correct what it characterized as a flawed student enrollment count
process. Its comments did, however, express concerns about certain aspects of our
report. The Authority was concerned that we did not discuss the effects of the
Authority's overhaul of DCPS in November 1996.‘ It also commented that our report did
not note that the flawed student count was one of the issues prompting the Authority to
change the governance structure and management of DCPS. In the report, we explained
that we did not review the Authority's overhaul of DCPS or the events and concems
leading to the overhaul.

“For many years, DCPS had been governed by an elected Board of Education. In Nov.
1996, the specially appointed Authority declared a state of emergency in DCPS and
transferred DCPS management-until June 30, 2000-to the Authority's agents, a nine-
member specially appointed Emergency Transitional Education Board of Trustees. The
Authority also replaced DCPS' superintendent with a Chief Executive Officer/
Superintendent.

6 GAO/T-HEHS-98.91


105

Ms. Norton. I am sure that will happen here and there. I don’t
think most people are going to go to that trouble. If so, they are
probably a fairly small number of cases relative to the huge num-

ers that Grier is talking about.

In terms of trackdown, I can understand in the ordinary course
of affairs, Dr. Ladner, I would say that having a few people who
are supposed to go out and track down would make sense. I would
recommend against that given shortages and the real needs of the
school system.

I would begin by concentrating on a deterrent effect that would
send a very strong message. I would begin by announcing, for ex-
ample, an example of the way you go about it rather than spendii
my money; looking to see whether you are in compliance, my school
system money. You are right about the U.S. attorney, I think.

I would announce before summer school, don’t come here because
everybody we find, we are referring each and every one to the U.S.
attorney. The U.S. attorney obviously won’t prosecute everybody,
but when people hear that a sanction nobody wants to face will be
in—I wouldn’t want my name over there. Even if you decided not
to prosecute, the deterrent effect, it seems to me, is worth more
than putting people in an office that is spent by the school system.
Let the U.S. attorney, then, take one action or another.

She may bring a misdemeanor charge; she may decide to plea
bargain it, but the fact that she has done it gives us a New York
City type boomerang and deterrent effect rather than have you all
spend what money you have, especially when you are trying to do
your summer school and the rest. Yes, Dr. Harvey.

Ms. Harvey. Yes, I would like to add just a point, Congress-
woman Norton, to the scenario here. What we have in the District
of Columbia is a very fluid immigrant population. A lot of the stu-
dents in that population are illegal. It is impossible in a lot of in-
stances to track and get parents to come in with the appropriate
documents. Yet these young people show up in our schools.

Whatever system that we build, we have to be sensitive to that
population so that every child, no matter what the case may be, is
engaged in an opportunity for entry into our school system. And
also and especially in certain areas of the city, we have a real
grandparent issue.

A lot of the grandparents will show the appropriate documents
and maybe, like you said, move to a higher level, but once again,
these grandparents are, indeed, the only resource that these young
people have. They live with them, and their parents cannot be lo-
cated. There are other extenuating variables that I think we need
to factor in.

Ms. Norton. I don’t factor in a single thing you said, Ms. Har-
vey. Not a single thing. First of all, as the chairman said, they are
legally entitled to go to school. If they live in the District of Colum-
bia, they are illegal. Under the Constitution of the United States,
they are entitled to an education. We will educate them. The ille-
gality that bothers us is if they come in from outside of our juris-
diction. If they are illegal, they pay taxes every day in this city,
they live here.

Let me tell you why—don’t go there, Ms. Harvey. Don’t even go
there. Did you hear Dr. Grier’s testimony? I lived in New York.


34

T have sometimes been quoted as saying that the correct enrollment of the D.C. Public Schools is
somewhere around 67,000. I have not said that. By the same token, after this testimony I might be
quoted as saying that the enrollment change since 1990 was minus 13 percent, or a loss of about
10,500 studemts, rather than 3,600. I haven't said thet either. I do not know what the correct
enrollment of the D.C. Public Schools is at this point, and I do not believe anyone else does either.
{tis highly unlikely, though, that the actual enrollment is even close to the current official figure. The
discrepancies are simply too great.

‘We had to tell Dr. Franklin Smith, who was Superintendent of Schools at the time we found these
discrepancies, that lacking better enrollment numbers than his staff could provide we could make only
the most tentative projections of his future enrollments; and that, quite frankly, they wouldn't be
‘worth the paper they were printed on. He made some efforts to straighten things out, but they. dida't
solve the problems, and three years later not much has changed. So at this point in time we still could
not produce projections that we considered reliable.

I do not know all of the reasons for whatever differences may cventually be found between the
Current counts and the numbers that will eventually emerge, but many of them have to do with
inadequate procedures. The GAO study deals with this topic, and Ms. Blanchette can speak to it
much more effectively than I. But I would like to note that these problems are far from new.

As long ego as 1990, after a scandal about the failure to reveal changes in the enrollments, the
accounting firm of Deloitte and Touche performed s management audit of the D.C. schools. They
had intended to do so by drawing a random sample from existing computer tapes that they had been
‘told contained detailed enroltment information for several past years. They found that the tapes were
‘not accurate enough to serve this purpose. When they asked to have hard copies instead, they found
that these were virtually non-existent except for the most recent year. The computerized student
information management system (SIMS) was found to be seriously deficient. The report identified
‘mumerous procedural inadequacies. Five years later, I ran into most of these same probleras. As far
as I know, most are still there. Mr. Wenning has made some usefull changes, but the basic
Procedures are still pretty much in place, and they're as fill of holes as ever.

Ido know, however, that it is not impossible for a large city school system to collect accurate
enroliment numbers. My firm prepares the annual enrollment projections for the New York City
Public Schools, a million-pupil schoo! system. We have done so since 1988. On # one-year besis, our
Projections have generally proved accurate within less than one student in 1,000. We use pretty
‘Sophisticated methods, but we could aot do this well without having good data to start with.

‘You may have noted that New York City's discrepancy was the second lowest among the major cities
— only 1.2 percent. And this mount could be due to growth, since New York City bas been
growing. New York City audits its enrollment cousts with extreme care, and it conducts surprise
head counts in randomly selected schools. ‘The final fall oumbers are not available until the following
March or April, There's a lot of understandable carping about this from impatient adminivtretors
ampious to get our projections, but in my view it's worth the wait. .

6


115

Mr. Davis. I think what would be helpful for this committee is
the two of you to work together with the control board to come up
with a plan. That would give everybody in the city a feeling of
where we’re going and how we're going to achieve it. We will con-
tinue to rework it, but that would be very helpful.

Ms. Norton. It would be very helpful.

Let me tell you what our fear is. You know that while I didn’t
think the control—we should simply overrule home rule, I simply
thought that much of the operation of the school system should
have been transferred. I don’t for a moment think you can give this
back to an elected school board without a transition plan that guar-
antees us that, in fact, the school board and the school system is
ready to seamlessly take it, run with it as if nothing had ever hap-
pened.

In order to assure that that will happen, we’ve got to have more
than a direction. We’ve got to have something very specific. These
people have got to be familiar with everything you’ve done. They’ve
got to understand why they can’t return if, in fact, they should not;
and there’s no way they can do that without a specific plan.

Mr. Davis. If we can just ask each of you to commit to try to
work on that and get back with us, I think that would bk—

Ms. Harvey. If I can answer, the board of education right now
is in the process of writing a draft of what we believe would be an
effective transitional plan. And we do plan to present that to the
board of trustees. That was one of our priorities in this year.

Mr. Davis. OK.

Ms. Harvey. And we are in the process of writing a plan of tran-
sition.

Mr. Davis. OK. Thank you.

Ms. LADNER. I would like to say the control board has given some
thought to this and that we’re at midpoint from the—I guess of a
year and a half to go, and it’s been roughly a year and a half since
the trustees came into existence.

A lot of realignment is occurring right now. I think we will come
up with a plan. We don’t have a date for it yet, but we certainly
have a good sense as to how this should go, and we stand ready
to assume that responsibility, for I feel it should be ours——

Mr. Davis. OK. Thank you.

Ms. LADNER [continuing]. With the input of the trustees and the
elected school board.

Mr. Davis. Thank you. We look forward to hearing from them.
Ms. Norton, thank you for raising that issue. I think that’s an im-
portant issue. I think citizens of the city are eager to see that. I’m
sure the emergency board of trustees wants to see that. We appre-
ciate all the work that you and your group are doing as well. You
know, there’s still a long way to go on this, but seeing everybody
going in the same direction heartens us.

Ms. Norton. Mr. Chairman, if I can say, finally, what I’m sure
‘ou will confirm, the Congress has its hearings, has its oversight.
it basically doesn’t pay much attention to DPW or to welfare. The

Congress has a laser-tight focus on schools. That’s why I’m trying
to get there first on the school population.

in a real sense the whole—much of what we're able to do for the
city as a whole depends upon the congressional view of where the


58

ference in the world about how residents receive it and how the
Congress receives it.

And I want to say to you that I think that hypothesis is the next
one that has to be entertained. The only thing worse than not
being able to count is saying to the residents of the District of Co-
lumbia, the Washington Post now tells you that there are x thou-
sands of people that you’ve been paying for, and particularly when
I think that those people have been on our payroll and taken dis-
proportionately from us in the first place.

ly question is: Have you considered the possibility of massive
fraud? And have you considered any way to go at eliminating
fraud, massive or insignificant?

General BECTON. Mrs. Norton, I will say that we always consider
the possibility or people doing illegal, immoral, dumb things. And
we certainly, when we uncover them, we will deal with them se-
verely.

Ms. Norton. What procedures are you using to uncover them?
That’s my question.

General BECTON. We're trying to hold——

Ms. Norton. I’m sure that if they popped up in your face, you
would do something about them. Let me ask you what you did
about the 100 or whatever, or the 18 or whatever number you have
found already. What have you done about those? What have you
done so that the next parents know that they shouldn’t do that?
What have you done so that the next school knows that it shouldn’t
do that? What action has already been taken with respect to the
few you have already found?

Mr. WENNING. The nonresidents that have been identified are
being processed for tuition enforcement.

Ms. Norton. Surely you found some nonresidents.

Mr. WENNING. Yes. In fact, the tuition enforcement branch is
now currently uncovering 10 per week.

Ms. NorTON. What have you done to expose this fact so that oth-
ers will know this cannot be done? I mean, the fact that you’ve
gone through your bureaucracy has no deterrent effect upon others
who would engage in this fraud and who may, we believe, at least
hypothetically, be engaging in it in quite large numbers.

ir. WENNING. Mrs. Norton, you're right that the previous ap-
proach to dealing with nonresidency became mired in our bureauc-
racy. The new rules are going to expedite it out of our bureaucracy
very quickly and will send a very strong message and deterrent
that we mean business.

Ms. Norton. What is the deterrent? That’s what I’m getting at.

Mr. WENNING. There will be law suits. They'll go to the courts.
They'll have one opportunity for appeal in the D.C. public schools
that they are actually a resident and prove it, and r that they
will be excluded from school. And the child will not be able to enter
the D.C. public schools.

Ms. Norton. Mr. Wenning, I wish you—let me ask you and Mr.
Becton, these folks are not going to court. They’re going back to
Prince Georges and Montgomery. And unless stern action of some
kind is taken, others will hide among the bramble bush.

What I am asking you to do is to indicate, even before you get
through your process, what the school system intends to do when


112

Ms. Norton. Well, first of all, I appreciate the maturity of that
statement and the cooperation you’re showing.

I know that Dr. Ladner had some ideas about how to settle the
lawsuit. I thought they were creative ideas. She worked with other
members of the control board. I still can’t understand why counsel
simply weren’t put in the room. I really don’t expect that Mr.
MacLaury and Ms. Harvey either, who are lay people, should have
been called upon to settle a lawsuit.

I regret that the lawsuit went ahead, and I have to tell you that
I was astonished that—that the control board came down with an
order after seeking an extension in order to settle the lawsuit with-
out real negotiations with the counsel for the other side who I have
found to be very realistic, able, and congenial attorneys.

So what I see here is another kind of unnecessary dispute which,
as Ms. Harvey says, is there and kind of keeps them—keeps them
from where they Pethaps could be and they're working around it.

You have Mr. MacLaury saying, it doesn’t help, as if somehow
saying they were supposed to simply slink away. They won the
lawsuit. And the people who lost the lawsuit to then issue an order
without talking to the other side may be unheard of in the annuals
of litigation in the United States of America. All I’m asking is that
the lawsuit be put away so that Mr. MacLaury and Ms. Harvey can
get down to the cases.

Now the problem I have with what you're talking about, Ms.
Harvey, is that I think lawsuits are settled—usually, even halfway
competent lawyers could have gotten together, ly, without the
parties in the room; and most lawsuits are not settled with parties
in the room.

The lawyers get together because that’s what lawyers are trained
to do, and they come with certain things that they think that their
clients need. y talk at—among one another. They try to reach
some agreement. Where they don’t feel fully empowered to go
ahead with certain kinds of proposals, they say, we’ll have to come
back on that one. And, normally, they can settle lawsuits like this
pretty quickly.

So I would hate to see, you know, you and Mr. MacLaury have
to—have to do what, fr: ly, is not done in lawsuits, have to be
there while somehow this is being—I hope you will tell your coun-
sel what it is you want, you who are the elected school board, that
the control board will tell their counsel what they want, and that
the lawyers will do what lawyers are trained to do, figure it out,
come back and see whether they can bring you back each a win/
win situation, rather than prolong this by getting the parties and
everybody all bollixed up in settling a lawsuit which is not what
parties do in this country when there’s a been a lawsuit.

Yes, Dr. Ladner.

Ms. LADNER. Let me make one point, Ms. Norton.

The Authority never delegated Mr. MacLaury and Mrs. Harvey
to settle this. We simply |—rather than the Authority comi:
up with a list of items or duties, et cetera, that we thought woul
be good for the board of education to consider or to carry out, the
fact is that we asked them to have a meeting together to discuss
these issues and to report back to us. Under no conditions was it
ever envisioned that that—that they would have the power to—


76

STATEMENTS OF JOYCE LADNER, MEMBER, DISTRICT OF CO-
LUMBIA FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND MANAGEMENT
ASSISTANCE AUTHORITY, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA; BRUCE
K. MacLAURY, CHAIRMAN, EMERGENCY TRANSITIONAL EDU-
CATION BOARD OF TRUSTEES, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA; AND
WILMA HARVEY, PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION
OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Ms. LADNER. Good afternoon. I appreciate the opportunity, Mr.
Chairman and members of the committee, to testify on the D.C.
public schools’ student count. The District of Columbia Financial
Management Assistance Authority October 1996 report entitled,
“Children in Crisis: A Failure of the D.C. Public Schools” states,
“one of the most serious data problems is the lack of credible infor-
mation on the number of students.”

Questions about the accuracy and reliability of student count in-
formation led to the passage of the District of Columbia School Re-
form Act of 1995. That act requires that no later than October 15
of each year, schools must calculate the number of students, includ-
ing nonresident students, enrolled in each grade from K through 12
and public charter schools, and enrolled in preschool, pre-K, and
adult education, and the amount of tuition assessed and currently
collected from nonresident students attending D.C. public schools.

The act also requires that the schools submit, not later than Oc-
tober 15, a summary of the most recent enrollment calculations to
the authority, the Mayor, the Council of the District of Columbia,
the Census Commission, the Comptroller General of the United
States, and appropriate congressional committees. The act requires
the schools to arrange with the authority to conduct this independ-
ent audit of the initial calculations.

Although the act required the report to be issued to the authority
by October 15, the official enrollment count was not conducted
until November 4, 1997, because the opening of the schools was de-
layed. The authority received the enrollment information on De-
cember 15, 1997. On January 20, 1998, the authority issued a re-
quest for proposals for potential vendors to conduct the independ-
ent audit of the calculation of the student count. Unfortunately, the
authority only received one proposal whose costs, in our opinion,
were prohibitive.

The authority therefore reissued the request for proposals. The
second request for proposals generated two responses. Two bids of-
fered substantially different approaches to the request. The author-
ity sought the informal advice of the GAO. Based upon that advice
and our own analysis of the proposals, we asked each of the bidders
for a best-and-final-offer to reflect an agreed upon approach to con-
ducting the independent audit. The authority evaluated those pro-
posals and recently awarded the contract. The independent audit
is expected to be completed by May 1, 1998.

The authority expects that the independent audit will assist the
schools to improve the student count process in the 1998-99 school
year and to increase the degree of reliance that you and the com-
munity can place on the count in making resource allocation deci-
sions. The Authority is committed to ensuring that any weaknesses
identified by the independent audit will be corrected.


28

New York City schools work very hard to get good data. Their dis-
crepancy was the second lowest among the major cities, only 1.2
rcent.

Per haven’t accused anyone in the District of cheating and I won't,
but we have to accept that all human beings are fallible. With all
the care that New York City puts into counting their students, they
found out this year that one large high school in New York had
very significant padding of their enrollments. When they did, they
did something interesting, I wonder whether that would happen in
the District. They removed the principal from her job j immediately,
assigned her to the chancellor’s office, she is the “super-super-
intendent,” and are preparing a lawsuit against her. They want to

ut her in 1 jail. This is fraud. They want to make sure that the pub-
fe knows about it and all the teachers know about it. So they got
it put in the newspaper. I read about it in the New York Times.
This is a school system that understands that miscounted enroll-
ments can mean big bucks. And if you don’t get them accurate, you
are costing far more money than it would cost to do it right. It is
costing you an uncounted amount of money because you are paying
for things you don’t need to pay for, too many empty buildings, too
many underutilized teachers.

prepared statement of Mr. Grier follows:]


94

March 13, 1998

Testimony of Wilma Harvey, President of the Board of
Education of the District of Columbia before the
House of Representatives Committee on Government
Reform and Oversight.

‘Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. The Board of Education is deeply
concerned about the questions raised around the accuracy of the DC public schools
enroliment count. The Board, as a policy body, must have reliable information upon
which to base its decisions and recommendations.

As you know, the problem is part of a long-standing controversy. Among the
justifications given for instituting the Emergency Board of Trustees and hiring CEO
Becton was the past administration's problems with opening schools on time and
Providing @ validated student count. The fect that the DC public schoo! system continues,
even under the new leadership, to have difficulty with the student count is disappointing,
but comes as little surprise. The DCPS has continued to postpone putting in systems we
‘need to maintain adequate student records and data that accurately describes current
enrollment and helps us to predict future enrollment and to get the administrative and
enrollment data needed to make policy, management and oversight decisions in a timely
‘end transparent manner.

1 will ct pretend to be an expert on these systems. However, the advice the Board has
received from informed citizens is that the DCPS needs both an upgraded geographic


1 thank the Chairman for his interest in this important matter, I welcome today's
witnesses, and I look forward to a fruitful exchange.


77

In addition to the independent audit, the Authority will rec-
ommend that the D.C. public schools conduct two student counts
during the 1998-99 school year: one in the fall, when schools open
for the fall semester; one in the beginning of the spring semester.
Many school districts in fact conduct more than one student count.

Two student enrollment counts conducted during the school year
will provide a better basis for ensuring the accuracy of student
counts and restoring public confidence in the calculation of D.C.
public schools of student enrollment. The two counts will also pro-
vide more timely, accurate and reliable student information for use
in program planning and resource allocation.

The first count will be used to make any resource adjustments
resulting in changes in the student number since the spring count.
The spring count, to be conducted in January, will be used to de-
velop the budget assumptions for the development and adoption of
the school budget for the subsequent fiscal year.

When D.C. public schools conduct two student counts, the Au-
thority will recommend that the act be amended to require an inde-
pendent audit after the second student count is conducted. The
independent audit will serve as a final check and monitoring tool
over the student count process. The proposed increase in the num-
ber of student counts will greatly increase the reliability of the stu-
dent count numbers, and it will address the concerns about the ac-
curacy of the student count.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes the overview of my testimony. I
will be happy to respond to any questions that you may have.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Ladner follows:]


83

Those are the five points that I think will make quite a dif-
ference in the accuracy and the confidence in the numbers that we
have. I will leave it at that for now, Mr. Chairman.

{The prepared statement of Mr. MacLaury follows:]


5

Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank Chair-
man Tom Davis for holding this oversight hearing concerning the
District of Columbia public schools enrollment count. As Tom
knows, this issue has been a pet peeve of mine for two reasons. It
is an example of a long-standing chronic problem that could have
been easily fixed long ago, and it is the kind of issue totally within
the control of the city that is used against the District when I try
to get additional money in the Congress. I do regret the necessity
for this hearing. Although I supported an alternative to the whole-
sale eradication of the elected school board, I have not joined the
detractors of the new officials. Quite the contrary, just yesterday in
a hearing in a House Education Subcommittee and later on the
House floor as well I praised the District’s new chief academic offi-
cer, Arlene Ackerman, for her fast start, her no nonsense, fresh ap-
proach and her zeal for action over words. I can only say that I was
thrilled at her testimony that next year our youngsters would read
the equivalent of 25 books. In the face of such new and concrete
efforts by Dr. Ackerman and by General Becton, it is unfortunate
that a threshold issue such as a continually inaccurate enrollment
count is left year after year to feed the instinct of some Members
of Congress to ignore what progress is being made.

Despite some continuing criticism by the General Accounting Of-
fice of the way the District counts its students, GAO also indicates
that some progress has been made in the school systems approach
to the counting of students. Unfortunately, the problem has long
been pursued with only one hypothesis rather than with alter-
native hypotheses to account for the enrollment figure, and even
the GAO report overconcentrates on the most obvious one, the me-
chanics of the count, giving too little attention to the possibility
that the school system may have many freeloaders from suburban
jurisdictions. The first hypothesis that the school system is simply
unable to count, which would have left it in no ition to teach
children to do so, is where we have been stuck. ile there have
been real problems in putting together a sound procedure for the
count, the second explanation may be more important, it is cer-
tainly more serious, that the school system has been counting both
residential and nonpaying, nonresidential students. After all, the
population of the District has been tumbling badly since the late
1980’s and since 1990 has spiraled precipitously down while we
were asked to believe that the school population could remain sta-
ble and in some years actually increase.

The District’s most recent count, 1997, of its student population
at something over 77,000 was nearly statistically identical to last
year’s count of something over 78,000. Of course, these figures defy
recently released census data that show that in only the last 2
years the District has lost as many residents as it lost in the entire
decade of the 1980’s. In the 1990's the District is on track to lose
3 times as many residents as it lost in the 1980’s, and currently
the city is at its lowest population since the Depression. Population
losses have been greatest in wards 7 and 8, where most of the Dis-
trict’s children reside. There is no way, in the face of these dev-
astating statistics, that public school enrollment count could re-
main stable from year to year.


111

it was six or seven topics, illustratively that we might work to-
gether on. And she has just now named a few of them. You could
name others like bilingual education, issues that are sensitive,
where the community has a very correct input, where we need to
jointly hear from the community.

Ms. NorTON. You indicated that it didn’t, to quote you, help that
the school board was in the courts. The school board and appar-
ently its counsel stood in readiness. They're not in the courts be-
cause they wanted to go to court.

I followed this litigation very carefully, and I’m very disappointed
that what I believe could have been an amicable settlement in the
beginning of a strengthened relationship was passed over. I think
you forced these people back into court because a series of not only
joint hearings but other joint action wasn’t worked out so as to set-
tle the lawsuit.

I want to know what you’re doing now to settle this lawsuit so
that matters involving the school system can be dealt with by
grown-up people rather than put before a judge to try to force peo-
ple to act like grown-ups and settle their differences. I would like
to know what is the status of the lawsuit and what is the status
of settlement discussions.

Ms. LADNER. I could speak to that, Madam Chairman. We have
a—members of the Authority have a meeting with our counsel and
representatives of the board of education and their counsel next
Thursday, I believe, Thursday morning at counsel’s headquarters.
The two parties who will attend are Ed Singletary and myself—and
I because we have the oversight from the Authority for schools—
and along with our counsel Dan Resnik. I don’t know—we’re going
to meet at plaintiff's counsel’s headquarters. So Mrs. Harvey can
better tell you.

Ms. Harvey. Well, the board of education—the plaintiffs, I
should say—in this instance will be—is scheduled to meet at Arent
and Fox at 10 o'clock on the 19th. The board of education is—the
plaintiffs rather—will be in attendance at that particular meeting.

To be very honest with you, Congresswoman Norton, the lawsuit
does indeed kind of put a little strain in between the two bodies;
but, however, we are committed. As the president of the board of
education, we are committed to stay focused on what we have to
do to get through this difficult process but stay focused on how we
can best advise and offer our input to the board of trustees as well
as to the Authority.

At each of our committee meetings, each action that we take we
have forwarded over to not only the trustees but directly to the Au-
thority so that they can actually see what the board of education
is doing.

It is sometimes—you know, being a member of the board of trust-
ees, sometimes I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. But, you know,
we do what we have to do; and the bottom line is that I’m ve:
committed to the children of the District of Columbia and my col-
leagues on the board of education as well. So we’re trying to work
through this process because we do feel that we could have taken
another route. However, it didn’t happen, so we're going to move
with the route that we have to take.


81

that you and the community can place on the count in making resource allocation
decisions, The Authority is committed to ensuring that any weaknesses identified by the
independent audit will be corrected.

Recommended Improvement in the Student Count

In addition to the independent audit, the Authority will recommend that the D.C.
Public Schools conduct two student counts during the 1998-1999 school year, one in the
fall, when school opens for the fall semester, and one in the beginning of the spring
semester. Many school districts, in fact, conduct more than one student count. Two
student enrollment counts, conducted during the school year, will provide a better basis
for ensuring the accuracy of the student counts and restoring public confidence in the
calculation of D.C. Public Schools of student enrollment. The two student counts will
also provide more timely, accurate and reliable student information for use in program
planning and resource allocation. The first count will be used to make any resource
adjustments resulting in changes in the student number since the spring count. The spring
count, to be conducted in January, will be used to develop the budget assumptions for the
development and adoption of the school budget for the subsequent fiscal year. When the
D.C. Public Schools conducts two student counts, the Authority will recommend that the
‘Act be amended to require an independent audit after the second student count is
conducted. The independent audit will serve as a final check and monitoring tool over
the student count process. The proposed increase in the number of student counts will
greatly increase the reliability of the student count numbers and it will address the
concems about the accuracy of the student count.

The Authority appreciates the opportunity to report on our efforts to meet the
requirements of the Act. This concludes my written testimony. I will be happy to
respond to any questions that the Subcommittee wishes to ask.


107

data up, because it can be, perhaps, an equitable administration of
scarce resources.

I think it should bring a measure of fairness. I’m not saying that
there is unfairness in the system now, but at least if we are able
to appropriate to each child, whether they are in the public school
or a charter school, the same amount of money, then it will remove
all the suspicion and doubt as to whether or not kids in one part
of the school are getting the same as those in another or whatever.

Mr. MacLaury. I would certainly concur. It’s very hard to argue
against a per pupil allotment formula, it seems to me, in the ab-
stract. The question is, how do you arrive at it? What do you count
as add-ons for preschool or high school? How do you differentiate
among special needs kids and the like?

It’s the application and determination of the formula, not that
there exists such a formula; that is the tough part. It’s not in con-
flict, I think, with school-based management. it is still—in fact,
you can argue on the contrary, that it’s essential to school-based
management or at least it’s complementary to it. We have to have
it because we are going to have charter schools.

We have charter schools and we are going to have more charter
schools. We have to have it. If we are going to have equivalency
across public schools and charter public schools, we have to have
a unified per pupil expenditure amount.

The last point I would make is that on the basis of where Coun-
cilman Chavous is at the moment with this exercise on per pupil
allotment, it would show that on that basis, the public schools for
the school year 1999 should be asking for $583 million in local
funds as opposed to the $543, I think it is, that we are asking. The
current formula, if you apply it pro forma to the number of stu-
dents that we think we have, correctly or incorrectly, would give
us a higher number.

Ms. Norton. But concomitantly, if anything like what Dr. Grier
has said is correct, that might indicate that the schools are over-
funded and that schools need to look at how they are spending
money and in streamlining in a way that makes sure the money
goes to the students. It cuts both ways. Yes, Ms. Harvey.

Ms. Harvey. I think that the Board of Education is on record
around the issue of equity. I think if this formula does indeed come
forth around the issues of equity in relationship to students, that,
indeed, is something that the Board of Education would continue
to employ and review as we pass—as the council begins to look at
this particular formula.

And also, the board of education is also on record with school-
based management and school-by-school budgeting. As a result of
this, I think that the council is beginning to look at a way in which
the school system can come up with the adequate funding that we
need. I think what the Board of Education is waiting now to see
is how does it really play out in relationship to the base.

For example, I think Mr. MacLaury is absolutely on target.
When we speak about our special education children, those kinds
of factors are things that we are seeing how the formula process
would work out. But it is truly something I think that is needed
to bring the school system up in regards to equity.

Ms. NorTON. Mr. Bonham, do you have any view on that?


92

pecially in the Shaw and the Columbia Heights area, are busting
from their seams.

As we entered into in the last round of school closing which re-
sulted in the closing of two schools, there was much discussion
around the potential growth in that area. The consideration of a
major housing development and the Metro construction indicates
future enrollment trends in the District of Columbia. It is my opin-
ion that ward 1 is just one of the many examples throughout the
District of Columbia that we need to have accurate data, that we
can show growth and patterns.

It is, therefore, not surprising to me as a board member of 11
years that the charter school proponents are attempting to respond
to the unmet demands and are now seeking to use the same build-
ings that were closed.

A similar problem emerges when you look at the draft facilities
master plan prepared by the District of Columbia public schools.
Hampered by the lack of credible current and projected enrollment
data, the plan fails to give a vision of the kinds of schools and their
geographic distribution that we will need to support revitalization
in the district. I believe the City Council was correct when it re-
jected that plan.

I strongly believe until we have a complete, and I underscore
complete, picture of current and projected enrollment, we should
not proceed with additional school closings. We must be able to
plan for success and meet the needs and demands of families re-
turning to our improving schools. I believe it is highly plausible
that over the coming years, the number of school children may in-
crease significantly.

If I may diverge from my testimony, I would say if you will look
at the surrounding jurisdictions, you will see a boom in the student
population. I think the D.C. public schools want to be prepared in
the future so that we can address that projected growth in our pop-
ulation.

Again, let me emphasize the need for good data to make good
policy decisions. Our city budget is capped, and we cannot request
additional money just because we have not planned well. The
DCPS cannot make credible arguments for an increase in the edu-
cation budget without more credible data. We need a reliable stu-
dent count to accurately calculate the core allotment in order to
fund our charter schools, and we need more good data for every as-
pect to make our schools good: new and modernized schools, text-
books, library acquisition, teacher recruitment, training, et cetera.

Let me close by saying that the goal of the District of Columbia
public schools is to be a first class school system that our residents
deserve for their children. To get to that, we must have integrity
restored in the enrollment count, and we need to move toward that
end.

In conclusion, I believe it is time to stop operating in an emer-
gency mode and postponing serious planning. Of course we must
act with urgency, but we must take the time now to put in place


60

There is a huge resentment of the fact that we cannot tax these
folks if they work in the District, and there is at least a reasonable
possibility that some of them work here, get out scot-free without
any—if this is found out, not by you, if the announcement doesn’t
come from you, but from the other investigators, you are going to
pay the price. So I’m asking you to submit before school is out, and
the steps to be taken for summer school, more than the vague an-
swers you've provided us this evening.

Ms. Norton. Let me just say for the record, because it’s in the
GAO testimony and the chairman asked, well, you know, give me
some of the reasons they would come in here. Elridge’s School is
a free all-day kindergarten. Let me tell you something. I have a bill
in which I’m usin, District, which has a national reputation in
prekindergarten, I’m using that to try to give the Federal Govern-
ment to give seed money to the States so that, in the 50 States,
we will have prekindergarten, which will get rid of the whole day
care controversy. And it will mean that people aren’t trying to find
out whether the buildings conform to safe standards or whether
teachers are certified. And I’m using the District as an indication
this can be done, although you've had to cobble together Head Start.
money. Anyway, you’ve done a remarkable job there.

Of course, you have kindergartens, and you realize Mississippi
was the last State to get kinder; n_and only got it in the 1980's.
I went to nursery school in a public school in the District of Colum-
bia, Bruce Monroe Nursery School, free; before- and after-school

rograms at low cost. The GAO said they visited one Program for
bee a week, which was an after-school care rogram. Tl never for-
get my mother-in-law, an extraordinary mother when I went back
to work after my child was born, and my mother-in-law said she
wouldn’t take any money. So in order to—to soothe our conscience,
we gave her $25 a week to take care of our kids. I can understand
why this would be attractive. That was considered a token amount
then. Imagine what that’s considered today when day care is not
available, after-school care is almost totally unavailable. The pro-
gram extended the schooldays to accommodate working parents
from 7 a.m. to 6 pm.

High schools, highly regarded—with highly regarded academic
and artistic programs, and some high schools had athletic pro-
grams that reportedly attracted scouts from highly rated colleges,
students could participate in athletic programs until age 19 com-
pared to 18 in some nearby jurisdictions and other wards.

In other words, I think we actually have some magnets out there,
a combination of city employees and good schools, that get very lit-
tle publicity, that is saying, for all of you comers that are looking
for some freeloading, we’re not counting, so come on in here.

So, in fact, you help us to look like we've got a 1: student
body. That is the next danger. First is poor counting. That’s only
incompetence. Next is massive fraud.

But you have to understand that there have been allegations
that the school system deliberately kept these figures. I do not be-
lieve that. But you’ve got to go at this, at the three levels in which
the allegations are out there, uncover it yourself, put forward your
own plan, rather than have it uncovered by others, especially since
Mr. Grier’s testimony is fairly devastating because he compares


56

With regard to your previous question regarding New York City
public school system as a model, we have not done any work in-
volving New York City, but we did visit the Boston school system
as part of our work for the August 1997 report. And I'll note that
we believe the Boston school system has a good, good process in
place for counting students. And it has the added provision of re-
quiring proof of residency, which we still believe is important, par-
ticularly in the District of Columbia.

Mr. Davis. If you’ve got 4,000 students that live outside the city,
somebody is paying for that in the city in a budget where you have
competing priorities. I think there’s not a person at this table or
in the system that doesn’t want to get that fixed. I agree with that.

As we look at the New York computer system, and you look at
the proof of residency that Boston has got, when you combine
these, you come up with a pretty good system.

I would say before we reinvent some new super duper system, if
we have a system that our experts are telling us is effective and
work, let’s use it. We can always update it when they get in place.

But we just struggle in this city sometimes with the best of in-
tentions just to try to stay afloat when there are some life rafts out
there that we can grab onto. In this case, it’s New York count sys-
tem and maybe Boston’s verification system for residency. Let’s em-
ploy them. We may have to tailor it slightly to fix the laws that
apply to the District, but if we can work toward that with a time-
table, then everyone is going to be more comfortable, and Congress
won't have to ask year after year, what’s the count?

Let me yield to my colleague Ms. Norton. I know you have a
number of questions as well. Ms. Norton, take as much time as you
need with the questions, since I did.

Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, I want to say that I’m yery Pleased you’ve begun to
move on this issue. If the truth be told, kly, for as long as I’ve
been back in the District, when I came back home in 1977, the
issue has been up, and there’s been no movement on it. So I’m
pleased to have some movement on it.

As I indicated, I am—I think that ultimately People can get it
right in counting. I’m most disturbed by the fact that we are losing
taxpayers, and that that means for every taxpayer you lose, some-
body may be having to pay more taxes. So I’m real concerned about
fraud myself.

And if there is fraud, I would like the school system to uncover
it, as Mr. Grier says. Perhaps we don’t have to be as draconian as
that, I’m sure. But I would like the school system to uncover it, be-
cause if it gets uncovered here or the newspapers, the District has
a terrible price to pay. It will all come back on the District.

This 90 percent figure that Mr. Wenning rests on and that Mr.
Grier says is most unusual in a large city school system, the 90
percent figure for tests——

Mr. WENNING. I would love to comment on that.

Ms. Norton. I would love to hear your comment on that.

Mr. WENNING. When I said 90 percent, I cited a District-wide fig-
ure. Mr. Grier then cited that high schools often have a lower per-
centage, and that’s indeed the case in D.C. public schools. In 11th
grade, for example, tests for only 76 percent of the official enroll-


18

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

1 am pleased to be here today to assist the Subcommittee in its oversight of the
District of Columbia Public Schools' (DCPS) enrollment count An accurate count of the
number of enrolled students is the cornerstone of a schoo! district's financial needs
assessment. Although in the past, DCPS did not receive funds on the basis of the number
of students enrolled, new budget initiatives will soon directly link DCPS' funding to
school enrollment Even now, the number of enrolled students is an important factor in
developing DCPS' budget and distributing its funds. Consequently, a valid enrollment
count process and an accurate count are critical for DCPS' district- and school-level
planning, staffing, funding, and resource allocation.

‘Today, I will discuss our recent report' on the enrollment count process that DCPS
used in school year 1996-97 and actions DCPS officials report they have taken in response
to our recommendations. Our report was prepared at your request and was in response
to criticisms raised in the past several years about the accuracy of DCPS' enrollment
count. Specifically, you asked us to examine DCPS' 1996-97 enrollment count process to
determine whether the process appeared sufficient to produce an accurate count.
‘Subsequently, for this hearing, you asked us to follow up with DCPS regarding any
actions taken in response to our recommendations.

Our report on DCPS' 1996-97 enrollment count process is based on interviews with
and documents obtained from DCPS administrative staff, city officials, officials in other
urban school districts and their state departments of education, officials in the U.S.
Department of Education, and education experts. We also visited 15 DCPS elementary
and secondary schools, randomly selected according to school level and city quadrant.
During our school visits, we interviewed principals, school administrative staff, and
teachers and reviewed selected documents. To follow up with DCPS regarding actions
taken in response to our recommendations, we interviewed DCPS' Director of
Educational Accountability, who is the DCPS official responsible for the 1997-98
enrollment count and reviewed various documents he provided to us. It is noteworthy
that we neither visited DCPS schools, talked with teachers and principals, nor reviewed
documents at the school level for our follow-up as we did for our report.

RESULTS IN BRIEF

‘As we reported in August 1997, in spite of some changes in DCPS' enrollment
count process in response to criticisms, the 1996-97 count process remained flawed in
several respects, For example, the Student Information System (SIS) continued to have
errors, such as multiple enrollment records for a single student and weaknesses in the

Emrors (GAO/HEHS-97-161, Aug. 21, 1997).


47

FURTHERMORE, DCPS CAN, FOR THE FIRST TIME, TARGET
NONRESIDENTS USING ITS AUTOMATED DATABASE, THIS DATA,
COUPLED WITH REVISED AND STRENGTHENED RESIDENCY
RULES, WILL SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVE DCPS' ABILITY TO
IDENTIFY NONRESIDENTS AND ENFORCE TUITION
REQUIREMENTS.

MR. CHAIRMAN, INSTITUTING CHANGE IN A LARGE URBAN
SCHOOL SYSTEM IN THE MIDST OF A TAKEOVER IS A COMPLEX.
AND OFTEN INCREMENTAL PROCESS THAT INVOLVES BOTH
CHANGES IN THE RULES AND CHANGES IN ORGANIZATIONAL
CULTURE. WE CHANGED THE RULES THIS YEAR ON HOW WE
COUNT OUR STUDENT ENROLLMENT. WE WERE ABLE TO
IDENTIFY ERRORS, CORRECT THEM, AND HOLD PEOPLE
ACCOUNTABLE. NOW WE MUST FOLLOW THROUGH WITH
ADDITIONAL IMPROVEMENTS AND CONTINUE TO FOSTER CHANGE
IN OUR ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE.

WE ARE ABOUT TO BEGIN A PROCESS OF COLLECTING THREE
DOCUMENTS SUPPORTING PROOF OF RESIDENCY FROM 77,000
DIFFERENT STUDENTS IN 150 SCHOOLS WHILE TARGETING
SEVERAL THOUSAND STUDENTS FOR TUITION ENFORCEMENT.
HAVING THE REVISED RULE IN PLACE, WITH ITS MORE
STRINGENT REQUIREMENTS, EXPEDITED APPEALS PROCESS, AND
LEVERAGE FOR PRINCIPALS, WAS AN IMPORTANT FIRST STEP. TO
BE SUCCESSFUL, HOWEVER, THIS EFFORT WILL REQUIRE THE


51

spending around $7,000 a student, that is not out of the ballpark,
is it; that is $28 million a year?

Mr. WENNING. Right.

General BECTON. That is correct.

Mr. Davis. That’s big bucks. What could you do with that money
in the school system; buy computers?

General BECTON. That is exactl: right.

Mr. Davis. New teachers, roofs, all those things could be used
with that money.

General BECTON. Which is why we are so insistent upon getting
a new residency approach approved that will have teeth in it.

Mr. Davis. I understand. You didn’t invent this situation. You
kind of walked into it and are trying to get a handle on it. I am
just trying to outline how important this is.

ir. Grier.

Mr. Grikr. I think it is obviously very important that the Dis-
trict collect money from parents of kids who are not legally in the
schools.

Mr. Davis. Or get them out of the schools.

Mr. GRIER. Or get them out of the school system if they can, yes.

Mr. Davis. I gather if they had to come up with $7,000, a lot of
these kids would go to their——

Mr. GRIER. Would have to. It would result in not a great deal of
increased revenue.

Mr. Davis. But if you have fewer kids, you can hire fewer teach-
ers, and lower the ratios. Would you agree with that?

es.

Ms. BLANCHETTE. It would seem reasonable that that would be
the result. If not fewer teachers then allocating resources in other
ways. And it might impact on school facility needs, number of
school buildings required and so forth.

Mr. GRIER. May I add a little to what I said? That is that I hope
that we won't fasten solely or mostly upon that question. I don’t
think it is the germane one. The question really is, How many kids
does the District have, where are they and what does this portend
for planning and management of the system?

lew York City could not manage a student body of over a million
kids if it didn’t have a good enrollment tracking system. It’s abso-
lutely essential. I hold New York City up as a model for the Na-
tion.

Mr. Davis. So you have a model at least in New York; we don’t
have to reinvent the wheel. In fact, in New York they are probably
more transient in many cases, given their immigration, than in this

city.

Mr. GRIER. Enormous transiency. Enormous. But they keep good
records. That is an automated system. It is easy to use data entry
screens. It is very user friendly.

Mr. Davis. Do they have proof of residency that they would re-
quire?

Mr. GRIER. They don’t require proof of residency. They couldn’t
get it from some of the students because they are illegals. There
would just be nothing there that they could work with. Fhey don’t
bother with that. But they do bother with the number of kids they
have enrolled and that is what they care about. They think they


80

of any material weaknesses in the systems, procedures, or methodology used in
determining the number of students and in assessing and collecting fees and tuition from

non-resident students.

The Authority is required, not later than 45 days, or as soon thereafter as is
practicable, after the date on which the Authority receives the initial annual report from
the schools, to submit the independent audit to the schools, the Mayor, the Council of the
District of Columbia, and the appropriate congressional committees. The cost of the

audit is to be borne by the schools.

Authority Compliance with Statutory Requirements

Although the Act required the report to be issued to the Authority by October 15”, the
official enrollment count was not conducted until November 4, 1997, because the
opening of the schools was delayed. The Authority received the enrollment report on
December 15, 1997. On January 20°, 1998, the Authority issued a request for proposals
for potential vendors to conduct the independent audit of the calculation of the student
count. Unfortunately, the Authority only received one proposal, whose costs, in our

opinion, were prohibitive.

‘The Authority, therefore, re-issued the request for proposals. The second request for
proposals generated two responses. The two bids offered substantially different
approaches to the request. The Authority sought the informal advice of the General
‘Accounting Office. Based upon that advice, and our own analysis of the proposals, we
asked each of the bidders for a best-and-final-offer to reflect an agreed upon approach to
conducting the independent audit. The Authority evaluated those proposals and recently
awarded the contract. The independent audit is expected to be completed by May i,

1998,

The Authority expects that the independent audit will assist the schools to improve the

student count process for the 1998-1999 school year and to increase the degree of reliance


13

count. General Becton pointed out that recently,
despite the heavy rains in the Washington area, not one
school in the District was cited for leaks in their roofs
and not one school was closed. That is an
improvement worth noting, and I congratulate
everyone involved in school reform in the District for
their hard work and the progress that has been made.

fa Beanchatte
JeieGemndertenging-tametitc U.S. General

Accounting Office released a report, in response to a
request by this Subcommittee, to examine the DCPS
student enrollment count process for the 1996-1997
school year. Isinoleompundenstandind tions, despite
the fact that many of the recommendations of that
report have been acted upon, and the GAO conducted a

follow-up evaluation, many deficiencies still exist.


55

Mr. Davis. I have just one other question before I yield to Ms.
Norton for questions. I wonder if you could describe to us the open
enrollment system that the city public schools have and whether
this could affect the accuracy of the count. I would like everybody
to take a shot at that if you feel you can.

General BECTON. I guess I need to find out, are you talking about
open enrollment that allows a person to go from one neighborhood
over to a school in another neighborhood?

Mr. Davis. Correct.

General BECTON. OK. The principals have the authority to enroll
a student out of boundary, but once that takes place, and he or she
can only enroll so many out of boundary students because of space
constraints and what programs they have, then that name goes
into a central data bank. If that name comes up someplace else, it’s
a duplicate.

Mr. Davis. OK. Anything you can add to that?

Mr. WENNING. That happens. We saw those duplicates. And as
I said, we removed 155 duplicates, often because students show up
in two different schools, and we are able to check for that. And we
purge the system of them.

(r. GRIER. Mr. Chairman, New York City has a tremendous
amount of transiency and kids moving between schools all the
time.

Mr. Davis. More than Washington, wouldn’t you say?

Mr. GrieR. Oh, much more. Much more. Huge Hispanic popu-
lation, a lot of them illegal. People coming in all the time. Their
system has grown enormously over the past few years because of
immigration. And these folks move around a lot, because they’re
poor. They’ve got an enormous management problem, but they keep
track of those students. Believe me, they track them.

Mr. Davis. They have a system up. They have a computer system
up which the city has not headed up.

General BECTON. That’s what we're shooting for.

Mr. GRIER. It’s a beautiful system. And it’s real time. It’s right
as of this moment.

Mr. Davis. We’re spending a lot of money in this city on new
computer systems. We have to make sure that we have something
that works, and not some brand new thing that’s supposed to be
super duper that may not reduce the same amount. This is not
complicated actually——

Mr. GRIER. It really isn’t.

Mr. Davis [continuing]. Counting people.

Mr. GRIER. It should be possible.

Mr. Davis. We make it complicated sometimes, and it doesn’t
need to be.

Ms. BLANCHETTE. Yes. Mr. Chairman, in response to your cur-
rent question regarding the open enrollment, as we state in our
testimony, it just increases the possibility of duplication.

Mr. Davis. Right.

Ms. BLANCHETTE. And I guess, to some extent, it probably oc-
curred to some entrepreneurial activity among school principals to
maybe recruit students sometimes. But we don’t take issue with
the open enrollment per se.


2

However, resolution of this student enrollment count issue is criti-
cal to an ability to successfully advance the efforts to reestablish
the District of Columbia public school system as one of the finest
in the Nation.

Last August the General Accounting Office released a report we
requested which examined the procedures and results of the Dis-
trict of Columbia public schools student enrollment count process,
focusing on the 1996-97 school year. The report included rec-
ommendations which addressed failures and inaccuracies of the
past in an effort to establish procedures which would produce accu-
rate and reliable results. Some of these recommendations have
been acted upon and some of the issues raised in the GAO report
are being addressed as work in progress. However, I am distressed
that in a followup evaluation by the GAO which looked at the pro-
cedures used to determine the enrollment count of 77,111, that
many deficiencies were said to remain, including a number of items
addressed in the August 1997 GAO report. In fact, the GAO found
that over half the enrollment count included incomplete informa-
tion as to residency.

There are a number of other critical issues that the subcommit-
tee will address in the course of this hearing. I remain optimistic
that by working together we can build on the progress that has
been made.

I yield to Delegate Norton, the ranking member of the sub-
committee, for any opening statement she may wish to make.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Thomas M. Davis follows:]


72

Ms. Norton. In January, when I was on the Senate panel with
Senator Jeffords, this rule had been lying there since February, the
prior February. That was the date on it. It was a big controversy
at that hearing. And yet apparently this rule, the emergency board
approved last Thursday new regulations that will strengthen con-
siderably the school system’s residency verification capability.

What is even doing—what have the board of trustees been doing
for the period since they’ve been appointed? This is something that
parents have screamed about in this town. This was lying there un-
enforced last Thursday. I mean, this—the delay is what is going to
kill us on this one. That is why—I hope you hear me—by the end
of the year, what this would amount to is an action plan to go into
effect beginning with the summer school.

They will be way over into the summer school. Let me tell you
why. Because Dr. Ackerman is going to have things in the after-
noon funded privately that will take kids to museums and parks.
Oh, they’re going to be over here for the summer school. So we
want an action plan submitted to this committee before summer
school that addresses how you will verify residency to get into the
summer school and how you will address all the questions that we
have raised, some of which I have previously indicated in this hear-
ing, so that, in September, you will be able to say, yeah, we know
it’s a humongous task. That’s not nearly as humongous as being a
taxpayer in the District of Columbia and paying somebody else’s
kid to come in here while everybody else is getting out of Dodge.
You’ve got it now. You’ve got your own rules.

The Chairman has suggested, and I heartily endorse his sugges-
tion, indeed I ask for the District of Columbia and D.C. Public
Schools to do this right down the line, find yourself a jurisdiction.
There’s always some in the United States that have done what you
are having to do from the ground up. Do not do it from the ground
up. Take theirs off the shelf and simply use it. If you do that here,
yeah, there will be glitches. I don’t have a problem with glitches.
I have a problem with a year’s delay in implementing regulations
that were passed February a year ago. I have problems with that.
We have the document before us. I have problems with that. I have
problems with the fact that these were just passed last Thursday.
I have got problems with that. And we simply can’t let this go on,
or else the city is going to have hell to pay, which is really the kids,
because somebody is going to get into your appropriation. And
somebody is going to say—so be warned. They’re going to say that
the District can’t pay something, can’t spend money for X, Y, or Z,
until they do something about the count. That’s why I say get it
in here before summer school so that you are ahead of the sheriff.
The sheriffs are over here.

General BECTON. Mrs. Norton, may I make a response to your
question about what we have been doing?

Ms. Norton. Please, go ahead, General Becton.

General BECTON. You made reference to a document from Feb-
ruary of last year. That document was never approved by the
Board. That document was significantly changed.

Ms. NorTON. That was my point. Why in the world wasn’t it ap-
proved by the board of trustees? What were they waiting for? All


27

ments accordingly. But then it leveled out. Since then it has hardly
changed at all. We have a situation where the population in the
District has dropped by about 78,000 or almost 13 percent in the
past 7 years, since 1990. The school system has dropped by only
3,600 students or 4.5 percent, only about a third as much. On the
face of it this could suggest several things. Either that the official
enrollments are still significantly in error, that the problems
haven’t been cleaned up, or that births have been going up, which
is not so. Births have been going down. They have been going down
much faster than the population has been going down; Births have
plummeted by 23 percent while the population went down by 13.
Or it might mean that the great majority of children have somehow
remained in the District while their parents have been migrating
to the suburbs. That sounds crazy but something like it could be
occurring, at least to some degree; that is, that parents are, as has
been suggested, driving their kids to the District every day, leaving
them at school. There are great early childhood programs here,
great day care programs in the schools so they leave them there,
pick them up at night, or leave them with grandparents.

Anyway, we looked at the change in the reported preprimary en-
rollments and first through third grade enrollments. Those are the
years where you would expect that to be most likely because it
probably relates to child care needs. Well, there was an increase of
about 14 percent in preprimary enrollments; that is only about
1,500 kids. Enrollments in first through third grades increased by
about 688, and the total is about 2,200. If enrollments have tracked
population fairly closely since 1990, it will have decreased by
around 13 percent or roughly 10,500. We don’t think that more
than a small part of the drop can be made up by the increase in
preprimary enrollments in these school programs.

The third slide shows what we did to try to check on what was
going on in Prince Georges. If Prince Georges was exporting a lot
of kids to the District schools every morning, you would expect it
would have a negative discrepancy, because it would be reporting
fewer kids than it had in its population. In fact the reverse is true,
it has a positive discrepancy Tike every other suburb. So we don’t
think a lot of kids, a huge number, can be coming in from Prince
Georges. Undoubtedly there are a few. How many, we really don’t
know. It won’t be known until considerable further work is done.

I have sometimes been quoted as saying that the correct enroll-
ment of the D.C. public schools is somewhere around 67,000. I
haven't said that. I’m not saying anything today about what the
numbers are. Frankly, I don’t know how many kids the District has
now in its schools. I don’t think anybody knows. The discrepancies,
however, are so great you have to believe that there has to be some
reason and that possibly the enrollment is not even close to the
current official figure.

It is not impossible for a large city school system to collect accu-
rate enrollment numbers. My firm prepares the annual enrollment
projections for the New York City public schools. In New York City,
a million pupil school system, our projections have generally proved
accurate within less than 1 student in 1,000, an error of less than
1 student in 1,000 on a 1-year basis. We use pretty sophisticated
methods, but we cannot do that well without good school data. The


70

We've gone through Mr. Grier’s data, his current data, and we
come up with a discrepancy indeed. And we find interesting dis-
crepancies at the early grades which suggest a larger number of
nonresidents in those grades.

Ms. NorTON. Well 4,000 whatever would be a shocking number,
but it’s—you know, it’s less than 8,000 or 10,000. What I am inter-
ested in is where the children are. I’m interested in where the
flight has been in the city. And I’m interested in the stability of
that figure. Everybody knows there’s children on the other side of
the Anacostia. And everybody knows the other side of the Ana-
costia has been cleaned out, tepo ulated. That is not too strong a
figure. What’s lost most is ward 7. Ward 8 was depopulated before
then, and yet that’s where most of the children are, because what’s
left in the District of Columbia are old people, that’s really what
you're talking about, and childless people.

So now if where all the children are is where most of the Popu-
lation has gone, you still have not made me understand that Dr.
Grier’s comparison should not obtain today, because I will say that
the precipitous loss in population since 1990 indicates that some-
how you have something miraculous happening in the District of
Columbia, and that even though, in annual totals, we see huge pre-
cipitous, huge, poor people getting out of Dodge, everybody getting
out of Dodge, it’s why I have a tax bill in here. I’m scared to
death. Huge discrepancies. But the school system remains the
same it is. It’s possible. It is possible. But you have given us no
hypothesis to indicate why that should be so in the face of Dr.
Grier’s analysis and in the face of the population decline that has
been so horrendous in the 1990’s except that there may be people
coming in and using our school system. That’s a possible hypoth-
esis. If that’s the case, I want you to really get on that one quick
before somebody else does, and then you get blamed for it, and we
always get punished for it.

General BECTON. The count that we used are the ones I’ve al-
ready counted, and that’s why we obviously differ.

Mr. WENNING. This is a table showing DCPS official enrollment
from 1990 to 1997, which I would also like to introduce into the
record. It does show the decline in enrollment.

Mr. WENNING. The decline in enrollment reported from last year
to this year is the largest decline in enrollment ever reported by
the D.C. Public Schools. Granted it was 2 percent.

Ms. Norton. It’s almost statistically insignificant. The figure
from last year—the figure, I have it in my opening statement.

Mr. WENNING. Last year was 78,648 compared to 77,111 this

ear.
» Ms. Norton. You believe that’s a true figure.

Mr. WENNING. I can’t speak to the veracity of last year’s figure,
but I do believe this year’s figure is a true figure, yes.

Ms. Norton. If last year’s figure is false, we couldn’t do anything
about this year’s, because you’d be comparing—even if you compare
a true figure to a false figure, we give you a false figure.

Dr. Grier, what is your view of the 4,000 whatever figure, almost
5,000 figure he just gave us?

Mr. GRIER. Well, Mr. Wenning and I have discussed this. And it’s
possible to look at these figures a number of ways. And I have con-


63

to see what changes had been made. We did not do a full study of
the current process.
[The information referred to follows:]


20

correcting these errors. For example, although Management Information Services
personne] maintained SIS, they had no authority to correct errors. In addition, DCPS’
enrollment procedures allowed multiple records to be entered into SIS for a single
student, and its student transfer process may have allowed a single student to be enrolled
in at least two schools simultaneously. Furthermore, DCPS' practice of allowing
principals to enroll unlimited out-of-boundary students increased the possibility of
multiple enrollment records for one student. Nevertheless, DCPS did not routinely check
for duplicate records.

In addition, DCPS' official enrollment count included categories of students usually
excluded from enrollment counts in other districts when the counts are used for funding
purposes. For example, DCPS included in its enrollment count students identified as
tuition-paying nonresidents of the District of Columbia and students above and below the
mandatory age for public education in the District of Columbia, including Head Start
participants,’ prekindergarten students (age 4), preschool students (age 0 to 3), and some
senior high and special education students aged 20 and older.’ In contrast, the three
states that we visited reported that they exclude from enrollment counts used for funding
Purposes any student who is above or below mandatory school age or who is fully funded
from other sources. Furthermore, even though the District of Columbia Auditor has
suggested that students unable to document their residency be excluded from the official
enrollment count, whether they pay tuition or not, DCPS included these students in its
enrollment count for school year 1996-97.

During school year 1996-97, District of Columbia schools had some attractive
Elementary

cost. For example, one school we visited had before- and after-school care for $25 per
week. This program extended the schoo! day's hours to accommodate working parents—
the program began at 7 am. and ended at 6 p.m. In addition, several high schools had
highly regarded academic and artistic programs; and some high schools had athletic
programs that reportedly attracted scouts from highly rated colleges. Furthermore,
students could participate in competitive athletic programs until age 19 in the District,
compared with age 18 in some nearby jurisdictions.

Problems persisted, however, in the critical area of residency verification. In
school year 1996-97, schools did not always verify student residency as required by DCPS!

own procedures. Proofs of residency, when actually obtained, often fell short of DCPS'
standards. Moreover, central office staff did not consistently track failures to verify

*Head Start has its own funding source.

‘The District of Columbia School Reform Act of 1995 requires separate reporting of some
of these groups but does not require that they be included in aggregate counts.

3 GAO/T-HEHS-98-91


37

Mr. Davis. Thank you very much. We will have some followup
questions. That was informative testimony.

General Becton is next.

General BECTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and members of the
committee. I appreciate being invited to testify before the sub-
committee today. As you know, Dr. MacLaury, the chairman of the
board and Mr. Wenning, director of the District of Columbia Public
School’s Office of Educational Accountability, are here with us this
morning and will testify as well. I would like to make a few general
remarks about the efforts that we have made to ensure the accu-
racy of our school student enrollment count. As I said, Mr.
Wenning will discuss the specific steps that we have taken toward
that end.

First, let me say that I clearly recognize the importance of an ac-
curate student count. Obviously our student count directly affects
our per pupil expenditure rate. This expenditure rate and the com-
parable expenditure rates of other school districts are used by pol-
icymakers to evaluate what our funding needs are and whether the
funds that we have are being used appropriately.

As you have already noted, the GAO evaluated the process for
counting students used in the September 1996-97 count, which as
you know was prior to our arrival, and found that process to be
vulnerable to error. As a matter of fact, the GAO found the count
to be unauditable because of the process that was used. We used
the GAO report as the basis for changes that we made in this
year’s count.

I should note we produced an auditable count. The financial au-
thority recently hired an independent firm to audit that count.
That audit is currently under way. According to our fall 1997-98
count, the official enrollment for DCPS is 77,111. That total in-
cludes 33 students who are paying tuition as nonresidents. We
know that there are additional nonresidents in the count and rec-
ognize that this is a serious problem. The board of trustees recently
approved a new stricter residency policy. I am hopeful that this
new rule will help us to identify nonresidents in our schools and
force them to pay tuition or remove them quickly.

I believe that Dr. MacLaury intends to discuss this rule in more
detail, so I will leave that up to him. I do want you to know that
we intend to continue working to improve the process by which we
count our students. I know that the GAO still believes our count
to be vulnerable to error, and although we did not agree with all
of the most recent findings, we do share their view that there is
still room for improvement. I hope you have had the opportunity
to review our February 27 letter to the GAO responding to our
draft testimony as it described both the areas where we are in sub-
stantial agreement with GAO and those areas where we believe
that they may not have fully understood certain actions that were
taken to improve the count and impact on those actions.

We are aware that some school districts have a much more cen-
tralized student enrollment process and we are considering the pos-
sibility of moving in that direction in the District of Columbia. Like
so many of the information systems in the District of Columbia, our
student information system is badly outdated. In its report, GAO
described many of its shortcomings. We are planning to purchase


57

ment was returned, test booklets. We know we have a truancy
problem. District-wide, 90 percent returned booklets. And the
issue—

Ms. Norton. Let me ask Mr. Grier if 90 percent District-wide is
an unusual figure.

Mr. Grier. Well, Pll just refer to the District’s own counts in
which they went out and found about a 10-percent average for stu-
dents not in attendance at the elementary level. So I just don’t un-
derstand how those figures track. I don’t want to accuse anybody,
but enrollments mean jobs, and falling enrollments can mean that
people will lose their jobs. And people under those circumstances,
very good people, can be forced into doing some things that maybe
they don’t really like to do. So you always have that problem. It’s
endemic to school systems that there can be padded enrollments.
It’s been going on for a long time.

One of the things that New York has that helps enforce this is
they got caught a couple of decades ago, and that’s why they’ve got
such a good system now. The State really took it out of them.

We have no higher authority here now except the control board.
And the control board is the first time in a long time that we’ve
had that higher authority. I hope the control board will take ad-
vantage of this opportunity to put in place a system that really will
work and that people can depend upon that it will be well-mon-
itored and well-managed.

Ms. Norton. Well, we have a council. The council has an edu-
cation committee. I don’t know why the council hasn’t performed
this task. It would be, it seems to me, ready-made for a legislative
body to monitor this. And I think it—they would be well-placed to
do so, because the District has to, in 4 years, figure out how it dem-
onstrates that, without a control board, it can do everything from
count money to count students.

First, let me say to Mr. Wenning, because of the strong efforts
you took to count this time, and they were considerably stronger
than what had been said in the past, there’s a natural, altogether
natural tendency to make sure everybody knows that those were
good criteria upon which to rely.

The problem I have with the way the school count has been ap-
proached over the years, I indicated somewhat in my testimony the
absence of all the hypotheses on the table, that the most dangerous
one to leave off the table is the possibility of fraud or padding or—
that’s dangerous to leave off the table.

And it seems to me that the most important thing the school sys-
tem can do is not to say, here are the tests, waive the tests and
waive the other data; that, in fact, I believe you have made
progress in finding what to say, but to indicate that that is a hy-
pothesis that anybody would, at this point at least, have to enter-
tain and to indicate an approach to proceeding on that hypothesis,
because I’m telling you, it’s going to be uncovered. I don’t know if
it’s going to be in this—some explanation, let me put it this way,
it is going to be uncovered. I don’t know if it will be this year or
next year. I don’t know if it will be a GAO report or if it will be
an investigative report in the city paper. But I know if it comes out
that way and not out of the school system, it makes all the dif-


23

REPORTED RESPONSES TO OUR RECOMMENDATIONS,

DCPS has made some changes in response to our recommendations. For example,
it dropped the enrollment card. DCPS now relies upon other, more readily collected
information, such as a child's grades or work, as proof that a child has been attending,
DCPS has also strengthened some mechanisms for correcting SIS errors, such as multiple
enrollment records for a single student. Staff reported that central office staff now
conduct monthly duplicate record checks. These staff then work with the schools to
resolve errors. In addition, central office staff now have the authority to correct SIS
errors directly. Schools are also now required to prepare monthly enrollment reports,
signed by the principal, throughout the school year. Central office staff review and track
these reports. In addition, SIS can now track consecutive days of absence for students,
which helps track the implementation of attendance rules. Finally, all principals are now
required to enter into SIS the residency status of all continuing as well as new DCPS
students. DOPS officials believe SIS' residency verification status field also serves as a
safeguard against including both duplicate records and inactive students in the enrollment
count.

Nonetheless, some DCPS policies and practices that increase the possibility of
multiple records and other SIS errors have not changed. For example, DCPS continues
allowing schools to enroll, without restriction, students who tive outside school
attendance boundaries. School data entry staff may still manually override SIS safeguards
against creating multiple records. In addition, SIS still lacks adequate safeguards to
ensure that it accurately tracks students when they transfer from one schoo! to another.
SIS' new residency verification status field will not prevent the creation or maintenance
of duplicate records. For example, a student might enroll in one school, filling out all
necessary forms required by that school, including the residency verification form, and
decide a few days later to switch to another school. Rather than officially transferring,
the student might simply go to this second school and re-register, submitting another
residency verification form as part of the routine registration paperwork. If the second
school's data entry staff choose to manually override SIS safeguards, duplicate records
could be created. Even if a student did not submit a residency verification form at the
second school, the data entry staff could simply code the SIS residency field to show that
no form had been returned, creating duplicate records.

Regarding the critical area of residency verification, all principals must now issue
and collect from all students a completed and signed residency verification form (as well
as enter residency verification status information into SIS as discussed). Principals are
also encouraged to obtain proofs of residency and attach these to the forms. DCPS
considers the form alone, however, the only required proof of residency for the 1997-98
count. The school district encouraged but not did not require such supporting proofs to
accompany this form. A signed form without proofs of residency is insufficient to prove
residency in our opinion. Such proofs are necessary to establish that residency

6 GAO/T-HEHS-98-91


2009.5

2009.6

2009.7

90

In all contested residency cases, the Superintendent or the Superintendent's
designee shall first attempt to settle claims through fact finding, interviews,
and discussion with the parties.

The review of the contested residency shall be performed by the
Superintendent or the Superintendent's designee. If, after the review of the
contested residency case, it is determined that the claimant failed to provide
the required proof of District of Columbia residency, the decision of the
Superintendent or the Superintendent's designee shall be the final
administrative decision of D.C. Public Schools.

In all contested residency cases, currently enrolled student shall be allowed
to continue to attend school without prepayment of tuition pending the final
administrative decision by the D.C. Public Schools.

Delete Sections 2009.8 - 2009.16


44

* STUDENTS COULD BE COUNTED MORE THAN ONCE DUE TO
DUPLICATE RECORDS.

* STUDENTS COULD BE COUNTED THAT WERE NOT ACTIVELY
ENROLLED.

* SCHOOL RECORDS WERE NOT PROPERLY MAINTAINED SO THAT
THE COUNT COULD NOT BE AUDITED.

* RESIDENCY VERIFICATION OFTEN WAS NOT DONE, LEAVING
DCPS VULNERABLE TO INCLUDING NONRESIDENT STUDENTS
IN ITS COUNT.

NEW ENROLLMENT COUNT PROCEDURES

IN RESPONSE TO THE GAO FINDINGS, DCPS IMPLEMENTED NEW
PROCEDURES THIS SCHOOL YEAR TO COUNT ITS OFFICIAL
ENROLLMENT. THE NEW PROCEDURES RESULTED IN A COUNT OF
77,411 STUDENTS THAT IS NOW BEING AUDITED, AS REQUIRED BY
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SCHOOL REFORM ACT OF 1995.

THE PROCEDURES USED THIS YEAR FEATURED:

* USE OF THE AUTOMATED DATABASE FOR THE OFFICIAL
COUNT


85

Under municipal regulations dating back to 1977, DC Public Schools have been in an
embarrassingly weak position regarding tuition enforcement, Parents were supposed to
provide a District address and phone number — but the rules said simply that principals
~may require” actual evidence of residency.

‘And some of that “evidence” included such meaningless items as “maintenance of a bank
account or local credit account in the District of Columbia” and “membership in a church
or other local organization operating in the District of Columbia.” Under these rules, a
child whose parents live in Anchorage could prove eligible for tuition-free attendance in
DC public schools.

Moreover, by spelling out an elaborate and time-consuming appeals process, the old rules
virtually invited litigation and delaying tactics,

By the action taken last week, now awaiting approval by the Control Board, the Trustees
have given General Becton the tools he needs to resolve this situation. Specifically

‘+ Principals shall require submission of at least three documents indicating DC residency
in order to determine if students are eligible to enroll,

‘* Principals may also demand verification for currently-enrolled students

‘* Residency can only be established by hard evidence such as proof of tax payment,
documentation of public assistance, or utility bills showing the parent’s name

* Requests for reconsideration must be filed within ten days, and will be handled through
an expedited review.

(With vour permission, I am submitting for the record the Notice of Final Rulemaking as
approved and forwarded to the Control Board.)

Mr. Chairman, this is not a simple issue. During the rulemaking process we heard from
advocates for the homeless and multicultural communities about the need for fairness and
sensitivity in establishing legal eligibility for schooling. We tried to take those comments
into account in the final version. We also heard from others that even steer measures
should have been taken. Rest assured that we will monitor implementation to see that
these rules are both effective and even-handed

But action was clearly necessary. We have heard far too many stories about cars with
Maryland and Virginia license plates driving up to DC schools. At a time when we've had
to begin closing undersubscribed schools, we've also heard of principals who looked the
other way so that out-of-District students would boost their enrollment. Frankly, the old
Board rules left plenty of room to maneuver.


62

Ms. Norton. Now you're getting to the point of things. General
Becton, we are not funded on a per-pupil funding allocation basis,
are we?

General BECTON. No. We're funded based on—our schools and
staff are on the number of students we have in the school.

Ms. NorTON. But we don’t know the number of the students we
have. That’s what I’m asking. Are they staffed on the basis of per-
pupil basis, on a per-pupil basis so you get a certain amount of
funding for each pupil?

General BECTON. In effect, yes, from a conceptual standpoint, be-
cause a school of 500 people will have x number of teachers. A
school of 450 people will have y number of teachers.

Ms. NorTON. Let me ask—let me try to reconcile this with what
Dr. Grier was reporting. One of the reasons that New York City
may go at this so relentlessly is that when they go to Albany, they
know that they are simply not going to get money except on an ac-
curate per-pupil basis. Does the District of Columbia fund its
schools on the per-pupil basis that is similar to the States or to
New York City and New York State in particular? Dr. Grier.

Mr. GRIER. I’m sorry. Does the the District of Columbia fund its
schools that way? I do not know. I’m sorry. Ms. Norton, I don’t

Ow.

Ms. Norton. I’m told that Congress has mandated this for the
next school year, which says to me it isn’t done now.

General BECTON. That’s what we have. And I think we have
mentioned that.

Ms. Norton. I see. If we go to that, let me tell you what that’s
going to do. It’s going to put it now under an appropriation—it’s
going to put it now under a real appropriation screen. That’s why
it’s so important to look at it, because if Congress says you must
do per-pupil funding in the same way that the States do it, then
that makes it a big new Appropriation Subcommittee item. So
please be on notice, because I don’t think I need to say anything
further on that.

Dr. Blanchette, you said you did not visit schools this time. You
did before.

Ms. BLANCHETTE. That’s correct.

Ms. NorTON. One hypothesis that we’re talking about here is
there may be padding going on here and there because that’s
human nature. And if nobody is looking, and people want to look
better than they do, somebody may slip and do it that way. What
was your point in going to schools before, and why did you not go
to them this time?

Ms. BLANCHETTE. Well, we did, at the request of the subcommit-
tee, a full study of the process. And in order to understand how the
process was operating, we had to go to the schools. But in the Dis-
trict of Columbia, the process is very much school-based, unlike
some other jurisdictions that we visited where there is much more
central operation to enroll students and to account for students.

We did not have the time this go-around. It took us last time,
to do the field work, about 9 months; another couple of months to
issue a report. This time we’ve spent maybe 6 weeks, a couple of
months, looking at—looking at or talking to, virtually, Mr.
Wenning and his staff and looking at the documents he provided


86

I believe that we need to go beyond the important issue of enforcement to examine some
of the policies that may attract non-residents to DC schools.

On the face of it, there’s an anomaly when Emergency Trustees, brought in to transform a
school system in crisis, have to worry about non-resident freeloaders! In part, this
phenomenon simply reflects the fact that consumers think we have some pretty effective
schools in the District. That’s certainly good news.

‘On the other hand, our school system offers what can only be described as inducements
for non-residents to sneak their children across the District line. The Mills decree, under
which the District operates, demands evaluation and placement of special education
students in only 50 days - the shortest such timeline in the country and far shorter than the
time allowed in other area school districts. On the 51” day, this court ruling mandates
private placement of students who cannot be served within the DC public school system.
‘The average cost of these placements now exceeds $39,000 per student, In my view, this
situation makes it entirely possible that some parents in neighboring jurisdictions are using
this system to get what their own county and state will not provide

And unlike our neighbors, the District also offers free, all-day prekindergarten. The
educational merits of such a program are worth debating — but many nonresidents
probably accept our generosity as free daycare.

‘Ata minimum, we need to target our enforcement efforts on schools and programs that
probably account for a large portion of our non-resident enrollment.

The new regulations make clear what is expected across the whole city. Together with the
new evaluation systems put in place this year by Mrs. Ackerman, they will make principals
clearly accountable for verifying enrollment. While I do not expect to see a sudden surge
in out-of-District tuition payments. better residency enforcement may well save millions in
teacher salaries and textbook costs.

look forward to your questions


31

In any event, if we add the 5,532 preprimary students reported by the Consus to the 67,278
enrolment in elementary and high school stated earlier, we get 72,810 — leaving a gap of 7,884 or
nearly 11 percent still unaccounted for. This is still much larger than the 2.5 percent average for the
other ten cities. Only one of these cities, Atlanta, is even in the ballpark.

‘The fact that most of the differences between the school system and Census figures were positive
suggested that undercounting by the Census Bureau might have played some role in these differences.
The Census does tend to undercount minorities, and all of the ten comparison cities have lerge
minority populations. But the differences in all but Atlanta were so much smaller than in the District
that we consider it highly unlikely that undercounting is a major source of the discrepancy here.

‘All the figures I've beea discussing s0 far are for 1990, and « lot of change has taken place since. We
next examined whether and to what degree the downward trend in the District's population ~ & trend
‘that began decades ago but has accelerated since 1990 — had been reflected in the school system's

official more commonly called enrollments. The chart shows the trends in population

and enrollments between 1985 and 1997. I've scaled the two sets of figures differently to make it

Sasytocomparethe twotrends,

Trends in Total Population (Census Bureau)
and School Membership (Schools)
District of Columbia, 1985-1997

Census (1000s) Sehoot (10008)

~ Population
“Membership

PPS PES PIPOP PRS

Population e356] 557 3s 945 [57s] 2555]
z 35.3)81.380.710.680.9}

‘The Grier Partnership


ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON comm
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sunpnce ron Congress of the Hnited States coun
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‘Washington, B.C. 20515

STATEMENT OF CONGRESSWOMAN ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON AT
A D.C. SUBCOMMITTEE OVERSIGHT HEARING ON
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS ENROLLMENT COUNT

March 13, 1998

| want to thank Chairman Tom Davis for holding this oversight hearing conceming the
District of Columbia Public Schools enrollment count. As Tom knows, this issue has been pet
peeve of mine for two reasons: (1) itis an example of a longstanding, chronic problem that could
have been easily fixed long ago, and (2) it is the kind of issue totally within the control of the city
that is used against the District when I try to get additional money in the Congress. I do regret
the necessity for this hearing. Although I supported an alteative to the wholesale eradication of
the elected schoo! board, I have not joined the detractors of the new officials. Quite the contrary.
Just yesterday, in a hearing in a House Education Subcommittee, and later, on the House floor as
well, I praised the District’s new Chief Academic Officer, Arlene Ackerman, for her fast start,
her no-nonsense, fresh approach, and her zeal for action over words to get things done. 1 can
only say that I was thrilled at her testimony that next year our youngsters would read the
equivalent of 25 books. In the face of such new and concrete efforts by Dr. Ackerman and by
General Becton, it is unfortunate that a threshold issue such as a continually, inaccurate
enrollment count is left year after year to feed the instinct of some Members of Congress to
ignore what progress is being made.

Despite some continuing criticism by the General Accounting Office (GAO) of the way
the District counts its students, GAO also indicates that some progress has been made in the
school system’s approach to the counting of students. Unfortunately, this problem has long been
pursued with only one hypothesis rather than with alternative hypotheses to account for the
enrollment figure, and even the GAO report overconcentrates on the most obvious one ~ the
mechanics of the count, giving too little attention to the possibility that the school system may
hhave many freeloaders from suburban jurisdictions. The first hypothesis that the school system
simply is unable to count, which would have left it in no position to teach children to do so is
‘where we have been stuck. While there have been real problems in putting together a sound
procedure for the count, the second explanation may also be important — that the school system
thas been counting both residential students and nonpaying nonresidential students. ARer all, the
population of the District has been tumbling badly since the late 1980s, and since 1990, has
spiraled precipitously while we were asked to believe that the school population could remain
stable and in some years actually increase.

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46

MR. CHAIRMAN, I BELIEVE WE HAVE TAKEN SIGNIFICANT STEPS
IN IMPROVING HOW WE COUNT OUR STUDENTS. I ALSO BELIEVE
THAT SIGNIFICANT STEPS REMAIN. PROMINENT AMONG THESE
ARE REPLACING THE CURRENT AUTOMATED DATA BASE WITH A
MODERN SYSTEM; MOVING TO A MORE CENTRALIZED
ENROLLMENT PROCESS WHILE ENSURING AN EQUITABLE SYSTEM
OF CHOICE AMONG SCHOOLS; AND, OF COURSE, COMBATING THE
PROBLEM OF NONRESIDENTS ATTENDING OUR SCHOOLS
WITHOUT PAYING TUITION.

AS GAO AND OTHERS WILL NO DOUBT TESTIFY, DCPS REMAINS.
VULNERABLE TO INCLUDING NONRESIDENTS IN ITS OFFICIAL
COUNT. DCPS OFFERS EDUCATION PROGRAMS THAT ARE
ATTRACTIVE TO NONRESIDENTS, PARTICULARLY PRE-SCHOOL,
PRE-KINDERGARTEN, AND ALL-DAY KINDERGARTEN PROGRAMS
NOT PROVIDED BY SURROUNDING JURISDICTIONS. IN ADDITION,
THERE IS CONSIDERABLE RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY BETWEEN THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA AND SURROUNDING JURISDICTIONS

WHEN CENSUS PROJECTIONS ARE RECONCILED WITH DCPS DATA,
IT APPEARS THAT THE NUMBER OF NONRESIDENTS INCLUDED IN
THE OFFICIAL COUNT MAY BE IN THE RANGE OF 4,000 TO 7,000
STUDENTS. HOWEVER, THE FACT THAT NONRESIDENTS MAY BE
INCLUDED IN THE COUNT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE COUNT IS.
INACCURATE. THE OVERALL COUNT IS INTENDED TO REFLECT
THE TOTAL NUMBER OF STUDENTS IN OUR SCHOOLS,
REGARDLESS OF THEIR RESIDENCY.


6

Although the GAO recommendations about how to perform a
proper count are important, they are not my major interest, espe-
cially in light of the improvement underway that I believe will con-
tinue. I hope that the school system will give priority to quickly ob-
taining tuition from nonpaying, nonresidential parents, including
billing them for past services and returning such students to their
home jurisdictions absent prompt payment. Many of the freeload-
ing parents may be city employees, the majority of whom do not
live in the District, who may bring their children with them as a
convenience to take advantage of some of our best programs, such
as early childhood, our special high schools and others. If so, these
are the same people who use other city services as well but get pro-
tection from commuter taxes. Some of them were driving home to
suburban jurisdictions on our gas cards until Congress stepped in.
The recently enacted law, which allows no exceptions, still may not
be fully enforced.

Further, we all must be alarmed by the GAO’s finding that near-
ly 60 percent of DCPS students have either failed to prove resi-
dency or to provide residency verification forms. I can only hope
that this does not mean that anything like this number are ille-
gally entering the District to attend our public schools. However,
the discrepancy between the declining population and the stable
school population figures suggest the possibility of massive fraud.
In recent years, some even have alleged that some school officials
in the past deliberately failed to address these faulty numbers to
keep budgets high. Current officials need to move quickly to solve
the nonresidency problem to keep this alleged taint from traveling
to them.

In point of fact, the school system has now adopted new rules
that will eliminate residency fraud after the Board of Trustees al-
lowed the regulations to remain on paper, unenforced for a full
year. Nevertheless, I am grateful that the regulations have now
been approved and ask only that an early date for purging nonpay-
ing nonresidents be set and that an airtight system from barring
nonpaying nonresidents be in effect by the time school opens in
September 1998.

Leaving the count issue unresolved will frustrate efforts to get
assistance for the District for even the best and most worthy ef-
forts, such as funds for the 20,000 children who will attend year-
round school this summer as the District of Columbia eliminates
social promotion, or resources needed for the massive backlog of
capital improvements that the school system must address. I am
anxious to work with the appropriate officials to help speed the
necessary reforms.

It the chairman for his interest in this important matter.
I welcome today’s witnesses, and I look forward to a fruitful ex-
change. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

1 (The prepared statement of Hon. Eleanor Holmes-Norton fol-
lows:


40

believe they may not have fully understood certain actions that were taken to improve the
count and the impact of those actions.

We are aware that some school districts have a much more centralized student enrollment
process, and we are considering the possibility of moving in that direction in DC. In
addition, like so many of the information systems in the District of Columbia, DCPS"
Student Information System is badly outdated, In its report, GAO described many of its
shortcomings. We are planning to purchase a new Student information System during this
fiscal year. This new system will help us to lock-out potentially inaccurate informauon.

Finally, you asked for information about DC’s compliance with the congressional
requirement that per-pupil funding allocations for DCPS schools and public charter schools
be established. As you may be aware, the law calls for this allocation to be developed by
the City Council and the Mayor, in consultation with the schools.

tis my understanding that Councilman Kevin Chavous, who is the Chairman of the
Council's Committee on Education, Libranes and Recreation, has brought together a
working group for the purpose of developing these allocations. Mr. Ed Stephenson,
DCPS" Chief Financial Officer, and members of his staff, have been participating in this
working group. I am certain that Councilman Chavous would be happy to update you on
the status of his efforts in this area.

{will now turn to Mr. Wenning (o provide you more detail on DCPS" response the 1997
GAO report, the process we used to conduct the 1997-1998 count, and his views on the
most recent GAO analysis. After his remarks, | will of course be available to answer any
questions you may have.

Thank you, again, for the opportunity to testify.


19

system's ability to track students. In addition, verification of student residency remained
problematic, On the basis of the flaws we identified in the 1996-97 process, we made
several recommendations to DCPS.

Although DCPS made some changes in its enrollment count process for the 1997-98
school year in response to our recommendations and plans to make more, the larger
systemic issues appear to remain mostly uncorrected. Consequently, fundamental
‘weaknesses still remain in the enroliment count process, making it vulnerable to
inaccuracy and weakening its credibility. For example, DCPS staff report that although
an important internal control—duplicate record checks-has been implemented for SIS,
additional internal controls are still lacking. Several DCPS enrollment and pupil
accounting procedures continue to increase the possibility of multiple enrollment records
for a single student. We are concerned that duplicate record checks alone may not be
sufficient to protect the integrity of SIS, given the many possibilities for error.

Furthermore, the enrollment count may still include nonresident students. More
than half (56 percent) of DCPS’ students have either failed to provide the residency
verification forms or have provided no proofs of residency (for example, copies of deeds,
rental leases, utility bills, or vehicle registrations, among others) to accompany their
forms. We question the appropriateness of including students who have failed to prove
residency in the official count, particularly students who have not even provided the basic
form. In addition, because DCPS has not yet monitored and audited residency
verification at the school level, additional problems may exist that are not yet apparent.
Proposed new rules governing residency will help DCPS deal with residency issues. Until
these issues are fully addressed and resolved, however, the accuracy and credibility of the
enrollment count will remain questionable.

In our more recent discussions with DCPS officials, they acknowledge that more
needs to be done to improve the enrollment count process, particularly in the areas of
further strengthening DCPS’ automated internal controls and addressing the nonresident
issue. They have expressed concern, however, that we have failed to recognize fully the
improvements DCPS made in the enrollment count process for school year 1997-98. We
have recognized DCPS' progress but nevertheless remain concerned about fundamental
systemic weaknesses.

We reported that even though DCPS changed parts of its enrollment process in
school year 1996-97 to address prior criticisms, the process remained flawed. Some of
the changes, such as the use of an enrollment card to verify attendance, increased
complexity and work effort but did little to improve the count’s credibility. Because
DCPS counts enrollment by counting enrollment records~not actual students—accurate
records are critical for an accurate count. Errors, including multiple enrollment records
for a single student, remained in SIS, but DCPS had only limited mechanisms for

2 GAO/T-HEHS-98-91


4

1 look forward to the testimony of our expert panel
today, as we work to make the D.C. School System a
top educational institution and a model for the rest of

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‘Subcommittee on the District of Columbia

Honorable Tom Davis
‘Chairman:

March 13, 1998
OPENING STATEMENT

‘Good aftemoon and welcome. It is fair to say that this Subcommittee has a myriad of issues
to deal with. However, few are as important to the revitalization and stability of the District of
‘Columbia than issues related to the D. C. Public Schools.

(On January 23rd, this Subcommittee conducted an oversight hearing dealing primarily with
the 1997 D.C, Public Schools repair program and Facilities Master Plan. Today, we will address
a fundamental element in the development and implementation of any successful plan for facilities,
staffing and other resources for a public school system, that being the process and result of
determining a reliable student enrollment count for the D. C. Public Schools.

thas been clearly established that enormous challenges exist related to D. C. Public School
facilities. Those challenges include the need for emergency capital repairs; catching up on deferred
‘maintenance; disposition of properties and buildings determined to be surplus; establishing effective
schedules for routine maintenance; upgrading systems such as electricity, heating and air
conditioning; and addressing the technology and laboratory needs that are critical to academic
achievement. An accurate, reliable and credible accounting of student enrollment is directly related
10 the ability to determine how many classrooms are needed, how many teachers, administrators, and
‘support personnel are needed, how much in supplies is needed, and correspondingly, what is needed
in the way of funding and other resources to meet those identified and confirmed needs.



110

forced to do it, they slide away from the taxpaying issue for the
residents of the District of Columbia. the | ,

You are not trying to get away from the law, you are simply try-
ing to get a fair standard. I wish you would do this. You can ask
Mr. Chavous to call me if he wants to, but General Becton did not
go around me; he came to me. This law is being abused in the ex-
treme. People are waiting the law out because they know it is al-
most humanly impossible to do it in 50 days and that they will get
a free ride in an expensive private school. That is the abuse. Now,
I tell you, I am not going to do what Kevin Chavous has done. And
if I didn’t do it, somebody else would do it.

Ms. Norton. But you can tell Mr. Chavous from me that either
the home rule jurisdiction should bring people into account or you
can bet that the Congress is going to do it.

This is—let me tell you what this abuse does. It means that the
most conscientious, best-off parents in the District of Columbia who
can hire lawyers and who learn the game are ripping off, I choose
my words carefully, poorer people who pay taxes in the District of
Columbia.

Now, I don’t see what—I wouldn’t—I might—I myself, as some
of you may know, have a retarded child. I’m the last person that.
would say short-circuit these children. Neither do I say that you
ought to be held to an impossible standard, and that the council
would be the first to jump up in the Congress’ face if this abuse
is corrected up here. The council is shilly shallying on this. I hope
that you all have some relationship with them. You've already been
there. If he doesn’t do it, then this abuse will be corrected from the
Hill.

Let me compliment Mr. MacLaury and Ms. Harvey on what ap-
pears to be a joint meeting just last night. Let me ask you how
many joint meetings are planned for the elected school board and
the board of trustees?

Ms. Harvey. Let me just answer, I don’t think that we could ar-
ticulate a number. But we have it in conversation, Congresswoman
Norton, around issues that we believe jointly, the board of edu-
cation.

Ms. NorTONn. Can you give me examples of some of those issues?

Ms. HarVEY. For example, we are going to look at, how can I
look at—we're going to look at the startup of schools, the readiness
of schools issue. That would be one joint issue that we need some
discussion around. The massive facility plan is another one that we
need to have joint issues around. We've also had on the table some
discussion around the teacher and principal evaluation structures,
those kinds of things that we believe that is germane to the board
of education having input.

Parents are very much concerned about the new guide that’s
coming over the student rights and responsibility. Those are the
kinds of joint forums that I think would be advantageous for the
board of education, board of trustees to begin the discussion with
the communities about.

Ms. Norton. Do you agree, Mr. MacLaury?

Mr. MacLaury. Yes, Ms. Norton. As Ms. Harvey knows, I met
with her shortly after her election as president of the school board
back in January and proposed a list of, I don’t remember whether


69

randum identifies schools who had discrepancies in their counts,
instances of two principals signing for the same student, principals
counting students that were not active in their schools. And this
memorandum specifies those schools. It also specifies those schools
with the high percentages of nonreturn of residency. So this is one
vehicle where we cannot have—

Ms. Norton. Mr. Wenning, can I ask you a question. I thought
you said—when Chairman Davis asked you how many students
were in the school, you replied that 77,000 whatever in the school.

Mr. WENNING. Correct.

Ms. Norton. You’re now saying you don’t trust the figures be-
cause of errors you think were in those figures.

Mr. WENNING. That is not the implication of my statement. This
summarizes how we purge students from the counts claimed by
principals before arriving at that final number. We spent 1 month
for 77,000 students. Now, George Grier just described New York
City’s approach for 6 months for 1 million students. We spent 1
month reconciling these data, checking the numbers signed by each
of the teachers and each of the principals, and matching them
against an automated data base, painstakingly by hand. And
through that we eliminated duplicate students and inactive stu-
dents and identified the schools that committed the discrepancies.

Ms. Norton. You see, therefore, why I’m more interested in the
fraud than I am in the count. It’s not that I don’t think there is
miscounting, but we're still left with this discrepancy. We're still
left with this discrepancy that’s way out of kilter with other juris-
dictions. And we're still left with no explanation.

And you keep saying, hey, look we got you a real good count
here, GAO notwithstanding. Well, you’ve got a real good count, and
you’ve got to come up with an alternative hypothesis for the dis-
crepancy. And again, I don’t know, but that’s how scientists do ev-
erything. They don’t know, but they pull out of their brain all of
the things they can think of that it could be. Then they test those
hypotheses. And that’s what you've got to do.

Mr. WENNING. Ms. Norton, if I might add, Mr. Grier presents
data about other jurisdictions. That data he presented was based
on the D.C. Public Schools 1989-90 enrollment count. With its cur-
rent data—

Ms. Norton. It was census that—what he did was—what he did
was precisely the way to try—the best means available. And it was
not 1997. But one of the problems we are afflicted with here is that
these figures haven’t changed much over the years. What he did
was absolutely the best way, if you don’t know, to try to—to see
if your system may have some flaws in it. He took census figures,
and he looked at census figures and compared those with school
figures. And he said—and then he said, how much are they sup-
posed to be off, because they’re certainly supposed to be off some
amount. Then he says they're supposed to off if you look in this
range. And he said the District of Columbia is way off. If you’re
saying to me that’s the way it used to be in 1990, but it’s not in
1997, then——

Mr. WENNING. That’s correct. And when I reconcile Mr. Grier’s
data against our enrollment count, I get a discrepancy of 4,839 stu-
dents, which is the basis for the estimate of nonresident students.


24

requirements have been met. Until DCPS students are required to provide substantial
proofs of residency, doubts about this issue will remain.

To illustrate this point, DCPS states that 83 percent of its officially enrolled
students have provided signed residency verification forms and therefore have provided
certification of residency. DCPS staf, however told us that only 83,862 (44 percent) of
the 77,111 students included in the official 1997-98 count have provided both completed
residency verification forms and accompanying proofs of residency. Another 30,337 (39
percent) have provided completed forms but no accompanying proofs, and 12,878 (17
percent) have provided no completed forms. In other words, more than half (56 percent)
of DCPS’ students have either failed to provide basic residency forms or have provided no
proofs of residency to accompany their forms. (DCPS believes that our characterization
of this situation is misteading and that the great majority of its students have provided
proof of residency.) Furthermore, DCPS staff told us that the school district has not yet
monitored and audited the schools' residency records but plans to do so shortly.

esd TS Mas Propcned modifications to te Board of Béucation’s rules governing
these rules. The proposed modifications would strengthen the
residency rides in everal ways by stag tha a leat three proof of residency “must” be
submitted, rather than "may be" submitted, as current rules state; specifying and limiting
documents sccepable as pron; eliminating membership in church or other local
organization operating in the District of Columbia as an acceptable proof; and

strengthening penalties for students who do not comply. DCPS staff told us that these
proposed changes are now under consideration by the Authority.

to our recommendation that the Congress consider directing DCPS to
report separately the enrollment counts of certain groups of students, the Congress has
not yet required that DCPS do this. DCPS continues to include these groups in its
enrollment count. For school year 1997-98, DCPS reports an official count of 77,111
students ‘This number includes 5,156 preschool and prekindergarten students who are
below mandatory school age in the District of Columbia, Some of these students are
Head Start participants and are paid for by Head Start; nevertheless, DCPS counts Head
Start participants as part of its elementary school population. The count also includes 18
tuition-paying nonresident students attending DCPS. In addition, DCPS staff told us that
although the count excludes adult education students, they did not know whether it
includes other students above the mandatory school age. Finally, as noted earlier, the
count includes students who have not completed residency verification.

In addition to talking to DCPS staff, we talked to staff at the Authority about
whether the Authority has provided for an independent audit of the 1997-98 enrollment

“DCPS School Year 1997-98 Official Membership, Oct. 30, 1997.
7 GAO/T-HEHS-98-91


10

Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Ms. Norton. Mrs. Morella, do
you have any statement?

Mrs. MoreE.LA. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I just want to thank you also
for holding this important hearing on student enrollment in the
D.C. public schools. As you mentioned in your opening statement,
we face numerous issues in this subcommittee but few are as im-
portant as those related to the District of Columbia public school
system. As a former educator, I have great concern about the chil-
dren in our Nation’s Capital and the quality of education in D.C.
schools. The District ranks near the bottom of the Nation in both
math and English test scores. The cumulative grade point average
for 12th grade students is 1.5 on a 4.0 scale. How can we address
the needs of the city’s children if we cannot even determine how
many children attend the District’s public schools?

As Co. ss debates issues involving school reform, one proposal
that is being seriously considered is how to reduce class size. It is
essential that we know how many students comprise the D.C. pub-
lic school system obviously. An accurate count of the number of stu-
dents enrolled in the public schools is essential to determining the
number of classrooms needed, the number of teachers needed, the
number of administrators and support personnel needed.

Recently, I met with General Becton about matters affecting the
D.C. public schools. At that meeting we discussed roof repairs as
well as the student enrollment count. General Becton pointed out
that recently, despite the heavy rains in the Washington area, not
one school in the District was cited for leaks in its roofs and not
one school was closed. That is an improvement worth noting. I con-
pratulate everyone involved in school reform in the District for his

rd work and the progress that has been made. Now we need to
look within those roofs.

The General Accounting Office, represented here by Ms.
Blanchette, released a report in response to a request by this sub-
committee to examine the DCPS student enrollment count process
for the 1996-97 school year. It points out that despite the fact that
many of the recommendations of that report have been acted upon
and the GAO has conducted a followup evaluation, many defi-
ciencies continue to exist.

I look forward, Mr. Chairman, to the testimony of our expert
panel here today as we work to make the District of Columbia
school system a top educational institution and a model for the rest
of the Nation.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Constance A. Morella follows:]


29

TESTIMONY OF GEORGE GRIER
PRINCIPAL, THE GRIER PARTNERSHIP
BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM AND OVERSIGHT
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
March 13, 1998

‘My name is Gearge Grier, and I am a principel in The Grier Partnership, a firm that since its founding
in 1976 has provided specialized demographic consulting services to many clients in both the public
and private sectors. Our services include, among others, projecting future needs for such
28 education, and developing state-of-the-art data systems to help school systems to more
effectively to moet their future needs for facilities and staff.

Ik was in this capacity that we were asked to help the District of Columbia Public Schools in 1995.
The 21st Century School Fund, a private non-profit organization dedicated to improving the D.C.
schools and supported in part by flinds from the Ford Foundation, spprosched us to project future
public schoo! enrollments in the District of Columbia as a basis for a plan to upgrade the District's
school facilities to serve the needs of the coming century. The plan had been requested by Dr.
Franklin Smith, who wes Superintendent of the D.C. Schools at that time.

‘When we start working with » new school system client, we first review the basic data on the student
population of that school district — including both the system's own enrollment figures and Census
data on the child population living in the district. In doing so, we soon found a startling .
The D.C. Public Schools reported an enrollment of 80,654 to the National Center for

‘Statistics in fall of 1990, while the Census Bureau had found only 67,278 students enrolled in'public
clementary and high schools in spring of the same year.

(Census and schoo! system figures scidom if ever agree exactly. One reason is that they are taken at
somewhat different times. But they are usually pretty close, typically no more than a ot
percentage points apart. In the District of Columbia, however, we found that the Public
Teported 20.6 percent more students enrolled than did the Consus Bureau.

‘We then compared this to the Census and School System figures for ten other major cities. They
‘were Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Aageles, New York, and
Philadelphia. In all except Atlanta, the discrepancies were below five percent. In Atlanta it was 8.8
pervent. The average of all these discrepancies (excluding D.C.) was 2.5 pervent. Seven of the ten
were positive (.¢., the school systems counted more pupils than the Census). The chart ion the
following page displays this comparison.


98

Mr. Davis. Thank you. I have some questions for all of you. Let
me start with Mr. MacLaury.

I know that in Fairfax County, where I come from, we have, from
a perspective of good test scores, good early learning, we have half-
day kindergarten there. We couldn’t afford to go to full-day kinder-
garten. We had to set priorities of what we could do in high school,
what we could do with technology. Most of the other jurisdictions,
and I don’t know what all of them have here, have half-day kinder-
garten.

The city somehow with its budget has made the decision to go
to full-time kindergarten. That is appearing to be a magnet attract-
ing some people into the school system who are not paying their
due. I think that raises some interesting issues in terms of edu-
cational priorities, in terms of are we losing more revenue than is
actually projected because it is a magnet, and we are not having
people certify or prove their residency.

Have you given any thought to going to half-day kindergarten
like the surrounding jurisdictions? I ask Ms. Harvey the same
thought in terms of you couldn’t go back now, I guess, because you
have done it, but how do you look at these policies and give the
justification, and what are the real costs?

Mr. MacLaury. I think the short answer to your bottom line
question, have we as trustees looked at the question of curtailing
from full-day to half-day kindergarten, the answer is no, we have
not looked at that. Nor have we looked at full-day prekindergarten
for that matter, which has the same kind of inducement actions.

But it seems to me that one needs to separate the kind of pro-
grams that are offered to the children of the District of Columbia
who have special needs, use that in the technical sense, but who
have needs for preschool education, on the one hand, from enforce-
ment of residency on the other. And let’s work on the enforcement
of residency requirements first. Yes, it is an inducement. It is being
taken advantage of in a way that is not supportable. Therefore, we
have got to enforce the residency requirements.

Mr. Davis. Again, I am not challenging the policies. I am just
saying have you examined, have you looked at what is the basis,
and maybe in trying to do the Tight thing by the city’s young peo-
ple, particularly the early years, kindergarten and prekindergarten,
have we created some issues that need to be looked at further and
clarified? That would be more in that line.

Ms. Harvey.

Ms. Harvey. Chairman Davis, I believe that the District of Co-
lumbia school system has been on the cutting edge in relationship
to all-day pre-K, et cetera. I would be the first one to say that we
are talking about two different aspects. The students that attend
the D.C. public schools need to have as much early entry into the
school system as possible, into the teaching and learning process.

I would implore that we continue along that line, because our
early childhood programs have been one of the flagship programs
that we have had throughout the District of Columbia. I would
hate to see that impacted with the verification of enrollment. But,
however, I think we need to look very carefully at the number of
students that we do have.


91

Mr. Davis. Thank you. I think it is right on target.

Ms. Harvey, thank you very much for being here. Please feel free
to take your time. You don’t get the forum a lot of times in this
city the way things are structured, so take the full time. You don’t
have to be quick. We’re happy to have you here.

Ms. Harvey. Thank you, Chairman Davis. Good afternoon to
Congresswoman Norton as well. I am joined this afternoon by Ben-
jamin Bonham, the ward 6 representative on the D.C. Board of
Education.

Mr. Davis. Welcome.

Ms. Harvey. Thank you for an opportunity to testify this after-
noon. The Board of Education is deeply concerned about the accu-
racy of the enrollment count. The board as a policymaking body
must have reliable information upon which it can base its decisions
and recommendations.

As indicated by many of the speakers this afternoon, the problem
is a part of a long-standing controversy. One of the justifications
for instituting the emergency board of trustees and hiring Gen. Ju-
lius Becton was the past administration’s problems with opening
school on time, providing a validated student count.

The fact that the D.C. public schools continue—under the new
leadership—to have difficulty with the student count is disappoint-
ing but not surprising. Systems are still not in place, and much has
been discussed this afternoon about the need to put those systems
in Place: As a member of the school board, I applaud their effort
and maintain that we must move in that direction. The mainte-
nance of adequate student records and data and accurate descrip-
tions of the current enrollment helps us as a board of education to
predict future enrollment and get the data needed to make policy,
management and oversight decisions in a timely and transparent
manner.

I will not pretend to be an expert on systems. However, the
board believes that these systems must be upgraded with geo-
graphic information for facilities planning and data management
systems to maintain student records. As indicated, former Super-
intendent Franklin Smith labored under the inaccuracies of our
student records system, and the current administrative team has
not made major progress in improving this system.

The board is clear. Uncertainty about the accuracy of our enroll-
ment count handicaps the district public schools in many ways.
First, student count is the starting point for many of our financial
formulas and planning activities. All of our academic and facilities
planning begins with the assumption of the number of students
that we serve. If we fail to be certain of the measurement of this
number, it will be impossible for us to move ahead in a productive
manner, and we would end up with faulty information.

It is my opinion that good data puts in place the process for good
public policy. I am intensely aware of what has happened when
there has not been good data placed before the Board of Education
and its constituents.

Let me just diverge and be personal for a moment. For the last
11 years I have had the opportunity of representing ward 1, one
of the most diverse communities in the District of Columbia. Re-
gardless of what the data says, the schools in the ward 1 area, es-


11

Statement of Congresswoman Constance A. Morella
Hearing on the District of Columbia Public Schools

Student Enrollment Count
Subcommittee on the District of Columbia
March 13, 1998

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for holding this
important hearing on student enrollment in the D.C.
Public Schools. As you mentioned in your opening
statement, we face numerous issues in this

subcommittee, but few are as important as those
related to the D.C. Public School System.

As a former teacher, I have great concern about the
children in our nation’s Capital and the quality of
education in the D.C. schools. The District ranks near
the bottom of the nation in both Math and English test
scores. The cumulative Grade Point Average for 12th
grade students is 1.5 on a 4.0 scale. How can we


7

© The DCPS can not make creditable arguments for an increased education budget
‘without more creditable data;

© We need a reliable student count to accurately calculate the core allotment in order to
fond our charter schools; and

© We need good data to plan for every aspect that make schools good ~ new or
modemized schools, textbooks and library acquisitions, teacher recruitment and
training, etc.

Let me close by saying that our goal is to be a 1* class school system that our residents
support and to which they send their children. To get there, we need integrity in the
enrollment count and we need the ability to make projections based on reliable data and
‘we need the entire process to sufficiently transparent that we regain the confidence of our
public,

believe that itis time to stop opersting in an emergency mode end postponing serious
planning. Of course, we must act with urgency, but we must take the time now to put in
the systems that we need to begin to plan well, to budget well and to succeed.


102

Mr. DAVIS. We are counting on you to do that. I know it is tough
when you are getting sued and you have the rhetoric.

Mr. MacLaory. We are not getting sued.

Mr. Davis. Well, you aren’t.

Mr. MacLaury. Exactly. There is a suit going on. On the facili-
ties question, just to put it in perspective, I won’t swear to these
numbers, but I think what I recall is there were some 16 million
square feet under the jurisdiction of the D.C. public school system,
and that we were occupying something like, or need on a student
count, back to that question, maybe 12 million square feet.

So there is somewhere between 3 and 4 million square feet extra
that are being maintained, of both buildings that are not needed.
We will have to come back as trustees to that question. It is a very
tough political question, as you know. You have heard Dr. Harvey
speak to the other side of that question.

Mr. Davis. I have been on it, too. I have sat in local government
where those are very difficult and anguishing.

Mr. MacLaury. We are now going through a ward-by-ward re-
validation of the long-range facilities plan that was done last year
to refine it and make it more responsive.

Mr. Davis. But, Mr. MacLaury, it is even more expensive in the
District’s case. You talked about the uniqueness of the city because
the facilities are so old than it would be if you had brand new
schools. These are decisions that have to be made.

In a sense, it is more difficult for the elected bodies to do that
because voters tend to be very parochial when it comes to their
neighborhood school. I respect that and understand it. But that is
almost a 25 percent surplus or 30 percent, depending on how you
look at it, of old property that is expensive-to-maintain that you
really don’t need today and you want to plan for tomorrow. As Ms.
Harvey says, you want to plan for a day when maybe demographics
go up slightly, that by you having a surplus built in there now that
it may be cost effective. These are decisions that need to be made.

I applaud what you are doing. I am glad to hear you are working
together. I just say from our perspective up here, we are counting
on all of you doing that. It is a complex, almost cumbersome proc-
ess with so many layers of people doing it. You have got the elected
board of education, you have got the advisory board, you have got
the control board on top of that, and we recognize it is cum-
bersome. But decisions are going to be made through this. By work-
ing together, some of these layers will disappear in short order and
it will go back to you, Ms. Harvey. So to the extent that you are
in there pitching, cooperating, giving suggestions, doing all those
kinds of things, I think we all feel more comfortable.

Ms. HaRVEY. Thank you.

Mr. Davis. I am going to now yield to my ranking member.

Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I join what
you just said about how the committee views followup on this hear-
ing. Mr. MacLaury, you have in your own testimony some of what
needs to be done on the school count. I am not going to go over the
concerns that I have already mentioned to the two administrative
officers who are responsible except to indicate the urgency of get-
ting beyond the fraud and, again, allegations even beyond fraud.


65

This memo describes problems encountered during the official enrollment count and
identifies schools that failed to adhere to enrollment procedures. Thus far, three principals
have received a letter of warming from their respective Assistant Superintendent. To ensure
accountability for accurately reporting enrollment, I recommended that additional letters of
waming be issued to principals and that compliance with enrollment procedures be a
significant factor in principals’ annual performance evaluation.

Principals failed to adhere to enrollment procedures in three primary ways: (1) including
discrepancies in their schoolwide and homeroom counts; (2) counting duplicate students;
(3) counting students as actively enrolled who later were deleted as inactive due to blank
residency fields; and (4) failing to obtain residency verification forms from students.

Di ies in $ * Enrollment Counts

The 13 schools listed below submitted enrollment counts for their schools that included

discrepancies such that the schoolwide count signed by the principal did not agree with the

individual homeroom lists signed by teachers andthe principal. These discrepancies totaled
students.

Adams Elementary School (already sent letter of warning)
Noyes Elementary School

Johnson Junior High School

Macfariand Middle School

Anacostia Senior High School (already sent letter of warning)

Ballou Senior High School

Coolidge Senior High Schoo!

Eastem Senior High School

Luke C, Moore Academy Senior High School (already sent leter of waming)
M.M. Washington Career Senior High School

Phelps Career Senior High School

Spingam Senior High School

Wilson Senior High School

See ORON DUAL

veers

2, Duplicate Students Counted

During the reconciliation process, the Deparment of Educational Accountability identified
133 students who were certified by signature as actively enrolled by owo different

principals on October 30, 1997. Staff contacted the schools involved to determine where
the student was actually enrolled. Following this process, 133 students were cut from the
official count. The existence of duplicates in the Student information System (SIS) is -
attributable to several factors including inadequate familiarity with proper procedures for
wansferring students from one school to another, a computer system that lacks internal
controls and does not support principals' efforts to keep data clean, and simple negligence
on the part of principals.

Procedures for transferring students are often not followed and transfer decisions are
essentially unregulated. I strongly recommend that we move to replace the currently
decentralized student transfer process with a lottery-based open enrollment system (with
neighborhood school preference) that is administered centrally by the Department of
Educational Accountability. This will permit effective monitoring as well as measurement
of the market share factor in annual school performance reviews.


71

cluded, after looking at them for quite a bit, that I couldn’t identify
any specific number that would be—you know, that would indicate
any possible overcount or kids filling the schools because they come
from someplace else.

I think the records are so faulty, the whole system is so full of
holes, that it’s impossible for anyone to know at this point how
many kids the District really has or how many it had last year.
We'll never know how many it had last year.

Ms. Norton. Dr. Blanchette, what is your view of the revised
rule that the board of trustees issued for verifying residency?

Ms. BLANCHETTE. Well, I think it’s truly important that there be
proofs of residency beyond the forms signed by parents or guard-
ians. And for school year 1997-98, that form signed by a parent or
guardian was the only, quote, proof. So if this revised ruling brings
about a situation whereby principals require families to present
proofs of residency, and three is certainly a sizable number, then
we're in a better situation. I never quite understood why principals
couldn’t have been directed to do that previously. The rule did
allow some latitude, but there was nothing in the previous rules
that precluded proofs of residency.

Ms. NorTOn. Why wasn’t that done this year, Mr. Wenning?

Mr. WENNING. Let me——

Ms. Norton. Yeah, I mean, some of these things are so obvious.
Like, you know, it made me cry when I heard that one of the
things that the school system was using was churches. Anybody
that goes to a D.C. church knows that we are lucky to have people
come back to the home church, because they’re all coming back
from Maryland or Virginia or our churches wouldn’t have anybody
in them. And yet that was what was being used.

Why weren’t people—I mean, General Becton, when he first
came, I remember you said you were going to use tax stuff and
whatever to find out who were really in the schools. And, yet,
frankly, at the hearing where Senator Jeffords invited me to sit in
with him, this rule that the—of the board of trustees had been on
paper for a year, and nothing had been done with it. I always say,
well, why is this rule at least not being used? But with the GAO
breathing down your neck, with Congress every year coming in to
try to catch you, got you, we don’t understand the delay in carrying
out some of these obvious—some of these obvious ways to fix the
system.

Mr. WENNING. The rule you speak of, which was the revised rule,
was changed significantly following the GAO report. The current
rule is the rule we operate under. And we're not able to change the
proofs required under the rule.

Now, it has been suggested by GAO that we could have enforced
the rule differently, and I think that’s true. However, let’s think
about the implications of that. We are changing the rules on resi-
dency, now requiring the finite list of proofs for all enrolled stu-
dents to supply. If we had begun enforcing the rule differently,
then we would have changed the rules several months later on
what proofs are required. Collecting three proofs from 77,000 stu-
dents is going to be one daunting task. To have started it as a false
start under a different rule simply would not have been practical.


16

In summary, as we reported in August 1997, in spite of changes
in the enrollment count process that were made in response to nu-
merous criticisms, the 1996-97 school year count process, which
was the focus of that August report, remained flawed in several re-
spects. Although changes have been made, and I will go over some
of those in a few minutes, although changes were made as a result
of our work and the findings that we pointed out, we believe that
larger systemic issues remain mostly uncorrected and that there-
fore fundamental weaknesses still remain in the enrollment count
process, making it vulnerable to inaccuracy and weakening its
credibility.

In August 1997, we reported on what we considered the 3 critical
areas to arrive at an accurate school count, enrollment, residency
verification, and pupil accounting. The first two, enrollment and
residency verification, are the key areas that decide which students
get counted. Let me point out when we talk about a student count
we are not talking about a physical count. What we are i
about is in essence a count of enrollment records. We took issue in
1997 with the use of the enrollment card, which was at that time
the system’s way of establishing attendance. In order for a student
to be counted, the student had to appear in a school for at least
1 of the first 10 school days. We found that card to be burdensome.
We recognized that it was initiated in response to prior criticisms,
but we didn’t believe that it had solved really any of the problems
and had created a good deal of work for teachers, particularly for
students that were young, disabled, or non-English speaking. We
found that there were multiple enrollment records on a single stu-
dent, that that situation had resulted from numerous factors, in-
cluding the fact that data entry clerks in school could override sys-
tem safeguards to prevent duplication, that central management
information services staff even having detected duplication were
not authorized to make changes but had to work with school per-
sonnel to get any changes made, and in the District of Columbia,
as you know, there is unlimited out of boundary student enroll-
ment. That is the District’s version of school choice. We certainly
do not take issue with that, but because of that it makes it easier
for a student to appear in more than one school, be considered in
attendance legitimately under the current situation as having at-
tended each school, and be counted numerous times, or at least
more than once.

We also found that there were certain ups of students that
are normally excluded from a pupil enrollment count when the
count is being used for funding purposes. These students were in-
cluded in the District of Columbia. These include tuition paying
nonresidents, students above or below the mandatory age for s ‘
attendance, and certain other students who had not proved their
residency. We know that for the current school count a number of
changes were made. There is no longer an enrollment card. The
school system uses other means of establishing attendance. There
are now monthly duplicate record checks by the central office staff,
who work with schools to resolve those errors, but now the central
office staff can make entries in the system and solve the errors di-
rectly. Schools also prepare monthly enrollment records, signed by
the principal, that are reviewed and tracked by the central office


99

Mr. Davis. Ms. Harvey, why is it impacted with verification of
enrollment? What is the big deal?

Ms. Harvey. I am saying it should not have. When you verify the
enrollment, we should also verify the enrollment in the grades
where there basically are children who are of nonschool age.

Mr. Davis. I see what you are saying. All-day kindergarten
raises some wonderful opportunities for kids in the city, that per-
haps in the city need it more than other areas. Let’s concede that
as the basis for the policy, and I don’t have any reason to quarrel
with that.

But the unintended consequence of that is you become a magnet
for other folks coming in here in jurisdictions who don’t want to
pay those extra dollars for all-day kindergarten, but whose parents
may work in the city or have relatives in the city, and then all of
a sudden the costs for the program grow exponentially. Unintended
but exponentially.

We are in a situation, given the current funding level for schools
and other priorities, where I think I hear an agreement on this
panel that we need to focus on educating our own in the city, as
opposed to being a veritable charity basket for other people who
would like to take advantage of this and have relatives in the city
or work in the city or whatever, but their local jurisdictions have
made other decisions.

Ms. Ladner.

Ms. LADNER. Yes, I would like to speak briefly to that. Two years
ago Superintendent Franklin Smith offered up the all-day kinder-
garten for nursery school kids. There was an enormous avalanche
of protest against it for several reasons. One is that—I learned
then that it is considered to be a national model by authorities in
preschool learning, so that a lot of the very informed parents who
are aware of such things protested against it.

The other is that Mrs. Harvey and Dr. MacLaury have spoken
to an essential issue, and that is that so many of our children enter
school with some disadvantages educationally. It is very much
needed. I too would separate the fraudulent numbers of children
who are in these programs, and we get all kinds of anecdotal evi-
dence about the cars from Fairfax and Prince Georges and Mont-
gomery counties driving up to the schools, in some of the more af-

luent areas as well, dropping those kids off before they go to work.

Mr. Davis. And saying, “Thanks, D.C., we appreciate it.”

Ms. LADNER. Absolutely. I think it is critical that we get those
people out of the schools. But I would not be in——

ir. Davis. Or have them pay, that is even better.

Ms. LADNER. Or have them pay. They should pay. But it is
used—as I said, the avalanche of criticism came from the addresses
in the city of people in middle class neighborhoods.

Mr. Davis. I would think so. It is great to afford. We have looked
at that in the Commonwealth of Virginia, looked at it in the Coun-
ty of Fairfax, which I represent. It just wasn’t affordable.

Ms. LADNER. My personal view is it was not affordable the Dis-
trict of Columbia, either, but it was one of those priorities that was
made.

Mr. Davis. That is OK. I don’t think we ought to quarrel with
that here. We have to look at what are the consequences of that


21

residency. Finally, school staff and parents rarely suffered sanctions for failure to comply
with the residency verification requirements.

In addition, the pupil accounting system failed to adequately track students. SIS
allowed more than one school to count a single student when the student transferred
from one school to another. Furthermore, schools did not always follow attendance
rules, and SIS lacked the capability to track implementation of the rules. Finally, some
attendance rules, if implemented, could have allowed counting of nonattending students.

Other school districts report that they use several approaches to control errors,
such as the ones we identified, and to improve the accuracy of their enrollment counts.
‘These include using centralized enrollment and pupil accounting centers and a variety of
automated SIS edits and procedures designed to prevent or disallow pupil accounting
errors before they occur.

Finally, the District of Columbia School Reform Act of 1995 imposed enrollment
count reporting and audit requirements. The act requires the enrollment count process to
produce an enrollment count that includes the number of special needs and nonresident

counterproductive. In short, the Reform Act's audit requirement was not met.
Because the enrollment count will become the basis for funding DCPS and is even

separately in its annual reporting of the enrollment count those students

~ fully funded from other sources, such as Head Start participants and tuition-paying
nonresidents;

= above and below the mandatory age for compulsory public education, such as
those in prekindergarten or those aged 20 and above; and

= for whom District residency cannot be confirmed.

We also recommended that the DCPS Chief Executive Officer/Superintendent do the
following:

- Clarify, document, and enforce the responsibilities and sanctions for employees
involved in the enrollment count process.

4 GAO/T-HEHS-96-91


50

Ms. BLANCHETTE. I am not. I can’t comment on what other juris-
dictions would experience in terms of the average daily attendance.
But I would like to make a point. One of the differences between
what we are saying and what General Becton and Mr. Wenning
have been talking about in terms of the process and the count have
to do with who is eligible to be counted. Because this count will
more so in the future than in the past be used to determine fund-
ing allocations and even in the past it has been relied on somewhat
to determine budgets for individual schools, one has to look at the
number of students that are supposed to be educated, not just the
number of bodies that might be present on the given day or even
on average over a period of time. That seems to be a key difference
here. A key point that we made and the concern that we have has
to do with the verification of residency. We do not believe that the
school system currently has in process a system that would authen-
ticate residency and detect nonresidents so that they can be given
the opportunity to pay tuition or have their students go elsewhere.

Mr. Davis. That leads me to the second question for the whole
hearing, and that is, from where are these students coming? Do all
the students attending D.C. schools belong there? I am sure I will
get different answers as I move through each witness. Let me start
over here with General Becton and Mr. Wenning this time. Do all
‘the students attending the D.C. schools belong there? What figure
do you have for students of others jurisdictions out of that 77,000

re?

“General BECTON. We have already identified that there are
somewhere, as Rich said, between 4,000 and upwards 7,000 of stu-
dents that we believe are in our schools that do not belong there
because they are not residents. I would like for Rich to describe
what we are doing about it, especially the new approach to resi-
dency requirement, passed by the Board of Trustees, that we in-
tend to take. We anticipate that the Control Board will have that
policy passed in the very near future.

Mr. WENNING. The current residency requirement for the D.C.
public schools, which is codified as a board rule, does not require
Principals to obtain proofs of residency from students. The proofs
specified in the existing rule are not finite, but they suggest some,
such as church membership for example, that could be accepted. I
should also add that the previous rule does not permit principals
to exclude currently enrolled students for failure to provide proofs.
The new rule does. The new rule also specifies a finite list of proofs
that can be accepted, and all students will be required to provide
those proofs.

As I described, it is going to be one mammoth task to collect that
information from 77,000 students, but we are committed to doing
that. In addition, the new rule provides for an expedited appeals
process. Currently when we identify a nonresident student, there
can be an endless round of appeals which makes it very difficult
to get to the point of tuition payment. The new rule provides for
a single appeal with the new rule in DCPS and then the issue
moves to the District’s Corporation Counsel. With the new rule, we
hope to target these students and combat this problem.

. Davis. Let me ask, conservatively, if you have 4,000 students
in this system that live outside the jurisdiction and the city is


95

information system for facilities planning and « large data management system to
maintain student records through which we can track our studeats and project enroliment.
Our management information system was outdated years ago. Superintendent Smith
Jabored under the inadequacy of our student records system and the current
administrative team has not made major progress in improving this system.

The DC public schools must find the will and resources to install or contract for these
‘systems, or we will continue to be subjected to hearings such as this one today in which
‘we are asked to defend our record-keeping.

Uncertainty about the accuracy of our enrollment count bandicaps the District public
schools in many ways. Student count is the starting point of many of our financiel
formulas and planning activitics. All of our academic and facilities planning begins with
assumptions about the number of students we serve. If we fail to be certain of such a
‘basic measurement, it’s possible that we go headlong into decisions based on faulty

information.

Good data should be the beginning place of public policy. 1 ama intensely aware of what
happens when this is not the case because of my experience with school closings last year
in my ward, Ward One. Ward One schools are bursting with students. Those of us who
live there know that we have had an increase of large families moving into the area, that
there is a planned major housing development and that Metro construction will increase
the number of residents. Yet two schools were closed in this ward. Many of the citizens


33

‘How many suburbanites there may actually be is put in question by another set of mumbers. We
compared the discrepancy between enroliments in 1990 as reported by the D.C. Public Schools and
by the 1990 Census with those for the nearby suburbs. The results are shown in the next chart.

Discrepancy Between Public School Enrollments

as Reported by School Systems to NCES and by 1990 Census
Major Jurisdictions of Metropolitan Washington

Source: National Center for Education Statistics
‘The Grier Partnership

All of the suburban discrepancies were positive for school enrollments, which could be partly due
to Census undercounting in some suturbs, but probably is due mainly to growth. The discrepancy
in Prince George's County is of particular interest. It is plus 3.4 percent, and is the second largest
suburban gap. If « significant percentage of Prince George's County children of school age were in
‘fact going to school in the District, then wouldn't this percentage be smaller or even negative?


17

staff, as we have been told, and that there is now a residency ver-
ification status field in the student information system.

However, we still have concerns. The unlimited out of boundary
enrollment situation still exists. Data entry clerks at the school
level can still override the information system. We believe that the
residence verification field that has been entered and seems to be
relied upon a great deal as being evidence that the system has im-
proved doesn’t really eliminate duplication. As we state in our ies-
timony, there are numerous students that are early childhood,
below the mandatory age that have been counted. We found nu-
merous problems with the residency verification in 1997. We really
don’t believe that the fundamental problem with residency verifici-
tion has been eliminated. In fact, now there is no monitoring, there
has not been any audits of the student verification records, and as
we reported in our testimony, over half of the students have not
presented proofs of residency beyond, in some cases, a form signed

y ts or guardians, In terms of the pupil accounting system
itself, there really haven’t been very fundamental changes.

So, to conclude, we recognize that changes have been made, we
applaud the school system for those changes, but we still have con-
cerns about the process, and of course concerns about the process
lead to concerns about the accuracy of the count.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Blanchette follows:]


61

yeu to comparable school systems. And to compare you to New
ork City, where it’s hard to keep track of anything, is to say to
us that there’s something amiss here.

Now, Dr. Lander, in her testimony, talks about two counts—this
is a question for Ms. Blanchette—that the control board thinks that
perhaps if two counts were done, there would be greater accuracy,
at different points. I would like to—since you’re here now, when
Dr. Ladner is not, I would like to ask your view of more than one
count as one way to go at the first level of concern, which is sheer
competence in counting students.

is. BLANCHETTE. And I am not familiar with that particular the-
ory. Is that two counts at two different points in time or different
students being counted? Is the purpose of the count different?

Ms. Norton. Two different points in time.

Ms. BLANCHETTE. Well, the school system, as I understand it, for
the current school year did a number of, quote, practice counts
prior to the counts as of October 30. So if the issue is whether or
not some type of rehearsal or some ‘ype of looking at the records
and purging duplicates and so forth beforehand is a good idea, I be-
lieve that was done.

Ms. NorTON. Well, I don’t think that’s what she was talking
about. She was talking about two counts in order to check the—
yourself for the other count.

Dr, Grier, do you know whether that is done in other school sys-
tems?

Mr. GRIER. Counts at two different times?

Ms. Norton. Yes.

Mr. GRIER. Well, actually, New York, they sort of count kids
every day and keep an updated running total of it. And on any
given day, they can tell you how many kids they have.

Ms. BLANCHETTE. Because this is not a physical count, it’s a
count of the records in the automated system, from one point in
time to some other near point in time, the records in the system
will not have changed. So I am—I’m not quite sure what the two
counts would give you in that respect.

Ms. Norton. Well, she says the first count will be used to make
any resource adjustments resulting in changes in student number
since the spring count. The spring count to be conducted in Janu-
ary will be used to develop the budget assumptions for the develop-
ment and adoption of the school budget for the subsequent fiscal

ear.
» Ms. BLANCHETTE. Mr. Wenning or General Becton can comment
on this, but I believe that’s the current process, isn’t it?

Mr. WENNING. We do a monthly count now using much of the
same procedures used for the official count. The reconciliation proc-
ess is not used every month, however.

Mr. GRIER. A number of school systems do—if I may add, a num-
ber of school systems do have a fall and spring count. And there
are several reasons for this, sometimes for Federal funding pur-
poses, et cetera. Also they want to know how many kids they’re los-
ing during the year because that gives them a track on how many
they’re losing because they usually do lose during the year. And
they want to know how many because it will give them a better
way of predicting what they’re going to get next fall.


114

of the District of Columbia. I, too, am hopeful that, after March 19,
that we will move in a different discourse.

I must say for the record that, under the advice of the attorneys,
at the voting sessions of the board of trustees I have been asked
to abstain, because we have not really gotten together, to see where
we're moving. So I am participating in all of the board of trustees
meetings. I’m reporting back to my colleagues. I’m asking for ad-
vice. I’m reporting out to the board of trustees on a weekly basis.

But it does kind of put you in a ticklish position. But, again, you
know I’ve been in this business for almost 30 years; and my com-
mitment from my hearts of hearts is that I’m going to do all I can
to make life better in the educational arena for children and this
city, no matter what the status may be.

Ms. NorTON. As long as you leave the lawsuits to the lawyers.
My admonishment is this: The lawyers, the control board’s counsel
and the counsel to the lawsuit for the board of education would be
asked to settle this suit next week by themselves the way lawyers
do, to get from you what it is you think should happen but then
to settle it as lawyers and get it out of the way. Because it is in
the way, and you are doing all you can to keep it out of the way.
But you should, frankly, not be—have to do that.

Ms. Harvey. I agree with you.

Ms. Norton. And no order should have been issued. And it was
bad faith to ask for extension and then not settle the lawsuit. And
that’s not you. And that’s the lawyers and that’s the control board.
It seems to me there is an obligation for the control board to say
to your lawyers, hey, look, settle this suit now so you don’t have
this on the table.

One more question, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Davis. I was going to say that I concur with your comments.
I think they’re very constructive.

Ms. Norton. What is your plan for transition? What is your plan
for the transition back to the board of education, which is due to
take place by 2000?

I guess Dr. Ladner may want to comment on that, too. Obviously
the, school board does.

Mr. MacLaury. Surely.

There have been a number of thoughts. This is a process of tran-
sition. It is not a plan as such. There’s not a piece of paper which
we have agreed upon that is the—stems from here to there.

But I think that the question is one of direction rather than a
specific plan, that we are working together, Dr. Harvey and I and
our two boards, as best we can. And that, as we go forward where
there are issues of importance to the children of the District, we
are getting their advice as the control board order requires us to
do, and we are working with them and will continue to work with
them.

We have held last evening, for example, not just a public meeting
jointly sponsored but our two boards met concurrently last night,
those members who could be present. And that will happen—that
will happen on a more regular basis.

Ms. Norton. The chairman and I have exactly the same re-
sponse to your answer. Why don’t you say it, Mr. Chairman?


116

schools are. So that our lan will keep somebody from saying that
this isn’t working, is process isn’t working, you know, that
there are already b to be real complaints about the school
system and people who embraced the notion of the board of trust-
ees before.

So the plan I think will help everybody to understand that there
is a working relationship here and, when normalcy comes, every-
thing will, in fact, be normal.

Mr, Davis. Thank you all. I’ve got to run downtown. I appreciate
everybody’s indulgence sitting here.

Without objection, all written statements and additional material
submitted by witnesses will be made a part of the permanent
record. The record will remain open for 10 days. The subcommittee
will continue to work with all interested parties to achieve our ob-
jectives.

These proceedings are closed. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 12:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.)

O°


J congratulate all of those who have been involved in D. C. school reform efforts and who
hhave made measurable progress in many areas. However, resolution of this student enrollment count
issue is critical to an ability to successfully advance the efforts to reestablish the District of Columbia
Public School system as one of the finest in this Nation. Additionally, the recent news about the
departure of several key senior staff members, including the COO, the CFO, the General Counsel,
and the Director of the Department of Educational Accountability, among others, is troubling to say
the least,

In August of last year, the United States General Accounting Office, released a report which
responded to a request from this Subcommittee to examine the procedures and results of the DCPS.
student enrollment count process, particularly focused at the 1996-97 school year. The report
included recommendations which would address failures and inaccuracies of the past in an effort to
establish procedures which would produce accurate and reliable results. Some of those
recommendations have been acted upon and some of the issues raised in the GAO report are being
addressed, although they continue to be a work in process. What is particularly distressing however,
is that in a follow-up evaluation by GAO that looked at the procedures implemented to produce the
1997-98 results which yielded an enrollment count of 77,111, many deficiencies remain, including
a number of the items addressed in the August 1997 GAO report.

In fact, GAO found that over 50% of the student enrollment count for 1997-98 of 77,111
‘students, included incomplete information as it related to either residency verification forms, proof
or residency, or both.

There are a number of other outstanding issues which the Subcommittee will attempt to
address during the question and answer period with the respective panels.

| continue to remain optimistic that by working together, we can further build on the progress
that has made,


93

systems that we need to begin to plan well, to budget well, and
most of all to succeed well for the children in the District of Colum-
ia.
Again, I thank you for the opportunity to speak and will be glad
to answer any questions you may have of me.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Harvey follows:]


38

a new student information system during the current fiscal year.
This new system will help us to lock out potentially inaccurate in-
formation.

Finally, you asked for information about the District of Colum-
bia’s compliance with the congressional requirement that per pupil
funding allocation for DCPS schools and charter schools be estab-
lished. As you may be aware, the law calls for this allocation to be
developed by the City Council and the Mayor in consultation with
the schools. It is my understanding that Council Member Kevin
Chavous, the chairman of the council’s Committee on Education,
Libraries and Recreation, has brought together a working group for
the purpose of developing those allocations. Ed Stephenson, our
chief financial officer, and members of his staff have been partici-
pating in this working group. I am certain that Council Member
Chavous will be happy to update you on the status of the efforts
in this area.

I would now like to turn it over to Rich to provide you with more
detail on our response to the 1997 GAO report, the process we used
to conduct the 1997-98 count, and his views on the most recent
GAO analysis. After his remarks, I will be more than happy to re-
spond to your questions.

(The prepared statement of General Becton follows:]


100

and how can we make it even more cost-effective. There is a lot of
evidence, it seems to me, that first of all early learning for man;
of these kids who are at risk is the best dollars you can spend.
That is critical. Second, in the city’s school system in terms of what
works, it works better at the lower grades than it is working at the
higher grades. Is that a fair comment?

is. LADNER. Yes.

Ms. Harvey. I think it is a very accurate comment. I think the
earlier that we get young people involved in the teaching and
learning process, the better chance we have of having them main-
tain and stay within the school system. I think research bears that
out. That is why the communities throughout the District of Co-
lumbia, be they in northwest Washington or southeast Washi: n,
are very much in support to all-day pre-K and our early childhood
programs.

Mr. Davis. A lot of the questions for this panel were already ad-
dressed in the last panel. You may want to supplement that, and
I will be able to hit some of that later. Let’s move quickly now that.
we have these understandings and ements.

Let me say we will be following through these issues closely. If
informal contacts don’t seem to be satisfactory, we will have more
hearings, we will write formal letters and ask for continued GAO
involvement in these issues.

The idea of trying to open the schools on time this year, given
that court order, was impossible for anybody. If you don’t do it this
next September-

Mr. MacLaury. Out of ere.

Mr. Davis. The problems inherited were significant. In my judg-
ment, Ms. Harvey, you had some great members on the school
board, you being among them, but it was just not operating in a
very functional manner, given some of the coalitions that you had
prior to this. I hope very shortly that we will be able to get back
to where we were and give you an opportunity.

That is why I want to Keep you as involved in these processes
as we can, working with Mr. MacLaury’s group, working with Gen-
eral Becton and keeping you involved. I get the feeling that maybe
that hasn’t happened to the extent it should. If we really talk about
handing back and restoring the democratic institutions in this city
over the long term, we have to make sure you are involved in many
of these corrections so we understand some of the mistakes of the
past.

Democracy doesn’t just happen and work. It needs to be nur-
tured. It is a learning experience for all of us. This country has
been very successful, but we have had notable failures across the
country in different areas in terms of working unevenly. This city
has such great potential as the capital of the free world. It was
very difficult for all of us to have to go to a Control Board and do
some of these things. But in very short order I hope that most of
the institutions we had prior to this are going to be having to pick
it up again.

To the extent that you folks are working together on these issues
and talking and discussing and learning, I think it is going to help
when full authority is restored back to the school voard. In the
meantime, I appreciate, Mr. MacLaury, what your group is doing



41

Mr. Davis. Thank you very much.

Mr. WENNING. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, I
welcome the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the
enrollment count in the District of Columbia public schools.

As you know, questions about the accuracy of DCPS’s enrollment
count have existed for many years. Most recently, in August 1997,
as the GAO has just testified, they released their audit of the
methodology used by DCPS for the count in October 1996. GAO
identified a number of major weaknesses, including inadequate use
of automation; namely, the count was done manually because the
data base, the student information system contained numerous er-
rors. Students could be counted more than once due to duplicate
records. Students could be counted that were not actively enrolled.
School records were not properly maintained so that the count
could not be audited. And residency verification often was not done,
leaving DCPS vulnerable to including nonresident students in its
count.

In response to the GAO findings, DCPS implemented new proce-
dures in this school year to count its official enrollment. The new
procedures resulted in a count of 77,111 students. That is now
being audited as required by the District of Columbia School Re-
form Act of 1995. The procedures used this year featured use of the
automated data base for the official count, weekly counts during
October to update and clean that data base, a requirement that
principals and teachers sign home room lists and principals sign
schoolwide counts, an inclusion of a new field in the data base,
which has been discussed, to record schools receipt of residency
verification forms, and a number of automated and manual inter-
nal controls to prevent inclusion of duplicate and inactive students
in the official count. The use of these new procedures resulted in
the removal of 286 students from the official count that were origi-
nally included by principals. These included 133 duplicate students
and 153 inactive students. In.addition, the new procedures allowed
us to identify schools that failed to comply with the enrollment pro-
cedures, permitting DCPS to hold principals accountable as part of
their annual evaluation process.

Mr. Chairman, I believe we have taken significant steps in im-
proving how we count our students. I also believe that significant
steps remain. Prominent among these are replacing the current
student information system with a modern system, moving to a
more centralized enrollment process while ensuring a more equi-
table system of choice among schools, and of course combating the
problem of nonresidents. As GAO testified and others will no doubt
testify, DCPS remains vulnerable to including nonresidents in its
official count. DCPS offers education programs that are attractive
to nonresidents, particularly preschool, pre-K, and all-day kinder-
garten programs, not provided by surrounding jurisdictions. In ad-
dition, there is of course considerable residential mobility between
the District of Columbia and surrounding jurisdictions. When cen-
sus projections are reconciled with the DCPS data, and I have gone
through Mr. Grier’s numbers, it appears that the number of non-
residents included in the official count may be in the range of 4 to
7,000 students.