REPORT OF L. TRENTON S. MARSH, Ph.D.
Dr. Carolyn Jackson-King, et al. v. District of Columbia,
Case No.2022 CA 495 B (D.C.Super. Ct.)
July 28, 2023
Qualifications and Assignment:
I am L. Trenton S. Marsh. I am an Assistant Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Learning Sciences and Educational Research at the University of Central Florida. I have a Ph.D. in Teaching and Learning with a concentration in urban education from New York University. I also have a Master of Arts in Human Resource Development from the George Washington University.
I have expertise in urban-situated education, teacher-student interactions, the social context of education, and school choice, with an emphasis on “no excuses” public charter schools. I also explore the experiences of lower-income students and families of color to help inform equitable pedagogies, policies, and processes, to give them a fair stake in all aspects of education PreK-12 through higher education.
I have been retained by the plaintiffs in this case, through their counsel, to explore the procedures and principles that gird Relay DC’s training; to understand how Washington D.C. Public Schools clustered schools and how Relay operated in Wards 7 and 8 of Washington, D.C; and to provide an opinion based on realistic concern for educational and social welfare of students in Wards 7 and 8.
I am being compensated in this matter at the rate of $125 an hour for my time for study and testimony. The fees for my services are not contingent in any manner on the outcome of this litigation. I continue to review materials and documents related to this case and reserve the right to supplement this expert report based on any additional work that I may be asked to do.
Professional Opinions and Basis for these Opinions:
My opinion for this case is based on my empirical research in public charter schools and traditional public schools that have included in-person observations, as well as open, semi- structured and structured interviews, focus groups, and surveys of multiple stakeholders. These individuals include teachers, administrators, caregivers, and students. In addition, this opinion is based on observations and field notes on key systems and structures that have been implemented in urban-situated public charter and traditional public school contexts. Further, this opinion was formed after reviewing the Relay Graduate Education training materials, and interviewing Dr. Carolyn Jackson-King.
Summary of Opinions:
My overall opinion in this matter with reasonable scientific certainty is that (1) the curriculum and overall professional development offered through Relay Graduate Education in the form of instruction and as a pedagogical guide serves as a philosophical framework with an explicit set of tenets to guide principals and teachers to educate Black children, and other historically minoritized youth from lower-socioeconomic statuses based on its affiliation with public charter management organizations like Uncommon Schools and Knowledge is Power Program, which have historically supported a no-excuses approach and ideology. As a result, (2) the Relay DC framework manifests into day-to-day interactions, intentional practices, and disciplinary rules and procedures, ultimately creating an environment known for sweating the small stuff (Whitman, 2008). From a pedagogical standpoint, former Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Curriculum and Instruction at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Education Martin Haberman (2010) refers to this as the pedagogy of poverty, not good teaching. According to Haberman these acts are performed to the exclusion of other forms of pedagogical taxonomies due to biases and stereotypes held by others about the race and socioeconomic class of students being taught. (3) This deficit-oriented socialization can inform the ways teachers teach and students are supposed to learn.
However, (4) this case as reflected in the pedagogy of poverty is not exclusively about race, rather it is at the intersection of race and socioeconomic status that signals a different ideology for the predominately Black students living in Wards 7 and 8 in Washington, D.C. Relay Graduate School of Education was created as an alternative to traditional teacher education college programs where teachers are deployed to Title I schools to increase student achievement. It is at this intersection, between race and class, that a seemingly racist pedagogical approach is perpetuated--one narrowly defined and dehumanizing for Black students from lower- socioeconomic statuses. In the end, there is a strive for a form of ostensible academic achievement in Washington, D.C., but at a human cost that is perpetuated by Relay DC. I explain the bases of these opinions in the sections below.
Documents Reviewed:
As a part of my assignment, I have reviewed the Complaint in Jackson-King et al. v. District of Columbia, No. 2022 CA 00495 B (D.C. Super. Ct.). I have also reviewed documents produced in discovery in the case by Relay. A complete list of the documents reviewed for this report is shown in Appendix B.
Background:
I gained an understanding of the following background facts from my review of the case documents and from my discussions with Dr. Jackson-King. Dr. Jackson-King was first introduced to Relay Graduate School of Education (Relay) in the summer of 2017, when she was invited by Amanda Alexander, then Deputy Chancellor in District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) and Melissa Kim, who was Chief Academic Officer at Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) to join a delegation of DCPS principals to attend/observe a public charter school from the UnCommon School Charter Management Organization (CMO) in Summit, NJ. Dr. Jackson-King was informed beforehand that the visited school had similar demographics and academic achievement of her scholars in Washington, D.C. Dr. Jackson-King was also informed that the teachers at the charter school had previously participated and consequently implemented the Relay training. Upon observation of the students, however, Dr. Jackson-King was appalled by the behavioral comportment dictated by the teachers towards the students and vowed not to engage in the behavioral approaches she observed. I have been asked to review the professional development/training module that Dr. Jackson-King was part of through Relay DC.
When Dr. Jackson-King became principal at Boone Elementary, her leadership approach was “choice and voices.” In a recent article, Reeve and Cheon (2021) found that autonomy- supportive teaching and learning, where students are given “voices and choices” in their learning, it has a positive impact on student learning outcomes. Allowing students to use their voice to express their opinions or concerns within a classroom creates a protective learning context. At the helm, Dr. Jackson-King’s school (and her students) were on par with DCPS schools—academically and behaviorally they were progressing at an appropriate pace and Dr. Jackson-King relayed that Boone Elementary was meeting the Capital Commitment Goals for elementary schools in the district.
This raises the question why Dr. Jackson-King’s school was mandated to participate in the Relay DC professional development. This also raises the question on how schools were clustered within DCPS for purposes of Relay participation.
History of Relay and its association with Teacher Education in the U.S. and Teacher Credentialing
Relay Graduate School of Education started as a Master’s-granting program, as an alternative method of education for aspiring teachers in charter schools focused on teaching lower-income and under-resourced students (Kretchmar et al., 2016). However, Relay is not a “graduate school of education” as that term is normally understood. Relay is not associated with a university or traditional educational system (Schneider, 2017), Relay does not have a physical campus or library, and it does not employ faculty with earned doctorates to teach, nor does Relay offer a research program (Ravich, 2023). Founded by Norman Atkins of Uncommon Schools and Dave Levin of Knowledge is Power Program, also known as KIPP, the motivation for a new way to train teachers originated from the belief that there were not enough quality trained teachers within the educational system that could tackle the achievement gap. As a result, Relay’s system uses a combination of new paternalism, rigidity, and individual decision-making (Schneider, 2017). Whitman (2008) applauds new paternalistic schools for teaching students “not just how to think but how to act according to what are commonly termed traditional middle-class values” (p. 3). In his book, Sweating the Small Stuff, Whitman profiles six schools, three of which are public charter schools that have strict policies regarding discipline and order, that he identifies as having an ideology of a “new paternalistic” modeling for schools. These schools for lower- income students of Color monitored the “small stuff” of their students. Adopted from policing, this “broken windows” (Wilson & Kelling, 1982) theory of discipline asserts any type of deviation from expected norms needs to be disrupted and put in check to prevent further, more serious incidents. In essence, if small behaviors are regulated in school (e.g., untucked shirt, loud talking, doodling), with a set of character traits and reward system, this should reduce larger school-related discipline incidents and ultimately reduce social inequality
The aim for Relay is that aspiring teachers can use their new paternalistic teaching techniques in their own classrooms while they are still Relay graduate students, influencing the way in which students are taught. These behavioral techniques and tactics are what Dr. Jackson-King first experienced in Summit, NJ and then later during her Relay DC-led professional development for Cluster 2 schools. These teaching methods also typically include modules instead of lessons and use activity worksheets and packets (Mungal, 2019). Moreover, the measure of success is singularly focused on standardized testing in math and English language arts to close what is often termed the persistent achievement gap (Tuttle et al., 2013; Mungal, 2019).
Further, Relay co-founders participated in Teach For America (TFA) -- an alternative teacher credential program that serves predominantly families with lower-socioeconomic statuses, often within Black and Latinx community public schools. TFA corps members often attend some of the most prestigious universities before embarking on a one-to-two-year teaching commitment (Schneider, 2017). There is however critical work about TFA. Some of this work can be found in the Education Policy Analysis Archives special issue in 2016, edited by Drs. Tina Trujillo and Janelle Scott of UC Berkeley. Of note for this case, is the critique of the racial and social class identities of TFAs corps members who are serving as teachers that facilitate entry into leadership and policy networks while muting conversation on the role of racism and structural inequalities that persist in U.S. schools. Further, scholars have interrogated the saviorism tropes (Sondel, 2015) and the best and brightest framing of TFA corps members.
Relay DC is connected to oppressive No-Excuses Approach and Rhetoric to Schooling in Urban America
The phrase “no-excuses” in the context of urban schooling reform was identified 20 years ago (Carter, 2000). In his research on “high performing, high poverty schools,” Samuel Carter (2000) refers to the term, “no-excuses,” as the foundational ideology about the lessons he learned about Black and Latinx students’ high academic achievement. These lessons centered around a perspective that high academic achievement within lower-income schools is a matter of teachers cultivating “schooling success” principles and classical educational philosophies couched within middle-class (and often White) respectabilities that may be unfamiliar to students of Color (Carter, 2000). As a term, “no-excuses” soared in places like New York City and where mayors, philanthropists and donors, and business elites took up this phrase quite a bit and identified disciplined-oriented charter schools as modeling no excuses approaches after the Thernstrom’s (2004) publication of No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning.
No Excuses reviewed data concerning students who make their way through the public school system in the U.S. Written by Abigail Thernstrom, then vice-chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and Stephan Thernstrom, a Harvard University professor, the book specifically highlights the disparities in achievement outcomes of Black students and concludes that the real educational disparity in the U.S. impacts Black students. While pointing out the inadequacies of current educational interventions such as Title I and Head Start, the Thernstroms highlight what they call “effective interventions,” notably CMOs like KIPP and its ability to enforce order and discipline with students, while according to the authors, holding students to higher standards that focus on core academic skills (i.e., math and English language arts). These schools the Thernstroms noted also emphasize the positioning of a set of values-- such as work habits, school culture, social norms, teamwork, and expectations for college that are presumably not being taught in students’ homes.
During this era, charter management organizations with no-excuses approaches also known as no-excuses charter schools (NECS) like KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Achievement First, and Success Academies, swelled in enrollment across the U.S. From no more than a dozen schools 30 years ago, today more than 7,800 charter schools serve approximately 3.7 million students, which is nearly 7.5 percent of the nearly 50 million students attending public schools in the United States (National Center for Education Statistics, 2023). And for some larger cities around 40% of their children attend charter schools (Harris & Chen, 2021). Washington, DC, for instance had the highest percentage of public school students enrolled in charter schools in 2021 (45 percent), followed by Arizona at 20 percent. From a city perspective, New York City holds 141,000 students enrolled in their 275 charter schools (New York City Charter School Center, 2023). About 80% of these students live in poverty, 9.6% live in temporary housing, 49% are Black students and 41% are Latinx students (New York City Charter School Center, 2023).
As co-founder of KIPP, Relay co-founder, Dave Levin was part of the original no-excuses charter schools. Like many NECS, KIPP schools emphasized frequent testing and dramatically increased instructional time, parental pledges of involvement, and a relentless focus on achievement, like math and reading scores (Fryer 2011; Thernstrom & Thernstrom, 2004). During the height of the rhetoric of NECS, like the current systems and routines positioned by Relay DC during trainings for administrators, the models were viewed as a solution to close the persistent achievement gap of high-poverty Black and Latinx students with their middle-class, White and Asian peer groups (Abdulkadiroglu et al. 2009; Angrist et al., 2011; Davis & Heller, 2017; Dynarski, 2015; Finn & Wright, 2016; Hoxby et al., 2009).
More recently, however, the term “no-excuses” has become obsolete. Yet, even as networks relinquish use of the term because it has become muddied, the culture of paternalism has remained constant.
Relay DC instilled this new paternalism offering a message of optimism to administrators in the face of long-standing challenges and inequalities facing urban education (McDermott & Nygreen, 2013). This optimism enticed Dr. Jackson-King to travel to Summit, New Jersey in 2017. These were promises to offer upward social mobility to large cohorts of Black students by instilling the necessary skills, attitudes, and dispositions for academic achievement in K-12. However, what Dr. Jackson-King experienced was “a sterile and seemingly uncaring environment.” She reflected that “teachers barked orders at students, such as ‘track the speaker’ whenever a student diverted their eyes. Students were compliant even as they were being publicly shamed into it.”
Socioeconomic Status and Race Plays a Role in Relay’s Approaches to Schooling in Urban America
Relay’s professed chief focus with its school leaders is on academic achievement. Narrowed definitions of schooling success for minoritized populations in the U.S. is not new. In 1909, Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, delivered an address to New York City School Teachers Association. He insisted that in the U.S., “we want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks” (The Papers of Woodrow Wilson Digital Edition, para. 10). Here, Wilson has outlined two “class[es] of persons” in the context of schooling. One type, children of those who wield the most power, who are to be exposed to a liberal education, and those children who are to be tracked to manual labor, not benefiting from the accoutrements of liberal schooling. Public school theorists (Bourdieu, 1986; Bowles & Gintis, 1976) purport that U.S. educational institutions are organized around and reflect the interests of the dominant groups in the society. It begins in the classroom, in the case of this proceeding, the classrooms in Washington, D.C. in Wards 7 and 8, as Relay DC is not offered in schools where Whites are predominant.
Ward 7 and Ward 8 in Washington, D.C. are highlighted in the tables below. Ward 7 is a primarily Black population, making up 89% of the people living there. The per capita income for this ward is about half that of the District of Columbia and less than about three-fourths of the United States. About 25% of the population is below the poverty line, which is more than one and a half times the District of Columbia and double the rate of the U.S. Almost half of this population make under $50k a year, and 38% of the children in this ward live in poverty.
Ward 8 is also a primarily black population, making up 87% of the people living there. The per capita income for this ward is about two-fifths that of the District of Columbia and about two- thirds that of the United States. About 30% of the population is below the poverty line, which is double the rate of District of Columbia and more than double the rate of the U.S. Almost sixty percent of this population make under $50k a year, and 38% of the children in this ward live in poverty.
Ward 7:
Population | 81,270 |
Race | |
White | 3% |
Black | 89% |
Asian | 1% |
Other | 1% |
Two+ | 3% |
Hispanic | 4% |
Per Capita Income | $30,298 |
Median Household Income | $51,627 |
Percent Below Poverty Line | 25.6% |
Number of Households | 30,017 |
U.S. Census Bureau (2021). American Community Survey 5-year estimates.
Ward 8:
Population | 83,272 |
Race | |
White | 5% |
Black | 87% |
Asian | 1% |
Other | 1% |
Two+ | 4% |
Hispanic | 3% |
Per Capita Income | 4% |
Median Household Income | $38,906 |
Percent Below Poverty Line | 30.2% |
Number of Households | 34,878 |
U.S. Census Bureau (2021). American Community Survey 5-year estimates.
Due to the overwhelming Black student population living in an economical status of poverty,
Wards 7 and 8 are ideal contexts for Relay’s Graduate School of Education form of pedagogy.
Relay and Pedagogy of Poverty
According to Haberman (2010) there are 14 teaching acts that constitute the core functions of urban teaching. These include Giving information, Asking questions, Giving directions, Making assignments, Monitoring seatwork, Reviewing assignments, Giving tests, Reviewing tests, Assigning homework, Reviewing homework, Settling disputes, Punishing noncompliance, Marking papers, and Giving grades. Taken separately, as Haberman (2010) argues there may be nothing wrong with these activities, however in totality, without any other alternative forms of teaching and learning for students, he argues these acts are performed to the exclusion of other forms of pedagogical taxonomies due to biases and stereotypes about the race and socioeconomic class of students being taught. And in the case of Relay DC, it is a matter of race and socioeconomics, specifically the Wards in which students and their DCPS schools are based. He continues that there is a particular constituency that values pedagogy of poverty, “It appeals to those who have low expectations for minorities and the poor...They believe that at-risk students are served best by a directive, controlling pedagogy” (p. 82). Based on what Dr. Jackson-King experienced in Relay trainings and in conversations with certain individuals in leadership, this belief was salient. Further Haberman (2010) shares that there is a specific logic that supports this type of pedagogy. That is, “Teachers are in charge and responsible. Students are those who still need to develop appropriate behavior. Therefore, when students follow teachers’ directions, appropriate behavior is being taught and learned” (p.83). This power dynamic between the teacher-student dyad is what Paulo Freire (1970) refers to as the banking model of education. In essence, the teacher at the front of the classroom, represents the all-knowing expert and deposits pre-determined knowledge into students, who are supposed to idly accept it. This seemingly is the preferred pedagogy of Relay DC to the Black students of Wards 7 and 8, and it is enforced and inculcated through their systems and routines.
Relay’s Strong Systems and Routines are rooted in a form of Paternalism squarely focused on Historically Marginalized Communities from Lower-Socioeconomic Statuses
According to the branding of Relay’s professional development, the curriculum is anchored in Doug Lemov’s Teach Like A Champion (TLC), which has a very explicit and paternalistic philosophy of what students need or, as suggested by Whitman (2008), a deliberate socialization for racial minoritized students (i.e., Black and Latinx) living in communities with lower-SES. The Relay DC program was not offered in schools where White students are predominant. Below are specific behavioral tenets of paternalism ushered by Relay DC that were experienced and observed by Dr. Jackson-King during her monthly professional development sessions and led her to consistently voice concerns about Relay DC and its potential negative influence on Boone Elementary and its students.
Efficiency and Time
Dr. Jackson-King often heard Relay coaches use the phrase, “Get Better Faster” and subscribed to the notion that “every second counts.” She interpreted these statements during her professional development as an emphasis on the ideal of urgency. As a tenet of Teach Like A Champion, this neoliberal principle of urgency perpetuates urban education as constantly in “crisis” mode and students’ time must always be maximized because their lives depend on, as Relay coaches suggested, “us[ing] every minute well.” In an empirical study at an urban-situated school that engaged in similar pedagogy (Marsh, 2017), a teacher suggested, “Individual scholars when given an opportunity to demonstrate willpower, persistence and urgency in an academic environment, are going to be much the better off than their peers in every way shape and form.” This comment reflects a seemingly color- and context-blind idea of meritocracy—any student demonstrating the act of being urgent is important for success. However, the school in the study, like Dr. Jackson-King’s student population, was comprised of historically marginalized students from a lower socioeconomic community, so in essence, the belief was that lower-income students of Color were the types of students that must be urgent if they wanted to achieve success.
Physical Appearance
While Boone Elementary embraced and abided by the DCPS school uniforms, to counter the paternalism associated with physical appearance (i.e., uniform), Dr. Jackson-King refused to engage in the punitive recommendations of Relay DC for her scholars’ physical appearance. To be clear, many middle-class and elite students attending private schools embrace uniform requirements in schools (Kahn, 2011). However, children from this higher socioeconomic background are much more likely to receive an education based on principles of child-centered progressivism rather than new paternalism. Students of privilege, moreover, face far fewer restrictions on behavior and appearance (McDermott & Nygreen, 2013). Therefore, instead of in-school detentions, public shaming, and behavioral demarcations, Dr. Jackson-King chose a more equitable approach to physical appearance. She recalls “access[ing] [Boone Elementary’s] closet to give students what they needed” to be successful for the day.
Bodily Control
In classrooms particularly, a popular paternalistic mechanism that is often used by teachers to restrict students’ behavior and in essence their bodies, is the “SLANT” model. As defined by the Teacher Channel (2023), SLANT is a body language, a behavior; it helps students actively participate in class by exhibiting to the teacher and classmates that they are interested and involved in the learning. Relay had its own version of SLANT. During the Relay training, school leaders were shown videos of teachers using a strong voice, what Dr. Jackson-King described as “talking down to students to get [students] attention.” This was followed by directing students’ movements, that is, how they sit, speak-using certain words to begin a conversation, and how to use their eyes. Students were mandated to look at whoever is speaking. These mandates were coupled with strict timelines to ensure “that the teachers had control.” However, this type of control is nearly nonexistent in affluent communities. Studies of affluent children’s schools often describe contexts in which students are free to move independently around their school and to question the reasons for rules rather than simply obey them (Anyon, 1980; Demerath, 2009; Hayward, 2000; Pope, 2001), as was portrayed in the Relay DC training videos.
Teach Like A Champion as an approach however has received critiques involving its language, heavy monitoring and discipline, and racialized nature of its training videos (Treuhaft-Ali, 2016; Cushing, 2021; Stahl, 2020). The strong focus on classroom maintenance has been said to reduce students’ critical thinking skills with the use of blanketed and scripted techniques (Treuhaft-Ali, 2016). In an empirical study (Marsh, 2017) about how teachers define schooling success, one teacher described his experience with TLC as learning “[How] [I] walk in a classroom, how do [I] stand, how to give directions, how to speak less, not more, how to give feedback properly, just like the basic fundamentals.” This articulated approach is what Ed Hirsch, Jr. (1996) called “Curricular Formalism”—that is, an approach to education where the concentration emphasized the form more than the substance of learning. For TLC, classroom maintenance is achieved by teacher scripts that emphasize a mixture of body language and verbal language of control and punishment (Cushing, 2021; Stahl, 2020). In the end, this has been seen as a system of oppression with potential negative impacts on youth development (Stahl, 2020). Furthermore, TLC training DVD and videos have also come under scrutiny. Most if not all of the videos portray a White teacher and students of Color, highlighting a persistent racial disparity in the educational system (Treuhaft-Ali, 2016). For Dr. Jackson-King’s professional development with Relay, in one of our interviews she mentioned that the videos used White woman teachers, who reflect the national trend of teachers across schooling contexts in the U.S. (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). Regardless of gender, the optics in the Relay training videos portray a sense of control of majority Black and Latinx students by White teachers and disproportionately show harsh punishment against them as compared to their White peers (Treuhaft-Ali, 2016). Ultimately the Relay training depict White teachers as “heroes” and “coaches” that are willingly “saving poor urban children” (Cushing, 2021) who act like “natives” in need of civilizing.
Akin to teachers, a school district leadership’s views and beliefs regarding their students can greatly influence the expectations that they may hold regarding schooling success and social growth and development of young people (Ford et al., 2011; Henfield & Washington, 2012). The pressures to reform education are embedded within increasingly hostile public rhetoric about the condition of public education. This current pressure, which suggests the larger education system, particularly in urban contexts is in “crisis” and beyond repair (Au, 2013), fosters the tenets and pedagogical systems and routines embedded in Relay DC.
Conclusions:
Based on my review as discussed in this report, it is my opinion that through its professional development focused on systems and routines, anchored in Teaching Like a Champion (2010) and the “pedagogy of poverty” (Haberman, 2010), Relay DC intentionally supported deficit ideology concerning Black working-class students in Wards 7 and 8. As a result, Black students from Wards 7 and 8 have had their culture, local knowledge, and abilities devalued by their education-elected District leaders.
In addition, while Dr. Jackson-King implemented some of the core academic strategies and suggestions of Relay DC coaches, her unapologetic refusal to engage in the behavioral control of students is justified. The Relay DC systems and routines are performed to the exclusion of other forms of pedagogical taxonomies due to biases and stereotypes about the clustered schools concerning the race and socioeconomic class of Wards 7 and 8 students being taught.
Finally, it is my opinion that Dr. Jackson-King was fully justified in repeatedly speaking out against an ideology that is rooted in deficit, racial inequities, offered through Relay DC to engage scholars of Color. If her actions in speaking out and attempting to hold Relay accountable are found to contribute to her job loss, in my opinion that would be unjustified and not in the interests of affected DCPS students.
I hereby certify that this report is a complete and accurate statement of all of my opinions, and the basis and reasons for them, to which I will testify under oath.
Dated: July 28, 2023
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