Is Bowser's goal really to damage and destroy DC public schools?
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Anonymous
A lot of teachers are embarrassed by WTU. |
Anonymous
+1. There is money and lobbying on both sides |
Anonymous
D.C. was one of the very last places in America, if not the entire world, to allow kids back in schools. |
Anonymous
No, that’s not what I’m saying. You are taking things too literally and personally, which is what’s weird. What I’m saying is that history will not judge these decisions and their makers kindly. It would be nice if that reckoning could happen earlier — not for purposes of revenge as you seem to assume, but in order to avoid repeating these mistakes during the next pandemic, which may not be another 100 years away. |
Anonymous
The last thing Democrats want to do is fight with teachers union, so they let teachers unions decide when schools could reopen. It was all politics, and no science. |
Anonymous
I also hope that things go better in the next global pandemic. Very controversial takes you have on here |
Anonymous
Only controversial in your little bubble. And nice try deflecting responsibility with your depersonalized take on this issue. |
Anonymous
| I also wanted to apologize for being a big part of this digression. The point of this thread is that Bowser is destroying public schools. To tie it back to her handling of reopening, her plan was a complete lack of a plan. She put each school in charge of their own reopening plan and pitted families and school communities against each other. It was brilliant from a political sense but did nothing but damage education in DCPS. She could’ve have said all schools were hybrid, full reopen, or any other system but instead told schools (which were already overwhelmed trying to pivot in the pandemic) to just figure it out. |
Anonymous
Not sure what I’m deflecting? I participated it my schools RCC, got vaxxed immediately, and was back ASAP. at no point was I discouraged to do any of this by the WTU. This is my last post on this (see above). |
Anonymous
Saying “I hope things go better in the next global pandemic” rather than “I hope we make better decisions in the next globe pandemic” is deflecting responsibility from human decision-makers (which I never said you were a part of) by pretending the school closures were necessitated by the virus. Humans had a lot of agency in the face of this global pandemic with regard to who and what was prioritized in our response, as the very different approaches around the country and the globe show. |
Anonymous
I hope we make better decisions in the next pandemic. |
Anonymous
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I'm sorry for not reading all of the prior pages and I hope I don't revisit material well covered. But I think that there are problems in every direction and they all form such a tight cycle it's hard to envision breaking the cycle at any point because one issue begets another.
Let's start with the schools big picture. Most but not all public schools are underperforming. Let's start with the category of schools that are underperforming by various degrees. And let's isolate one problem which is associated with parents there - because even though its caused by the problematic school, parent behavior is a problem that drives other problems. First, wealthy parents with lots of money leave the public system for private schools. At least this requires some pain, they have to be able to afford it. So that skims kids with lots of resources and likely less learning and discipline off the top, but that still leaves a lot of middle class kids in the public schools, plus, historically, people like my family who had some wealth but strongly believed in public schools when I was growing up. These days, though, if those same middle class and even connected working class are equipped with a good internet connection, and enough executive function and time in the family to study, strategize, and run an effective lottery campaign, the majority of middle income kids are also cherry picked out. Not only does this scoop kids who (likely, per the data) need fewer extra intense resources and behavior / mental health interventions, this also takes the parents with fundraising, organizing and motivating / supporting resources out of the community. The kids left in the public school are: 1) true believers in public school (limited) feel genuinely satisfied by the public school (limited) or have parents who don't have the energy, time, skills or resources to pursue charter schools for them (vast majority). Capitol Hill cluster School parents figured this out early on and said hey lets link arms and stop moving out of the city for better schools and stop sending kids to private. let's join the PTO and try to improve the schools. now, this isn't perfect and I'm sure it smacks, to some degree, of gentrification, but on its face at least it's an effort to stick with the public school. But these days you cannot do the same thing, because of the ubiquitous charters. If it cost a lot of money to opt out of public school, we'd have more sticking with it because they otherwise love their homes, city life, neighborhood, proximity to work, etc. But now, it's feasible, with a little time and a lot of effort, to find another option for your kid at some charter. so the schools and the kids left behind sink. But what are parents to do? I mean, if everyone else does it, are you going to send your kids to the school and hope for the best? We didn't - (but we did choose private, at least my tax dollars stay in the school and I'm not pulling a resource from anywhere). This is just one loop in the endless cycle. The teachers are overworked and miserable, and the resources aren't there for them, they're underpaid and overworked and also dealing with insanely poor resources, and they're trying to care for the kids that are ultimately the last kids standing in the schools, most of the kids have more intense needs, are facing higher levels of poverty, come to school with more stress and more baggage so the teachers start to feel a sense of hopelessness and burnout. So then they turn to their union for their only source of power, and the unions are pretty damn corrupt as well. they're driven by a council, not just the rank and file, and many teachers hold their nose through some of the unions activities because they need the union for their collective bargaining. But the collective bargaining itself is probably keeping pay lower and reducing the ability for good teachers to shine and be promoted based on merit. and then, parents react again, with anger to the teachers, how dare they leave, quit, refuse to simulcast, break down, post on twitter. And the parents turn against each other. How dare you leave the school for your private? You elitist jerk! Except that parent has left the public for a charter. And the public school parents left, themselves, don't necessarily share a consensus about what they want. Study after study shows homework is bad for kids, but many administrators still assign it, despite all evidence to the contrary, in young years, and many parents actively WANT it because they see it as a sign of a schools academic rigor and they think their child needs it. And so the kids left behind in the public schools become problem kids within the school, and maybe if they were surrounded by stable peers, maybe if their village was invested in their school, they'd have better outcomes and the teachers would be teaching kids in their actual community and etc. So, it's easy to say that charters are the problem, and it's probably clear from my note that I think that myself. BUT, I'm damn lucky our family can afford private school and I'm not willing to deny that experience for others - I'm not willing to say let's close down charters that harm public schools as long as the public schools themselves were shitty. Charters didn't magically appear because some evil person wanted to corrupt free education, they evolved (however opportunistically and problematically) from a real need, which was parents without wealth in failing school districts demanded a lifeboat for their kids. I don't think the solution is that we effectively break any chain in this destructive cycle, but rather that we start investing in the chain throughout its pieces. Taking advantage of new wealth in communities not just in tax revenue but in school participation. And its' going to take really grand thinking. I don't know the answer. in decades of investment in school and dozens of iterations of school reform, we seem to be consistently making schools worse. |
Anonymous
| holy god. The "Enter" key is your friend. Use it. |
Anonymous
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TL;DR
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Anonymous
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What school did you go to that didn’t teach about paragraphs?
Maybe come back with an edited draft and I will read it. |