Graduates from low-performing D.C. schools face tough college road

[Anonymous]

Only 38% of students who graduated DCPS and went on to college, graduated from college within 5 years. That statistic is pathetic. What about the students who drop out mid-or after freshman year because the coursework was way over their heads and they were woefully unprepared - and didn't even know how to seek out resources? They interviewed valedictorians, not the average DCPS-graduate-now-college-student.

[Anonymous]

I hear you PP. There is a disconnect for me in the experience of the Wilson kid - who BTW graduated from Wilson in 2010. I found this profile on the DCPS website:
http://dc.gov/DCPS/About+DCPS/Who+We+Are/I+am+a+DCPS+Graduate/Class+of+2010/Seth+Brown

My child is at Deal now and has certainly had writing assignments of more than 5 pages! Even my 5th grader too!

I think for those of us that do choose public, we know up front that we have to make sure our kids are prepared. I'm guessing too that many of the kids don't have parents that went to college, which would also put them at a disadvantage no matter what high school they graduated from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I read this article and it further reinforced my decision to go private.

I strongly suggest you talk to real people and not depend on an article that didn't even mention whether the Wilson student had taken AP English or what score he got on it. Could be his "good" scores were in math and science and he just wasn't concentrating on English.

COuld be he took the easy AP English teacher who didn't assign long essays instead of the hard teacher who did.

You just don't know so please don't assume that you do - based on what is not said in a Post article.

[Anonymous]

I read the article and my only criticsm of the article is that it leads one to believe that this is a problem only for DC schools. I would suggest that this is a problem for most students graduating from urban inner city (or poor rural) schools. I am a gradaute of Georgetown University and I went to public high school in Brooklyn, NY. That article could have been about me...the parallels are almost on point. I graduated 2nd in my class, got admitted to Georgetown as a Community Scholar. Serioulsy struggled my freshman year. Figured out by my second year because failure simply wasn't an option for me. Got (hands down in my opinion ) one of the best educations ever at Georgetown and went on to law school where I excelled. That story could have just as easily been about many of my friends from schools in Maryland, LA, Chicago, Boston, etc. Many of us experienced what this article highlights, and can speak to how we felt lost, confused, bamboozled by our high schools, and less deserving of our white counter parts or other minority friends who parents did send them to private and/or boarding schools.

The reality is that urban inner city schools are seriously failing our kids. We often think only the kids who are struggling have been failed, and forget that even the hardworking smart kids are being failed too. I have already decided to either move into one of the so called "rich" suburbs so my daughter can get a good public education or suck it up and pay for private school.

[Anonymous]

13:33 a point that excluded a demographic that is the majority at this school. The wording of vast majority in comparison to the slight minority is somewhat implied. No comments, can resonate more than making an entire statement.

[Anonymous]

This article was really depressing. I work with a kid who is not even close to being a valedictorian in a DC charter school. Her school keeps taking the kids on college visits and she talks about going to college but she is not prepared at all for college. Her school seems to not be preparing her for doing something else after high school besides college. I'm worried that she will get into community college and end up taking out loans to pay for remedial courses (you don't get college credit for that) and never finish and end up in debt. I can't get the staff at the charter school to return phone calls or emails so it's hard to know what is going on there.

And I see worksheets for essay writing that give the kids a specific structure to follow but don't expect anything in the way of an independent thought. She thinks she's doing okay because she's passing her classes. She has no idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I read the article and my only criticsm of the article is that it leads one to believe that this is a problem only for DC schools. I would suggest that this is a problem for most students graduating from urban inner city (or poor rural) schools. I am a gradaute of Georgetown University and I went to public high school in Brooklyn, NY. That article could have been about me...the parallels are almost on point. I graduated 2nd in my class, got admitted to Georgetown as a Community Scholar. Serioulsy struggled my freshman year. Figured out by my second year because failure simply wasn't an option for me. Got (hands down in my opinion ) one of the best educations ever at Georgetown and went on to law school where I excelled. That story could have just as easily been about many of my friends from schools in Maryland, LA, Chicago, Boston, etc. Many of us experienced what this article highlights, and can speak to how we felt lost, confused, bamboozled by our high schools, and less deserving of our white counter parts or other minority friends who parents did send them to private and/or boarding schools.

The reality is that urban inner city schools are seriously failing our kids. We often think only the kids who are struggling have been failed, and forget that even the hardworking smart kids are being failed too. I have already decided to either move into one of the so called "rich" suburbs so my daughter can get a good public education or suck it up and pay for private school.

A lot of the commenters to the article on Wapo are saying they had similar problems their first year of college despite having had all the benefits of a good school and supportive educated parents.

My first year of college was tough too, but I expected it -- My high school teachers and older friends told me it would be a lot different from high school. So I wonder why so many people are shocked about this. Are kids not listening? Not believing? or was my experience (many years ago) extremely unusual?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This article was really depressing. I work with a kid who is not even close to being a valedictorian in a DC charter school. Her school keeps taking the kids on college visits and she talks about going to college but she is not prepared at all for college. Her school seems to not be preparing her for doing something else after high school besides college. I'm worried that she will get into community college and end up taking out loans to pay for remedial courses (you don't get college credit for that) and never finish and end up in debt. I can't get the staff at the charter school to return phone calls or emails so it's hard to know what is going on there.

And I see worksheets for essay writing that give the kids a specific structure to follow but don't expect anything in the way of an independent thought. She thinks she's doing okay because she's passing her classes. She has no idea.

Yeah -- I think the charters especially push the rah-rah aspects of college without giving the kids any concept of what it's really like.

It sort of reminds me of kids who say they want to be doctors because they get a lot of positive attention - not because they have any idea of what becoming an MD entails or if they have the talent for it. Then when they take their first college chemistry course, they realize it's not for them.

[Anonymous]

I am glad to hear from a PP with a child at Deal and a fifth grader that they have already been given writing assignments longer than five pages.

How is it possible that this Wilson kid who supposedly took 11 APs could not have had such an assignment? If not in English, than in history or government -- or even in French or Spanish? Or even possibly biology.

"Still, he was overwhelmed during his first semester at the New Hampshire Ivy League school because he was assigned two five-page writing assignments — longer than any assignments he’d completed in high school, he said."

This should be par for the course in middle school, and kids should write their first true research paper by ninth grade. (Like I did.)

How worried should I be about Murch and Deal? Because I am now very worried about Wilson. I have a 3 year old. Hopefully Wilson will get better before he's ready for high school.

[Anonymous]

17:30 I think your experience was unusual. No one bothered telling just how ill prepared I really was. I certainly expected college to be challenging. What I did not expect was to sit in class and be totally confused after reading, preparing, etc. I never knew some people took sociology and philosophy in high school. College was the first time I even heard of these classes.

This article isn't speaking of the regular rigors of college. It's a much deeper issue than that.

[Anonymous]

Wilson has had some excellent AP teachers in the past.

"Reform" changed that.

IMPACT doesn't allow for much creativity. If teachers want to keep their jobs, they have to perform in class, while the evaluator is looking at them. Anything done after class, like reading and commenting on long essays, doesn't count.

I know there was a teacher at Wilson who did this who is no longer there. I'm sure the 2010 valedictorian couldn't have had him.

[Anonymous]

I think most kids grade off to college tend to have a rough adjustment. Many deal with leaving home, finances, new environment, new social situations and am entirely new academic experience. Some sink, many swim regardless of what school they come from. There are many private school kids who struggle just as much as public school kids. It is a big adjustment for any kid just like middle school is an adjustment and high school is an adjustment.

[Anonymous]

There is a difference between having adjustment issues and not being academically prepared. Saying "well most kids have adjustment issues" minimizes the real failure this article highlights. If you haven't personally experienced then it's easy to cast it off as not that unusual.

[Anonymous]

DCPS teachers don't have a student assistant who can read all of those 5-page assignments. So to think that a DCPS teach is going to assign a 5-page assignment to her 250 student class load is ridiculous. Considering her colleague who's not teaching AP is getting the same pay and accolades by assigning one page book reports. You know this to be true.

This is why gym teachers don't coach sports. This is why instrumental music teachers don't form marching bands. Think about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS teachers don't have a student assistant who can read all of those 5-page assignments. So to think that a DCPS teach is going to assign a 5-page assignment to her 250 student class load is ridiculous. Considering her colleague who's not teaching AP is getting the same pay and accolades by assigning one page book reports. You know this to be true.

This is why gym teachers don't coach sports. This is why instrumental music teachers don't form marching bands. Think about it.

Actually the class at Deal I am referring to did have a TA from a teachers' college (we've had several classes at Deal with TAs) and teachers regularly assign solid and thoughtful writing assignments. Students also have to discuss and defend their points of view on current events. I believe that Deal is laying a solid foundation, however I'm a troubled that this could be undermined by whatever is going on at Wilson.