Lack of Social Promotion at BASIS?

[Anonymous]

to 10:15 - some poverty-stricken kids will benefit just by being in a classroom with middle class kids, but many suffer from effects of poverty than can't be overcome by school influences. This is what DCPS refuses to believe and why its school reform is such a failure.

Charters can't solve the problem either, as 12:33 explains.

It would have been nice for kids in the middle class and kids in poverty if the fantasy that all it takes is a good teacher for all kids to learn had been true.

It's not true. It's a fantasy, a failed doctrine and a false dogma not supported by research, the costly DCPS experiment or common sense.

And yet it continues.

[Anonymous]

12:33 - would you stay in DC if you could afford to buy a home in ward 3?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:12:33 - would you stay in DC if you could afford to buy a home in ward 3?

We can afford to buy in Ward 3 - we're closing on a Mo. Co. property that wouldn't look out of place in NW. What we can't afford are privates for 2 kids from 6th up, plus college, and don't like the bubble environment at privates. We aren't as concerned about Deal as Wilson. We can't bank on our math-oriented kids being admitted to Walls, and aren't inspired by modest quant offerings there anyway. Our children are shy and advanced academically and we aren't crazy about them being at Wilson eventually, with many tough kids needing remediation, or the lack of self-contained school-within-a-school academies. After our Two Rivers experience, Basis sounds too good to be true (Two Rivers also promised challenge). If DC offered a top math/science focused test-in academy, different story. We will miss city life a lot, planning to return as empty nesters. For us, too many risks (financially, socially and academically) in staying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:33 - would you stay in DC if you could afford to buy a home in ward 3?

We can afford to buy in Ward 3 - we're closing on a Mo. Co. property that wouldn't look out of place in NW. What we can't afford are privates for 2 kids from 6th up, plus college, and don't like the bubble environment at privates. We aren't as concerned about Deal as Wilson. We can't bank on our math-oriented kids being admitted to Walls, and aren't inspired by modest quant offerings there anyway. Our children are shy and advanced academically and we aren't crazy about them being at Wilson eventually, with many tough kids needing remediation, or the lack of self-contained school-within-a-school academies. After our Two Rivers experience, Basis sounds too good to be true (Two Rivers also promised challenge). If DC offered a top math/science focused test-in academy, different story. We will miss city life a lot, planning to return as empty nesters. For us, too many risks (financially, socially and academically) in staying.

Thanks. Would Elllington have been an option, if your kids were arts-inclined? I hear the academics there are good, with an orderly student body, happy teachers, good administration and engaged parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:to 10:15 - some poverty-stricken kids will benefit just by being in a classroom with middle class kids, but many suffer from effects of poverty than can't be overcome by school influences. This is what DCPS refuses to believe and why its school reform is such a failure.

Charters can't solve the problem either, as 12:33 explains.

It would have been nice for kids in the middle class and kids in poverty if the fantasy that all it takes is a good teacher for all kids to learn had been true.

It's not true. It's a fantasy, a failed doctrine and a false dogma not supported by research, the costly DCPS experiment or common sense.

And yet it continues.

I think you missed my point, PP, that some kids need to be boarded and that the school must take on the role of parent for those kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:33 - would you stay in DC if you could afford to buy a home in ward 3?

Thanks. Would Elllington have been an option, if your kids were arts-inclined? I hear the academics there are good, with an orderly student body, happy teachers, good administration and engaged parents.

I've heard Ellington academics are very peripheral, not at all challenging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:to 10:15 - some poverty-stricken kids will benefit just by being in a classroom with middle class kids, but many suffer from effects of poverty than can't be overcome by school influences. This is what DCPS refuses to believe and why its school reform is such a failure.

Charters can't solve the problem either, as 12:33 explains.

It would have been nice for kids in the middle class and kids in poverty if the fantasy that all it takes is a good teacher for all kids to learn had been true.

It's not true. It's a fantasy, a failed doctrine and a false dogma not supported by research, the costly DCPS experiment or common sense.

And yet it continues.

I think you missed my point, PP, that some kids need to be boarded and that the school must take on the role of parent for those kids.

This whole.idea of kids needing to go to boarding school to counter act the cultural influences of their home and neighborhood makes me thing of the Native American boarding schools. We as a country had the same thoughts about Indian children-- that their home culture was terribly inadequate and didn't fit the society's notion of healthy/successful. Small children were forced to go to boarding schools where their appearance, dress, language, religion, eating habits etc. Were "normalized". All along America and Americans were convinced they were doing God work and were in the best interest of the kids and the nation.

Of course we look back now and are horrified and call it what it was: cultural genocide. If you have ever been on an Indian reservation, you know the policy resonates today in terrible ways.

So I get nervous when people start advocating that children need to be removed from their families and cultures in large numbers in order to civilize and educate them "properly". It requires some real examination.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:33 - would you stay in DC if you could afford to buy a home in ward 3?

Thanks. Would Elllington have been an option, if your kids were arts-inclined? I hear the academics there are good, with an orderly student body, happy teachers, good administration and engaged parents.

I've heard Ellington academics are very peripheral, not at all challenging.

checking it out personally would help. I hear they are offering more AP courses, and as a selective school, you don't have to worry about a bunch of charter rejects showing up throughout the year. There are kids from the burbs who pay tuition to go there.

[Anonymous]

To 06:29 I would agree that it is not appropriate to remove children from their families and cultures, but there is a cultural change that does desperately need to happen.

That being, that education needs to be valued, that it needs to be taught and reinforced that education and hard work is what will lift one from poverty and difficult circumstance, nothing else will.

Consider that much in current "culture" is transitory; appearance, dress, and habits generally just a few decades old at most (the great-grandparents of today's urban youth were nothing like today's urban youth), whereas Native Americans had a culture millennia deep that was disrupted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To 06:29 I would agree that it is not appropriate to remove children from their families and cultures, but there is a cultural change that does desperately need to happen.

That being, that education needs to be valued, that it needs to be taught and reinforced that education and hard work is what will lift one from poverty and difficult circumstance, nothing else will.

Consider that much in current "culture" is transitory; appearance, dress, and habits generally just a few decades old at most (the great-grandparents of today's urban youth were nothing like today's urban youth), whereas Native Americans had a culture millennia deep that was disrupted.

This sounds right to me. The question is how to change the culture?

Obviously firing teachers and extensive test prep is not the way, but it's all the current admin knows.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To 06:29 I would agree that it is not appropriate to remove children from their families and cultures, but there is a cultural change that does desperately need to happen.

That being, that education needs to be valued, that it needs to be taught and reinforced that education and hard work is what will lift one from poverty and difficult circumstance, nothing else will.

Consider that much in current "culture" is transitory; appearance, dress, and habits generally just a few decades old at most (the great-grandparents of today's urban youth were nothing like today's urban youth), whereas Native Americans had a culture millennia deep that was disrupted.

ITA -- As an AA I am tired of people (in general, both minority and non-minority) spouted this nonsense about contemporary urban culture (dress, attitude towards women and lack of respect for education) as if it was intrinsic or had an historical legacy dated back hundreds of years. Now the legacy of poverty and lack of access to resources are historical--slavery and structural racism--however, my grandparents did not react to racism and limited access to cultural/social capital like today's "urban" culture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

ITA -- As an AA I am tired of people (in general, both minority and non-minority) spouted this nonsense about contemporary urban culture (dress, attitude towards women and lack of respect for education) as if it was intrinsic or had an historical legacy dated back hundreds of years. Now the legacy of poverty and lack of access to resources are historical--slavery and structural racism--however, my grandparents did not react to racism and limited access to cultural/social capital like today's "urban" culture.

Honestly, I do not think whether it is intrinsic or not is as important as African Americans themselves rising up against this segment of the black culture that disses education which dishonors the name of Martin Luther King Junior

People of poverty all over the world see the value in education and would love to have the opportunity to go to school. It is high time for African Americans to call upon all African Americans to rise up and value education and other time honored values that were valued by Martin Luther King Junior..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To 06:29 I would agree that it is not appropriate to remove children from their families and cultures, but there is a cultural change that does desperately need to happen.

That being, that education needs to be valued, that it needs to be taught and reinforced that education and hard work is what will lift one from poverty and difficult circumstance, nothing else will.

Consider that much in current "culture" is transitory; appearance, dress, and habits generally just a few decades old at most (the great-grandparents of today's urban youth were nothing like today's urban youth), whereas Native Americans had a culture millennia deep that was disrupted.

ITA -- As an AA I am tired of people (in general, both minority and non-minority) spouted this nonsense about contemporary urban culture (dress, attitude towards women and lack of respect for education) as if it was intrinsic or had an historical legacy dated back hundreds of years. Now the legacy of poverty and lack of access to resources are historical--slavery and structural racism--however, my grandparents did not react to racism and limited access to cultural/social capital like today's "urban" culture.

+1 from another AA

I think what's required though is a break up of concentrated areas of poverty. Housing patterns very much correlate with school performance. This town has never really desegregated. I can and do visit areas of Washington, DC, restaurants for instance, where I am the only in the place. As much as people hate gentrification, I think it could have a profoundly positive impact on the east side of town. On the west side, there needs to be more opportunities for section 8 vouchers holders to find housing. The idea is to create income diversity in most neighborhoods and put the social service agencies middle to downtown, accessible by public transportation.

Some of what is held out there as contemporary culture is rooted in jail or poverty. This is becoming the norm all over and is true across culture lines. Look at the explosion of expression through skin exposure, body art, language. It's not just an AA thing.

[Anonymous]

This discussion doesn't really belong in a Basis thread, it's a far bigger issue.

There IS a huge problem with the attitude of anti-intellectualism in some segments of culture that needs to be addressed. The attitude of giving a beatdown to the kid that raises his hand in class.

With some AAs, there exists an attitude that it's "acting white" or selling out on black culture to get educated or try to be upwardly mobile comes out of nowhere and has no merit or valid historic basis. Dr. King sold black culture out by becoming educated? I think not. Try and tell a proud Morehouse grad he sold out and is acting white. Try and tell Cornel West or other AA academics, intellectuals and thought leaders that. You won't make much of a case.

But, as the PP points out, it's not confined to segments of the AA community, as an example whites have their problems of anti-intellectualism, too - with their glorification of redneck "hold my beer while I..." antics, goths, stoners, and other segments that glorify all the wrong things.

As to how to fix it, for starters, we should not feed into it and cater to it by wrapping schools around it.

[Anonymous]

So, are we saying that DCPS school reform has failed? That it takes more than a good teacher - or even three good teachers in a row - to radically improve educational opportunities for children who don't come from education-oriented homes?

If so, what's to be done about it.