S/O High SES students will perform well no matter their peer group

[Anonymous]

I think DCPS major strategy to close the achievement gap is to cap the growth of the top kids. They want to limit any options that will help advanced kids as that will just increase the gap between top and bottom. Two ways to close a gap - push down the top or raise up the bottom. They are not competent enough to do much with the kids who really need intervention so they want to limit the potential of the highest achieving kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think DCPS major strategy to close the achievement gap is to cap the growth of the top kids. They want to limit any options that will help advanced kids as that will just increase the gap between top and bottom. Two ways to close a gap - push down the top or raise up the bottom. They are not competent enough to do much with the kids who really need intervention so they want to limit the potential of the highest achieving kids.

THIS. No one has been able to close the achievement gap no matter how much money we throw out per student (BTW DC is one of the highest per student).

So you “close” it by dumbing down the curriculum so the higher achieving students are not challenged to their fullest ability. You also just pass students no matter the truancy rate or just push them thru each year without competency to get an artificially high graduation rate. We all know about the scandal last year in DC about that. PARCC scores came out for Ballou and single digits in competency. I don’t see how all those students should graduate. The diploma is useless.

Also good point from a poster about the kid who got A’s in pre-calculus at Coolidge and was placed in remedial math. Dumb down the curriculum, don’t provide tracking, etc.. and this is what you get. Anyone who thinks the kid who got A’s in precalculus at Coolidge is doing the same challenging work and performing at the same level as someone who took pre-calcullus at the best pyramid in Bethesda is living in la, la land.

It all comes out in college people. You either sink or swim when you compete in a bigger arena. Your success is in large part determined by the rigor of your high school curriculum. Google top kids in poor urban schools and you will see a ton of articles about how they struggle in college with not knowing as much as other students, not being able to think as critically, etc...

Those who advocate mixed academic abilities in classes, you go for it and good luck. Actions speak louder than words. For the rest of us who know better, we will go private or move out of the city. And it will be a significant percentage of households. Then see how really abysmal the PARCC scores are for DCPS...

[Anonymous]

I definitely think that my children love to learn and do work hard, so whatever environment they are in it will work out. Perhaps they won't be ready for Ivies, but my family did well following our passions without that kind of background, into technical fields and law. I don't want my kids to be on a treadmill, I just want them to be happy. I don't really feel like there is a need for them to climb socially or to get out of poverty or anything. Get degrees, find things you'd like to do, be self-sufficient. Leave it to others to work themselves to the bone and enjoy the workahol and the big house.

Perhaps I'm settling. But really I'd rather help others than help my kids or myself. I think they will see it the same way. I know it's not a common belief but I think it'll be fine. If my kids are fine, I am not going to try to find them the "best" school or anything like that.

BUT - if it makes you happy, go ahead! I know I'm offering a minority opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think DCPS major strategy to close the achievement gap is to cap the growth of the top kids. They want to limit any options that will help advanced kids as that will just increase the gap between top and bottom. Two ways to close a gap - push down the top or raise up the bottom. They are not competent enough to do much with the kids who really need intervention so they want to limit the potential of the highest achieving kids.

THIS. No one has been able to close the achievement gap no matter how much money we throw out per student (BTW DC is one of the highest per student).

So you “close” it by dumbing down the curriculum so the higher achieving students are not challenged to their fullest ability. You also just pass students no matter the truancy rate or just push them thru each year without competency to get an artificially high graduation rate. We all know about the scandal last year in DC about that. PARCC scores came out for Ballou and single digits in competency. I don’t see how all those students should graduate. The diploma is useless.

Also good point from a poster about the kid who got A’s in pre-calculus at Coolidge and was placed in remedial math. Dumb down the curriculum, don’t provide tracking, etc.. and this is what you get. Anyone who thinks the kid who got A’s in precalculus at Coolidge is doing the same challenging work and performing at the same level as someone who took pre-calcullus at the best pyramid in Bethesda is living in la, la land.

It all comes out in college people. You either sink or swim when you compete in a bigger arena. Your success is in large part determined by the rigor of your high school curriculum. Google top kids in poor urban schools and you will see a ton of articles about how they struggle in college with not knowing as much as other students, not being able to think as critically, etc...

Those who advocate mixed academic abilities in classes, you go for it and good luck. Actions speak louder than words. For the rest of us who know better, we will go private or move out of the city. And it will be a significant percentage of households. Then see how really abysmal the PARCC scores are for DCPS...

My parents immigrated here when I was 4 with nothing and we were sponsored by a church. I knew no English when I started K and went to ESL classes in school for 2-3 years. Thanks to tracking I did well in school and have a post graduate degree. You can’t make all poor kids do better or well without tracking, but you can give the kids who are smarter or higher performing a better chance to succeed like myself with tracking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think DCPS major strategy to close the achievement gap is to cap the growth of the top kids. They want to limit any options that will help advanced kids as that will just increase the gap between top and bottom. Two ways to close a gap - push down the top or raise up the bottom. They are not competent enough to do much with the kids who really need intervention so they want to limit the potential of the highest achieving kids.

THIS. No one has been able to close the achievement gap no matter how much money we throw out per student (BTW DC is one of the highest per student).

So you “close” it by dumbing down the curriculum so the higher achieving students are not challenged to their fullest ability. You also just pass students no matter the truancy rate or just push them thru each year without competency to get an artificially high graduation rate. We all know about the scandal last year in DC about that. PARCC scores came out for Ballou and single digits in competency. I don’t see how all those students should graduate. The diploma is useless.

Also good point from a poster about the kid who got A’s in pre-calculus at Coolidge and was placed in remedial math. Dumb down the curriculum, don’t provide tracking, etc.. and this is what you get. Anyone who thinks the kid who got A’s in precalculus at Coolidge is doing the same challenging work and performing at the same level as someone who took pre-calcullus at the best pyramid in Bethesda is living in la, la land.

It all comes out in college people. You either sink or swim when you compete in a bigger arena. Your success is in large part determined by the rigor of your high school curriculum. Google top kids in poor urban schools and you will see a ton of articles about how they struggle in college with not knowing as much as other students, not being able to think as critically, etc...

Those who advocate mixed academic abilities in classes, you go for it and good luck. Actions speak louder than words. For the rest of us who know better, we will go private or move out of the city. And it will be a significant percentage of households. Then see how really abysmal the PARCC scores are for DCPS...

My parents immigrated here when I was 4 with nothing and we were sponsored by a church. I knew no English when I started K and went to ESL classes in school for 2-3 years. Thanks to tracking I did well in school and have a post graduate degree. You can’t make all poor kids do better or well without tracking, but you can give the kids who are smarter or higher performing a better chance to succeed like myself with tracking.

I will also add that I did well in college, and it was because of tracking and being challenged among other similar peers academically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t read most of the responses but my kid used to be at a title 1 and is now at a lottery school with 6% farms.
Let me tell you, it’s day and night.
The school is better if the vast majority of parents helps it, even if by making sure their kids are ready to learn.

Not DC I assume? I don’t know of a single lottery school in DC with a farm rate that low.

YY? It has just 5% at risk.

They kick them all out

Latin MS has 7% at-risk. Those are the two lowest I am aware of.

Is at risk the same as FARMs?

No....actually I don't think you can get FARM rates can you?

You can't get that data anymore. Most DCPS schools have so many students who qualify for FARMS that they fall under the community eligibility provisions.

For the schools that are under that threshold, the surveys we all fill out determine who qualifies. You need to have an income that is less than 1.3 times the federal poverty rate (federal poverty rate for 2019 is $25,750 for a family of 4).

At risk captures a different population, including children whose family qualifies for federal nutrition assistance (formerly called food stamps) and/or TANF, and/or are homeless, runaway or migrant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I definitely think that my children love to learn and do work hard, so whatever environment they are in it will work out. Perhaps they won't be ready for Ivies, but my family did well following our passions without that kind of background, into technical fields and law. I don't want my kids to be on a treadmill, I just want them to be happy. I don't really feel like there is a need for them to climb socially or to get out of poverty or anything. Get degrees, find things you'd like to do, be self-sufficient. Leave it to others to work themselves to the bone and enjoy the workahol and the big house.

Perhaps I'm settling. But really I'd rather help others than help my kids or myself. I think they will see it the same way. I know it's not a common belief but I think it'll be fine. If my kids are fine, I am not going to try to find them the "best" school or anything like that.

BUT - if it makes you happy, go ahead! I know I'm offering a minority opinion.

No one said anything about the ivies. People are saying their kids in DCPS are bored and it’s too easy. A ton of parents supplement at Deal and Wilson BTW.

Yes you are settling and in the minority. Every parent wants what is best for their child. You can put whatever idealism and goal you want to help society over your child if you want but don’t think 99% of parents will. Good luck to you but don’t bet on seeing any closing of the achievement gap by sacrificing your children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think DCPS major strategy to close the achievement gap is to cap the growth of the top kids. They want to limit any options that will help advanced kids as that will just increase the gap between top and bottom. Two ways to close a gap - push down the top or raise up the bottom. They are not competent enough to do much with the kids who really need intervention so they want to limit the potential of the highest achieving kids.

School systems' access to federal funding is based largely on test scores, so the key metric that DCPS policymakers care about is PARCC scores. That's what teachers, schools, and ultimately the whole system are judged by. So no, they have no interest in "limiting options that will help advanced kids" as a strategy to somehow narrow the achievement gap. Smart kids will get a 5 on PARCC tests, and that's what DCPS wants. It's not like those kids might be getting a 10 on PARCC and DCPS somehow whats to prevent that. The test only goes to 5.

These statements, which are repeated often on DCUM, are a pathetic paranoid fantasy that's totally unreflective of the incentive structure driving the decisions of DCPS policymakers -- an incentive structure that's widely published and easy to understand. The fact that supposedly educated grown adults would rather sit around dreaming up ways to cast themselves as somehow victims is really sad.

The move away from tracking (e.g. "honors for all" at Wilson) is driven by a totally transparent, simple, easily understood history that's also been explained many times. Honors class access at Wilson used to be based on recommendations from the middle school. NW middle schools recommended almost all of their students for honors classes whereas other middle schools were recommending literally none of their kids, regardless of the individual kids' ability level. This was an inequitable way of tracking students that was really not based on ability.

Rather than experience the nightmare of type-A NW parent pushback ("what do you mean Johnnie's not in honors classes?") and administrative PITA that placement testing would have caused, the school decided to try to teach the richer, more rigorous curriculum of honors courses to all students. Basically they decided to make classes harder for everybody. They also tried to put more kids in AP classes.

I totally understand why they did this. I think it was a huge mistake that does a dis-service to kids at all levels, but I totally understand why they did it -- after all, their reasoning has been explained very clearly many times. For those who don't choose to indulge in paranoid victimhood, it's pretty straightforward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
My parents immigrated here when I was 4 with nothing and we were sponsored by a church. I knew no English when I started K and went to ESL classes in school for 2-3 years. Thanks to tracking I did well in school and have a post graduate degree. You can’t make all poor kids do better or well without tracking, but you can give the kids who are smarter or higher performing a better chance to succeed like myself with tracking.

That's great that the system worked well for you. Are you by any chance white or Asian?

I ask because in the South, where I grew up in the 70s, tracking was often used as a tool for enforcing segregation in theoretically desegregated schools. There were no tests, but white kids were almost all "high achieving", whereas Black kids were on-level or special ed. It felt to me like the system was working (I'm reasonably bright, and I was in gifted classes), but I think the system always feels like it's working to the people who it's designed to work for. I think the bright black kids in my area had a different opinion. In fact, one of those kids went on to write a book about how as a child he was placed in special ed classes without ever having been administered any testing whatsoever. That was before he grew up, earned a PhD, and became tenured faculty at an Ivy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My parents immigrated here when I was 4 with nothing and we were sponsored by a church. I knew no English when I started K and went to ESL classes in school for 2-3 years. Thanks to tracking I did well in school and have a post graduate degree. You can’t make all poor kids do better or well without tracking, but you can give the kids who are smarter or higher performing a better chance to succeed like myself with tracking.

That's great that the system worked well for you. Are you by any chance white or Asian?

I ask because in the South, where I grew up in the 70s, tracking was often used as a tool for enforcing segregation in theoretically desegregated schools. There were no tests, but white kids were almost all "high achieving", whereas Black kids were on-level or special ed. It felt to me like the system was working (I'm reasonably bright, and I was in gifted classes), but I think the system always feels like it's working to the people who it's designed to work for. I think the bright black kids in my area had a different opinion. In fact, one of those kids went on to write a book about how as a child he was placed in special ed classes without ever having been administered any testing whatsoever. That was before he grew up, earned a PhD, and became tenured faculty at an Ivy.

dp: Misuse in the past doesn’t mean it can’t be done properly. Not wanting to deal with complaining parents (as suggested in post above this one) is also a very poor reason not to do something that otherwise makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My parents immigrated here when I was 4 with nothing and we were sponsored by a church. I knew no English when I started K and went to ESL classes in school for 2-3 years. Thanks to tracking I did well in school and have a post graduate degree. You can’t make all poor kids do better or well without tracking, but you can give the kids who are smarter or higher performing a better chance to succeed like myself with tracking.

That's great that the system worked well for you. Are you by any chance white or Asian?

I ask because in the South, where I grew up in the 70s, tracking was often used as a tool for enforcing segregation in theoretically desegregated schools. There were no tests, but white kids were almost all "high achieving", whereas Black kids were on-level or special ed. It felt to me like the system was working (I'm reasonably bright, and I was in gifted classes), but I think the system always feels like it's working to the people who it's designed to work for. I think the bright black kids in my area had a different opinion. In fact, one of those kids went on to write a book about how as a child he was placed in special ed classes without ever having been administered any testing whatsoever. That was before he grew up, earned a PhD, and became tenured faculty at an Ivy.

An alternative way of looking at it is that even in the present, when testing is applied as a gateway to tracking, you're seeing the exact same results. This is why New York City Public Schools is considering doing away with its "gifted" program. That is, the results display a bias that tracks closely to race. But the reasons for that are complex, moreso than your simplistic conclusion based on one person's personal experience from the 1970s.

[Anonymous]

But hey he was sponsored by a church and had to learn English so tracking works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think DCPS major strategy to close the achievement gap is to cap the growth of the top kids. They want to limit any options that will help advanced kids as that will just increase the gap between top and bottom. Two ways to close a gap - push down the top or raise up the bottom. They are not competent enough to do much with the kids who really need intervention so they want to limit the potential of the highest achieving kids.

School systems' access to federal funding is based largely on test scores, so the key metric that DCPS policymakers care about is PARCC scores. That's what teachers, schools, and ultimately the whole system are judged by. So no, they have no interest in "limiting options that will help advanced kids" as a strategy to somehow narrow the achievement gap. Smart kids will get a 5 on PARCC tests, and that's what DCPS wants. It's not like those kids might be getting a 10 on PARCC and DCPS somehow whats to prevent that. The test only goes to 5.

These statements, which are repeated often on DCUM, are a pathetic paranoid fantasy that's totally unreflective of the incentive structure driving the decisions of DCPS policymakers -- an incentive structure that's widely published and easy to understand. The fact that supposedly educated grown adults would rather sit around dreaming up ways to cast themselves as somehow victims is really sad.

The move away from tracking (e.g. "honors for all" at Wilson) is driven by a totally transparent, simple, easily understood history that's also been explained many times. Honors class access at Wilson used to be based on recommendations from the middle school. NW middle schools recommended almost all of their students for honors classes whereas other middle schools were recommending literally none of their kids, regardless of the individual kids' ability level. This was an inequitable way of tracking students that was really not based on ability.

Rather than experience the nightmare of type-A NW parent pushback ("what do you mean Johnnie's not in honors classes?") and administrative PITA that placement testing would have caused, the school decided to try to teach the richer, more rigorous curriculum of honors courses to all students. Basically they decided to make classes harder for everybody. They also tried to put more kids in AP classes.

I totally understand why they did this. I think it was a huge mistake that does a dis-service to kids at all levels, but I totally understand why they did it -- after all, their reasoning has been explained very clearly many times. For those who don't choose to indulge in paranoid victimhood, it's pretty straightforward.

Most federal funding is NOT based on PARCC, some of it but not most for schools. And more funding comes if the schools are terrible though special Ed grants and head start, free lunch etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My parents immigrated here when I was 4 with nothing and we were sponsored by a church. I knew no English when I started K and went to ESL classes in school for 2-3 years. Thanks to tracking I did well in school and have a post graduate degree. You can’t make all poor kids do better or well without tracking, but you can give the kids who are smarter or higher performing a better chance to succeed like myself with tracking.

That's great that the system worked well for you. Are you by any chance white or Asian?

I ask because in the South, where I grew up in the 70s, tracking was often used as a tool for enforcing segregation in theoretically desegregated schools. There were no tests, but white kids were almost all "high achieving", whereas Black kids were on-level or special ed. It felt to me like the system was working (I'm reasonably bright, and I was in gifted classes), but I think the system always feels like it's working to the people who it's designed to work for. I think the bright black kids in my area had a different opinion. In fact, one of those kids went on to write a book about how as a child he was placed in special ed classes without ever having been administered any testing whatsoever. That was before he grew up, earned a PhD, and became tenured faculty at an Ivy.

We'd have the same result today in DC, not because of discrimination or bigotry, but because so few black kids in DCPS are on grade level according to PARCC. Heck, there are 50 point gaps in many cases, even at so-called HRCS.

Why would a kid one or more grade levels behind be put on an advanced track?

But the kids who are capable should absolutely get advanced tracking. Maybe the racial discrepancy will light a fire under some butts to *improve* the dysfunction that results in such failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But hey he was sponsored by a church and had to learn English so tracking works.

Of course it works, for bright kids. I'm sorry if you were left out.