How things change in a decade!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As true as that is, in a triage situation, really any situation with scarce resources, it's hard to see how we don't prioritize the high schoolers who could become carjackers and then the kindergarteners who are on their way to becoming the next generation of carjackers.

Knowing that most of the top-grade students that we've got in DC could just go to private schools or move just tells us that DC's not going to and shouldn't focus on our kids. It's gonna focus on the children of the poor.

The problem is that educators don't know how to turn the children of the poor into high performers. Even medium performers. At least for anything beyond adopting the kids away from their actual parents. Which causes its own harm.

No, no, no. It just infuriates that many educators and politicians love the idea that school is a place to "save" disadvantaged children. They think they are heroes by working with doomed kids in underperforming schools.

But schools can't systematically make up for familial deficits. There is absolutely a big role here for the government. Government should be helping families get off to a good start and stay out of poverty and dysfunction.

But putting primary expectation and responsibility for solving societal ills onto schools just undermines the schools for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Look I don’t have any other place I can think of where the children of the illiterate are supposed to learn to read and write. Do your part and stop passing the buck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP. It’s not a dumb lie, the Mississippi results are bogus. What changed is, they started failing, third graders, who weren’t literate then the next year they tested the fourth graders for literacy and surprise, of them were literate. Because the failing cohort was no longer in that grade.

Oh stop. That's not at all what happened. Snooty progressives are just mad that Republican hicks from Mississippi do a way better job educating poor black kids, and at a fraction of the cost.

[Anonymous]

Dude so you didn’t read the statistics paper, did you? Adult literacy is a thing too now apparently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As true as that is, in a triage situation, really any situation with scarce resources, it's hard to see how we don't prioritize the high schoolers who could become carjackers and then the kindergarteners who are on their way to becoming the next generation of carjackers.

Knowing that most of the top-grade students that we've got in DC could just go to private schools or move just tells us that DC's not going to and shouldn't focus on our kids. It's gonna focus on the children of the poor.

The problem is that educators don't know how to turn the children of the poor into high performers. Even medium performers. At least for anything beyond adopting the kids away from their actual parents. Which causes its own harm.

The only way to help those kids is make their moms older when they have the kids, or not have the kids at all. That’s so far from what schools should be doing- even if yes public health authorities should be providing birth controls for free in schools. Spending more on those kids is just throwing good money after bad, except for the few who can make it out- who in turn are ill served by not being separated from the rest in gifted and talented programs they test into.

Spend on your kids, not the majority of DC. Got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look I don’t have any other place I can think of where the children of the illiterate are supposed to learn to read and write. Do your part and stop passing the buck.

If they don’t learn at least a little at home, they simply will not at school. Terrifying, I know, but it’s an unfortunate truth.

[Anonymous]

FYI, Maryland's current state superintendent of education is the same person who oversaw the "Mississippi miracle". She began her career in PG County and has worked in DC and MD. I've heard her speak a couple of times and am interested in what happens in MD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FYI, Maryland's current state superintendent of education is the same person who oversaw the "Mississippi miracle". She began her career in PG County and has worked in DC and MD. I've heard her speak a couple of times and am interested in what happens in MD.

I understand that the same steps will be taken in Maryland as in Mississippi, including mandated science-based reading curricula, universal screenings with high quality interventions, and yes, not passing third grade if you can’t read. Many states, including DC, already have dyslexia laws now that mandate most of these things, but it will be interesting to see what DC does if/when MD rolls out the third grade passing rule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As true as that is, in a triage situation, really any situation with scarce resources, it's hard to see how we don't prioritize the high schoolers who could become carjackers and then the kindergarteners who are on their way to becoming the next generation of carjackers.

Knowing that most of the top-grade students that we've got in DC could just go to private schools or move just tells us that DC's not going to and shouldn't focus on our kids. It's gonna focus on the children of the poor.

The problem is that educators don't know how to turn the children of the poor into high performers. Even medium performers. At least for anything beyond adopting the kids away from their actual parents. Which causes its own harm.

The only way to help those kids is make their moms older when they have the kids, or not have the kids at all. That’s so far from what schools should be doing- even if yes public health authorities should be providing birth controls for free in schools. Spending more on those kids is just throwing good money after bad, except for the few who can make it out- who in turn are ill served by not being separated from the rest in gifted and talented programs they test into.

Spend on your kids, not the majority of DC. Got it.

Reallocating resources so that only a few thousand kids are on the college track and the majority are in vocational would, in the long run, be better for everyone in DC. It would certainly be cheaper than what we do now, which is pretend like every single kid is a diamond in the rough when that’s demonstrably untrue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FYI, Maryland's current state superintendent of education is the same person who oversaw the "Mississippi miracle". She began her career in PG County and has worked in DC and MD. I've heard her speak a couple of times and am interested in what happens in MD.

I understand that the same steps will be taken in Maryland as in Mississippi, including mandated science-based reading curricula, universal screenings with high quality interventions, and yes, not passing third grade if you can’t read. Many states, including DC, already have dyslexia laws now that mandate most of these things, but it will be interesting to see what DC does if/when MD rolls out the third grade passing rule.

I suspect it will “work” in that scores will go up but that poorer schools and counties (eg eastern shore) will face operational challenges and pressure to move kids along under the rug

[Anonymous]

Raise your hands if you think underperforming Maryland school systems will let large numbers of third graders repeat the grade the next year.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:My prediction: The list of the best schools in the city, at every level, will be increasingly dominated by charters.

Only for middle school.

DCPS is by far the leader for elementary. High School is split.

No for elementary EOTP. It’s the immersion charters. Families that don’t get in then settle for DCPS.

Nope. Definitely not true on Capitol Hill.

OK, CH may be the exception but it is a very, very small part of EOTP.

Some CH families do choose immersion over DCPS but not majority.

No, it's actually you who are focusing on one specific slice of EOTP. Other parts -- CH included -- have different stories, but few of them are immersion charter-focused. Shepherd, Ross, Reed, Bancroft, Maury, Brent, Ludlow-Taylor, Chisholm, Payne, Watkins and Van Ness are all schools where DCPSes are the preferred destinations (either the IB itself or a nearby one). EOTR few kids are in immersion and the ones that are are mostly in/hoping for Chisholm.

Folks in Brookland, Eckington, Brentwood, Edgewood are heading to immersion (and other, e.g., Lee) charters because they're the closest good options. The charters that folks EOTR attend are not immersion, but they choose them for the same reason. For anyone close enough to Capitol Hill or WOTP, those DCPSes are typically the closest good options and so the first choice. As CH has gentrified, there are now many more CH ESes on the list and so more good spots for OOBers; same thing with the DCPS ESes along the North Cap corridor.

As a general matter, I think most people think -- and the test scores certainly bear out -- that DPCSes are the best-performing ESes.

Yeah agree. I know US News is somehow debatable, but all 10 of the top elementary schools are DCPS, with 6 WOTP and 4 EOTP (Ross, Shepherd, Maury, Brent).

And if anyone looked at that "who is beating 3rd grade expectations" chart, charter schools like Yu Ying and LAMB that have very low poverty rates have startling low 3rd grade reading scores -- they are underperforming relative to demographics.


Middle school is a different story, because DCPS really doesn't seem to have that figured out, curricularly.

But they come back in high school, with many DCPS schools offering sufficient challenge (Walls, Banneker, JR, MacArthur and McKinley Tech)

Ok, well kids at those immersion schools are learning everything via a second language. When the teacher is teaching them about ecosystems or conjunctions or Native American history or whatever, the teacher is not doing it in English.

Former LAMB employee. The kids don't speak Spanish. Almost none of them. Teachers may speak in Spanish but everyone responds in English. Try talking to one of these students in Spanish for longer than 2 seconds and they'll look at you like you have lobsters crawling out of your ears.

Pro-tip: If you're going to lie about a school, it should at least be a little bit believable. This is like claiming kids at BASIS don't know how to add or subtract.

I actually don’t think this is made up. My neighbors go there and they are in upper grades and barely speak Spanish and their friends don’t either. I’m a native speaker. My kids go to another bilingual chapter and it’s the same. There are so many kids in 5th grade who barely speak Spanish.

You are a native Spanish speaker and a former teacher at a bilingual school and your kids barely speak Spanish?

I’m PP. I’m not a teacher. There is a different PP that worked at LAMB. My kids speak Spanish fluently but a lot of their friends do not even though they have been in a bilingual school since PreK. We work hard on bilingualism at home. There is a lot of English at their school.

So it is ok to trash other students that you have never met? So no kids at charters are fluent, except yours of course because you are the only ones that work hard at bilingualism. Please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As true as that is, in a triage situation, really any situation with scarce resources, it's hard to see how we don't prioritize the high schoolers who could become carjackers and then the kindergarteners who are on their way to becoming the next generation of carjackers.

Knowing that most of the top-grade students that we've got in DC could just go to private schools or move just tells us that DC's not going to and shouldn't focus on our kids. It's gonna focus on the children of the poor.

The problem is that educators don't know how to turn the children of the poor into high performers. Even medium performers. At least for anything beyond adopting the kids away from their actual parents. Which causes its own harm.

The only way to help those kids is make their moms older when they have the kids, or not have the kids at all. That’s so far from what schools should be doing- even if yes public health authorities should be providing birth controls for free in schools. Spending more on those kids is just throwing good money after bad, except for the few who can make it out- who in turn are ill served by not being separated from the rest in gifted and talented programs they test into.

Spend on your kids, not the majority of DC. Got it.

Reallocating resources so that only a few thousand kids are on the college track and the majority are in vocational would, in the long run, be better for everyone in DC. It would certainly be cheaper than what we do now, which is pretend like every single kid is a diamond in the rough when that’s demonstrably untrue.

You deeply misunderstand the DC school population. Black is not equal to poor. And poor is not equal to hopeless and not worth of education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As true as that is, in a triage situation, really any situation with scarce resources, it's hard to see how we don't prioritize the high schoolers who could become carjackers and then the kindergarteners who are on their way to becoming the next generation of carjackers.

Knowing that most of the top-grade students that we've got in DC could just go to private schools or move just tells us that DC's not going to and shouldn't focus on our kids. It's gonna focus on the children of the poor.

The problem is that educators don't know how to turn the children of the poor into high performers. Even medium performers. At least for anything beyond adopting the kids away from their actual parents. Which causes its own harm.

Why are our schools seen as "in a triage situation" or in a situation with scarce resources? Our area is one of the wealthiest in the nation. Why wouldn't we spend serious money on education? Resources here are not particularly scare compared to most other school districts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As true as that is, in a triage situation, really any situation with scarce resources, it's hard to see how we don't prioritize the high schoolers who could become carjackers and then the kindergarteners who are on their way to becoming the next generation of carjackers.

Knowing that most of the top-grade students that we've got in DC could just go to private schools or move just tells us that DC's not going to and shouldn't focus on our kids. It's gonna focus on the children of the poor.

The problem is that educators don't know how to turn the children of the poor into high performers. Even medium performers. At least for anything beyond adopting the kids away from their actual parents. Which causes its own harm.

The only way to help those kids is make their moms older when they have the kids, or not have the kids at all. That’s so far from what schools should be doing- even if yes public health authorities should be providing birth controls for free in schools. Spending more on those kids is just throwing good money after bad, except for the few who can make it out- who in turn are ill served by not being separated from the rest in gifted and talented programs they test into.

Spend on your kids, not the majority of DC. Got it.

Reallocating resources so that only a few thousand kids are on the college track and the majority are in vocational would, in the long run, be better for everyone in DC. It would certainly be cheaper than what we do now, which is pretend like every single kid is a diamond in the rough when that’s demonstrably untrue.

You deeply misunderstand the DC school population. Black is not equal to poor. And poor is not equal to hopeless and not worth of education.

Same poster adding stats.
https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/household-income-by-race/

Many black families are middle class or wealthy in DC. And almost no poor residents are white. Both of those facts are different than the nation writ large.

Also worth asking is why the narrative in DC is so focused on Black families and ignores hispanic families so fervently. Historical reasons, sure, but DC has had a substantial hispanic population for decades now, and it's only growing.