Bell Multicultural High School

[Anonymous]

What is the deal with this school? It is in Columbia Heights, yet I was told that in AdMo our in bounds HS is Wilson. This school has AP, International Bac and French & Spanish programs--sounds like what MV, YY, EWS, and LAMB are trying to accomplish as a secondary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the deal with this school? It is in Columbia Heights, yet I was told that in AdMo our in bounds HS is Wilson. This school has AP, International Bac and French & Spanish programs--sounds like what MV, YY, EWS, and LAMB are trying to accomplish as a secondary school.

Except that it doesn't have YY, LAMB, Stokes, and MV as feeder schools. They are all highly-desirable charters, with rigorous academic programs, and they largely have high SES families (= high expectations, $ support, etc.). They are all choice schools, and their combined destination school is going to be competitive and highly-desired.

Bell/Col. Heights is a default school. The language programs exist because of the extremely high ESL numbers, not because there is a high SES collection of families with expectations of high-quality language programs.

Marketing a school (such as Bancroft or Bell) as "Spanish Immersion" in the attempt to co-opt high-SES families is out-and-out fraud, and should be prosecuted as a criminal offense. (In the opinion of someone who gives a damn about the inferior, larger-scale,

[Anonymous]

LINCOLN- BELL has a very large ESL population, yet the principal keeps on terminating the best and most popular teachers.

It is a DCPS school but is run like a charter or private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:LINCOLN- BELL has a very large ESL population, yet the principal keeps on terminating the best and most popular teachers.

It is a DCPS school but is run like a charter or private.

The principal of this school is one of the most feared principals in DCPS. She routinely fires scores of teachers each year. According to the current public school reform philosophy, with all these firings, this should be one of the best school s in the country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the deal with this school? It is in Columbia Heights, yet I was told that in AdMo our in bounds HS is Wilson. This school has AP, International Bac and French & Spanish programs--sounds like what MV, YY, EWS, and LAMB are trying to accomplish as a secondary school.

Columbia Heights EC does not have an IB program. Currently Banneker is the only HS with IB, and Eastern will roll out IB course next year.

[Anonymous]

The principal is the most senior principal throughout the entire system. She has actually built CHEC from the ground up. She is probably the only employee in the DCPS system who has risen from teacher to , assistant principal to principal to assistant superitendent and back to principal. I don't know about fearing her but she's a no non-sense type principal. Her personality is a little off putting but she's quite knowledgeable and extremely focused on her students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The principal is the most senior principal throughout the entire system. She has actually built CHEC from the ground up. She is probably the only employee in the DCPS system who has risen from teacher to , assistant principal to principal to assistant superitendent and back to principal. I don't know about fearing her but she's a no non-sense type principal. Her personality is a little off putting but she's quite knowledgeable and extremely focused on her students.

Soooooo...why are the scores so low and low for several years?

[Anonymous]

Because the students are all recent, poor immigrants with parents who have a 5th grade education and aren't home to model an academic atmosphere, since they are working 4 low-wage jobs. That's why.

[Anonymous]

Scores are probably low because of the yearly teacher churn to the tune of 50 percent. From what I've read she's not a good leader on many levels. There has been some truly disturbing news emanating from that school.

Beware.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The principal is the most senior principal throughout the entire system. She has actually built CHEC from the ground up. She is probably the only employee in the DCPS system who has risen from teacher to , assistant principal to principal to assistant superitendent and back to principal. I don't know about fearing her but she's a no non-sense type principal. Her personality is a little off putting but she's quite knowledgeable and extremely focused on her students.

curious as to why...

[Anonymous]

Well she was doing both job simultaneously which was anither feather in her cap. She was only promoted to Asst. Sup by popular demand. She was extremely relunctant to accept the position brvause she didn't want to abandon CHEC. So DCPS accomodatef her with dual positions. She went back on her own accord but has been heavily recruited by others superintendents and chancellors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well she was doing both job simultaneously which was anither feather in her cap. She was only promoted to Asst. Sup by popular demand. She was extremely relunctant to accept the position brvause she didn't want to abandon CHEC. So DCPS accomodatef her with dual positions. She went back on her own accord but has been heavily recruited by others superintendents and chancellors.

gush gush gush. Try working for her. Not a happy building.

[Anonymous]

You can get a former teacher's perspective of what it was like to work at CHEC. In his blog he did not hold anything back. Very disturbing stuff.

Teachbad

[Anonymous]

Also, check out another website about another former teacher that worked at CHEC; again, not a pretty picture about CHEC, in fact it is quite disturbing. However, it is a great website for information about education at http://anurbanteacherseducation.com and shows that he is an intelligent thinker not a pro-union DCPS crazy teacher!!!

[Anonymous]

There have also been stories of teachers having inappropriate relationships/having children with students. According to first hand eyewitnesses, the principal protected the real culprits by finding scapegoat teachers, accusing them of the crime and firing them.

She made sure DCPS and the union did not get involved in it so that the truth would not come out.

Teachers who tried to protect the scapegoat teachers were terminated too. About 12 years ago a group of teachers tried to get the story to the press, at no avail. They tried to get a probono lawyer but were unsuccessful.