Cardozo: XQ is it Working?

[Anonymous]

Sounds like accountability and consequences are missing all round, except for the teachers. More and more responsibilities are put on teachers while not holding students, parents, care-givers and administration accountable. Bringing back consequences would be a start.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like accountability and consequences are missing all round, except for the teachers. More and more responsibilities are put on teachers while not holding students, parents, care-givers and administration accountable. Bringing back consequences would be a start.

Tell that to the principal. He’s 95% of the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like accountability and consequences are missing all round, except for the teachers. More and more responsibilities are put on teachers while not holding students, parents, care-givers and administration accountable. Bringing back consequences would be a start.

Tell that to the principal. He’s 95% of the problem.

Facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like accountability and consequences are missing all round, except for the teachers. More and more responsibilities are put on teachers while not holding students, parents, care-givers and administration accountable. Bringing back consequences would be a start.

Parent here.

1. What is XQ?

2. What does it stand for?

3. Are my taxes paying for it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like accountability and consequences are missing all round, except for the teachers. More and more responsibilities are put on teachers while not holding students, parents, care-givers and administration accountable. Bringing back consequences would be a start.

Parent here.

1. What is XQ?

2. What does it stand for?

3. Are my taxes paying for it?

Teacher from an XQ School here (not Cardozo)

1. XQ is intended to give students voice over their education so, in short classes aren’t boring and because kids had a hand in planning their curriculum, it will help bridge the gap between a lack of motivation and interest vs. boredom and poor attendance.

2. The “X” in “XQ” just means that it is the variable “X” as it would stand for in mathematics. It could mean any number of things, both positive or negative.

3. Theoretically, no, but your taxes are paying for curricular programming that would divert funds away from standard classes like, Math, Science, Social Studies, Art, Music, P.E., and English in favor of dedicating more time and effort to prioritizing the XQ models.

Analysis: Despite its poor outcomes across the country, there never has been a fully completed XQ school. Each school operates on a budget of additional funds (anywhere between $500,000 to $10 million depending on need and circumstance), but once the contract is up, so are the resources.

I’m at Dunbar and we’re without faults too. We’re also behind, but it doesn’t sound as bad as Cardozo. Their focus is to create a high school graduates who are wholly ready to enter into creating, managing, and operating a small business. That sounds nice in theory, but most businesses don’t make a profit within the first 3 years and given the economy and the lack of preparedness, trust, and effort that their director, William Blake has put into the program, it sounds like Cardozo was doomed from the start. The real victims are the kids. Such a shame.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like accountability and consequences are missing all round, except for the teachers. More and more responsibilities are put on teachers while not holding students, parents, care-givers and administration accountable. Bringing back consequences would be a start.

Parent here.

1. What is XQ?

2. What does it stand for?

3. Are my taxes paying for it?

Teacher from an XQ School here (not Cardozo)

1. XQ is intended to give students voice over their education so, in short classes aren’t boring and because kids had a hand in planning their curriculum, it will help bridge the gap between a lack of motivation and interest vs. boredom and poor attendance.

2. The “X” in “XQ” just means that it is the variable “X” as it would stand for in mathematics. It could mean any number of things, both positive or negative.

3. Theoretically, no, but your taxes are paying for curricular programming that would divert funds away from standard classes like, Math, Science, Social Studies, Art, Music, P.E., and English in favor of dedicating more time and effort to prioritizing the XQ models.

Analysis: Despite its poor outcomes across the country, there never has been a fully completed XQ school. Each school operates on a budget of additional funds (anywhere between $500,000 to $10 million depending on need and circumstance), but once the contract is up, so are the resources.

I’m at Dunbar and we’re without faults too. We’re also behind, but it doesn’t sound as bad as Cardozo. Their focus is to create a high school graduates who are wholly ready to enter into creating, managing, and operating a small business. That sounds nice in theory, but most businesses don’t make a profit within the first 3 years and given the economy and the lack of preparedness, trust, and effort that their director, William Blake has put into the program, it sounds like Cardozo was doomed from the start. The real victims are the kids. Such a shame.

NP and this might sound like a stupid question but what if a kid at Dunbar doesn’t want to start their own small business right out of Hs? What if they want to be an engineer or lawyer or dentist or something? They are in entrepreneurial classes but not like constitutional law or pre calculus?

[Anonymous]

Not a stupid question.

Dunbar’s XQ model is Afrofuturist, (and speaking as a black person, is even less vague than Cardozo’s model) where the kids are supposed to be figuring out ways as a black person, to dismantle systemic racism and “create their own utopia”.

This isn’t a tangible solution because the students can’t create an actual plan and fully execute it.

More directly to your question, if a student doesn’t want to create their own business at Cardozo, one of my friends says that it doesn’t matter because every student starting at 9th grade will begin to take those classes, so technically, it’s a graduation requirement.

The “Ghetto Finance” class that kids take is a class that the principal teaches. There’s no work. It’s just him talking about his sordid past with gangs (and honestly, much of it sounds like folklore) and “how they can make money on the street.”

In short, the entire XQ model is supposed to give kids a chance to “design” their own school, but in reality, it’s just a way for former educators, higher-ups, and self-important people to bolster their résumé’s.

Based on trends across the District they’ll try it with every school to see if it sticks, but it’ll probably die out in >3 years. However, it will already have done damage to your child’s college application and academic résumé.

[Anonymous]

I thought Cardozo had an aerospace naft academy. Is that still an option or is that being dismantled for the XQ stuff?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought Cardozo had an aerospace naft academy. Is that still an option or is that being dismantled for the XQ stuff?

The aerospace academy has mostly been defunct for years. There is an engineering academy director at Cardozo who gets paid $150 k or more and has zero engineering background.
She is a glorified paper pusher who does not get along with the engineering teachers. Cardozo is a hot mess and Mola is a huge part of the problem

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought Cardozo had an aerospace naft academy. Is that still an option or is that being dismantled for the XQ stuff?

Another Cardozo Teacher:

I don’t know much about the aerospace academy, but the PP is right. It’s mostly ineffective.

Like most things at Cardozo, and I would guess across the city, they could be great, but there are probably 5 overpaid and under qualified people for every 20 overworked teachers.

That’s not to say that all teachers are angels. There is a garden variety of people who are in it for the wrong reasons, but none of them have the power to take on a program like XQ and use the children as a means to further their own professional endeavors. (Mola; Blake; Ferebee; Bowser; Pinder; et. al)

I have been at Cardozo for over a decade and love it there but that’s because the kids are great even if society wants to portray them as the “other”. Meanwhile politicians like our principal will market that as a way to make it seem like everyone else is the problem and not them, but then he doesn’t guide them with a disciplined hand and gives into them whenever they want. This allows him to apply for programs like XQ to say that our students “need” the help b/c they’re black, brown, etc. He’s no different than the race baiting trolls on cable news.

[Anonymous]

What in the actual hell??? Ghetto finance??? What serious principal or educator would name a class trying to move kids forward that. Hood Finance and in short for Neighborhood would be better and still classless. From hustling to business would be better and still some inappropriate. I would fire that principal on his poor judgment alone.

And even if kids are part of the discussion/planning to design the curriculum someone must point out the programming and skill components that must be taught. Like for instance the ability to plan, read, do math, and how to train employees.

How has no one toured this program and realized that it’s terrible? And what is staff and administrators putting in their reporting about progress?

[Anonymous]

PP-

Cardozo Parent here:

My son showed me a paper that told him to “get his hustle on” and “come correct.”

He’s not in the group, but was taken aback by the phrasing.

He asked other teachers and they didn’t know what any of it meant but asked his friends and they said just “show up, get food, and listen to Principal Mola talk about what it takes to make money on the street. There’s no work and everyone gets an A.”

He said it’s part of this XQ program.

I’ll be bringing it up to Ferebee. You should do the same. It’s b.s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What in the actual hell??? Ghetto finance??? What serious principal or educator would name a class trying to move kids forward that. Hood Finance and in short for Neighborhood would be better and still classless. From hustling to business would be better and still some inappropriate. I would fire that principal on his poor judgment alone.

And even if kids are part of the discussion/planning to design the curriculum someone must point out the programming and skill components that must be taught. Like for instance the ability to plan, read, do math, and how to train employees.

How has no one toured this program and realized that it’s terrible? And what is staff and administrators putting in their reporting about progress?

None of the kids or teachers knew about this.

Kim Martin, the Instructional Superintendent, was in the school on Friday, Jan. 12th, but we never get a report of her findings, so, she may not have see this. The “class” also meets every other Wednesday, so she may not be privy to all of the XQ mess.

[Anonymous]

"XQ is trash."

- Every teacher in DCPS

[Anonymous]

Sounds like the soft bigotry of low expectations.