Given the rigor of Basis, was it ever expected to be for every kid in the District?

[Anonymous]

This is the attitude that makes me feel hopeless^^^ People worried about how it "looks" and not understanding that investing in excellence will spread excellence throughout the system. Investing in mediocrity will get you, well, mediocrity. What in the blazes to kids have to aspire to? Where is their bar? There is more to education than you think. There is heart and soul. DCPS as it is squashes that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

That's just not true - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-schools-insider/post/dcps-to-pilot-gifted-and-talented-program/2012/02/06/gIQAZvpFuQ_blog.html

I just read the article and this sounds like a watered down version of only enrichments for gifted education. Gifted education should not just consist of enrichments and projects but should encompass all classes for a given student.

[Anonymous]

This is still the city that reelected Marion Barry after he got caught on video smoking crack. Grey and his cronies, not all that much better, what a joke. Who votes in this city?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That's just not true - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-schools-insider/post/dcps-to-pilot-gifted-and-talented-program/2012/02/06/gIQAZvpFuQ_blog.html

I just read the article and this sounds like a watered down version of only enrichments for gifted education. Gifted education should not just consist of enrichments and projects but should encompass all classes for a given student.

What gifted program takes all comers? Ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe DC does not offer advanced, gifted, honors b/c more than 1/2 of it's three graders cannot read at grade level same for all their other grades. Kind of looks bad to offer advanced instruction for high SES kids (white, Asian, black) when the majority of the kids (FARMS, AA) cannot read.

So you are saying that it is ok to not meet the needs of all students???

As for struggling learners, I think that DC, as well as many school districts, have chosen and used ineffective and fuzzy reading and math curricula I believe many school districts are guilty of educational malpractice!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:.


It is called differentiation, and anyone in the field of education gets inundated by this concept course after course regardless of the teaching method.
The sad thing however is that it is not being used, or is being used minimally by many teachers.
The same complex concept can be taught to the very advanced and below grade student in the same classroom if the teacher can create different test formats to accommodate all students. This way everyone ( including ESL, learning disabled) is served.
Not too difficult to do. It's just more time consuming but gives every student an equitable chance to grow and succeed.

Differentiation is a joke!! The bottom line is that when advanced learners are mixed with struggling learners, the teacher has no choice but to focus on the struggling learners.

It is absolutely not a joke.
I have seen it done at the elementary, middle and even high school level in selective schools.
This is something consistently done in US schools overseas, where diplomatic and business communities are served. Teachers may not face the exact same challenges as in public schools but they have so many other ones.

At the elementary level, small group instruction is being used consistently
At the middle and high schoo level, lessons are prepared and written in a simpler format (think abridged version of a complicated book).
Let's say it's history or social studies at the middle or high school level. Those students who are struggling with the language will have teacher-made simpler reading which does not sacrifice context.
Same happens with some of the homework and some of the testing.
The word "differentiation" itself is seldom used but expected to be fully implemented.

Is it time consuming? You bet! However, once the teacher has the material, it is just a matter of implementing it. Instead of spending hundreds of hours on meetings and empty staff development, have the school concentrate on differentitation in the classroom and equity will definitely follow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Whoa, whoa - no one was suggesting a "large conspiracy." I was suggesting why some people dislike charters; maybe not you, but some people. But to give a more practical example, some people might say, "Why open a school like Basis instead of creating more honors and advanced classes in neighborhood schools?" That's not a "large conspiracy" it's a practical school/curriculum question.

And, I'd rather not get into it, but we all know why Ward 3 schools are more successful than other schools and why there's been no charters; that is a different discussion - likely a discussion about income, poverty, and out-of-school experiences, not a discussion about whether charter schools are the best thing for a school system.

DCPS is free to offer more honors and advanced course but chooses not too even though DCPS has more money to spend than any other district in the country!!! Heck, DCPS does not even acknowledge the need for gifted education as other states at least give lip service to the same need.

That may be, but some other states have Gifted IEPs to specifically meet the needs of gifted children and DC does not do this last I checked.

A Gifted IEP affords the student an individualized plan to meet their needs for gifted education and has great weight legally in ensuring that schools meet these needs.

That's just not true - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-schools-insider/post/dcps-to-pilot-gifted-and-talented-program/2012/02/06/gIQAZvpFuQ_blog.html

I wasn't impressed by this supposed toe-dip into gifted or advanced programming. At Hardy, the offerings are specialized enrichment such as "film-making." That's a nice summer camp activity, but doesn't address the pent-up demand for more rigorous math and/or reading; and there's no test component. At Kelly Miller, less than one quarter of the students can read proficiently. In that context, does "gifted" really mean "at grade level"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It is absolutely not a joke.
I have seen it done at the elementary, middle and even high school level in selective schools.
This is something consistently done in US schools overseas, where diplomatic and business communities are served. Teachers may not face the exact same challenges as in public schools but they have so many other ones.

At the elementary level, small group instruction is being used consistently
At the middle and high schoo level, lessons are prepared and written in a simpler format (think abridged version of a complicated book).
Let's say it's history or social studies at the middle or high school level. Those students who are struggling with the language will have teacher-made simpler reading which does not sacrifice context.
Same happens with some of the homework and some of the testing.
The word "differentiation" itself is seldom used but expected to be fully implemented.

Is it time consuming? You bet! However, once the teacher has the material, it is just a matter of implementing it. Instead of spending hundreds of hours on meetings and empty staff development, have the school concentrate on differentitation in the classroom and equity will definitely follow.

Small group instruction often means that each group gets about 10 minutes of a teacher's time instead of the full class time of about an hour. The rest of the time is spent doing who knows what!! How is 10 minutes of a teacher's time better than the whole class time???

As for the teacher making easier reading materials, how does that help with the student who cannot read who may be in a class with a student already performing at a college level??? How is that a wise use of a teacher's limited time???

As for equity, I am not sure what you mean. The fact is that every student has unique abilities and needs and hence will never be "equal" in that sense. However, we all have equal worth. Meeting the needs of all students does not mean we are somehow treating some groups as unequal.

I am for ability group with supports and frequent re-assessments allowing for movement when ready. Until schools see this, then schools will continue to fail students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:.


It is called differentiation, and anyone in the field of education gets inundated by this concept course after course regardless of the teaching method.
The sad thing however is that it is not being used, or is being used minimally by many teachers.
The same complex concept can be taught to the very advanced and below grade student in the same classroom if the teacher can create different test formats to accommodate all students. This way everyone ( including ESL, learning disabled) is served.
Not too difficult to do. It's just more time consuming but gives every student an equitable chance to grow and succeed.

Differentiation is a joke!! The bottom line is that when advanced learners are mixed with struggling learners, the teacher has no choice but to focus on the struggling learners.

It is absolutely not a joke.
I have seen it done at the elementary, middle and even high school level in selective schools.
This is something consistently done in US schools overseas, where diplomatic and business communities are served. Teachers may not face the exact same challenges as in public schools but they have so many other ones.

At the elementary level, small group instruction is being used consistently
At the middle and high schoo level, lessons are prepared and written in a simpler format (think abridged version of a complicated book).
Let's say it's history or social studies at the middle or high school level. Those students who are struggling with the language will have teacher-made simpler reading which does not sacrifice context.
Same happens with some of the homework and some of the testing.
The word "differentiation" itself is seldom used but expected to be fully implemented.

Is it time consuming? You bet! However, once the teacher has the material, it is just a matter of implementing it. Instead of spending hundreds of hours on meetings and empty staff development, have the school concentrate on differentitation in the classroom and equity will definitely follow.

The fact of the matter is that it's easier said than done. Go into a room of 25 10 year-olds, where some are on grade level, a few are above grade level, and then some cannot read or work independently. Then, teach all of these students about the causes of the Civil War. Remember to engage all students and monitor the behavior of all students (make sure that when you're working with one group ALL of the other students are engaged and able to work independently). Keep it rigorous but not out of reach for any child. When you finish, start this over and do the same thing with adding fractions with different denominators. Later, after lunch, you can do the same for photosynthesis and vocabulary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe DC does not offer advanced, gifted, honors b/c more than 1/2 of it's three graders cannot read at grade level same for all their other grades. Kind of looks bad to offer advanced instruction for high SES kids (white, Asian, black) when the majority of the kids (FARMS, AA) cannot read.

This gets at the heart of it... The cookie cutter approach. DC has kids able to function at varying levels, yet it wants to impose a backward one-size-fits-all model that does not accommodate that. The kids that are struggling at reading, for example, clearly need extra help, which could be provided via reading labs and other types of activities. They clearly do not meet the needs of disabled kids, given the huge amounts of money spent to ship disabled kids out-of-state, and they likewise clearly do not meet the needs of gifted and talented kids, given the lack of such programs even though many other states have had them for DECADES. One-size-fits-all does not work. Choices are needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:.


It is called differentiation, and anyone in the field of education gets inundated by this concept course after course regardless of the teaching method.
The sad thing however is that it is not being used, or is being used minimally by many teachers.
The same complex concept can be taught to the very advanced and below grade student in the same classroom if the teacher can create different test formats to accommodate all students. This way everyone ( including ESL, learning disabled) is served.
Not too difficult to do. It's just more time consuming but gives every student an equitable chance to grow and succeed.

Differentiation is a joke!! The bottom line is that when advanced learners are mixed with struggling learners, the teacher has no choice but to focus on the struggling learners.

It is absolutely not a joke.
I have seen it done at the elementary, middle and even high school level in selective schools.
This is something consistently done in US schools overseas, where diplomatic and business communities are served. Teachers may not face the exact same challenges as in public schools but they have so many other ones.

At the elementary level, small group instruction is being used consistently
At the middle and high schoo level, lessons are prepared and written in a simpler format (think abridged version of a complicated book).
Let's say it's history or social studies at the middle or high school level. Those students who are struggling with the language will have teacher-made simpler reading which does not sacrifice context.
Same happens with some of the homework and some of the testing.
The word "differentiation" itself is seldom used but expected to be fully implemented.

Is it time consuming? You bet! However, once the teacher has the material, it is just a matter of implementing it. Instead of spending hundreds of hours on meetings and empty staff development, have the school concentrate on differentitation in the classroom and equity will definitely follow.

Hey! That's exactly what I wrote on my grad school essay. And graduated with honors! But then I got into actual classrooms and realized that differentiation is really only practical in certain circumstances. It is not effective with the huge gaps in preparation/achievement we often see in the dc schools. It is just not a miracle cure for the modern classroom. It is a useful tool among others, including flexible ability grouping.

[Anonymous]

Isn't the reality of issue that we don't want to face the extrmeme effects of income inequality. Sure you may not feel rich in ward 3 with your $800,000 colonial but you are still more well off than most of the country. The reality is your educational attainment will be passed down to your child. If you you are poor your deficits will also be passed down. In my mind the real problem is that we treat too much of education as a set of skills so income inequality magnifies the problem. I have thought we needed more content for a long time but this editorial does a better job a framing the changes than I can articulate.

Vocabulary Declines, With Unspeakable Results

For all the talk about income inequality in the United States, there is too little recognition of education's role in the problem. Yet it is no coincidence that, as economist John Bishop has shown, the middle class's economic woes followed a decline in 12th-grade verbal scores, which fell sharply between 1962 and 1980—and, as the latest news confirms, have remained flat ever since.

The federal government reported this month that students' vocabulary scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have seen no significant change since 2009. On average, students don't know the words they need to flourish as learners, earners or citizens.

All verbal tests are, at bottom, vocabulary tests. To predict competence most accurately, the U.S. military's Armed Forces Qualification Test gives twice as much weight to verbal scores as to math scores, and researchers such as Christopher Winship and Anders D. Korneman have shown that these verbally weighted scores are good predictors of income level. Math is an important index to general competence, but on average words are twice as important.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444165804578010394278688454.html?mod=ITP_opinion_0

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn't the reality of issue that we don't want to face the extrmeme effects of income inequality. Sure you may not feel rich in ward 3 with your $800,000 colonial but you are still more well off than most of the country. The reality is your educational attainment will be passed down to your child. If you you are poor your deficits will also be passed down. In my mind the real problem is that we treat too much of education as a set of skills so income inequality magnifies the problem. I have thought we needed more content for a long time but this editorial does a better job a framing the changes than I can articulate.

Vocabulary Declines, With Unspeakable Results

For all the talk about income inequality in the United States, there is too little recognition of education's role in the problem. Yet it is no coincidence that, as economist John Bishop has shown, the middle class's economic woes followed a decline in 12th-grade verbal scores, which fell sharply between 1962 and 1980—and, as the latest news confirms, have remained flat ever since.

The federal government reported this month that students' vocabulary scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress have seen no significant change since 2009. On average, students don't know the words they need to flourish as learners, earners or citizens.

All verbal tests are, at bottom, vocabulary tests. To predict competence most accurately, the U.S. military's Armed Forces Qualification Test gives twice as much weight to verbal scores as to math scores, and researchers such as Christopher Winship and Anders D. Korneman have shown that these verbally weighted scores are good predictors of income level. Math is an important index to general competence, but on average words are twice as important.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444165804578010394278688454.html?mod=ITP_opinion_0

Again, I think schools can have an impact by using great curriculum (which they often fail to use), greater content, greater ability grouping, and direct instruction. Many schools texts have been "dumbed" down over the years by using less and less vocabulary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. If there is not more to this story then what was printed in the WP (and that’s a Big If) then it shouldn’t be taboo to say/think that the school was designed at the outset to be a place for very hard working and/or advanced kids, in a race/class/sex neutral way. Why tip-toe around?

I think it's because that's pretty much the basis of the whole charter debate - instead of investing resources into neighborhood schools in order to bring these types of specialized programs to those schools, is it better to pull the resources out and just create specialized schools? When you put the resources into neighborhood schools, there's the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats; when you pull resources out and create specialized schools, it can seem like a quick fix that will help the few who are able to gain access to the school, but ultimately won't help create a stronger school system.

I put in the hours at our local school to make it work. We were successful because we had people either with money or the ability to do fundraisers for large sums of numbers. First off, a parent shouldn't have to work this hard to make a school successful. Of course parents should be involved but to the level that is required in some DC neighborhoods no.

The system is so broke and that's why charters are so important here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. If there is not more to this story then what was printed in the WP (and that’s a Big If) then it shouldn’t be taboo to say/think that the school was designed at the outset to be a place for very hard working and/or advanced kids, in a race/class/sex neutral way. Why tip-toe around?

I think it's because that's pretty much the basis of the whole charter debate - instead of investing resources into neighborhood schools in order to bring these types of specialized programs to those schools, is it better to pull the resources out and just create specialized schools? When you put the resources into neighborhood schools, there's the idea that a rising tide lifts all boats; when you pull resources out and create specialized schools, it can seem like a quick fix that will help the few who are able to gain access to the school, but ultimately won't help create a stronger school system.

I put in the hours at our local school to make it work. We were successful because we had people either with money or the ability to do fundraisers for large sums of numbers. First off, a parent shouldn't have to work this hard to make a school successful. Of course parents should be involved but to the level that is required in some DC neighborhoods no.

The system is so broke and that's why charters are so important here.

Again, the problem is not money when DC spends more per pupil than any other district!!! The problem is incompetence!