Why are so many DC schools so bad?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

people are too lazy and entitled

You are a genius. That is clearly the answer to all societal ills. I'm thrilled you could take time out of running for the Republican presidential nomination to drop such sage wisdom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real issue is no one has solutions to poverty's multigenerational effects on education. No one likes to tell poor people their children will end up the same. It's just one more way the promise of the American Dream isn't available to all.

This is not true you know. There IS a solution and it is called extreme taxation, aka redistribution of wealth. It's just unpopular. If you taxed the UMC and rich at extremely high rates and redistributed this money to the poor such that every family had a living wage, you would see some progress. There is little support for it however.

I actually think the opposite. I worked a minimum wage job in college. My coworkers knew exactly how much they could make before their welfare benefits would decrease and they wouldn't work any more than that. The benefits were holding them back. I had some really crazy stories. But basically they worked the job with me, got assistance with housing and food and had kids to get child support.

I believe in temporary assistance like TANF, but not continued assistance.

But do the math, could you have worked enough min. wage hours and OT (probably wouldn't have been allowed to even if physically possible) to pay rent, utilities, health insurance for a family, feed and cloth kids, pay for transportation, and all the other life expense that a family has that you as a college student probably did not have?

pp here. It actually was a career kind of place where you could get promotions and raises. Most made double minimum wage. It was a trained skill we learned similar to being a lab tech. They refused promotions because it would cut into benefits. I was actually good friends with them all and worked there for years. I was focused on getting out of there, but they just didn't see any other way out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

people are too lazy and entitled

You are a genius. That is clearly the answer to all societal ills. I'm thrilled you could take time out of running for the Republican presidential nomination to drop such sage wisdom.

The poster made a good point. Most people, if just given things, become used to it. This actually makes it more difficult for them to break the habit of getting things without working for it. This actually happens to both the very poor and the very rich. Children who grow up in an extremely wealthy household can be just as lazy as those that grow up in extreme poverty.

[Anonymous]

This thread makes me so frustrated with people (i.e. the idiot posters).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's a number of different factors, both a lot listed above and more. Forgive me for this being long. I used to do some work with agencies who had to deal with DCPS, so I observed or experienced a lot of these that others might not list.

One issue is special education - DDS has failed on special ed services for so many decades that judges have pretty much guaranteed that if you go to court your child will get placement at private schools paid for by the city. So about 30% of all funds go to the lawsuits. DC is one of the few cities where higher end law firms take education cases because they are a guaranteed win and there is no cap on legal fees.

High poverty: so many of DC's schools are Title I schools (free or reduced lunch, used as an indicator of poverty), and with some schools the rate of free lunch is 99%. With that level of high poverty students, there are a wealth of other issues that have to be dealt with, kids don't have the level of home support (reading for pleasure, enrichment, etc.) and for many parents the emphasis is that kids go to school as a place to babysit and take them off of their hands vs. a place to learn.

Organizational dysfunction: central office is disorganized and dysfunctional, and it rolls from the top down. Under Arlene Ackerman (remember her?), schools went to a budgeting system where each principal was responsible for their whole budget, and very few had experience with it. Supplies and books don't get delivered, people find end-arounds or give up, and schools get dirty and run down.

Churn: one of the best things happening now is that Henderson has stayed, because studies have shown that superintendents in urban/high poverty school districts can only make significant change if they stay 5 years or more, and that rarely happens. During one year, I remember the position changing three times? With that going on, teachers resort to "behind the door" teaching - a new reformer comes in, teachers nod and smile during professional development, then they get back to their classrooms and do the same old thing once their doors are shut, and they wait for you to resign or be replaced in a short period of time.

With all of this, parents who have high expectations for their kids pull out of the system. If they have the means they go to private schools, or they move to the suburbs with good schools. Repeat all of this for decades and you have a level of systemic failure that is hard to change.

There's more, but that's a few things that make improving DC schools challenging.

During that period, scores rose more than they did (if they did) during more stable periods. Clearly superintendent stability and proficiency scores are not causative.

Also, the huge turnover in teaching and principal staff during the Rhee-Henderson years has done nothing to improve scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The no one has solutions argument is bullshit. Poor people aren't stupid--give anyone access to opportunity and they'll take it.

My grandmother grew up doing migrant farmwork, but still, she--and many many others from her poor, rural high school went to a state school for college and worked their way up. My other grandmother was a war widow with an infant and 16. She grew up eating lard on toast. She, too, put herself through school (and at that point with four kids) and became successful selling real estate.

We were the gentrifying yuppies at my poor, inner city elementary school growing up, but we weren't the only ones. It was an amazingly diverse place, where students from all backgrounds learned together. And we all did learn. The magnet school I attended after skewed slightly more affluent, but there too were families from all over.

We mixed. And I think that is the key. The mantra that poor kids are just poor and that you can't risk your own children being "exposed" to them is bullshit and sadly pervasive now. And that is a new sentiment. And a disturbing one.

Your situation is an anecdote. Study after study now say that the US is behind the UK in social mobility. It's a fallacy. You will most likely die in the same social class in which you were born. I used to work at OSSE and am now at a nonprofit and saw a lot of data. Kids who make it out of poverty are literally extraordinary. Hands down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm familiar with that concept. Are there really 80-90 percent of parents in DC who are not talking/reading to their children enough? What do these people do for a living and how do they afford to live in DC?

I know people say this but I personally find it really hard to believe. I used to work in a poor school district and most of those parents DID really care about their kids and helped them with their homework, read to them at night, etc.

I work in ward 8 and it is really extreme poverty. Please, try to spend some time volunteering with these families. You will be astounded. There really is minimal emphasis on education.

This. Plus distrust of public institutions of any sort.

Before you can improve the lives of tomorrow's DCPS kindergartners you need to reach TODAY's 9th grade girls to educate them on consequences of out of wed childbirth and not completing their education. Maybe some sort of scared straight program is required where you bring in teen mom's with 2, 3, 4 kids to talk about their lives. I know couples in upper NWDC who make $400K and are on the fence about whether they can afford a 3rd child. Can't even imagine getting by in this city on minimum wage with even one kid.

Read the book Hand to Mouth and you will understand why this happens.

[Anonymous]

Another aspect of this is that DC is seen as the provider of last resort, not just for city residents but for the entire region. When times get hard, DC is where people go.

Relisha Rudd's mother grew up in the Virginia foster care system, but became DC's problem in a tragic way.

[Anonymous]

My situation is not just an anecdote. If you look at the lives of many of your own relatives back from the 20s to the 60s in America, you will see the same pattern of an upward trajectory. Trust me, both of my grandmothers, while awesome, were not particularly extraordinary... I don't even think they worked very hard--but it was possible, common even.

That social movement has been lost, in favor of hand-wringing and economic segregation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My situation is not just an anecdote. If you look at the lives of many of your own relatives back from the 20s to the 60s in America, you will see the same pattern of an upward trajectory. Trust me, both of my grandmothers, while awesome, were not particularly extraordinary... I don't even think they worked very hard--but it was possible, common even.

That social movement has been lost, in favor of hand-wringing and economic segregation.

Were your grandma's black?

[Anonymous]

DC also has a relatively small population of school-age kids. According to the 2014 census (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/11000.html) the country as a whole was 17.1% between the ages of 5 and 18, DC was 11.0%. A large number of those kids are either very rich or very poor. DC doesn't have a large middle class constituency for schools, which is what is the usual driver in places where public schools are good. In fact, it doesn't take much observation of public education to find actions that seem to put the interests of the adults involved in public education ahead of the kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My situation is not just an anecdote. If you look at the lives of many of your own relatives back from the 20s to the 60s in America, you will see the same pattern of an upward trajectory. Trust me, both of my grandmothers, while awesome, were not particularly extraordinary... I don't even think they worked very hard--but it was possible, common even.

That social movement has been lost, in favor of hand-wringing and economic segregation.

I agree that social mobility has been lost. But it's not the fault of those who didn't achieve it.

It's worth pointing out that the three principle drivers of social mobility -- higher education, home ownership, and middle-class jobs -- were systematically denied to blacks in the US for most of the 20th century.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC also has a relatively small population of school-age kids. According to the 2014 census (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/11000.html) the country as a whole was 17.1% between the ages of 5 and 18, DC was 11.0%. A large number of those kids are either very rich or very poor. DC doesn't have a large middle class constituency for schools, which is what is the usual driver in places where public schools are good. In fact, it doesn't take much observation of public education to find actions that seem to put the interests of the adults involved in public education ahead of the kids.

Yes! Rich go to private schools and poor kids just get stuck with DC's finest. We're middle class and didn't buy in DC because of the schools.

[Anonymous]

See, I see that as part of the middle class failing... You think the only schools that are good are the ones in neighborhoods that are not of your class. We are relatively umc, and my experience with DC schools has been that this poverty bugaboo everyone is so scared of? Not a huge deal. Kids are kids, and all want to learn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:See, I see that as part of the middle class failing... You think the only schools that are good are the ones in neighborhoods that are not of your class. We are relatively umc, and my experience with DC schools has been that this poverty bugaboo everyone is so scared of? Not a huge deal. Kids are kids, and all want to learn.

And your school is where? ward 7 or 8?