Failing Schools Almost Impossible to "Turnaround"

[Anonymous]

Parents who have school-aged kids can't wait a decade or two. That's why it's so hard to turnaround the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents who have school-aged kids can't wait a decade or two. That's why it's so hard to turnaround the system.

are test scores the most important factor when choosing a school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here we go round and round and round.

poor test scores = failing schools
failing schools = bad teachers, or poverty, or whatever

Isn't it time to start evaluating schools based on the quality of educational benefits that are offered rather than student test scores?

Not sure what your point is. You can evaluate the schools however you like. Educational outcomes will be poor as long as there's severely concentrated poverty in DCPS. The "quality of educational benefits" is orthogonal to the question of school quality in DC. At least until we manage to get the DCPS poverty rate down to something like 20%. That's going to happen as gentrification continues apace; then we can talk about optimizing the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here we go round and round and round.

poor test scores = failing schools
failing schools = bad teachers, or poverty, or whatever

Isn't it time to start evaluating schools based on the quality of educational benefits that are offered rather than student test scores?

Not sure what your point is. You can evaluate the schools however you like. Educational outcomes will be poor as long as there's severely concentrated poverty in DCPS. The "quality of educational benefits" is orthogonal to the question of school quality in DC. At least until we manage to get the DCPS poverty rate down to something like 20%. That's going to happen as gentrification continues apace; then we can talk about optimizing the system.

That's the point. Is education about outcomes that can be measured? Or is it about opportunity?

You seem to equate "quality" with "higher test scores"
You have correctly concluded that these outcomes are determined by poverty.
And then you posit that gentrification, in itself, will raise test scores.
But does this address the quality of educational benefits offered? I don't think so.

Why not let schools concentrate on quality education and let city bureaucracies deal with poverty.

[Anonymous]

As long as an anti-learning, anti-knowledge approach to life is present in any household the children will never learn enough in any school to be successful adults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would assume the issues facing most "failing schools" have more to do with poverty than the actual system. There is an ugly culture that is often associated with it. You can hire the best teachers in the world but little will change if students come from homes that do not value education. Until we can change that than those schools will continue to fail.

KIPP and SEED disagree with you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would assume the issues facing most "failing schools" have more to do with poverty than the actual system. There is an ugly culture that is often associated with it. You can hire the best teachers in the world but little will change if students come from homes that do not value education. Until we can change that than those schools will continue to fail.

This.

In another decade or two, the poverty rate in DC will be roughly the same as the rest of the region. And the schools will be some of the best in the country. Gentrification works.

DC spends more money per student than any other district in the nation - throwing more money at the school system is not going to yield further results. The issues that remain are community and cultural issues that need to be addressed outside of the school system.

The numbers regarding per pupil spending are not comparable to any other district in the nation, so to say DC spends more per pupil is inaccurate when you are talking about how much is actually spent per pupil in individual schools. DC has to handle the responsibilities that are handled by most states in addition to traditionally local responsibilities. It also has extremely high expenses related to serving children with special needs. Because of the totally screwed up way DC used to handle services for children with special needs and a resulting court loss, it has become a place to move for families with children with special needs because they can get more very expensive services here.

I am not saying more money will solve the problem, I am just noting you leave a lot out.

All states/jurisdictions have students with special needs. The SN student population is NOT the anchor around DCPS's neck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ask anyone who knows the history of segregation and they will tell you that DC had two sets of school buildings. We now have extra buildings because of that fact as well as the enrollment dip.

So does every other town and city east of the Rockies, not to mention plenty of those to the west. What other excuses do you have?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's nonsense. 80% of DC is not in deep poverty. And even so, poverty does not have to automatically correlate with poor school performance - take for example latinos and immigrants who arrive as refugees from horrible conditions and deep poverty - typically they close the performance and income gap within a single generation.

As for affordable housing, what is forcing poor families to stay in DC? It's obviously not for work. And if we are supposed to consider that it's for family or community, consider that family and community is the biggest part of what is contributing to poor performance and continued poverty.

If you don't get it you don't get it. As the previous poster noted, poverty "in general" is closely related to a number of factors. Lack of education, absent parents, lack of resources, hunger, lack of healthcare (illness and poor nutrition cause frequent absences and lack of healthcare in elementary grades often lead to undiagnosed health/SpEd issues). Children of immigrants cannot be compared to low SES children because many immigrants are not low SES, they maybe in their new adopted country but at the school where my child goes many of them had middle-class jobs in their country. There are many African children whose parents are driving cabs that were teachers and professors in their country, they also came here so their children could have the opportunity for a better education. There are huge differences in educational success between the children of refugees that come from countries of high literacy and those that don't, overall the children from El Salvador that had intermittent education are not doing well. Many of their parents are illiterate, we even have children who are not highly literate in Spanish. Many Americans lump all immigrant, refugees and ELLs together but statistics show that family literacy and poverty play a huge role. Additionally, many families in NW who are low income live with multiple generations and relatives to afford the rents or have moved to Maryland. There are many domestics in my school, do you really think they can afford the astronomical rents in DC? If the parents are absent, often traveling as far as Baltimore to clean - who do you think is looking after the children and making sure they do their homework. If they themselves don't speak English, how can they help? Of course, they want a better life for their children and support their child's education but poverty plays a huge role in many ways as it does for all low-SES children native or otherwise.

This is a bunch of utter and compete bullcrap. People come to America from abject poverty, suppression, dictatorships, persecution and illiteracy in the third world, and through hard work, they find they can make it here in America. Yet people who were born here end up not even trying, and turn around and blame the system, blame their own parents, blame blame blame. Whose fault is absent parents? The parents themselves. Whose fault is all the rest? It's 99% on the parents. Blaming no longer cuts it.

[Anonymous]

Parents who have school-aged kids can't wait a decade or two. That's why it's so hard to turnaround the system.

... hard to turn around the system.

Look, if we're going to have a serious discussion about failing schools, we really should try to demonstrate that we paid attention and learned English grammar during our own time in school. Unless we ourselves failed in school?

[Anonymous]

I would assume the issues facing most "failing schools" have more to do with poverty than the actual system. There is an ugly culture that is often associated with it. You can hire the best teachers in the world but little will change if students come from homes that do not value education. Until we can change that than those schools will continue to fail.



KIPP and SEED disagree with you.

KIPP has never, ever proven to be scalable. They have never been able to replicate those results beyond a school here and there.

Which is great, but KIPP's 20/7 model is not the answer for any school SYSTEM. It's a successful boutique approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would assume the issues facing most "failing schools" have more to do with poverty than the actual system. There is an ugly culture that is often associated with it. You can hire the best teachers in the world but little will change if students come from homes that do not value education. Until we can change that than those schools will continue to fail.

KIPP and SEED disagree with you.

I would think the parents that send their children to these charter school do value education, which is why they are choosing to send their children to a more rigorous school and by this action are self selecting themselves away from a cohort of kids from families that do not value education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would assume the issues facing most "failing schools" have more to do with poverty than the actual system. There is an ugly culture that is often associated with it. You can hire the best teachers in the world but little will change if students come from homes that do not value education. Until we can change that than those schools will continue to fail.

This.

In another decade or two, the poverty rate in DC will be roughly the same as the rest of the region. And the schools will be some of the best in the country. Gentrification works.

DC spends more money per student than any other district in the nation - throwing more money at the school system is not going to yield further results. The issues that remain are community and cultural issues that need to be addressed outside of the school system.

The numbers regarding per pupil spending are not comparable to any other district in the nation, so to say DC spends more per pupil is inaccurate when you are talking about how much is actually spent per pupil in individual schools. DC has to handle the responsibilities that are handled by most states in addition to traditionally local responsibilities. It also has extremely high expenses related to serving children with special needs. Because of the totally screwed up way DC used to handle services for children with special needs and a resulting court loss, it has become a place to move for families with children with special needs because they can get more very expensive services here.

I am not saying more money will solve the problem, I am just noting you leave a lot out.

All states/jurisdictions have students with special needs. The SN student population is NOT the anchor around DCPS's neck.

My understanding is that costs per special needs student in DCPS are higher than most districts and such students make up a larger percentage of the student population than most districts. I am interested in being proven wrong, if you can please identify another school district with a similarly high percentage of its dollars serving special needs kids and if you could include the percentages of the school age children that are receiving special needs education that would be helpful as well.

[Anonymous]

PP, I'd like to see some figures to back that up, if it's true.

It seems extraordinary that somehow the District of Columbia would have a disproportionately large number of special needs students as compared to anywhere in the nation, and that said special needs were so significantly more severe than average for special needs that it would entail more money. If that's the case, one should start wondering about serious environmental problems causing birth defects.

[Anonymous]

^^^ Great point. But I would stress that you do not need to wonder about how poor prenatal care relates to delayed devolpment and resulting special education student issues. The evidence is all around the schools. I posted previously about how a failing school is either part of a failing community that we need to embrace, and restructure completely, or simply walk away from. Pouring our time and efforts into bite sized pieces of the problem does nothing. I am a former corporate attorney who joined TFA 5 years ago in DC, because I wanted to give back and help the community. Now, five years later I am not sure we can force educational values on a community that is still resistant. I tend to shy away from the incubator model of the KIPP and SEED schools, where they ignore the community and just pull from the top. However, advocating for paretns and famillies who do not know what they are missing is a lost cause. Best thing I hope for now are lower birth rates. It's sad, but true.