WaPo Editorial today on DCPS/charter collaboration

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:another incoherent editorial from the Washington Post.

The whole point of charters is that they are forced to compete for students (and thus funding) and that this competitive pressure is what drives the charters to perform.

Encouraging greater collaboration with DCPS is completely counter to this fundamental principle.

And at the same time, why on earth would DCPS want this to succeed?

Trying to force parties to collaborate when it is against their interest is doomed to fail.

The Washington Post's local editorials are a joke. I can't believe anyone takes them seriously.

The whole point if charters was NOT competition. That has been a fundamental misunderstanding. Charters were supposed to be labs for testing new ideas to integrate into public schools.

In a 1988 address, Mr. Shanker outlined an idea for a new kind of public school where teachers could experiment with fresh and innovative ways of reaching students. Mr. Shanker estimated that only one-fifth of American students were well served by traditional classrooms. In charter schools, teachers would be given the opportunity to draw upon their expertise to create high-performing educational laboratories from which the traditional public schools could learn. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/opinion/sunday/albert-shanker-the-original-charter-school-visionary.html?_r=0

If I had the time and energy, I could easily find quotes from the political types in Congress who actually passed the bill creating the District's charters that support my position that injecting free market competition into the education arena was one the objectives. Not that I believe that it was the only one. But it was an important objective. I also think that, regardless of the original intentions, it is a present reality that should be considered in the debate.

I find it curious that you have such a good memory that you can find an op-ed piece written last year by a charter school lobbyist so quickly. One of the quirks of this anonymous forum is that people who have a professional interest in supporting charters (and public schools) post here often. I find it disingenuous when they do so without identifying their biases. I myself am a parent with 2 kids in charters.

As a charter school parent who works closely with public schools - I find both of you to be assholes.

Who cares WHAT the original point is - or what charter lobbyist or DC School unions are doing at the national level. I only care what is best for the children of DC. Since so few of us actual do, maybe stop fighting each other and spend a little more time working on that.

eh, you're right, I got a little caught up. Sorry. To much coffee I guess. Gotta get back to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the thing is, if we didn't have charters we'd have a greater number of better neighborhood schools because the many families that flee for HRCS would be forced to put their resources into their "focus" or "rising" schools that a few are already trying to improve. Yeah, some would move, but not all.

We will NEVER have universally good by-right schools if we perpetuate an easy opt-out for families. It will never happen. I'm not suggesting improvement would stretch east of the river immediately, but our Wests and Garrisons and Brookland Middles and Coolidges and Amidon-Bowens and Takomas and Truesdells would be much improved if all the families that go charter were there instead. I'm also not suggesting that we shouldn't have initiated charters when we did; it seems like it was necessary for our failing city schools at the time. But now? We can reevaluate our definition of and path to "excellence for everyone."

The mayor knows this, and to not continue to move us down this separate-but-equal-but-not-really road we are on is the right move.

Not true. I would NEVER send my child to our IB schools. If not for charters, I would be living in Maryland.

You and most transplants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the thing is, if we didn't have charters we'd have a greater number of better neighborhood schools because the many families that flee for HRCS would be forced to put their resources into their "focus" or "rising" schools that a few are already trying to improve. Yeah, some would move, but not all.

We will NEVER have universally good by-right schools if we perpetuate an easy opt-out for families. It will never happen. I'm not suggesting improvement would stretch east of the river immediately, but our Wests and Garrisons and Brookland Middles and Coolidges and Amidon-Bowens and Takomas and Truesdells would be much improved if all the families that go charter were there instead. I'm also not suggesting that we shouldn't have initiated charters when we did; it seems like it was necessary for our failing city schools at the time. But now? We can reevaluate our definition of and path to "excellence for everyone."

The mayor knows this, and to not continue to move us down this separate-but-equal-but-not-really road we are on is the right move.

Not true. I would NEVER send my child to our IB schools. If not for charters, I would be living in Maryland.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GO TO MARYLAND. Good riddance. I would much rather have a neighbor who is invested in our community than one who opts out. Please move, seriously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the thing is, if we didn't have charters we'd have a greater number of better neighborhood schools because the many families that flee for HRCS would be forced to put their resources into their "focus" or "rising" schools that a few are already trying to improve. Yeah, some would move, but not all.

We will NEVER have universally good by-right schools if we perpetuate an easy opt-out for families. It will never happen. I'm not suggesting improvement would stretch east of the river immediately, but our Wests and Garrisons and Brookland Middles and Coolidges and Amidon-Bowens and Takomas and Truesdells would be much improved if all the families that go charter were there instead. I'm also not suggesting that we shouldn't have initiated charters when we did; it seems like it was necessary for our failing city schools at the time. But now? We can reevaluate our definition of and path to "excellence for everyone."

The mayor knows this, and to not continue to move us down this separate-but-equal-but-not-really road we are on is the right move.

Not true. I would NEVER send my child to our IB schools. If not for charters, I would be living in Maryland.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GO TO MARYLAND. Good riddance. I would much rather have a neighbor who is invested in our community than one who opts out. Please move, seriously.

Charters ARE part of the community and the data shows they doing a better job at getting kids to graduate than DCPS. Perhaps you should go to Virginia where charter schools aren't even allowed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the thing is, if we didn't have charters we'd have a greater number of better neighborhood schools because the many families that flee for HRCS would be forced to put their resources into their "focus" or "rising" schools that a few are already trying to improve. Yeah, some would move, but not all.

We will NEVER have universally good by-right schools if we perpetuate an easy opt-out for families. It will never happen. I'm not suggesting improvement would stretch east of the river immediately, but our Wests and Garrisons and Brookland Middles and Coolidges and Amidon-Bowens and Takomas and Truesdells would be much improved if all the families that go charter were there instead. I'm also not suggesting that we shouldn't have initiated charters when we did; it seems like it was necessary for our failing city schools at the time. But now? We can reevaluate our definition of and path to "excellence for everyone."

The mayor knows this, and to not continue to move us down this separate-but-equal-but-not-really road we are on is the right move.

Not true. I would NEVER send my child to our IB schools. If not for charters, I would be living in Maryland.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GO TO MARYLAND. Good riddance. I would much rather have a neighbor who is invested in our community than one who opts out. Please move, seriously.

Charters ARE part of the community and the data shows they doing a better job at getting kids to graduate than DCPS. Perhaps you should go to Virginia where charter schools aren't even allowed.

Neighborhoods are communities. Charters actively fight any ties to educating their neighborhoods' children. Charters are interested in fostering tribes, not community.

But keep lying to yourself if it makes you feel better. Most people in your echo chamber probably find you entirely sincere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the thing is, if we didn't have charters we'd have a greater number of better neighborhood schools because the many families that flee for HRCS would be forced to put their resources into their "focus" or "rising" schools that a few are already trying to improve. Yeah, some would move, but not all.

We will NEVER have universally good by-right schools if we perpetuate an easy opt-out for families. It will never happen. I'm not suggesting improvement would stretch east of the river immediately, but our Wests and Garrisons and Brookland Middles and Coolidges and Amidon-Bowens and Takomas and Truesdells would be much improved if all the families that go charter were there instead. I'm also not suggesting that we shouldn't have initiated charters when we did; it seems like it was necessary for our failing city schools at the time. But now? We can reevaluate our definition of and path to "excellence for everyone."

The mayor knows this, and to not continue to move us down this separate-but-equal-but-not-really road we are on is the right move.

Not true. I would NEVER send my child to our IB schools. If not for charters, I would be living in Maryland.

You and most transplants.

I'm not a transplant, well - I've got 30 years living in the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the thing is, if we didn't have charters we'd have a greater number of better neighborhood schools because the many families that flee for HRCS would be forced to put their resources into their "focus" or "rising" schools that a few are already trying to improve. Yeah, some would move, but not all.

We will NEVER have universally good by-right schools if we perpetuate an easy opt-out for families. It will never happen. I'm not suggesting improvement would stretch east of the river immediately, but our Wests and Garrisons and Brookland Middles and Coolidges and Amidon-Bowens and Takomas and Truesdells would be much improved if all the families that go charter were there instead. I'm also not suggesting that we shouldn't have initiated charters when we did; it seems like it was necessary for our failing city schools at the time. But now? We can reevaluate our definition of and path to "excellence for everyone."

The mayor knows this, and to not continue to move us down this separate-but-equal-but-not-really road we are on is the right move.

Not true. I would NEVER send my child to our IB schools. If not for charters, I would be living in Maryland.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GO TO MARYLAND. Good riddance. I would much rather have a neighbor who is invested in our community than one who opts out. Please move, seriously.

Really? Invested in your community as in keeps buildings empty and fights to keep "some" of the city's children as second class citizens? Sounds like an AWESOME community you live in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the thing is, if we didn't have charters we'd have a greater number of better neighborhood schools because the many families that flee for HRCS would be forced to put their resources into their "focus" or "rising" schools that a few are already trying to improve. Yeah, some would move, but not all.

We will NEVER have universally good by-right schools if we perpetuate an easy opt-out for families. It will never happen. I'm not suggesting improvement would stretch east of the river immediately, but our Wests and Garrisons and Brookland Middles and Coolidges and Amidon-Bowens and Takomas and Truesdells would be much improved if all the families that go charter were there instead. I'm also not suggesting that we shouldn't have initiated charters when we did; it seems like it was necessary for our failing city schools at the time. But now? We can reevaluate our definition of and path to "excellence for everyone."

The mayor knows this, and to not continue to move us down this separate-but-equal-but-not-really road we are on is the right move.

Not true. I would NEVER send my child to our IB schools. If not for charters, I would be living in Maryland.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GO TO MARYLAND. Good riddance. I would much rather have a neighbor who is invested in our community than one who opts out. Please move, seriously.

Really? Invested in your community as in keeps buildings empty and fights to keep "some" of the city's children as second class citizens? Sounds like an AWESOME community you live in.

Um, this is a non sequitur... but good try!

[Anonymous]

OK - focus people. Kids first, right?
My bias: parent of two kids in DCPS.

I'm not anti-charter. I don't think that a completely free market approach is best for all our kids. Nor should charters be subjected to top down DCPS management. But there's a reasonable middle ground, with concessions from both DCPS (funding / facilities) and DCPCS (complementing rather than competing, fairer admittance / retention policies), and both (common lottery - yay mostly!, common data system so we can compare the two head to head).

It really sounds like there's something reasonable for a collaborative task force to work on. So stop harping on the shortcomings of 'the other', and talk about some reasonable compromises.

[Anonymous]

What you fail to acknowledge is that the freedom to innovate and do things differently than DCPS is part of what is making some of these charters work. I have a child who have profound and significant language based learning disabilities - now in high school with minimal accommodations. The charter school was willing and able to provide much more targetted and better services for him because they had the freedom to hire contractor specialists who were trained in his rare disorder and these services enabled him to now be succeeding beyond all of our expectations. We tried our local DCPS (Takoma) and were offered a fraction of the services by people with no experience. Rather than suing the school system - which we could have done and secured a private SN school placement - we have stayed in charters.

but really, not all charters do things as well as they pretend to. Look at EL Haynes school report card, and compare it to Seaton Elementary's for example. There is very little difference in the ability to bring high risk children's performance up.

I think we've been sold a false bill of goods, honestly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OK - focus people. Kids first, right?
My bias: parent of two kids in DCPS.

I'm not anti-charter. I don't think that a completely free market approach is best for all our kids. Nor should charters be subjected to top down DCPS management. But there's a reasonable middle ground, with concessions from both DCPS (funding / facilities) and DCPCS (complementing rather than competing, fairer admittance / retention policies), and both (common lottery - yay mostly!, common data system so we can compare the two head to head).

It really sounds like there's something reasonable for a collaborative task force to work on. So stop harping on the shortcomings of 'the other', and talk about some reasonable compromises.

+1. Nice post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

What you fail to acknowledge is that the freedom to innovate and do things differently than DCPS is part of what is making some of these charters work. I have a child who have profound and significant language based learning disabilities - now in high school with minimal accommodations. The charter school was willing and able to provide much more targetted and better services for him because they had the freedom to hire contractor specialists who were trained in his rare disorder and these services enabled him to now be succeeding beyond all of our expectations. We tried our local DCPS (Takoma) and were offered a fraction of the services by people with no experience. Rather than suing the school system - which we could have done and secured a private SN school placement - we have stayed in charters.

but really, not all charters do things as well as they pretend to. Look at EL Haynes school report card, and compare it to Seaton Elementary's for example. There is very little difference in the ability to bring high risk children's performance up.

I think we've been sold a false bill of goods, honestly.

So... we should be asking for common sets of data from DCPS and DCPCS. That could include growth of students by grade, race, gender, qualification for FARMS, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the thing is, if we didn't have charters we'd have a greater number of better neighborhood schools because the many families that flee for HRCS would be forced to put their resources into their "focus" or "rising" schools that a few are already trying to improve. Yeah, some would move, but not all.

We will NEVER have universally good by-right schools if we perpetuate an easy opt-out for families. It will never happen. I'm not suggesting improvement would stretch east of the river immediately, but our Wests and Garrisons and Brookland Middles and Coolidges and Amidon-Bowens and Takomas and Truesdells would be much improved if all the families that go charter were there instead. I'm also not suggesting that we shouldn't have initiated charters when we did; it seems like it was necessary for our failing city schools at the time. But now? We can reevaluate our definition of and path to "excellence for everyone."

The mayor knows this, and to not continue to move us down this separate-but-equal-but-not-really road we are on is the right move.

What you fail to acknowledge is that the freedom to innovate and do things differently than DCPS is part of what is making some of these charters work. I have a child who have profound and significant language based learning disabilities - now in high school with minimal accommodations. The charter school was willing and able to provide much more targetted and better services for him because they had the freedom to hire contractor specialists who were trained in his rare disorder and these services enabled him to now be succeeding beyond all of our expectations. We tried our local DCPS (Takoma) and were offered a fraction of the services by people with no experience. Rather than suing the school system - which we could have done and secured a private SN school placement - we have stayed in charters.

I get your situation, I think you're right, and I'm happy things have worked out. But I'm admittedly speaking about the general population of students, which is the overwhelming majority of DCPS. FWIW, we are very familiar with Takoma and have found it to be chock full of experienced and effective educators.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the thing is, if we didn't have charters we'd have a greater number of better neighborhood schools because the many families that flee for HRCS would be forced to put their resources into their "focus" or "rising" schools that a few are already trying to improve. Yeah, some would move, but not all.

We will NEVER have universally good by-right schools if we perpetuate an easy opt-out for families. It will never happen. I'm not suggesting improvement would stretch east of the river immediately, but our Wests and Garrisons and Brookland Middles and Coolidges and Amidon-Bowens and Takomas and Truesdells would be much improved if all the families that go charter were there instead. I'm also not suggesting that we shouldn't have initiated charters when we did; it seems like it was necessary for our failing city schools at the time. But now? We can reevaluate our definition of and path to "excellence for everyone."

The mayor knows this, and to not continue to move us down this separate-but-equal-but-not-really road we are on is the right move.

Not true. I would NEVER send my child to our IB schools. If not for charters, I would be living in Maryland.

Hence the bolded part above. So, still true then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

What you fail to acknowledge is that the freedom to innovate and do things differently than DCPS is part of what is making some of these charters work. I have a child who have profound and significant language based learning disabilities - now in high school with minimal accommodations. The charter school was willing and able to provide much more targetted and better services for him because they had the freedom to hire contractor specialists who were trained in his rare disorder and these services enabled him to now be succeeding beyond all of our expectations. We tried our local DCPS (Takoma) and were offered a fraction of the services by people with no experience. Rather than suing the school system - which we could have done and secured a private SN school placement - we have stayed in charters.

but really, not all charters do things as well as they pretend to. Look at EL Haynes school report card, and compare it to Seaton Elementary's for example. There is very little difference in the ability to bring high risk children's performance up.

I think we've been sold a false bill of goods, honestly.

And that's probably partly why Haynes is a Tier 2 school. But there are Tier 1 schools that are getting better results with that population (still not good enough) but many of them are not schools that are ever discussed in this forum.