What would an at-risk preference do? New MSDC research paper out

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought that there were enough pre-k spaces in for all children. I'm a little at a loss as to why 3 and 4 year olds would need to travel across town to schools for pre-k.

Pre-k is highly regulated throughout the the system and inspected. The building might look different, but the kids have the same food and the same classroom resources. There are also great pre-k teachers working across all wards.

Also some of these schools have resources for the parents like GED courses.

Kids are not behind in pre-k. Wrap around services need to be strengthened at each school - healthcare, adult education, job counseling. There's already early stages seats for students that can't get special services.


This isn’t just about pre-k. it is about getting at risk kids into higher performing schools all the way through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought that there were enough pre-k spaces in for all children. I'm a little at a loss as to why 3 and 4 year olds would need to travel across town to schools for pre-k.

Pre-k is highly regulated throughout the the system and inspected. The building might look different, but the kids have the same food and the same classroom resources. There are also great pre-k teachers working across all wards.

Also some of these schools have resources for the parents like GED courses.

Kids are not behind in pre-k. Wrap around services need to be strengthened at each school - healthcare, adult education, job counseling. There's already early stages seats for students that can't get special services.

Maybe parents would like to take them to a school near where they work?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought that there were enough pre-k spaces in for all children. I'm a little at a loss as to why 3 and 4 year olds would need to travel across town to schools for pre-k.

Pre-k is highly regulated throughout the the system and inspected. The building might look different, but the kids have the same food and the same classroom resources. There are also great pre-k teachers working across all wards.

Also some of these schools have resources for the parents like GED courses.

Kids are not behind in pre-k. Wrap around services need to be strengthened at each school - healthcare, adult education, job counseling. There's already early stages seats for students that can't get special services.


This isn’t just about pre-k. it is about getting at risk kids into higher performing schools all the way through.

The achievement gap is present in preschool, actually. It shows up clearly in the research and is glaringly obvious at my DD's school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought that there were enough pre-k spaces in for all children. I'm a little at a loss as to why 3 and 4 year olds would need to travel across town to schools for pre-k.

Pre-k is highly regulated throughout the the system and inspected. The building might look different, but the kids have the same food and the same classroom resources. There are also great pre-k teachers working across all wards.

Also some of these schools have resources for the parents like GED courses.

Kids are not behind in pre-k. Wrap around services need to be strengthened at each school - healthcare, adult education, job counseling. There's already early stages seats for students that can't get special services.


This isn’t just about pre-k. it is about getting at risk kids into higher performing schools all the way through.

The achievement gap is present in preschool, actually. It shows up clearly in the research and is glaringly obvious at my DD's school.

It is also well borne out in national reserch. Google million word gap.

[Anonymous]

This is all really wonky stuff. I would say after working at one of the worst performing elementary schools in the District that the children with motivated parents and capable children were participating in the lottery. There are buses that idled in the morning in front of my school taking children to J.O Wilson across the river.

The ones that aren't participating in the lottery process are truly at-risk families that would not be able to access a school in a different community anyways. Thinking back to my Pre-K classroom - there was a father of 6 that was interviewing for shift-work. How is he going to have the time to travel across town picking up his kids and pay for himself to commute back and forth. I had a student that was taken into the foster system away from their parents. The foster family brought her daily from MD because the child was having such severe behavior problems being taken out of her community and away from cousins and friends. Children in kinder and first grade were regularily getting their siblings in pre-k to school because the parents weren't at home.

How is taking at-risk funding away from these schools and communities going to address the conditions as to why these families and students are at-risk.

Educationally at-risk students might be behind 3 or 4 years in reading and math levels. No matter how great or rich your school is - they are not going to snap their fingers and get results. Children need to be met where they are emotionally and educationally and stop all this non-sense high-stake testing of students that can barely read themselves. I was in on meeting where administrators said not to focus on the lowest achievers because they would not ever be able to contribute to showing growth in the averages.

I think stregthening neighborhood schools would stregthen the communities. Schools can be a powerful community instutitions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought that there were enough pre-k spaces in for all children. I'm a little at a loss as to why 3 and 4 year olds would need to travel across town to schools for pre-k.

Pre-k is highly regulated throughout the the system and inspected. The building might look different, but the kids have the same food and the same classroom resources. There are also great pre-k teachers working across all wards.

Also some of these schools have resources for the parents like GED courses.

Kids are not behind in pre-k. Wrap around services need to be strengthened at each school - healthcare, adult education, job counseling. There's already early stages seats for students that can't get special services.


This isn’t just about pre-k. it is about getting at risk kids into higher performing schools all the way through.

The achievement gap is present in preschool, actually. It shows up clearly in the research and is glaringly obvious at my DD's school.

Yes this.

I'm a PK teacher in the city and the achievement gap is already present the first day of PK3.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the points of that Twitter posting that stood out to me is that at risk kids are far less likely to enter the lottery at all (more than 40% of all kids are at risk, but way less than 40% of lottery applicants. That confirms what I've thought about charter schools not taking their "fair share" of the most difficult to educate students, and so any comparison of outcomes isn't fair. It also suggests that providing access to quality schools for at risk kids has to be done outside the lottery system.

I suppose it also suggests that at-risk students are underrepresented at Pk3 and Pk4 -- since they'd need to use the lottery to get there. Which is really frustrating since that is presumably who would benefit from it the most.

In the April 2018 Common Lottery board minutes (posted in another thread) they said 2018 had the highest level of applicants from Ward 8 (yes, I know that isn't where ALL the at-risk kids are). Kang also wanted MSDC to outline what outreach had been done specifically to homeless families.

Ward 8 has the highest number of children in the city.

Sending more Ward 8 students to Wards 3 and 4 would truly be a brilliant move -- we know about the crazy-high truancy rates even when they live next to their school, but somehow that would change by sending them to the other corner of the city...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought that there were enough pre-k spaces in for all children. I'm a little at a loss as to why 3 and 4 year olds would need to travel across town to schools for pre-k.

Pre-k is highly regulated throughout the the system and inspected. The building might look different, but the kids have the same food and the same classroom resources. There are also great pre-k teachers working across all wards.

Also some of these schools have resources for the parents like GED courses.

Kids are not behind in pre-k. Wrap around services need to be strengthened at each school - healthcare, adult education, job counseling. There's already early stages seats for students that can't get special services.


This isn’t just about pre-k. it is about getting at risk kids into higher performing schools all the way through.

The achievement gap is present in preschool, actually. It shows up clearly in the research and is glaringly obvious at my DD's school.

It is also well borne out in national reserch. Google million word gap.

Yes, some children have been exposed to more vocabulary and content knowledge in the preschool years than others. There is much research to show this - if you need it. Isn't preschool supposed to prepare students so there is no achievement gap later?

The learning standards, at least a few years ago, were to recognize 10 letters and letter sounds, recognize that print goes from left to right, write their own name, ect. Most children mastered this after two years of pre-k. If students do not than they should be further monitored for special education. Pre-k is play-based instruction where children learn to cooperate. How is there an achievement gap already in the classroom? They are assessed according to their own development not others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought that there were enough pre-k spaces in for all children. I'm a little at a loss as to why 3 and 4 year olds would need to travel across town to schools for pre-k.

Pre-k is highly regulated throughout the the system and inspected. The building might look different, but the kids have the same food and the same classroom resources. There are also great pre-k teachers working across all wards.

Also some of these schools have resources for the parents like GED courses.

Kids are not behind in pre-k. Wrap around services need to be strengthened at each school - healthcare, adult education, job counseling. There's already early stages seats for students that can't get special services.


This isn’t just about pre-k. it is about getting at risk kids into higher performing schools all the way through.

The achievement gap is present in preschool, actually. It shows up clearly in the research and is glaringly obvious at my DD's school.

Yes this.

I'm a PK teacher in the city and the achievement gap is already present the first day of PK3.

I am too. How is there a gap when achievement has yet to be measured? I guess I'm using the wrong definition of "achievement gap."

[Anonymous]

All you SJW people instead of spouting off these ideas that would never work here is an easy solution for you

Move to ward 8 and bring up the schools by sending your kids there

Oh wait you don't want to do that

Yall are a bunch of hypocrites

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought that there were enough pre-k spaces in for all children. I'm a little at a loss as to why 3 and 4 year olds would need to travel across town to schools for pre-k.

Pre-k is highly regulated throughout the the system and inspected. The building might look different, but the kids have the same food and the same classroom resources. There are also great pre-k teachers working across all wards.

Also some of these schools have resources for the parents like GED courses.

Kids are not behind in pre-k. Wrap around services need to be strengthened at each school - healthcare, adult education, job counseling. There's already early stages seats for students that can't get special services.


This isn’t just about pre-k. it is about getting at risk kids into higher performing schools all the way through.

The achievement gap is present in preschool, actually. It shows up clearly in the research and is glaringly obvious at my DD's school.

Yes this.

I'm a PK teacher in the city and the achievement gap is already present the first day of PK3.

I am too. How is there a gap when achievement has yet to be measured? I guess I'm using the wrong definition of "achievement gap."

Take a walk in any lower income neighborhood and it will be obvious

You will find two primary scenarios

1. People yelling and screaming and cussing in front of or at kids instead of talking to them
2. Or people ignoring kids

[Anonymous]

Cognitive gaps show up before children are 3, thanks to health, nutrition, trauma and just differences in the amount and way babies and toddlers are spoken to and with.

This is a good summary https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2013/09/24/early-childhood-achievement-gaps-and-social-mobility-part-1/amp/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Cognitive gaps show up before children are 3, thanks to health, nutrition, trauma and just differences in the amount and way babies and toddlers are spoken to and with.

This is a good summary https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2013/09/24/early-childhood-achievement-gaps-and-social-mobility-part-1/amp/

Yes. There is also research that trauma can also be inherited genetically. How does this inform at-risk spots for lottery? This shows some of the reasons that achievement gaps grow overtime, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cognitive gaps show up before children are 3, thanks to health, nutrition, trauma and just differences in the amount and way babies and toddlers are spoken to and with.

This is a good summary https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2013/09/24/early-childhood-achievement-gaps-and-social-mobility-part-1/amp/

Yes. There is also research that trauma can also be inherited genetically. How does this inform at-risk spots for lottery? This shows some of the reasons that achievement gaps grow overtime, right?

It means that at risk lottery seats is not the panacea but it may help. As will home visiting programs, parent support and education https://www.npr.org/2013/12/29/257922222/closing-the-word-gap-between-rich-and-poor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought that there were enough pre-k spaces in for all children. I'm a little at a loss as to why 3 and 4 year olds would need to travel across town to schools for pre-k.

Pre-k is highly regulated throughout the the system and inspected. The building might look different, but the kids have the same food and the same classroom resources. There are also great pre-k teachers working across all wards.

Also some of these schools have resources for the parents like GED courses.

Kids are not behind in pre-k. Wrap around services need to be strengthened at each school - healthcare, adult education, job counseling. There's already early stages seats for students that can't get special services.

Maybe parents would like to take them to a school near where they work?

A lot of "at risk" families are not working, looking for work, working two jobs, or are homeless. Many people have aunts, uncles, friends, or grandparents pick up kids.