Capitol Hill Middle School and High School situation
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
No, it was tracking based on testing, de facto segregation. |
Anonymous
You could still do tracking if you offered the same classes, with levels. The issue in Hansen is they had a white collar track with all white kids and a blue collar track with all black kids, plus biased testing, plus 1000 other issues. |
Anonymous
| If they could show us, through stuff like videos of classes or displays of student work, how each child is receiving appropriate level instruction, that would be wonderful. I would love to believe that's possible in DC, and other jurisdictions have made efforts in that direction. But the range of abilities is just so wide that nobody believes it's possible, and DCPS is unwilling to attempt any sort of demonstration. |
Anonymous
Coolidge used to also be very highly regarded. I know someone who went there over 40 years ago and she said it was a good school. She would not advise sending kids there now. |
Anonymous
Have you tried to ask the principal if you could visit and sit in on a few classes. Sometimes schools allow that. |
Anonymous
Colleges do tracking. For example, My daughter had to choose between Physics for poets, regular physics or honors (accelerated) physics. Similar choice for math. She |
Anonymous
+100 At least in our case at our HRCS, parents become more entrenched and convinced that their kids attend a “great” school the longer they are there because they can’t face the reality: its a crappy school but they have no alternative lined up. |
Anonymous
Absolutely. Look at the thread on Oyster Adams that has turned into a immersion HRCS vs. immersion EOTP DCPS debate. Parents genuinely go into ECE thinking the charters are better, and by the time they realize they're mediocre just like the DCPS schools, they're already invested in the school and looking ahead to middle school. Or they're entrenched and have blinders to the gaps and low standards in the school. Though there's an argument to be made that if you have a kid who's average or slightly below average, it's better for them to be in a less rigorous environment. Those are probably the families that are perfectly happy and have no concerns with their charter. |
Anonymous
Sure, here you go: One hundred years ago, on October 2, 1916, a new public high school building for black youngsters was opened in Washington, D.C. and named for black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. Its history is a story inspiring in many ways and appalling in many other ways. Prior to 1916, the same high school had existed under other names, housed in other buildings — and with a remarkable academic record. In 1899, when it was called "the M Street School," a test was given in Washington's four academic public high schools, three white and one black. The black high school scored higher than two of the three white high schools. Today, it would be considered Utopian even to set that as a goal, much less expect to see it happen. The M Street School had neither of two so-called "prerequisites" for quality education. There was no "diversity." It was an all-black school from its beginning, and on through its life as a high quality institution under the name Dunbar High School. But its days as a high quality institution ended abruptly in the middle of the 1950s. After that, it became just another failing ghetto school. The other so-called "prerequisite" that the M Street School lacked was an adequate building. Its student body was 50 percent larger than the building's capacity, a fact that led eventually to the new Dunbar High School building. But its students excelled even in their overcrowded building. Some students at the M Street School began going to some of the leading colleges in the country in the late 19th century. The first of its graduates to go to Harvard did so in 1903. Over the years from 1892 to 1954, thirty-four of the graduates from the M Street School and Dunbar went on to Amherst. Of these, 74 percent graduated from Amherst and 28 percent of these graduates were Phi Beta Kappas. Other graduates from M Street High School and Dunbar became Phi Beta Kappas at Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and other elite institutions. Graduates of this same high school pioneered as the first black in many places. These included the first black man to graduate from Annapolis, the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. from an American institution, the first black federal judge, the first black general, the first black Cabinet member and, among other notables, a doctor who became internationally renowned for his pioneering work in developing the use of blood plasma. How could all of this come to an abrupt end in the 1950s? Like many other disasters, it began with good intentions and arbitrary assumptions. When Chief Justice Earl Warren declared in the landmark 1954 case of "Brown v. Board of Education" that racially separate schools were "inherently unequal," Dunbar High School was a living refutation of that assumption. And it was within walking distance of the Supreme Court. A higher percentage of Dunbar graduates went on to college than the percentage at any white public high school in Washington. But what do facts matter when there is heady rhetoric and crusading zeal? There is no question that racially segregated schools in the South provided an inadequate education for blacks. But the assumption that racial "integration" was the answer led to years of racial polarization and turmoil over busing, with little, if any, educational improvement. For Washington, the end of racial segregation led to a political compromise, in which all schools became neighborhood schools. Dunbar, which had been accepting outstanding black students from anywhere in the city, could now accept only students from the rough ghetto neighborhood in which it was located. Virtually overnight, Dunbar became a typical ghetto school. As unmotivated, unruly and disruptive students flooded in, Dunbar teachers began moving out and many retired. More than 80 years of academic excellence simply vanished into thin air. Nobody, black or white, mounted any serious opposition. "Integration" was the cry of the moment, and it drowned out everything else. That is what happens in politics. Today, there is a new Dunbar High School building, costing more than $100 million. But its graduates go on to college at only about half the rate of Dunbar graduates in earlier and poorer times. Politics can deliver costly "favors," even when it cannot deliver quality education. |
Anonymous
| There’s a book on the history of Dunbar. https://www.amazon.com/First-Class-Legacy-Dunbar-Americas/dp/1613731760 |
Anonymous
| Dunbar also operated for decades under a de facto intra-racial discriminatory system. Now retired Washington Post columnist Colbert King, who was a Dunbar graduate, used to write about how Dunbar had a strong preference for admitting light-skinned students who came from the highest AA socio-economic strata in DC at the time, and that it was not easy being a darker-complected student. As in New Orleans, there are many levels to AA society in DC which white transplants (and many white Washingtonians) do not understand. |
Anonymous
|
A middle school cannot succeed broadly without a majority of students (not 90% but something above 2/3s) that arrive at grade level. The same for high schools. DCPS is unwilling to make changes to feeder patterns to ensure that a high percentage of the students in Capital Hill middle schools are prepared, SH comes closest. Because of the lack of successful middle schools, there is not a chance that neighborhood high schools will have enough prepared students.
That plus parents are unwilling to let their children be social experiments. Charters provide families with alternative pathways. It all equals a poor chance of a critical mass of prepared students at more than SH. SH has been on the brink of wide acceptance as a great option for as long as I have been reading DCUM and my kids are in middle (Deal) and high school (SWW). FWIW, my older child attends SWW and has multiple friends from SH and they are very academically successful (and delightful) kids. |
Anonymous
Wow! This is so interesting. What a shame! I think the same thing happened to Coolidge as well. Is this excerpt from an article? |
Anonymous
LOL. How many charter schools in DC actually meet your 2/3 metric? And can we please dispense with this “social experiment” language? It’s both offensive and cliche. |
Anonymous
| Ha, none that I know of. None of the HRCS at least |