Ludlow-Taylor getting a new a new Principal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ I'm so tired of hearing the Brent story. Brent got better because they do not have housing projects in their IB and because with the recession people could not afford private for a few years. It was not forward thinking parents/field of dreams shit.

If you bought a house whose school zone includes the housing projects, why are you bitching? If you didn't know that before you bought, then you should have. Those kids have just as much a right to attend LT as your child does. If you want to avoid low SES (or for some-- black kids), then you should move to the burbs or Ward 3. Otherwise, go private or charter. If those options aren't available to you then, STFU, enroll your kids in what is already apparently a good school, and somehow try to bridge the culture gap. It won't be easy, but when you signed those mortgage papers, you made the bed you're now lying in. (And spare me the uber-entitled, I pay more taxes line). Disparaging the school, the students and the previous administration does nothing.

Can somebody tell me where the housing projects near LT are? Because they're nowhere near the school itself.

I don't think there are any projects. Maybe some halfway houses. Watkins has Kentucky Courts IB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ I'm so tired of hearing the Brent story. Brent got better because they do not have housing projects in their IB and because with the recession people could not afford private for a few years. It was not forward thinking parents/field of dreams shit.

If you bought a house whose school zone includes the housing projects, why are you bitching? If you didn't know that before you bought, then you should have. Those kids have just as much a right to attend LT as your child does. If you want to avoid low SES (or for some-- black kids), then you should move to the burbs or Ward 3. Otherwise, go private or charter. If those options aren't available to you then, STFU, enroll your kids in what is already apparently a good school, and somehow try to bridge the culture gap. It won't be easy, but when you signed those mortgage papers, you made the bed you're now lying in. (And spare me the uber-entitled, I pay more taxes line). Disparaging the school, the students and the previous administration does nothing.

Can somebody tell me where the housing projects near LT are? Because they're nowhere near the school itself.

Yeah, I am confused about that statement too. There are housings projects IB for LT?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We're rehashing old topics, but the issue is not just what the high SES kids would and wouldn't learn. I'm not convinced that it's mainly this.

Few in-bounds parents have the patience and stamina to battle to enjoy being a part of the L-T community year after year. You're never sure who to believe. White parents swear that they're in it for the long haul, then, suddenly, they stop turning up. You're walking on egg shells culturally after prek, under pressure to pay lip service to BS "diversity" (translation, lots of low SES AA kids from K, and a handful of others).

I've seen how neighborhood parents grow quietly demoralized, eager to head to a school where they can kick back and be themselves. It's a lot more fun to be part of a joyful school where fund raising galas, a serious music room, a garden, and dynamic and inclusive school musicals are the norm than not. Just listen to the many pps scolding well-intentioned in-bound parents for being honest about what they want at LT, ordering them to take a hike if the ghetto-influenced school culture isn't for them. Who needs it; you go if you can.

This new principal is going to need to be tough to keep the ossified old guard from tipping the balance over and over again.

big ticket fund raising is a monster pain in the ass. ask the people who do the real work in organizing these things what it's really about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is so tired. All of the people I know that went there, and wanted to stay, but were met with little more than an eye roll from Cobbs have long since left this discussion.

Cobbs gave the people attending the school from OOB what they wanted. She didn't placate the people in the neighborhood that wanted to see changes. You can kvetch all you want about that one way or another, she/they taught these OOB kids as well as can be expected, but whatever she did/didn't do didn't make it a neighborhood school.

Pp - good luck with that "getting a group of parents" together to stick it out. They'll be made to feel welcome by the new principal or they won't. That defines what happens to LT over the next few years. It becomes the next Brent, or it stats what it is and nails down the basics for a group of kids that need it. Both meet a DCPS need - now let's all see what happens...

Give me a break! What did the people attend the school from OOB want from Cobbs except a school that taught their kids? What did the so called IB parents "who wanted to stay" want? What precisely is it you think the school needs to do to become a "true neighborhood school" beyond doing a very good job at teaching its students? Be fucking specific if you can, because right now few have any idea what you're talking about.

The school is undeniably doing a fine (and improving) job of educating the kids that choose to attend, whether they be OB or IB. As an IB parent, all this hand wringing about percentages of "OB" or "low-SES" kids seems stupid and it makes me think you haven't been to the school lately. The PK3 through K classrooms are diverse with at least 50% of the kids being IB white kids, if that's so freaking important. From 1st grade through 5th, there is a higher percentage of OB brown kids who are evidently doing quite well on the standardized tests being administered. Dwindling choices and the fact that LT is doing a good job should keep more IB parents in LT through the higher grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ I'm so tired of hearing the Brent story. Brent got better because they do not have housing projects in their IB and because with the recession people could not afford private for a few years. It was not forward thinking parents/field of dreams shit.

If you bought a house whose school zone includes the housing projects, why are you bitching? If you didn't know that before you bought, then you should have. Those kids have just as much a right to attend LT as your child does. If you want to avoid low SES (or for some-- black kids), then you should move to the burbs or Ward 3. Otherwise, go private or charter. If those options aren't available to you then, STFU, enroll your kids in what is already apparently a good school, and somehow try to bridge the culture gap. It won't be easy, but when you signed those mortgage papers, you made the bed you're now lying in. (And spare me the uber-entitled, I pay more taxes line). Disparaging the school, the students and the previous administration does nothing.

How on earth would you avoid that in charters where the % of both AA and FARM are both higher?

http://www.dcpcsb.org/data/files/fast%20facts%20-%20october%202013[1].pdf

You're absolutely right. You can't avoid that in charters. As a matter of fact, not only do some HRCSs have a higher percentage of both AA and FARM students than LT, they also didn't score as well on the CAS. Still, some parents see them as an escape hatch from their local school. The difference is, those parents go in with their sleeves rolled up and ready to work to make their charter school great for the benefit of ALL the children and families who come from every corner of the city. But some of the more entitled posters on this string don't want to do the work. They believe their tax dollars should magically fix everything for them.

[Anonymous]

My kids aren't experiments, so they are entitled to a healthy, productive, safe, learning environment. What are you talking about, you moved off the Hill? To where?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids aren't experiments, so they are entitled to a healthy, productive, safe, learning environment. What are you talking about, you moved off the Hill? To where?

The only school your kids are entitled to is your in-bounds school. What you make of that is up to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids aren't experiments, so they are entitled to a healthy, productive, safe, learning environment. What are you talking about, you moved off the Hill? To where?

The only school your kids are entitled to is your in-bounds school. What you make of that is up to you.

Yes, and that school must have a healthy, productive, safe, learning environment. If not, some bureaucrat is failing the neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

10:13
You have really taken the Kool-aid. It's NOT a parents job to battle the ills of generational poverty!

[Anonymous]

To summarize the possible approaches

A. White folks, get used to a school with lots black/low SES kids, LT is fine, its got TEST SCORES, suck it up racists

B. We can flip this school, if only we can overcome the prisoners dilemma - maybe we could all sign a pact to keep our kids in LT till 3rd grade at least? We could meet in a back alley with candles and swear on our ancestors honor?

C. DCPS needs tp provide goodies - music rooms, gardens, stuff like that. And a pony. Because flipping LT is more important ot DCPS than building new middle schools EOTP. Or something.

D. Its all about the principal. If the new principal is good, the upward spiral will start without much else

Am I missing anything?

[Anonymous]

C. Not a pony. A unicorn. If the kids in ward 3 get a pony, we should get unicorns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To summarize the possible approaches

A. White folks, get used to a school with lots black/low SES kids, LT is fine, its got TEST SCORES, suck it up racists

B. We can flip this school, if only we can overcome the prisoners dilemma - maybe we could all sign a pact to keep our kids in LT till 3rd grade at least? We could meet in a back alley with candles and swear on our ancestors honor?

C. DCPS needs tp provide goodies - music rooms, gardens, stuff like that. And a pony. Because flipping LT is more important ot DCPS than building new middle schools EOTP. Or something.

D. Its all about the principal. If the new principal is good, the upward spiral will start without much else

Am I missing anything?

There are schools that get a pony?! Why didn't anyone tell me that? Damn, my kid is in college now but she sure missed out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So let me get this straight... No matter how successful LT is in teaching it's students and achieving goals, it's completely discounted because the children there are predominately brown?

no -- it should be discounted because LT has 3x as many IEPs as any other well performing ES in Cap Hill. Nearly 1/5 of students have IEPs. That's not a bad thing unto itself (it's good that they're serving kids with special needs and doing it well), but students with IEPs are tested differently than students without. It doesn't dismiss performance outright, but it does impact comparison to other schools. It's reductionist to assume that race is the only factor here.

and before you compare it to SWS 1/8 you should first factor in the medically fragile classrooms. but SWS hasn't hit testing grades yet

Actually I find that in its favor. Do you know how hard I tried to get the parents of the kid I tutored to go to her middle school and get her tested? They went in and were told that the school didn't know anything about that and that was that. They gave up and their kid never got the extra help she needed. And these were parents who had it together enough to make their five kids come to this tutoring program all the way through high school. But they didn't have the sense of entitlement to demand that the kid's school test her.

The high number of IEPs shows that these families got it together enough to demand that the schools test their kids. Those are more likely to be functional families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So let me get this straight... No matter how successful LT is in teaching it's students and achieving goals, it's completely discounted because the children there are predominately brown?

no -- it should be discounted because LT has 3x as many IEPs as any other well performing ES in Cap Hill. Nearly 1/5 of students have IEPs. That's not a bad thing unto itself (it's good that they're serving kids with special needs and doing it well), but students with IEPs are tested differently than students without. It doesn't dismiss performance outright, but it does impact comparison to other schools. It's reductionist to assume that race is the only factor here.

and before you compare it to SWS 1/8 you should first factor in the medically fragile classrooms. but SWS hasn't hit testing grades yet

Actually I find that in its favor. Do you know how hard I tried to get the parents of the kid I tutored to go to her middle school and get her tested? They went in and were told that the school didn't know anything about that and that was that. They gave up and their kid never got the extra help she needed. And these were parents who had it together enough to make their five kids come to this tutoring program all the way through high school. But they didn't have the sense of entitlement to demand that the kid's school test her.

The high number of IEPs shows that these families got it together enough to demand that the schools test their kids. Those are more likely to be functional families.

PP here -- agreed. I wasn't commenting on the value of IEP (and stated as much). Strictly from a testing perspective and quantitative analysis, testing students with IEPs present a different qualitative approach. The results should not be considered 'apples to apples' with schools where this is less of a factor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So let me get this straight... No matter how successful LT is in teaching it's students and achieving goals, it's completely discounted because the children there are predominately brown?

no -- it should be discounted because LT has 3x as many IEPs as any other well performing ES in Cap Hill. Nearly 1/5 of students have IEPs. That's not a bad thing unto itself (it's good that they're serving kids with special needs and doing it well), but students with IEPs are tested differently than students without. It doesn't dismiss performance outright, but it does impact comparison to other schools. It's reductionist to assume that race is the only factor here.

and before you compare it to SWS 1/8 you should first factor in the medically fragile classrooms. but SWS hasn't hit testing grades yet

Actually I find that in its favor. Do you know how hard I tried to get the parents of the kid I tutored to go to her middle school and get her tested? They went in and were told that the school didn't know anything about that and that was that. They gave up and their kid never got the extra help she needed. And these were parents who had it together enough to make their five kids come to this tutoring program all the way through high school. But they didn't have the sense of entitlement to demand that the kid's school test her.

The high number of IEPs shows that these families got it together enough to demand that the schools test their kids. Those are more likely to be functional families.

PP here -- agreed. I wasn't commenting on the value of IEP (and stated as much). Strictly from a testing perspective and quantitative analysis, testing students with IEPs present a different qualitative approach. The results should not be considered 'apples to apples' with schools where this is less of a factor.

Okay, I see your point. Thanks for explaining that.