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Talking to people who follow schools issues it seems that no one was surprised by the graduation scandal, the attendance scandal and now the residency scandal. It was widely known that these problems existed. So now that the spotlight is on schools, what will the next scandal be?
I have two nominations: * Non-payment of tuition by out-of-state students * Private placement of out-of-state students What else? |
| I saw someone (maybe you) mention private placement in the Ellington threat - what is that? |
| Lack of (or minimal) Science and Social Studies Education at the Elementary Level despite existing District Wide Standards and Curriculum |
DC pays for about 700 special needs kids who cannot be served by public schools to attend private schools. There are indications that not all of these kids are DC residents. |
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I think a lot of the private placement of out of state kids is kids in foster care who have special needs.
There are over 1000 kids in out of home placements. https://cfsa.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/cfsa/page_content/attachments/Children%20and%20Youth%20CFSA%20Statistics%20July%202016_0.pdf Half of all DC foster placements, and probably more of the older kids, are in Maryland. It wouldn't surprise me if most of those kids had such severe needs that they required private placement. That could easily be 300+ kids. Then there are the kids who are supervised not by CFSA but by DYRS. I'd be glad for someone to look into it but am not sure it's the next scandal. I'd go with: bad accounting by PTAs, corruption in construction contracts (like dragging out timelines and then charging extra for expedited work), or discrepancies in accepting mid-year placements or OOB kids (why do some DCPS schools take kids in upper grades if there's space and others don't?). |
| I think residency fraud will come out about a lot of schools. Maybe not the schools fault but how parents are able to Work the system. |
| Vendor fraud--everything from food services to busing. |
| Whether "tuition-paying" students actually pay. |
| The behavioral tech system. My son has a classmate with a behavioral tech. The kid has had many different people serve in this role during this first half of the year. Zero consistency for this disruptive kid. And regardless who the tech is, this person does nothing to intervene when his/her charge is acting out and disrupting the class. What is their purpose? |
| Just like the graduation rate scandal did, the residency fraud scandal is going to grow. We're going to find out that it is prevalent across a lot of school schools. |
DCPS teacher here. Until behavior techs are actually trained, they will continue to be one of the two biggest wastes of money. The other being instructional coaches. |
| Grades are being inflated for children of HHI white parents in order to increase chances of college acceptance- the WOTP grade scandal. |
| A teacher's duty to report violence or threat of violence is suppressed by principals for the sake of preserving a school's so called reputation. Therefore the school looks a lot safer than it is, and parents remain oblivious to very real but undocumented problems. |
??? Is this something you dreamed up? |
That's the easiest one to prove if you can get someone knowledgeable to talk about it. The cost differences between DCPS/DGS projects and similar projects by charters are ridiculous- DCPS at least twice as much for similar buildings, sometimes 3 times as much. And the charters still have to abide by some of the hiring standards like hiring a certain percentage of DC residents and DC businesses. |