Our Gain, DCPS Suckers

[Anonymous]

5:01, the troll that you are, only confirms you are probably a hoarder of items. As your circle of friends only exist on a keyboard.

You don't realize we live on the same block.

[Anonymous]

What are you talking about?

I just posted for the first time and you're calling me a troll?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there research that shows the middle-class-with-kids population in DC is growing in any kind of statistically significant way? Middle class meaning teachers, cops, nurses, store managers, used car salesmen, etc. HHI below 100k. (This is what most people mean by middle class, right?)

I don't think so. DH & I both have Master's degrees. He works, I'm a SAHM. Our HHI is around $120K and I think we're definitely middle class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thought I'd add our story to the growing list of 'anecdotal' city homebuyer success stories. We bought our rowhouse in east Columbia Heights in '02 for under 200K. Drug dealing, trash on our street, etc. Today, half the houses on our street have turned over, five in the last two years for over 400k, the latest sold a few months ago for over 500K. We've got a preschooler and a toddler, with our oldest in a DCPS school a five minute drive away with a waitlist in the hundreds and working the various lotteries available here in the city just in case we get lucky again and can upgrade further. No doubt it's taken some effort to make life work here, and we have long since gotten over our choices not making sense to everyone. The wealth and position of strength we're operating with now is something we attribute directly to giving this city a chance. Not saying it's perfect or that we wouldn't ever change where we live -- but it won't be out of desperation.

Agreed! It's the greater risk that yields the greater reward. In our case, it was a calculated risk, but I don't regret it. We live in Bloomingdale, and we love it here. There are houses 4 or 5 blocks east which are going for more than what we paid a few years ago. I'll agree that the local DCPS options are bad, the neighborhood families we know are all either in 3 select charters (LAMB, Two Rivers, Yu Ying) or else private (WIS). I know there are children in the neighborhood at Walker-Jones and Emery, but we don't know their families. If there are people underwater or looking to leave, I don't know them. It's a small neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know this thread has strayed off but I grew up with the teacher in this story and she and her family are just wonderful people. Our little town is very proud of her.

Tell her we're rooting for her, pp!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If people could stop arguing about whether the suburbs or the city are better for a minute, please note that one of the main reasons there was cheating which led to this teacher's firing was because of the pressures the administration put on teachers to make sure their students improve on DC CAS. The article notes that DC CAS accounts for 50% of a teacher's score whereas in other school systems it counts for a much smaller percentage.

And who was it that instituted this kind of lopsided teacher evaluation? And instituted it without a trial period, so any flaws could become apparent before they were used to evaluate teachers? And who was it that dismissed subsequent reports of cheating? The heroine of many folks in DC's white middle class, Michelle Rhee - who continues to make scads of money as a consultant despite the mess she left behind.

Yes, I think the system will improve as more middle class people decide to stay in DC and raise their kids here. But we've got to do a better job of picking our chancellors. Rhee lacked the proper experience to run a school system and this article shows us one more reason why.

Of course, it's also deeply embarrassing that DCPS is saying that this teacher would have been fired anyway even if she had reported her suspicions about cheating. (That can't be blamed on Michelle Rhee - other mindless administrators did that.) Jeez, it's like the Supreme Court saying that a condemned man has to die anyway even though there may still be evidence exonerating him....oh wait.

At any rate, as a former DCPS parent, I find this story deeply embarrassing and you folks in FCPS may laugh all you want. You have every right to!

Just want to point out that, for most DC residents, and DCPS parents, you guys just look silly. There's a million and one reasons why DCPS isn't a world-class school system. People are fighting every day to make it so. Pointing at one person, or one story, and saying, "See! There you go! This is why the system is broken!" just makes you look incredibly myopic.

And Michelle Rhee is in serious danger of becoming a mash-up of Emmanuel Goldstein and Moby Dick for you guys.

Sigh...okay, I don't have time to write a book about DCPS but of course, dear pp, Rhee wasn't the only reason that DCPS is broken - but she was responsible for instituting this broken testing system, which happened to lead to the teacher being fired. Her failed leadership is ultimately to blame for this particular problem. But, no, I dare say she wasn't to blame for bathroom stalls not having doors, for example - that predated her, but then again, this thread is not about the structural problems of DCPS schools. It's about a talented person who went through a lot of unnecessary pain and struggle because of a flawed test and her students who lost the benefit of her teaching.

[Anonymous]

We are 150k plus under water -- bought in 2005 -- and would love to get out of our upper NW neighborhood to one with better schools -- inside DC or out. Plain and simple -- we are stuck. Hoping for a miracle in the lottery....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are 150k plus under water -- bought in 2005 -- and would love to get out of our upper NW neighborhood to one with better schools -- inside DC or out. Plain and simple -- we are stuck. Hoping for a miracle in the lottery....

Where are you in "upper NW" where house values have plummeted that much since 2005 (before the peak of the bubble) AND where schools aren't good?

[Anonymous]

Shepherd Park

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are 150k plus under water -- bought in 2005 -- and would love to get out of our upper NW neighborhood to one with better schools -- inside DC or out. Plain and simple -- we are stuck. Hoping for a miracle in the lottery....

Good luck, pp. Hope it works out!

[Anonymous]

Getting back to IMPACT, this teacher was a Group 1 teacher, meaning a teacher whose IMPACT score is weighted 55% according to test scores.

Here is some recent data on the percentage of "so-called" highly effective educators according to group. Note that only 4% of Group 1 teachers were rated highly effective last year. What does this tell you about the validity of this evaluation instrument?

Group % Highly Effective Teachers in Group
1 4
2 16
3 11
3a 41
4 18
5 64
6 0

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to IMPACT, this teacher was a Group 1 teacher, meaning a teacher whose IMPACT score is weighted 55% according to test scores.

Here is some recent data on the percentage of "so-called" highly effective educators according to group. Note that only 4% of Group 1 teachers were rated highly effective last year. What does this tell you about the validity of this evaluation instrument?

Group % Highly Effective Teachers in Group
1 4
2 16
3 11
3a 41
4 18
5 64
6 0

Please advise -- I know group are teachers in the testing grades, whose students take the DC-CAS. What are the other groups?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Getting back to IMPACT, this teacher was a Group 1 teacher, meaning a teacher whose IMPACT score is weighted 55% according to test scores.

Here is some recent data on the percentage of "so-called" highly effective educators according to group. Note that only 4% of Group 1 teachers were rated highly effective last year. What does this tell you about the validity of this evaluation instrument?

Group % Highly Effective Teachers in Group
1 4
2 16
3 11
3a 41
4 18
5 64
6 0

Please advise -- I know group are teachers in the testing grades, whose students take the DC-CAS. What are the other groups?

Group 2 teachers that teach grades/subjects that are not tested or that don't have testing data from the previous year.
Group 3 special education teachers
Group 3a special education autism teachers
Group 4 ELL bilingual teachers
Group 5 itinerant ELL teachers
Group 6 Shared teachers

[Anonymous]

Apparently the itinerant ELL teachers are some of the best teachers we've got. And those Group 1 teachers are chopped liver.

Not!

[Anonymous]

this is why 2nd graders will take standard test in 2011-12, so that their 3rd grade teacher can be "group 1"