An intrinsic problem to the DC charter system - admin becoming unresponsive?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So - yes, charters being experiments and such seems to invite parents to criticize. But it does go to show that some mechanism for dispute resolution is needed. And, DCPS as we also know has plenty of its own problems. On both fronts, I am sure there is expertise out there about how to better run schools of both kinds. Having no mechanism for raising issues seems like a lose-lose situation for both DCPS and Charter....

There IS a mechanism -- each school's board. But most parents are reluctant to do what it would take to get action. They don't want to be 'outed' or seen as 'that parent.'

Have parents organized and flooded their board with petitions or letters or phone calls; picketed outside their meetings or outside school at dropoff; gone to the media; run a social media campaign; talked to the OSSE ombudsman? You have to use all the same things that people do when a government agency or elected official is being unresponsive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So - yes, charters being experiments and such seems to invite parents to criticize. But it does go to show that some mechanism for dispute resolution is needed. And, DCPS as we also know has plenty of its own problems. On both fronts, I am sure there is expertise out there about how to better run schools of both kinds. Having no mechanism for raising issues seems like a lose-lose situation for both DCPS and Charter....

There IS a mechanism -- each school's board. But most parents are reluctant to do what it would take to get action. They don't want to be 'outed' or seen as 'that parent.'

Have parents organized and flooded their board with petitions or letters or phone calls; picketed outside their meetings or outside school at dropoff; gone to the media; run a social media campaign; talked to the OSSE ombudsman? You have to use all the same things that people do when a government agency or elected official is being unresponsive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So - yes, charters being experiments and such seems to invite parents to criticize. But it does go to show that some mechanism for dispute resolution is needed. And, DCPS as we also know has plenty of its own problems. On both fronts, I am sure there is expertise out there about how to better run schools of both kinds. Having no mechanism for raising issues seems like a lose-lose situation for both DCPS and Charter....

There IS a mechanism -- each school's board. But most parents are reluctant to do what it would take to get action. They don't want to be 'outed' or seen as 'that parent.'

Have parents organized and flooded their board with petitions or letters or phone calls; picketed outside their meetings or outside school at dropoff; gone to the media; run a social media campaign; talked to the OSSE ombudsman? You have to use all the same things that people do when a government agency or elected official is being unresponsive.

Yes it has happened: LAMB.

I guess it eventually worked but not enough. Why? Not an elected position! They have no real incentive to respond.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So - yes, charters being experiments and such seems to invite parents to criticize. But it does go to show that some mechanism for dispute resolution is needed. And, DCPS as we also know has plenty of its own problems. On both fronts, I am sure there is expertise out there about how to better run schools of both kinds. Having no mechanism for raising issues seems like a lose-lose situation for both DCPS and Charter....

There IS a mechanism -- each school's board. But most parents are reluctant to do what it would take to get action. They don't want to be 'outed' or seen as 'that parent.'

Have parents organized and flooded their board with petitions or letters or phone calls; picketed outside their meetings or outside school at dropoff; gone to the media; run a social media campaign; talked to the OSSE ombudsman? You have to use all the same things that people do when a government agency or elected official is being unresponsive.

Yes it has happened: LAMB.

I guess it eventually worked but not enough. Why? Not an elected position! They have no real incentive to respond.

It did work. It just didn't work very quickly. And it took a teacher creating a crime for parents to get really vocal.

[Anonymous]

But why should the parents have to do all that? Why are the admins so difficult?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But why should the parents have to do all that? Why are the admins so difficult?

Why shouldn’t they?

And do you think a traditional public school admin is necessarily any different? I think some folks at Lafayette would say heyve had even less of a response than LAMB parents got.

They have serious issues with their principal; the Wash Post and Northwest Current has written about it. They met with the chancellor(s). And nothing has changed yet.

[Anonymous]

But I thought charters were different!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So - yes, charters being experiments and such seems to invite parents to criticize. But it does go to show that some mechanism for dispute resolution is needed. And, DCPS as we also know has plenty of its own problems. On both fronts, I am sure there is expertise out there about how to better run schools of both kinds. Having no mechanism for raising issues seems like a lose-lose situation for both DCPS and Charter....

There IS a mechanism -- each school's board. But most parents are reluctant to do what it would take to get action. They don't want to be 'outed' or seen as 'that parent.'

Have parents organized and flooded their board with petitions or letters or phone calls; picketed outside their meetings or outside school at dropoff; gone to the media; run a social media campaign; talked to the OSSE ombudsman? You have to use all the same things that people do when a government agency or elected official is being unresponsive.

Also, MV tried this and the campaign was very successful from a grass roots perspective (about half the parents signed a comment letter many, many parents signed up to testify and others wrote personalized letters). The charter board still approved the expansion and the Board has had minimal turnover since then (I think just a couple new members) and school hasn't really changed much. Bottom like is it is very hard to influence school's board since they are not elected. Charter school board is not really accountable to the school's parents.

[Anonymous]

Parents can opt their kids out of PARCC. That would have an impact if enough did it.

I don’t recall MV parents asking for the admin to be payed. They asked for a stop or a delay in expansion until after at least one class of 5th graders had finished. They got a year’s delay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So - yes, charters being experiments and such seems to invite parents to criticize. But it does go to show that some mechanism for dispute resolution is needed. And, DCPS as we also know has plenty of its own problems. On both fronts, I am sure there is expertise out there about how to better run schools of both kinds. Having no mechanism for raising issues seems like a lose-lose situation for both DCPS and Charter....

There IS a mechanism -- each school's board. But most parents are reluctant to do what it would take to get action. They don't want to be 'outed' or seen as 'that parent.'

Have parents organized and flooded their board with petitions or letters or phone calls; picketed outside their meetings or outside school at dropoff; gone to the media; run a social media campaign; talked to the OSSE ombudsman? You have to use all the same things that people do when a government agency or elected official is being unresponsive.

Yes it has happened: LAMB.

I guess it eventually worked but not enough. Why? Not an elected position! They have no real incentive to respond.

Also if you ARE vocal and make noise about an issue, you will always be seen as “That Parent”. I’ve heard the lamb admin complain bitterly about the vocal parents and straight up ignore them afterwards. So if you do raise a fuss, be prepared for that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents can opt their kids out of PARCC. That would have an impact if enough did it.

I don’t recall MV parents asking for the admin to be payed. They asked for a stop or a delay in expansion until after at least one class of 5th graders had finished. They got a year’s delay.

Parents did not want expansion going forward until various benchmarks were met. The school's board delayed expansion by one year but it will move forward (this is not a one year delay and then reevaluate whether to expand - the expansion was approved). The one year delay doesn't really mean much. Parents continued to fight the expansion after the School's Board announced the one year delay. The Charter Board approved the expansion even though the school did not meet the charter board's own requirements to expand (for ex: school was not certified) and ignored the 100s of public comments filed by parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents can opt their kids out of PARCC. That would have an impact if enough did it.

I don’t recall MV parents asking for the admin to be payed. They asked for a stop or a delay in expansion until after at least one class of 5th graders had finished. They got a year’s delay.

Parents did not want expansion going forward until various benchmarks were met. The school's board delayed expansion by one year but it will move forward (this is not a one year delay and then reevaluate whether to expand - the expansion was approved). The one year delay doesn't really mean much. Parents continued to fight the expansion after the School's Board announced the one year delay. The Charter Board approved the expansion even though the school did not meet the charter board's own requirements to expand (for ex: school was not certified) and ignored the 100s of public comments filed by parents.

As per the usual, the charter board rubber stamps everything.

I go straight for my council member now. Don’t waste your time with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That’s a feature, not a bug. If you want true autonomy for the school leadership then you give up accountability.

I think poster raises a good point. Charters are essentially set up to be their own fiefdoms paid for with taxpayer dollars. I am at MV and while my kids have had generally good experiences so far, I am starting to find it disconcerting that if I ever have a problem there is essentially no where to go since school leadership is pretty useless. I am considering moving to the suburbs to be part of a functional school system.

Exactly. There is nowhere to go, if your neighborhood school is egregiously underperforming. It may be fine for early grades, but what is a 5th grader or middle schooler to do? Sacrifice the whole educational pathway through high school, to express discontent that will be ignored anyway? Leaving is not a viable strategy to make change, if they can easily replace you. Parents need some way to at least force the charter board to take an interest. A hearing with public testimony could compel the board to answer parent questions, at least. Nobody likes to bring bad publicity on their school, but I'm running out of other ideas.

This. Things are generally okay for ECE - even poorly performing DCPS schools frequently get this right. Then the problems start after we've already committed years to Chinese immersion. That's when we realize the admin lacks the skills and motivation to resolve serious issues. So do we accept that we sacrificed years of our children's education for the language immersion to pull them out and end the language immersion experience? Accompanied by a move to a better school district (likely suburbs)? Or do we stick with it in the hopes that DCI is better than our feeder? Or will we encounter the same types of admin issues at DCI?

As PP suggested, we need better oversight of the charter schools. There has to be some way to hold the admin accountable, because right now it's brick wall city.

What were you expecting, PP? Why did it take you years to figure out that YY admins lack the skills and motivation to resolve serious issues? I figured this out at the open house I attended after we got a PreK4 spot. The principal was a bitch when I raised my hand to politely asked which dialects the Chinese teachers speak, if they speak to bilingual children in "home" dialects or only in Mandarin, what sort of dialect transition support is built into the curriculum (if any) and how much communication comes home in Chinese. I asked the last question for the sake of my in-laws, who also attended but can't read English well and provide most of our family's childcare. She didn't seemed to know the answer to any of my questions, but took the opportunity to snap at me for asking them in front of my in-laws and the other parents. Later, at break, my in-laws and I chatted with teachers who speak our dialect to get basic info - the teachers were very forthcoming, and said critical things about her as an admin. I realized that she wasn't on top of things - how could she be? We moved to a good school district within DC and enrolled at a DCPS. Better oversight of charters will only get you so far when DCPC is hiring admins who are unqualified in fundamental ways. Why would DCI be better than the feeder?

PP you're responding to here. I didn't get the kind of insider info that you got during the open house. Then things were going along fine in the early years, before most schools encounter the types of problems that it takes a strong leadership team to manage. By the time we realized how weak the administration is, we were years into Chinese immersion. I should mention that we have no Chinese background, so heritage school isn't an option for us.

Not sure why I wonder if DCI might be different. Maybe because it's a different school with a different administration? But I get the point that I think you're making, which is that it's likely to be more of the same crap.

So now we're back to our original choices of ending the immersion experience for our children (includes moving) or hanging in there to try DCI . . .

You bring up an interesting point though. Have any current DCI parents had issues with the Yu Ying administration, but found DCI to be much better?

[Anonymous]

Isn't the old leader of YY now the leader of DCI?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That’s a feature, not a bug. If you want true autonomy for the school leadership then you give up accountability.

I think poster raises a good point. Charters are essentially set up to be their own fiefdoms paid for with taxpayer dollars. I am at MV and while my kids have had generally good experiences so far, I am starting to find it disconcerting that if I ever have a problem there is essentially no where to go since school leadership is pretty useless. I am considering moving to the suburbs to be part of a functional school system.

Exactly. There is nowhere to go, if your neighborhood school is egregiously underperforming. It may be fine for early grades, but what is a 5th grader or middle schooler to do? Sacrifice the whole educational pathway through high school, to express discontent that will be ignored anyway? Leaving is not a viable strategy to make change, if they can easily replace you. Parents need some way to at least force the charter board to take an interest. A hearing with public testimony could compel the board to answer parent questions, at least. Nobody likes to bring bad publicity on their school, but I'm running out of other ideas.

This. Things are generally okay for ECE - even poorly performing DCPS schools frequently get this right. Then the problems start after we've already committed years to Chinese immersion. That's when we realize the admin lacks the skills and motivation to resolve serious issues. So do we accept that we sacrificed years of our children's education for the language immersion to pull them out and end the language immersion experience? Accompanied by a move to a better school district (likely suburbs)? Or do we stick with it in the hopes that DCI is better than our feeder? Or will we encounter the same types of admin issues at DCI?

As PP suggested, we need better oversight of the charter schools. There has to be some way to hold the admin accountable, because right now it's brick wall city.

What were you expecting, PP? Why did it take you years to figure out that YY admins lack the skills and motivation to resolve serious issues? I figured this out at the open house I attended after we got a PreK4 spot. The principal was a bitch when I raised my hand to politely asked which dialects the Chinese teachers speak, if they speak to bilingual children in "home" dialects or only in Mandarin, what sort of dialect transition support is built into the curriculum (if any) and how much communication comes home in Chinese. I asked the last question for the sake of my in-laws, who also attended but can't read English well and provide most of our family's childcare. She didn't seemed to know the answer to any of my questions, but took the opportunity to snap at me for asking them in front of my in-laws and the other parents. Later, at break, my in-laws and I chatted with teachers who speak our dialect to get basic info - the teachers were very forthcoming, and said critical things about her as an admin. I realized that she wasn't on top of things - how could she be? We moved to a good school district within DC and enrolled at a DCPS. Better oversight of charters will only get you so far when DCPC is hiring admins who are unqualified in fundamental ways. Why would DCI be better than the feeder?

PP you're responding to here. I didn't get the kind of insider info that you got during the open house. Then things were going along fine in the early years, before most schools encounter the types of problems that it takes a strong leadership team to manage. By the time we realized how weak the administration is, we were years into Chinese immersion. I should mention that we have no Chinese background, so heritage school isn't an option for us.

Not sure why I wonder if DCI might be different. Maybe because it's a different school with a different administration? But I get the point that I think you're making, which is that it's likely to be more of the same crap.

So now we're back to our original choices of ending the immersion experience for our children (includes moving) or hanging in there to try DCI . . .

You bring up an interesting point though. Have any current DCI parents had issues with the Yu Ying administration, but found DCI to be much better?

What were those problems, and how did parents try to influence them?