Letter from Cancellor re moving schools - opps - I got caught moving my kid?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The interim replacement for Wilson will be Amanda Alexander, chief of DCPS elementary schools

https://twitter.com/PeteJamison/status/966059982448885760

Does anyone know anything about her?

https://dcps.dc.gov/biography/dr-amanda-alexander

Dr. Amanda Alexander is the Chief of the Office of Elementary Schools for the District of Columbia Public Schools. She provides leadership and vision for the district’s elementary schools and supervises a team of instructional superintendents. She also oversees early childhood programs (Pre-K3 and Pre-K4) and the federal Head Start program.

Dr. Alexander began her career with DCPS in 1998 as a kindergarten teacher at Walker-Jones Elementary School. She later joined New Leaders for New Schools and served as an assistant principal at PS 40 and PS 2 in New York City’s highly acclaimed District 2. With a refined understanding of progressive pedagogies in reading and writing and approaches to teacher professional development, she returned to DCPS to serve as the principal at Bunker Hill Elementary School and later Ross Elementary School. Under her leadership, both schools saw double digit gains in literacy and mathematics. The successes at these diverse schools led then Chancellor Michelle Rhee to charge Dr. Alexander with the redesign of the structure for principal supervision and the management of a cluster of elementary schools as an instructional superintendent. As evidenced by student achievement outcomes, attendance and teacher quality, her cluster of schools significantly outperformed other clusters in the district.

2013, she was asked by Chancellor Kaya Henderson to serve as the Deputy Chief of Schools and focus solely on the recruitment, development, and supervision of the K-12 instructional superintendent team. By leveraging a generous grant from the Wallace Foundation, she provided extensive professional learning opportunities for instructional superintendents focused on the knowledge and skills necessary to support principals in an era of new rigorous standards for student learning. For the pioneering work in the field of principal supervision, DCPS was featured in a documentary and publication of the foundation. Over the course of her time as a central office administrator, Dr. Alexander has also led literacy initiatives and a district-wide taskforce to identify and implement evidenced-based practices to improve student performance. Her efforts in this area have been recognized by the Reading Recovery Council of North America as she is the organization’s 2018 recipient of the Excellence in Literacy Leadership Award.

Dr. Alexander has a B.A. in English and a M.Ed. in curriculum and instruction from Howard University, a M.S.Ed. in educational leadership from Baruch College, and a Ph.D. in education from American University.

Nice to see someone who has taken a solid upward trajectory without skipping steps. Always frustrated that Rhee only taught for 3 years and never served in an administrative role in a school system before becoming chancellor. You need that organizational and institutional experience to understand the impacts of your policies.

Good to see someone with solid educational credentials.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok, next up, how do we get this Schoell woman off the Parents Council? He did what any parent would? Um, no, in his situation every other parent’s option is back to the IB school, go private, homeschool or move. Not cherry pick another high school.

And no, chancellors should not get flexibility in placing their children. You are getting paid multitudes over the average DC salary and can afford to live IB for any school in the District. Make that choice. The right choice over special favors and placements.

The parents' council has no power or decision making authority -- it's a window dressing thing. Anyone can apply to be part of it.

I totally disagree with her view, but that's no reason why she shouldn't be allowed to be on this committee.

That quote is pretty idiotic. She's advocating that people should break the rules if circumstances justify.

... no, lots of commentators here prefer online lynching instead.

he was served a shit sandwich in this job. Inherited a bigger lottery scandal from his predecessor and illusory gains in graduation rates based on policies to more aggressively promote struggling high school students which he was pressured to build upon. It makes sense that his biggest message this year was promoting better attendance -- the system can work with struggling students but it's tough to justify promotion for no-shows.

I don't like the optics but would have preferred this going to an ethics panel and being addressed through formal process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok, next up, how do we get this Schoell woman off the Parents Council? He did what any parent would? Um, no, in his situation every other parent’s option is back to the IB school, go private, homeschool or move. Not cherry pick another high school.

And no, chancellors should not get flexibility in placing their children. You are getting paid multitudes over the average DC salary and can afford to live IB for any school in the District. Make that choice. The right choice over special favors and placements.

The parents' council has no power or decision making authority -- it's a window dressing thing. Anyone can apply to be part of it.

I totally disagree with her view, but that's no reason why she shouldn't be allowed to be on this committee.

That quote is pretty idiotic. She's advocating that people should break the rules if circumstances justify.

The Chancellor's Parent Cabinet is a joke. I was in the first cohort with Kaya Henderson. We went to (usually) monthly meetings, where the agenda was set by DCPS, and got to hear about how great they were doing with their initiatives. We usually got to ask questions - they were 1/3 good questions, 1/3 too specific to be relevant, and 1/3 focused on upper middle class parents wanting things like more foreign language instruction and more recess for their 5 year olds who did not get the challenges of DCPS (or perhaps didn't care). It is a PR stunt to say "We are engaged!" but these people are not influential. I don't know how Wilson conducted the meetings, but Kaya was overly cheery about progress and unwilling/unable to address the concerns of all (partly because DCPS has such massive gaps and is too complicated of a system to manage well). I also felt like she was kind of dismissive of some parents who tried to talk about harder issues like disparity and inequity among the starkly divided students in some school populations (me included).

I've found that under Bowser any sort of citizen input exercise is deliberately structured to be a meaningless exercise. Ok everybody, put your stickers next to the items that are most important to you!

[Anonymous]

The “chancellors cabinet” predates Mayor Bowser.

[Anonymous]

I agree with 17:02 that he inherited the graduation and attendance scandal. I never blamed him for that at all and had no reason to think he'd be any worse than anyone else at addressing it.

Still can't believe he did what he did and didn't see what a disaster it would be.

[Anonymous]

“I wish I could go back and look up and talk to as many people as I could about the challenge I was facing,” Wilson, who spent the weekend apologizing to council members, said in an interview Monday. “I failed miserably. It wasn’t a mistake out of anything other than trying to ensure that my daughter’s well-being was taken care of.” -- WP

That, sir, is what we are ALL trying to do. Every parent in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“I wish I could go back and look up and talk to as many people as I could about the challenge I was facing,” Wilson, who spent the weekend apologizing to council members, said in an interview Monday. “I failed miserably. It wasn’t a mistake out of anything other than trying to ensure that my daughter’s well-being was taken care of.” -- WP

That, sir, is what we are ALL trying to do. Every parent in DC.

Do you think he means the crappy choices for his kid or that the DC challenges were too much for him in general?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok, next up, how do we get this Schoell woman off the Parents Council? He did what any parent would? Um, no, in his situation every other parent’s option is back to the IB school, go private, homeschool or move. Not cherry pick another high school.

And no, chancellors should not get flexibility in placing their children. You are getting paid multitudes over the average DC salary and can afford to live IB for any school in the District. Make that choice. The right choice over special favors and placements.

The parents' council has no power or decision making authority -- it's a window dressing thing. Anyone can apply to be part of it.

I totally disagree with her view, but that's no reason why she shouldn't be allowed to be on this committee.

That quote is pretty idiotic. She's advocating that people should break the rules if circumstances justify.

The Chancellor's Parent Cabinet is a joke. I was in the first cohort with Kaya Henderson. We went to (usually) monthly meetings, where the agenda was set by DCPS, and got to hear about how great they were doing with their initiatives. We usually got to ask questions - they were 1/3 good questions, 1/3 too specific to be relevant, and 1/3 focused on upper middle class parents wanting things like more foreign language instruction and more recess for their 5 year olds who did not get the challenges of DCPS (or perhaps didn't care). It is a PR stunt to say "We are engaged!" but these people are not influential. I don't know how Wilson conducted the meetings, but Kaya was overly cheery about progress and unwilling/unable to address the concerns of all (partly because DCPS has such massive gaps and is too complicated of a system to manage well). I also felt like she was kind of dismissive of some parents who tried to talk about harder issues like disparity and inequity among the starkly divided students in some school populations (me included).

I've found that under Bowser any sort of citizen input exercise is deliberately structured to be a meaningless exercise. Ok everybody, put your stickers next to the items that are most important to you!

This was a DCPS Kaya/Henderson problem, not a Mayor Bowser problem. Kaya and her cohorts refused to truly listen to parents; they just wanted parents to show up to make public events look good. Chancellor Wilson's challenge was with removing the legacy of patronizing and sometimes corrupt management and forming management truly interested in approving the system. In the end, the habitual, structural problems were too big and hard-wired for him. Agree with the prior poster that he was served a shit sandwich, though.

The problem I have with Mayor Bowser is that she's not been proactive in responding to big-picture problems. Her personality is to delegate all authority to others lower in the food chain (DME, Chancellors) and blame them whenever something explodes. It's never her fault, and she could never have done anything better, in her eyes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The interim replacement for Wilson will be Amanda Alexander, chief of DCPS elementary schools

https://twitter.com/PeteJamison/status/966059982448885760

Does anyone know anything about her?

https://dcps.dc.gov/biography/dr-amanda-alexander

Dr. Amanda Alexander is the Chief of the Office of Elementary Schools for the District of Columbia Public Schools. She provides leadership and vision for the district’s elementary schools and supervises a team of instructional superintendents. She also oversees early childhood programs (Pre-K3 and Pre-K4) and the federal Head Start program.

Dr. Alexander began her career with DCPS in 1998 as a kindergarten teacher at Walker-Jones Elementary School. She later joined New Leaders for New Schools and served as an assistant principal at PS 40 and PS 2 in New York City’s highly acclaimed District 2. With a refined understanding of progressive pedagogies in reading and writing and approaches to teacher professional development, she returned to DCPS to serve as the principal at Bunker Hill Elementary School and later Ross Elementary School. Under her leadership, both schools saw double digit gains in literacy and mathematics. The successes at these diverse schools led then Chancellor Michelle Rhee to charge Dr. Alexander with the redesign of the structure for principal supervision and the management of a cluster of elementary schools as an instructional superintendent. As evidenced by student achievement outcomes, attendance and teacher quality, her cluster of schools significantly outperformed other clusters in the district.

2013, she was asked by Chancellor Kaya Henderson to serve as the Deputy Chief of Schools and focus solely on the recruitment, development, and supervision of the K-12 instructional superintendent team. By leveraging a generous grant from the Wallace Foundation, she provided extensive professional learning opportunities for instructional superintendents focused on the knowledge and skills necessary to support principals in an era of new rigorous standards for student learning. For the pioneering work in the field of principal supervision, DCPS was featured in a documentary and publication of the foundation. Over the course of her time as a central office administrator, Dr. Alexander has also led literacy initiatives and a district-wide taskforce to identify and implement evidenced-based practices to improve student performance. Her efforts in this area have been recognized by the Reading Recovery Council of North America as she is the organization’s 2018 recipient of the Excellence in Literacy Leadership Award.

Dr. Alexander has a B.A. in English and a M.Ed. in curriculum and instruction from Howard University, a M.S.Ed. in educational leadership from Baruch College, and a Ph.D. in education from American University.

Nice to see someone who has taken a solid upward trajectory without skipping steps. Always frustrated that Rhee only taught for 3 years and never served in an administrative role in a school system before becoming chancellor. You need that organizational and institutional experience to understand the impacts of your policies.

Good to see someone with solid educational credentials.

Wow, she sounds actually qualified.

Team Alexander!!

[Anonymous]

No degrees from an online University, at least. Keep her, for g_d sakes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok, next up, how do we get this Schoell woman off the Parents Council? He did what any parent would? Um, no, in his situation every other parent’s option is back to the IB school, go private, homeschool or move. Not cherry pick another high school.

And no, chancellors should not get flexibility in placing their children. You are getting paid multitudes over the average DC salary and can afford to live IB for any school in the District. Make that choice. The right choice over special favors and placements.

The parents' council has no power or decision making authority -- it's a window dressing thing. Anyone can apply to be part of it.

I totally disagree with her view, but that's no reason why she shouldn't be allowed to be on this committee.

That quote is pretty idiotic. She's advocating that people should break the rules if circumstances justify.

The Chancellor's Parent Cabinet is a joke. I was in the first cohort with Kaya Henderson. We went to (usually) monthly meetings, where the agenda was set by DCPS, and got to hear about how great they were doing with their initiatives. We usually got to ask questions - they were 1/3 good questions, 1/3 too specific to be relevant, and 1/3 focused on upper middle class parents wanting things like more foreign language instruction and more recess for their 5 year olds who did not get the challenges of DCPS (or perhaps didn't care). It is a PR stunt to say "We are engaged!" but these people are not influential. I don't know how Wilson conducted the meetings, but Kaya was overly cheery about progress and unwilling/unable to address the concerns of all (partly because DCPS has such massive gaps and is too complicated of a system to manage well). I also felt like she was kind of dismissive of some parents who tried to talk about harder issues like disparity and inequity among the starkly divided students in some school populations (me included).

I've found that under Bowser any sort of citizen input exercise is deliberately structured to be a meaningless exercise. Ok everybody, put your stickers next to the items that are most important to you!

This was a DCPS Kaya/Henderson problem, not a Mayor Bowser problem. Kaya and her cohorts refused to truly listen to parents; they just wanted parents to show up to make public events look good. Chancellor Wilson's challenge was with removing the legacy of patronizing and sometimes corrupt management and forming management truly interested in approving the system. In the end, the habitual, structural problems were too big and hard-wired for him. Agree with the prior poster that he was served a shit sandwich, though.

The problem I have with Mayor Bowser is that she's not been proactive in responding to big-picture problems. Her personality is to delegate all authority to others lower in the food chain (DME, Chancellors) and blame them whenever something explodes. It's never her fault, and she could never have done anything better, in her eyes.

How is any of this the "system's" fault? He independently chose to do something against policy and something that was already a hot button issue to begin with? This wasn't a systemic failure, it was a personal one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“I wish I could go back and look up and talk to as many people as I could about the challenge I was facing,” Wilson, who spent the weekend apologizing to council members, said in an interview Monday. “I failed miserably. It wasn’t a mistake out of anything other than trying to ensure that my daughter’s well-being was taken care of.” -- WP

That, sir, is what we are ALL trying to do. Every parent in DC.

Do you think he means the crappy choices for his kid or that the DC challenges were too much for him in general?

more specifically, his perception of Dunbar is a terribly damning. It's especially tone deaf coupled with his earlier pleas for parents to enroll in Fall 2017 (from WCP)

"Sometimes I see families obsessing over ‘My kid has to be in this school or that school or they won’t make it.’" he observed. "And what I say to a parent is, ‘You make the difference, you send your child to this DCPS school, you spend time meeting with school leaders and getting involved with the PTA or the local school government council, you and your neighbors come to our parent cabinet meetings together, and your child will be successful.’”

[Anonymous]

If you can't see that the entire organization is in short-circuit mode, based on a list of problems, then well...run for Mayor, I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The interim replacement for Wilson will be Amanda Alexander, chief of DCPS elementary schools

https://twitter.com/PeteJamison/status/966059982448885760

Does anyone know anything about her?

https://dcps.dc.gov/biography/dr-amanda-alexander

Dr. Amanda Alexander is the Chief of the Office of Elementary Schools for the District of Columbia Public Schools. She provides leadership and vision for the district’s elementary schools and supervises a team of instructional superintendents. She also oversees early childhood programs (Pre-K3 and Pre-K4) and the federal Head Start program.

Dr. Alexander began her career with DCPS in 1998 as a kindergarten teacher at Walker-Jones Elementary School. She later joined New Leaders for New Schools and served as an assistant principal at PS 40 and PS 2 in New York City’s highly acclaimed District 2. With a refined understanding of progressive pedagogies in reading and writing and approaches to teacher professional development, she returned to DCPS to serve as the principal at Bunker Hill Elementary School and later Ross Elementary School. Under her leadership, both schools saw double digit gains in literacy and mathematics. The successes at these diverse schools led then Chancellor Michelle Rhee to charge Dr. Alexander with the redesign of the structure for principal supervision and the management of a cluster of elementary schools as an instructional superintendent. As evidenced by student achievement outcomes, attendance and teacher quality, her cluster of schools significantly outperformed other clusters in the district.

2013, she was asked by Chancellor Kaya Henderson to serve as the Deputy Chief of Schools and focus solely on the recruitment, development, and supervision of the K-12 instructional superintendent team. By leveraging a generous grant from the Wallace Foundation, she provided extensive professional learning opportunities for instructional superintendents focused on the knowledge and skills necessary to support principals in an era of new rigorous standards for student learning. For the pioneering work in the field of principal supervision, DCPS was featured in a documentary and publication of the foundation. Over the course of her time as a central office administrator, Dr. Alexander has also led literacy initiatives and a district-wide taskforce to identify and implement evidenced-based practices to improve student performance. Her efforts in this area have been recognized by the Reading Recovery Council of North America as she is the organization’s 2018 recipient of the Excellence in Literacy Leadership Award.

Dr. Alexander has a B.A. in English and a M.Ed. in curriculum and instruction from Howard University, a M.S.Ed. in educational leadership from Baruch College, and a Ph.D. in education from American University.

Nice to see someone who has taken a solid upward trajectory without skipping steps. Always frustrated that Rhee only taught for 3 years and never served in an administrative role in a school system before becoming chancellor. You need that organizational and institutional experience to understand the impacts of your policies.

Good to see someone with solid educational credentials.

Wow, she sounds actually qualified.

Team Alexander!!

so why was she passed over just a year ago?

[Anonymous]

As a DCPS teacher - this saddens me. He was a teachers advocate and was focused on social emotional learning and the welfare of all students.