DC Public Education Candidate Forum starting now

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

Thanks for this - what structural changes is JLG supporting?

Janeese is a vote for the status quo. She will slavishly do whatever the teacher's union wants (she was trying to re-close schools during the pandemic for months after they had finally opened for good). Her answer to every problem is throwing more money at it. Let's face it. These schools are extremely well funded. What they need are higher academic standards. She is the last person on Earth who will support making schools more rigorous.

This is what worries me too. A PP stated that JLG would be "changing who is in charge not just the chancellor but possibly deputy of education, superintendents." That's what new Mayors do but the people in consideration for those jobs by JLG are the DSA, not focused on higher standards, set. It's a real drawback IMO for her as a candidate.

She's also a sworn enemy of charters. Don't be shocked if she slashes funding for them if elected. Charters already get screwed under the current way DC funds schools.

Yea, she’s not gonna slash the great charters. Also you are an idiot. The mayor alone cannot slash ONLY charter funds, it’d be illegal.

There is a fair amount of discretion in the budget to fund charters lower than DCPS (whether you consider it slashing or not probably depends, but the mayor has room to hurt charters financially). This can happen in two main ways.

First, facilities funding is very different for charters; the per pupil allotment they get already doesn’t keep pace with DC prices, and the three-year budget last year froze it. Because this looks so different from how DCPS facilities are funded, it is essentially decoupled and you can hurt charters here. In fact, the charter sector is extremely worried about this area for this year’s budget already.

Next, there is the fund for teacher pay above and beyond what schools can do with PPF. Now, you can argue that this bucket should only be for DCPS since it relates to the WTU negotiated contract, but last year the mayor put some money aside for charters for equity with this funding bucket for DCPS teachers. Again, the charter sector is very worried about this bucket this year already; without, they will either be at more of a disadvantage for recruitment or have to cut elsewhere. Again, regardless of what you think about this bucket, the mayor has a lot of sway depending on whether they put it on a proposed budget and it would harm charters.

So charters don’t have donors? I’m kidding we both know they do, as well as that they are businesses.

Teachers go teach at charters regardless if the pay is lower, just as some choose private schools.

So tell me what the ‘disadvantage’ is for great charters? If they are doing poorly, then the kids might as well go to the same DCPS school in their neighborhood.

+1

Charters are often monetarily mismanaged. And they are top heavy, paying very high salaries to school leaders. The successful ones or ones in a network will be fine. The ones doing poorly and mismanaging money should close. That’s part of being autonomous. If you don’t have to follow all of DCPS’s rules, you don’t get the same resources.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

I think anyone who thinks things were better before Rhee is on the really good drugs

You are not a DCPS educator, please do not speak on something you do not understand.

I am speaking on educators. The evaluation system she brought is trash and refused by everyone else to replicate. It has been found to be bias. And fraud was confirmed at all the schools that magically started to do ‘well’ after her ‘plans.’ She had no idea what she was doing.

The teachers were trash who were coasting to a pension. The schools were a smoking crater. Things are so much better in part because she shocked the system.

Ha. The teachers who are trash but liked by the principal are now coasting. And teachers who are excellent but not liked are being pushed out.

Teachers are not able to do anything if their supervisor says their lesson was bad, they can even make things up. AKA commit fraud. Teachers are not allowed to file a grievance based on the score, we can file ONLY if there is some kind of procedural error.

Meaning the only avenue is to sue and I am sure how much time and money it takes to sue DCPS.

So try again. What did Rhee do? The fraud in test scores wasn’t enough? Tell me why are many DCPS’s schools still horrible?
What do teachers TODAY want that would fail students?

Or are you speaking from ignorance and anger?

She demanded and got accountability from teachers, closed the worst of the worst schools in the country, and slowly put the framework in place that turned around the absolute worst school system in the country. Was she perfect? No. But she did what was necessary and broke the back of the most predatory orgs, let alone teachers union, in the country. We as parents have to be ever vigilant against people like you who want to backslide into tenured do nothings stealing money off the back of kids’ futures, and stomp it out when we see it.

When did I say I wanted tenure? See it’s people like you who don’t listen for comprehension or discussion but to simply respond that are a problem.

I also never stated there aren’t teachers who need or needed to be fired. I am telling you that IMPACT is racist and does not actually produce results. I am also asking you to quantify that it’s working because there are some poor schools that’s are still kicking. Constant fraud is happening. I have children, so please do not insinuate that you are the authority on parents as well.

The ‘predatory’ orgs are the tech ones -which McDuffie, Bowser, and the current chancellor love.

Just an FYI before Rhee I was highly effective and after Rhee I was too. That woman made me rich, not a better teacher.


The only question I really want you to answer since you think you understand IMPACT so well, is how does it prevent bad teachers, how has it increased scores and learning of students, and how has it helped schools overall become better?

Impact wasn’t racist, it just revealed how terrible the incumbent class of teachers in dc was, who were predominantly black. A disparity is not sufficient to prove racism. And people use the race card to escape any accountability whatsoever.

Any evidence I give you won’t suffice (enrollment increases, test score increases, in bounds increases, growth scores, hell, the measurement of these things at all), because you’re one of the holdouts engaged in the attempted re-enshittificstion of DCPS

Oh, IMPACT AND Rhee made DCPS better? Let’s unpack that masterpiece of circular logic.

The test score gains that launched Rhee onto the cover of Time Magazine with a broom, sweeping away the riff raff, were later found to have some of the highest suspicious erasure rates in the country. USA Today ran a whole investigation. Turns out when you fire people for low scores, scores have a funny way of going up, sometimes because kids learned more, and sometimes because answers magically got changed. DCPS never seriously investigated it. Moving on.

Now, Rhee fired roughly 600 teachers using IMPACT. Disproportionately Black teachers, in a majority-Black city, serving majority-Black kids. Georgetown researchers documented this. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a finding. The tool that was supposedly saving Black children was quietly gutting the Black educator pipeline that those same children depended on for culturally responsive instruction and basic adult representation in their school buildings.
But sure, IMPACT made things better. For whom, exactly? Test scores that have been partially fabricated. Enrollment numbers in a city that was simultaneously gentrifying at warp speed? You cannot separate “DCPS improved” from “DC got wealthier and whiter” and pretend the evaluation tool did the heavy lifting.

The re-enshittification crowd wants the miracle story without the footnotes.

Now here’s the part that is really idiotic of you not to know. If IMPACT was the revolutionary breakthrough its defenders claim, you’d expect other school districts to have adopted it. They didn’t. Most districts that followed DC’s lead under Race to the Top, making substantial changes to include high-stakes evaluation, did not see similar benefits. Cough* cause fraud.

DCPS was one of just six sites identified post-hoc for above-average effects. Six. Out of the entire country. And even Brookings, which is not exactly a hotbed of teacher union sympathy, acknowledges that the allocation of incentives and disincentives in IMPACT was highly racialized.
So what we have is a system that: was found racist by its own university (American University) review, was cited as the number one reason teachers leave DCPS, created climates of fear in the schools that needed stability most, and was quietly abandoned by virtually every other district that tried something similar.

But by all means, tell us again how Rhee’s broom was sweeping in the right direction.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

This will be my final response to those who come with low level knowledge and simply a hatred for teachers.

Janice Lewis George is not perfect by any means but do not sit here and tell me that she is a puppet. Her track record alone disproves this. Do not sit here and tell me that teachers as a whole hate students and just want to do nothing.

I assure you there are teachers (most of us) want to do better for kids, want higher standards, and better working conditions. Do you not wish you could make your job less toxic and dramatic so you could get better results…

I also promise you Rhee did NOT prevent horrible and lazy teachers or admin to come work for DCPS.

The research found impact racist solely based on the fact that there was a difference in the outcomes. There’s no matching or anything design in there, it’s just that the proportions are different which you would kinda expect when the base rates are different.

I’m tired of people trying to dodge standards and accountability by calling any attempt at accountability racist.

Two separate issues getting smooshed together here, so let’s unstick them.

On the methodology critique, you’re partially right that raw outcome differences alone don’t prove discrimination. But that’s not actually all the research did. The racial gap in IMPACT scores persisted regardless of the race of the evaluator. That matters, because if this were simply about Black teachers being concentrated in harder schools with harder conditions, you’d expect a same-race evaluator who understands that context to close the gap. They didn’t. The bias traveled with the teacher, not the school.

Also, Black teachers receiving two and a half times as many score deductions as white teachers is not a base rate problem. Deductions are discrete evaluator decisions, not aggregate outcomes. That requires an explanation beyond “the proportions are different.”
Now, on the broader point about accountability being called racist as a dodge, that is a real thing that happens and it is genuinely annoying. But the move you’re making right now, dismissing documented bias findings as just proportion differences, is the exact mirror image of that problem. One side cries racism to avoid accountability. The other cries accountability to avoid racism. Both are dodges.

DCPS’s own chancellor said “we are not surprised to see racial gaps persist within IMPACT assessments.” That’s not a union press release. That’s the district.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But sure, give another incorrect response.

My understanding is that twice as many black educators were rated poorly as other races. Which, when you take the relative proportion of teacher race in DC, makes sense. If one race makes up 66% of the teachers, you’d expect 66% of the under performers to be that race, regardless of their proportion of the non teacher population.

Now, if it’s a matter of conditional probability (a black teacher is more than twice as likely to be found deficient) that’s different. But it’s pretty easily explained as a function of tenure (more experienced teachers are worse, big discontinuity at tenure I’d bet money). I don’t see the AU people doing a matched design that can match on that. If you actually match teacher to teacher and find race is causing that difference, I’ll believe it, but the specific method is new enough (2022!) that I know they didn’t do that (separate and apart from the fact that education methods are pretty behind the curve)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

I think anyone who thinks things were better before Rhee is on the really good drugs

You are not a DCPS educator, please do not speak on something you do not understand.

I am speaking on educators. The evaluation system she brought is trash and refused by everyone else to replicate. It has been found to be bias. And fraud was confirmed at all the schools that magically started to do ‘well’ after her ‘plans.’ She had no idea what she was doing.

The teachers were trash who were coasting to a pension. The schools were a smoking crater. Things are so much better in part because she shocked the system.

Ha. The teachers who are trash but liked by the principal are now coasting. And teachers who are excellent but not liked are being pushed out.

Teachers are not able to do anything if their supervisor says their lesson was bad, they can even make things up. AKA commit fraud. Teachers are not allowed to file a grievance based on the score, we can file ONLY if there is some kind of procedural error.

Meaning the only avenue is to sue and I am sure how much time and money it takes to sue DCPS.

So try again. What did Rhee do? The fraud in test scores wasn’t enough? Tell me why are many DCPS’s schools still horrible?
What do teachers TODAY want that would fail students?

Or are you speaking from ignorance and anger?

She demanded and got accountability from teachers, closed the worst of the worst schools in the country, and slowly put the framework in place that turned around the absolute worst school system in the country. Was she perfect? No. But she did what was necessary and broke the back of the most predatory orgs, let alone teachers union, in the country. We as parents have to be ever vigilant against people like you who want to backslide into tenured do nothings stealing money off the back of kids’ futures, and stomp it out when we see it.

When did I say I wanted tenure? See it’s people like you who don’t listen for comprehension or discussion but to simply respond that are a problem.

I also never stated there aren’t teachers who need or needed to be fired. I am telling you that IMPACT is racist and does not actually produce results. I am also asking you to quantify that it’s working because there are some poor schools that’s are still kicking. Constant fraud is happening. I have children, so please do not insinuate that you are the authority on parents as well.

The ‘predatory’ orgs are the tech ones -which McDuffie, Bowser, and the current chancellor love.

Just an FYI before Rhee I was highly effective and after Rhee I was too. That woman made me rich, not a better teacher.


The only question I really want you to answer since you think you understand IMPACT so well, is how does it prevent bad teachers, how has it increased scores and learning of students, and how has it helped schools overall become better?

Impact wasn’t racist, it just revealed how terrible the incumbent class of teachers in dc was, who were predominantly black. A disparity is not sufficient to prove racism. And people use the race card to escape any accountability whatsoever.

Any evidence I give you won’t suffice (enrollment increases, test score increases, in bounds increases, growth scores, hell, the measurement of these things at all), because you’re one of the holdouts engaged in the attempted re-enshittificstion of DCPS

Oh, IMPACT AND Rhee made DCPS better? Let’s unpack that masterpiece of circular logic.

The test score gains that launched Rhee onto the cover of Time Magazine with a broom, sweeping away the riff raff, were later found to have some of the highest suspicious erasure rates in the country. USA Today ran a whole investigation. Turns out when you fire people for low scores, scores have a funny way of going up, sometimes because kids learned more, and sometimes because answers magically got changed. DCPS never seriously investigated it. Moving on.

Now, Rhee fired roughly 600 teachers using IMPACT. Disproportionately Black teachers, in a majority-Black city, serving majority-Black kids. Georgetown researchers documented this. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a finding. The tool that was supposedly saving Black children was quietly gutting the Black educator pipeline that those same children depended on for culturally responsive instruction and basic adult representation in their school buildings.
But sure, IMPACT made things better. For whom, exactly? Test scores that have been partially fabricated. Enrollment numbers in a city that was simultaneously gentrifying at warp speed? You cannot separate “DCPS improved” from “DC got wealthier and whiter” and pretend the evaluation tool did the heavy lifting.

The re-enshittification crowd wants the miracle story without the footnotes.

Now here’s the part that is really idiotic of you not to know. If IMPACT was the revolutionary breakthrough its defenders claim, you’d expect other school districts to have adopted it. They didn’t. Most districts that followed DC’s lead under Race to the Top, making substantial changes to include high-stakes evaluation, did not see similar benefits. Cough* cause fraud.

DCPS was one of just six sites identified post-hoc for above-average effects. Six. Out of the entire country. And even Brookings, which is not exactly a hotbed of teacher union sympathy, acknowledges that the allocation of incentives and disincentives in IMPACT was highly racialized.
So what we have is a system that: was found racist by its own university (American University) review, was cited as the number one reason teachers leave DCPS, created climates of fear in the schools that needed stability most, and was quietly abandoned by virtually every other district that tried something similar.

But by all means, tell us again how Rhee’s broom was sweeping in the right direction.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

This will be my final response to those who come with low level knowledge and simply a hatred for teachers.

Janice Lewis George is not perfect by any means but do not sit here and tell me that she is a puppet. Her track record alone disproves this. Do not sit here and tell me that teachers as a whole hate students and just want to do nothing.

I assure you there are teachers (most of us) want to do better for kids, want higher standards, and better working conditions. Do you not wish you could make your job less toxic and dramatic so you could get better results…

I also promise you Rhee did NOT prevent horrible and lazy teachers or admin to come work for DCPS.

The research found impact racist solely based on the fact that there was a difference in the outcomes. There’s no matching or anything design in there, it’s just that the proportions are different which you would kinda expect when the base rates are different.

I’m tired of people trying to dodge standards and accountability by calling any attempt at accountability racist.

Two separate issues getting smooshed together here, so let’s unstick them.

On the methodology critique, you’re partially right that raw outcome differences alone don’t prove discrimination. But that’s not actually all the research did. The racial gap in IMPACT scores persisted regardless of the race of the evaluator. That matters, because if this were simply about Black teachers being concentrated in harder schools with harder conditions, you’d expect a same-race evaluator who understands that context to close the gap. They didn’t. The bias traveled with the teacher, not the school.

Also, Black teachers receiving two and a half times as many score deductions as white teachers is not a base rate problem. Deductions are discrete evaluator decisions, not aggregate outcomes. That requires an explanation beyond “the proportions are different.”
Now, on the broader point about accountability being called racist as a dodge, that is a real thing that happens and it is genuinely annoying. But the move you’re making right now, dismissing documented bias findings as just proportion differences, is the exact mirror image of that problem. One side cries racism to avoid accountability. The other cries accountability to avoid racism. Both are dodges.

DCPS’s own chancellor said “we are not surprised to see racial gaps persist within IMPACT assessments.” That’s not a union press release. That’s the district.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But sure, give another incorrect response.

How do Impact scores compare for Black teachers hired more than a decade ago and Black teachers hired in the past decade?

Could the Impact gap be explained by hiring practices or no?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much of life in DC is a low level insurrection against dc government, an entrenched political “dc native” class, and public sector unions whose primary goal is to enrich themselves as much as possible while providing the lowest level of service possible. We cannot give an inch to these leeches, and people have to realize how much contempt the city of dc and its people employees have for its citizens, especially of its most productive, tax paying citizens.

You haven’t added to the discussion, except to show that you are deeply racist and ignorant.

dp - This Fall, there was a thread here with a poster ardently insisting would be racist to cut staff in Central because DCPS had been a path to the middle class for a lot of Blacks over time. I sorta get her point, but providing jobs is not the purpose of DCPS and educational considerations should be paramount.

I don't think that poster represents all DC government employees, but I do think it represents some.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

Thanks for this - what structural changes is JLG supporting?

Janeese is a vote for the status quo. She will slavishly do whatever the teacher's union wants (she was trying to re-close schools during the pandemic for months after they had finally opened for good). Her answer to every problem is throwing more money at it. Let's face it. These schools are extremely well funded. What they need are higher academic standards. She is the last person on Earth who will support making schools more rigorous.

This is what worries me too. A PP stated that JLG would be "changing who is in charge not just the chancellor but possibly deputy of education, superintendents." That's what new Mayors do but the people in consideration for those jobs by JLG are the DSA, not focused on higher standards, set. It's a real drawback IMO for her as a candidate.

She's also a sworn enemy of charters. Don't be shocked if she slashes funding for them if elected. Charters already get screwed under the current way DC funds schools.

I dont know how any parent of a charter school student could support JLG. She doesn't think charters should even exist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

Thanks for this - what structural changes is JLG supporting?

DP- overall? The debate was pretty short.
But universal childcare (little kids), more aftercare slots,actually addressing truancy and how kids get to school. As well as how we can address challenging behaviors.
Changing who is in charge not just the chancellor but possibly deputy of education, superintendents.
More listening to what teachers, parents, and students are saying.

I think no one is offering the huge changes teachers and parents would really want.

But I also agree that of all the candidates Janice and Gary are the best but Gary’s answers were way less polished and he admitted he has no expertise in running education. I know I will not be voting for McDuffie either, I do need the next mayor to not just care about businesses and crime (well I’d like them to actually care about crime more) but also education.

I'm always surprised when people here rip JLG on education because she has been incredibly engaged on education during her time on Council. People see DSA and lose their minds but she's from Ward 4, went to Deal and Wilson, and she and her staff have shown up and pushed for school improvements even outside of just her constituents. I'm sure there are things we disagree on but the blanket "she's DSA and hates standards" is so reductive.

I also believe she may be in favor of relinquishing mayoral control of DCPS which would be huge and one of Bowser's worst decisions. It makes everything at the school level, even small things, a political fight which is not how we should view education.

I agree. I'm not sure what baggage people have that cause them to be negative about her but Janeese understands what's going on and can speak to the issues competently. It's refreshing compared to the usual political hacks that are just trying to tell us what we want to hear but clearly don't understand the issues.

Janeese would be a major step down from Bowser. At least Bowser is willing to stand up to the teachers union. We remember how hard Janeese fought to keep schools closed during the pandemic, even after they had been open for months. We also know how adamantly she opposes raising academic standards or any form of accountability with schools. Nobody cares or should care about this nothing burger she's selling re: mayoral control of DCPS. It's meaningless.

+1000

Mamdani also campaigned on changing mayoral control of schools in NYC and immediately reversed course when he took office. Also, how is Janeese talking about appointing the next chancellor and superintendent (unilaterally done through mayoral control) and also giving up mayoral control? Without mayoral control, these appointment would be done by the school board. Political double speak.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

I think anyone who thinks things were better before Rhee is on the really good drugs

You are not a DCPS educator, please do not speak on something you do not understand.

I am speaking on educators. The evaluation system she brought is trash and refused by everyone else to replicate. It has been found to be bias. And fraud was confirmed at all the schools that magically started to do ‘well’ after her ‘plans.’ She had no idea what she was doing.

The teachers were trash who were coasting to a pension. The schools were a smoking crater. Things are so much better in part because she shocked the system.

Ha. The teachers who are trash but liked by the principal are now coasting. And teachers who are excellent but not liked are being pushed out.

Teachers are not able to do anything if their supervisor says their lesson was bad, they can even make things up. AKA commit fraud. Teachers are not allowed to file a grievance based on the score, we can file ONLY if there is some kind of procedural error.

Meaning the only avenue is to sue and I am sure how much time and money it takes to sue DCPS.

So try again. What did Rhee do? The fraud in test scores wasn’t enough? Tell me why are many DCPS’s schools still horrible?
What do teachers TODAY want that would fail students?

Or are you speaking from ignorance and anger?

She demanded and got accountability from teachers, closed the worst of the worst schools in the country, and slowly put the framework in place that turned around the absolute worst school system in the country. Was she perfect? No. But she did what was necessary and broke the back of the most predatory orgs, let alone teachers union, in the country. We as parents have to be ever vigilant against people like you who want to backslide into tenured do nothings stealing money off the back of kids’ futures, and stomp it out when we see it.

When did I say I wanted tenure? See it’s people like you who don’t listen for comprehension or discussion but to simply respond that are a problem.

I also never stated there aren’t teachers who need or needed to be fired. I am telling you that IMPACT is racist and does not actually produce results. I am also asking you to quantify that it’s working because there are some poor schools that’s are still kicking. Constant fraud is happening. I have children, so please do not insinuate that you are the authority on parents as well.

The ‘predatory’ orgs are the tech ones -which McDuffie, Bowser, and the current chancellor love.

Just an FYI before Rhee I was highly effective and after Rhee I was too. That woman made me rich, not a better teacher.


The only question I really want you to answer since you think you understand IMPACT so well, is how does it prevent bad teachers, how has it increased scores and learning of students, and how has it helped schools overall become better?

Impact wasn’t racist, it just revealed how terrible the incumbent class of teachers in dc was, who were predominantly black. A disparity is not sufficient to prove racism. And people use the race card to escape any accountability whatsoever.

Any evidence I give you won’t suffice (enrollment increases, test score increases, in bounds increases, growth scores, hell, the measurement of these things at all), because you’re one of the holdouts engaged in the attempted re-enshittificstion of DCPS

Oh, IMPACT AND Rhee made DCPS better? Let’s unpack that masterpiece of circular logic.

The test score gains that launched Rhee onto the cover of Time Magazine with a broom, sweeping away the riff raff, were later found to have some of the highest suspicious erasure rates in the country. USA Today ran a whole investigation. Turns out when you fire people for low scores, scores have a funny way of going up, sometimes because kids learned more, and sometimes because answers magically got changed. DCPS never seriously investigated it. Moving on.

Now, Rhee fired roughly 600 teachers using IMPACT. Disproportionately Black teachers, in a majority-Black city, serving majority-Black kids. Georgetown researchers documented this. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a finding. The tool that was supposedly saving Black children was quietly gutting the Black educator pipeline that those same children depended on for culturally responsive instruction and basic adult representation in their school buildings.
But sure, IMPACT made things better. For whom, exactly? Test scores that have been partially fabricated. Enrollment numbers in a city that was simultaneously gentrifying at warp speed? You cannot separate “DCPS improved” from “DC got wealthier and whiter” and pretend the evaluation tool did the heavy lifting.

The re-enshittification crowd wants the miracle story without the footnotes.

Now here’s the part that is really idiotic of you not to know. If IMPACT was the revolutionary breakthrough its defenders claim, you’d expect other school districts to have adopted it. They didn’t. Most districts that followed DC’s lead under Race to the Top, making substantial changes to include high-stakes evaluation, did not see similar benefits. Cough* cause fraud.

DCPS was one of just six sites identified post-hoc for above-average effects. Six. Out of the entire country. And even Brookings, which is not exactly a hotbed of teacher union sympathy, acknowledges that the allocation of incentives and disincentives in IMPACT was highly racialized.
So what we have is a system that: was found racist by its own university (American University) review, was cited as the number one reason teachers leave DCPS, created climates of fear in the schools that needed stability most, and was quietly abandoned by virtually every other district that tried something similar.

But by all means, tell us again how Rhee’s broom was sweeping in the right direction.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

This will be my final response to those who come with low level knowledge and simply a hatred for teachers.

Janice Lewis George is not perfect by any means but do not sit here and tell me that she is a puppet. Her track record alone disproves this. Do not sit here and tell me that teachers as a whole hate students and just want to do nothing.

I assure you there are teachers (most of us) want to do better for kids, want higher standards, and better working conditions. Do you not wish you could make your job less toxic and dramatic so you could get better results…

I also promise you Rhee did NOT prevent horrible and lazy teachers or admin to come work for DCPS.

The research found impact racist solely based on the fact that there was a difference in the outcomes. There’s no matching or anything design in there, it’s just that the proportions are different which you would kinda expect when the base rates are different.

I’m tired of people trying to dodge standards and accountability by calling any attempt at accountability racist.

Two separate issues getting smooshed together here, so let’s unstick them.

On the methodology critique, you’re partially right that raw outcome differences alone don’t prove discrimination. But that’s not actually all the research did. The racial gap in IMPACT scores persisted regardless of the race of the evaluator. That matters, because if this were simply about Black teachers being concentrated in harder schools with harder conditions, you’d expect a same-race evaluator who understands that context to close the gap. They didn’t. The bias traveled with the teacher, not the school.

Also, Black teachers receiving two and a half times as many score deductions as white teachers is not a base rate problem. Deductions are discrete evaluator decisions, not aggregate outcomes. That requires an explanation beyond “the proportions are different.”
Now, on the broader point about accountability being called racist as a dodge, that is a real thing that happens and it is genuinely annoying. But the move you’re making right now, dismissing documented bias findings as just proportion differences, is the exact mirror image of that problem. One side cries racism to avoid accountability. The other cries accountability to avoid racism. Both are dodges.

DCPS’s own chancellor said “we are not surprised to see racial gaps persist within IMPACT assessments.” That’s not a union press release. That’s the district.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But sure, give another incorrect response.

My understanding is that twice as many black educators were rated poorly as other races. Which, when you take the relative proportion of teacher race in DC, makes sense. If one race makes up 66% of the teachers, you’d expect 66% of the under performers to be that race, regardless of their proportion of the non teacher population.

Now, if it’s a matter of conditional probability (a black teacher is more than twice as likely to be found deficient) that’s different. But it’s pretty easily explained as a function of tenure (more experienced teachers are worse, big discontinuity at tenure I’d bet money). I don’t see the AU people doing a matched design that can match on that. If you actually match teacher to teacher and find race is causing that difference, I’ll believe it, but the specific method is new enough (2022!) that I know they didn’t do that (separate and apart from the fact that education methods are pretty behind the curve)

The core misreading is about what the statistic actually was. The finding wasn’t that Black teachers made up a disproportionate share of poor performers in raw numbers, which is the argument you addressed. The finding was that Black teachers received two and a half times as many deductions as white teachers.

That’s already a rate, not a count. It’s already the conditional probability version. “Two and a half times as many deductions” means a given Black teacher was far more likely to receive a deduction than a comparable white teacher, not simply that more Black teachers showed up in the low-scoring pile because there are more Black teachers overall.

So the proportionality argument, while mathematically sensible as a general caution, was actually refuting a claim nobody made. The base rate concern would be valid if the headline were “more Black teachers scored poorly in absolute terms.” But that’s not what was reported. The disparity was already normalized per teacher, which makes the proportionality explanation a non-answer to the actual finding.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

I think anyone who thinks things were better before Rhee is on the really good drugs

You are not a DCPS educator, please do not speak on something you do not understand.

I am speaking on educators. The evaluation system she brought is trash and refused by everyone else to replicate. It has been found to be bias. And fraud was confirmed at all the schools that magically started to do ‘well’ after her ‘plans.’ She had no idea what she was doing.

The teachers were trash who were coasting to a pension. The schools were a smoking crater. Things are so much better in part because she shocked the system.

Ha. The teachers who are trash but liked by the principal are now coasting. And teachers who are excellent but not liked are being pushed out.

Teachers are not able to do anything if their supervisor says their lesson was bad, they can even make things up. AKA commit fraud. Teachers are not allowed to file a grievance based on the score, we can file ONLY if there is some kind of procedural error.

Meaning the only avenue is to sue and I am sure how much time and money it takes to sue DCPS.

So try again. What did Rhee do? The fraud in test scores wasn’t enough? Tell me why are many DCPS’s schools still horrible?
What do teachers TODAY want that would fail students?

Or are you speaking from ignorance and anger?

She demanded and got accountability from teachers, closed the worst of the worst schools in the country, and slowly put the framework in place that turned around the absolute worst school system in the country. Was she perfect? No. But she did what was necessary and broke the back of the most predatory orgs, let alone teachers union, in the country. We as parents have to be ever vigilant against people like you who want to backslide into tenured do nothings stealing money off the back of kids’ futures, and stomp it out when we see it.

When did I say I wanted tenure? See it’s people like you who don’t listen for comprehension or discussion but to simply respond that are a problem.

I also never stated there aren’t teachers who need or needed to be fired. I am telling you that IMPACT is racist and does not actually produce results. I am also asking you to quantify that it’s working because there are some poor schools that’s are still kicking. Constant fraud is happening. I have children, so please do not insinuate that you are the authority on parents as well.

The ‘predatory’ orgs are the tech ones -which McDuffie, Bowser, and the current chancellor love.

Just an FYI before Rhee I was highly effective and after Rhee I was too. That woman made me rich, not a better teacher.


The only question I really want you to answer since you think you understand IMPACT so well, is how does it prevent bad teachers, how has it increased scores and learning of students, and how has it helped schools overall become better?

Impact wasn’t racist, it just revealed how terrible the incumbent class of teachers in dc was, who were predominantly black. A disparity is not sufficient to prove racism. And people use the race card to escape any accountability whatsoever.

Any evidence I give you won’t suffice (enrollment increases, test score increases, in bounds increases, growth scores, hell, the measurement of these things at all), because you’re one of the holdouts engaged in the attempted re-enshittificstion of DCPS

Oh, IMPACT AND Rhee made DCPS better? Let’s unpack that masterpiece of circular logic.

The test score gains that launched Rhee onto the cover of Time Magazine with a broom, sweeping away the riff raff, were later found to have some of the highest suspicious erasure rates in the country. USA Today ran a whole investigation. Turns out when you fire people for low scores, scores have a funny way of going up, sometimes because kids learned more, and sometimes because answers magically got changed. DCPS never seriously investigated it. Moving on.

Now, Rhee fired roughly 600 teachers using IMPACT. Disproportionately Black teachers, in a majority-Black city, serving majority-Black kids. Georgetown researchers documented this. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a finding. The tool that was supposedly saving Black children was quietly gutting the Black educator pipeline that those same children depended on for culturally responsive instruction and basic adult representation in their school buildings.
But sure, IMPACT made things better. For whom, exactly? Test scores that have been partially fabricated. Enrollment numbers in a city that was simultaneously gentrifying at warp speed? You cannot separate “DCPS improved” from “DC got wealthier and whiter” and pretend the evaluation tool did the heavy lifting.

The re-enshittification crowd wants the miracle story without the footnotes.

Now here’s the part that is really idiotic of you not to know. If IMPACT was the revolutionary breakthrough its defenders claim, you’d expect other school districts to have adopted it. They didn’t. Most districts that followed DC’s lead under Race to the Top, making substantial changes to include high-stakes evaluation, did not see similar benefits. Cough* cause fraud.

DCPS was one of just six sites identified post-hoc for above-average effects. Six. Out of the entire country. And even Brookings, which is not exactly a hotbed of teacher union sympathy, acknowledges that the allocation of incentives and disincentives in IMPACT was highly racialized.
So what we have is a system that: was found racist by its own university (American University) review, was cited as the number one reason teachers leave DCPS, created climates of fear in the schools that needed stability most, and was quietly abandoned by virtually every other district that tried something similar.

But by all means, tell us again how Rhee’s broom was sweeping in the right direction.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

This will be my final response to those who come with low level knowledge and simply a hatred for teachers.

Janice Lewis George is not perfect by any means but do not sit here and tell me that she is a puppet. Her track record alone disproves this. Do not sit here and tell me that teachers as a whole hate students and just want to do nothing.

I assure you there are teachers (most of us) want to do better for kids, want higher standards, and better working conditions. Do you not wish you could make your job less toxic and dramatic so you could get better results…

I also promise you Rhee did NOT prevent horrible and lazy teachers or admin to come work for DCPS.

The research found impact racist solely based on the fact that there was a difference in the outcomes. There’s no matching or anything design in there, it’s just that the proportions are different which you would kinda expect when the base rates are different.

I’m tired of people trying to dodge standards and accountability by calling any attempt at accountability racist.

Two separate issues getting smooshed together here, so let’s unstick them.

On the methodology critique, you’re partially right that raw outcome differences alone don’t prove discrimination. But that’s not actually all the research did. The racial gap in IMPACT scores persisted regardless of the race of the evaluator. That matters, because if this were simply about Black teachers being concentrated in harder schools with harder conditions, you’d expect a same-race evaluator who understands that context to close the gap. They didn’t. The bias traveled with the teacher, not the school.

Also, Black teachers receiving two and a half times as many score deductions as white teachers is not a base rate problem. Deductions are discrete evaluator decisions, not aggregate outcomes. That requires an explanation beyond “the proportions are different.”
Now, on the broader point about accountability being called racist as a dodge, that is a real thing that happens and it is genuinely annoying. But the move you’re making right now, dismissing documented bias findings as just proportion differences, is the exact mirror image of that problem. One side cries racism to avoid accountability. The other cries accountability to avoid racism. Both are dodges.

DCPS’s own chancellor said “we are not surprised to see racial gaps persist within IMPACT assessments.” That’s not a union press release. That’s the district.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But sure, give another incorrect response.

How do Impact scores compare for Black teachers hired more than a decade ago and Black teachers hired in the past decade?

Could the Impact gap be explained by hiring practices or no?

DCPS refuses to share data from the last 8 years, though they have made some minimal and mostly useless changes. Anti-bias training doesn’t help corrupt individuals.

What we do know points in a pretty clear direction. If old hiring practices were the explanation, you’d expect the gap to be shrinking as newer, better-hired Black teachers come in. Instead, newer Black teachers were being immediately dismissed at four times the rate of newer white teachers in the early years of IMPACT. These are people hired under the same reformed system, and the gap was there from day one.

So hiring practices probably explain a small slice of the overall score difference, but they can’t explain why it follows Black teachers across generations of hiring. The gap isn’t a holdover from a worse era. It keeps showing up in new people entering the system, which suggests something about the evaluation itself rather than the quality of who’s being hired.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much of life in DC is a low level insurrection against dc government, an entrenched political “dc native” class, and public sector unions whose primary goal is to enrich themselves as much as possible while providing the lowest level of service possible. We cannot give an inch to these leeches, and people have to realize how much contempt the city of dc and its people employees have for its citizens, especially of its most productive, tax paying citizens.

You haven’t added to the discussion, except to show that you are deeply racist and ignorant.

dp - This Fall, there was a thread here with a poster ardently insisting would be racist to cut staff in Central because DCPS had been a path to the middle class for a lot of Blacks over time. I sorta get her point, but providing jobs is not the purpose of DCPS and educational considerations should be paramount.

I don't think that poster represents all DC government employees, but I do think it represents some.

That was not me, there have been more cuts to central -specifically in ECE and I am happy. They did not do their jobs -I am not about wasting money. I adamantly support black excellence but not at the cost of a handout. Again you are showing your racist tail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

Thanks for this - what structural changes is JLG supporting?

Janeese is a vote for the status quo. She will slavishly do whatever the teacher's union wants (she was trying to re-close schools during the pandemic for months after they had finally opened for good). Her answer to every problem is throwing more money at it. Let's face it. These schools are extremely well funded. What they need are higher academic standards. She is the last person on Earth who will support making schools more rigorous.

This is what worries me too. A PP stated that JLG would be "changing who is in charge not just the chancellor but possibly deputy of education, superintendents." That's what new Mayors do but the people in consideration for those jobs by JLG are the DSA, not focused on higher standards, set. It's a real drawback IMO for her as a candidate.

She's also a sworn enemy of charters. Don't be shocked if she slashes funding for them if elected. Charters already get screwed under the current way DC funds schools.

I dont know how any parent of a charter school student could support JLG. She doesn't think charters should even exist.

So you will vote for the status quo because you are scared and don’t get how the government works?

DC Council is the sole appropriator and has to approve it -they won’t. Not that Lewis-George would do that. She may close useless money sucking charters. If they are doing poorly and the building is just pretty why not make it a DCPS school and close the raggedy original school or vice versa?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

I think anyone who thinks things were better before Rhee is on the really good drugs

You are not a DCPS educator, please do not speak on something you do not understand.

I am speaking on educators. The evaluation system she brought is trash and refused by everyone else to replicate. It has been found to be bias. And fraud was confirmed at all the schools that magically started to do ‘well’ after her ‘plans.’ She had no idea what she was doing.

The teachers were trash who were coasting to a pension. The schools were a smoking crater. Things are so much better in part because she shocked the system.

Ha. The teachers who are trash but liked by the principal are now coasting. And teachers who are excellent but not liked are being pushed out.

Teachers are not able to do anything if their supervisor says their lesson was bad, they can even make things up. AKA commit fraud. Teachers are not allowed to file a grievance based on the score, we can file ONLY if there is some kind of procedural error.

Meaning the only avenue is to sue and I am sure how much time and money it takes to sue DCPS.

So try again. What did Rhee do? The fraud in test scores wasn’t enough? Tell me why are many DCPS’s schools still horrible?
What do teachers TODAY want that would fail students?

Or are you speaking from ignorance and anger?

She demanded and got accountability from teachers, closed the worst of the worst schools in the country, and slowly put the framework in place that turned around the absolute worst school system in the country. Was she perfect? No. But she did what was necessary and broke the back of the most predatory orgs, let alone teachers union, in the country. We as parents have to be ever vigilant against people like you who want to backslide into tenured do nothings stealing money off the back of kids’ futures, and stomp it out when we see it.

When did I say I wanted tenure? See it’s people like you who don’t listen for comprehension or discussion but to simply respond that are a problem.

I also never stated there aren’t teachers who need or needed to be fired. I am telling you that IMPACT is racist and does not actually produce results. I am also asking you to quantify that it’s working because there are some poor schools that’s are still kicking. Constant fraud is happening. I have children, so please do not insinuate that you are the authority on parents as well.

The ‘predatory’ orgs are the tech ones -which McDuffie, Bowser, and the current chancellor love.

Just an FYI before Rhee I was highly effective and after Rhee I was too. That woman made me rich, not a better teacher.


The only question I really want you to answer since you think you understand IMPACT so well, is how does it prevent bad teachers, how has it increased scores and learning of students, and how has it helped schools overall become better?

Impact wasn’t racist, it just revealed how terrible the incumbent class of teachers in dc was, who were predominantly black. A disparity is not sufficient to prove racism. And people use the race card to escape any accountability whatsoever.

Any evidence I give you won’t suffice (enrollment increases, test score increases, in bounds increases, growth scores, hell, the measurement of these things at all), because you’re one of the holdouts engaged in the attempted re-enshittificstion of DCPS

Oh, IMPACT AND Rhee made DCPS better? Let’s unpack that masterpiece of circular logic.

The test score gains that launched Rhee onto the cover of Time Magazine with a broom, sweeping away the riff raff, were later found to have some of the highest suspicious erasure rates in the country. USA Today ran a whole investigation. Turns out when you fire people for low scores, scores have a funny way of going up, sometimes because kids learned more, and sometimes because answers magically got changed. DCPS never seriously investigated it. Moving on.

Now, Rhee fired roughly 600 teachers using IMPACT. Disproportionately Black teachers, in a majority-Black city, serving majority-Black kids. Georgetown researchers documented this. This is not a conspiracy theory, it is a finding. The tool that was supposedly saving Black children was quietly gutting the Black educator pipeline that those same children depended on for culturally responsive instruction and basic adult representation in their school buildings.
But sure, IMPACT made things better. For whom, exactly? Test scores that have been partially fabricated. Enrollment numbers in a city that was simultaneously gentrifying at warp speed? You cannot separate “DCPS improved” from “DC got wealthier and whiter” and pretend the evaluation tool did the heavy lifting.

The re-enshittification crowd wants the miracle story without the footnotes.

Now here’s the part that is really idiotic of you not to know. If IMPACT was the revolutionary breakthrough its defenders claim, you’d expect other school districts to have adopted it. They didn’t. Most districts that followed DC’s lead under Race to the Top, making substantial changes to include high-stakes evaluation, did not see similar benefits. Cough* cause fraud.

DCPS was one of just six sites identified post-hoc for above-average effects. Six. Out of the entire country. And even Brookings, which is not exactly a hotbed of teacher union sympathy, acknowledges that the allocation of incentives and disincentives in IMPACT was highly racialized.
So what we have is a system that: was found racist by its own university (American University) review, was cited as the number one reason teachers leave DCPS, created climates of fear in the schools that needed stability most, and was quietly abandoned by virtually every other district that tried something similar.

But by all means, tell us again how Rhee’s broom was sweeping in the right direction.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

This will be my final response to those who come with low level knowledge and simply a hatred for teachers.

Janice Lewis George is not perfect by any means but do not sit here and tell me that she is a puppet. Her track record alone disproves this. Do not sit here and tell me that teachers as a whole hate students and just want to do nothing.

I assure you there are teachers (most of us) want to do better for kids, want higher standards, and better working conditions. Do you not wish you could make your job less toxic and dramatic so you could get better results…

I also promise you Rhee did NOT prevent horrible and lazy teachers or admin to come work for DCPS.

The research found impact racist solely based on the fact that there was a difference in the outcomes. There’s no matching or anything design in there, it’s just that the proportions are different which you would kinda expect when the base rates are different.

I’m tired of people trying to dodge standards and accountability by calling any attempt at accountability racist.

Two separate issues getting smooshed together here, so let’s unstick them.

On the methodology critique, you’re partially right that raw outcome differences alone don’t prove discrimination. But that’s not actually all the research did. The racial gap in IMPACT scores persisted regardless of the race of the evaluator. That matters, because if this were simply about Black teachers being concentrated in harder schools with harder conditions, you’d expect a same-race evaluator who understands that context to close the gap. They didn’t. The bias traveled with the teacher, not the school.

Also, Black teachers receiving two and a half times as many score deductions as white teachers is not a base rate problem. Deductions are discrete evaluator decisions, not aggregate outcomes. That requires an explanation beyond “the proportions are different.”
Now, on the broader point about accountability being called racist as a dodge, that is a real thing that happens and it is genuinely annoying. But the move you’re making right now, dismissing documented bias findings as just proportion differences, is the exact mirror image of that problem. One side cries racism to avoid accountability. The other cries accountability to avoid racism. Both are dodges.

DCPS’s own chancellor said “we are not surprised to see racial gaps persist within IMPACT assessments.” That’s not a union press release. That’s the district.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But sure, give another incorrect response.

How do Impact scores compare for Black teachers hired more than a decade ago and Black teachers hired in the past decade?

Could the Impact gap be explained by hiring practices or no?

DCPS refuses to share data from the last 8 years, though they have made some minimal and mostly useless changes. Anti-bias training doesn’t help corrupt individuals.

What we do know points in a pretty clear direction. If old hiring practices were the explanation, you’d expect the gap to be shrinking as newer, better-hired Black teachers come in. Instead, newer Black teachers were being immediately dismissed at four times the rate of newer white teachers in the early years of IMPACT. These are people hired under the same reformed system, and the gap was there from day one.

So hiring practices probably explain a small slice of the overall score difference, but they can’t explain why it follows Black teachers across generations of hiring. The gap isn’t a holdover from a worse era. It keeps showing up in new people entering the system, which suggests something about the evaluation itself rather than the quality of who’s being hired.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If you look at the old report- the methods are really crap, just a straight regression comparing two very small subsets of the data, but set that aside- the discrepancy is entirely driven by differences in professionalism scores. I’m willing to believe the differences are racially motivated to the extent the metrics are subjective. I didn’t see the actual criteria for the professionalism score though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So much of life in DC is a low level insurrection against dc government, an entrenched political “dc native” class, and public sector unions whose primary goal is to enrich themselves as much as possible while providing the lowest level of service possible. We cannot give an inch to these leeches, and people have to realize how much contempt the city of dc and its people employees have for its citizens, especially of its most productive, tax paying citizens.

You haven’t added to the discussion, except to show that you are deeply racist and ignorant.

dp - This Fall, there was a thread here with a poster ardently insisting would be racist to cut staff in Central because DCPS had been a path to the middle class for a lot of Blacks over time. I sorta get her point, but providing jobs is not the purpose of DCPS and educational considerations should be paramount.

I don't think that poster represents all DC government employees, but I do think it represents some.

Prior to Rhee, DCPS was absolutely a jobs program. There are still some fossils who remember and miss those days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

Thanks for this - what structural changes is JLG supporting?

Janeese is a vote for the status quo. She will slavishly do whatever the teacher's union wants (she was trying to re-close schools during the pandemic for months after they had finally opened for good). Her answer to every problem is throwing more money at it. Let's face it. These schools are extremely well funded. What they need are higher academic standards. She is the last person on Earth who will support making schools more rigorous.

This is what worries me too. A PP stated that JLG would be "changing who is in charge not just the chancellor but possibly deputy of education, superintendents." That's what new Mayors do but the people in consideration for those jobs by JLG are the DSA, not focused on higher standards, set. It's a real drawback IMO for her as a candidate.

She's also a sworn enemy of charters. Don't be shocked if she slashes funding for them if elected. Charters already get screwed under the current way DC funds schools.

Yea, she’s not gonna slash the great charters. Also you are an idiot. The mayor alone cannot slash ONLY charter funds, it’d be illegal.

There is a fair amount of discretion in the budget to fund charters lower than DCPS (whether you consider it slashing or not probably depends, but the mayor has room to hurt charters financially). This can happen in two main ways.

First, facilities funding is very different for charters; the per pupil allotment they get already doesn’t keep pace with DC prices, and the three-year budget last year froze it. Because this looks so different from how DCPS facilities are funded, it is essentially decoupled and you can hurt charters here. In fact, the charter sector is extremely worried about this area for this year’s budget already.

Next, there is the fund for teacher pay above and beyond what schools can do with PPF. Now, you can argue that this bucket should only be for DCPS since it relates to the WTU negotiated contract, but last year the mayor put some money aside for charters for equity with this funding bucket for DCPS teachers. Again, the charter sector is very worried about this bucket this year already; without, they will either be at more of a disadvantage for recruitment or have to cut elsewhere. Again, regardless of what you think about this bucket, the mayor has a lot of sway depending on whether they put it on a proposed budget and it would harm charters.

So charters don’t have donors? I’m kidding we both know they do, as well as that they are businesses.

Teachers go teach at charters regardless if the pay is lower, just as some choose private schools.

So tell me what the ‘disadvantage’ is for great charters? If they are doing poorly, then the kids might as well go to the same DCPS school in their neighborhood.

+1

Charters are often monetarily mismanaged. And they are top heavy, paying very high salaries to school leaders. The successful ones or ones in a network will be fine. The ones doing poorly and mismanaging money should close. That’s part of being autonomous. If you don’t have to follow all of DCPS’s rules, you don’t get the same resources.

Yes, yes, we all know you both hate the charter sector, it’s super interesting.

But that’s not the actual question here; the question is does the mayor have the legal ability to make things harder financially for charters without making things harder for DCPS, and the answer there is yes. That’s just a fact, whether you think that’s a problem is a matter of your opinion.

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Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

Thanks for this - what structural changes is JLG supporting?

Janeese is a vote for the status quo. She will slavishly do whatever the teacher's union wants (she was trying to re-close schools during the pandemic for months after they had finally opened for good). Her answer to every problem is throwing more money at it. Let's face it. These schools are extremely well funded. What they need are higher academic standards. She is the last person on Earth who will support making schools more rigorous.

This is what worries me too. A PP stated that JLG would be "changing who is in charge not just the chancellor but possibly deputy of education, superintendents." That's what new Mayors do but the people in consideration for those jobs by JLG are the DSA, not focused on higher standards, set. It's a real drawback IMO for her as a candidate.

She's also a sworn enemy of charters. Don't be shocked if she slashes funding for them if elected. Charters already get screwed under the current way DC funds schools.

I dont know how any parent of a charter school student could support JLG. She doesn't think charters should even exist.

She will make life very hard for charter schools if she's elected. Charters are already seriously underfunded compared to DCPS.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly Janice Lewis George is my pick -she is the only one who talked about actually structural changes.
My second is Gary Goodweather, who talks about classroom changes and training for teacher but to me it’s also a red flag. If you know Michelle Rhee, she did a number on DCPS and helped ruin it. Teachers don’t need MORE training, we need GOOD training and planning time.

I find it interesting McDuffie is ALWAYS declining debates involving education. I also recently discovered his plan is to get kids ‘AI ready.’ Just no, we don’t need more tech. The research clearly shows this is not the way and let’s be honest most dummies can utilize AI -to use it well should be an elective a kid in HS can take IF they are interested.

Thanks for this - what structural changes is JLG supporting?

DP- overall? The debate was pretty short.
But universal childcare (little kids), more aftercare slots,actually addressing truancy and how kids get to school. As well as how we can address challenging behaviors.
Changing who is in charge not just the chancellor but possibly deputy of education, superintendents.
More listening to what teachers, parents, and students are saying.

I think no one is offering the huge changes teachers and parents would really want.

But I also agree that of all the candidates Janice and Gary are the best but Gary’s answers were way less polished and he admitted he has no expertise in running education. I know I will not be voting for McDuffie either, I do need the next mayor to not just care about businesses and crime (well I’d like them to actually care about crime more) but also education.

I'm always surprised when people here rip JLG on education because she has been incredibly engaged on education during her time on Council. People see DSA and lose their minds but she's from Ward 4, went to Deal and Wilson, and she and her staff have shown up and pushed for school improvements even outside of just her constituents. I'm sure there are things we disagree on but the blanket "she's DSA and hates standards" is so reductive.

I also believe she may be in favor of relinquishing mayoral control of DCPS which would be huge and one of Bowser's worst decisions. It makes everything at the school level, even small things, a political fight which is not how we should view education.

I agree. I'm not sure what baggage people have that cause them to be negative about her but Janeese understands what's going on and can speak to the issues competently. It's refreshing compared to the usual political hacks that are just trying to tell us what we want to hear but clearly don't understand the issues.

Janeese would be a major step down from Bowser. At least Bowser is willing to stand up to the teachers union. We remember how hard Janeese fought to keep schools closed during the pandemic, even after they had been open for months. We also know how adamantly she opposes raising academic standards or any form of accountability with schools. Nobody cares or should care about this nothing burger she's selling re: mayoral control of DCPS. It's meaningless.

Ugh. She would be a disaster.