Reply to HB Woodlawn and ATS

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’ll say it again — I don’t think we should get rid of the special programs, I think we should find a way to offer more of them. Create a second ATS and house it at whichever of the neighborhood elementary schools is currently most underenrolled. Those parents would be IRATE but all the parents who get into the new ATS would be thrilled. Then use part of the WL building for a new HB Woodlawn. That way W-L doesn’t have to be so big and APS doesn’t have to find additional space for a new HB Woodlawn. Just use the WL space. [/quote]

+ 1 million[/quote]

Or they could just improve the instruction at all the other schools so every kid can have "the best."[/quote]

ATS and HB are self-selecting populations. In the case of ATS, you're judging a program by its standardized test results when everything about ATS is leading up to getting good standardized test results. That's not everyone's goal.

HB has the second most affluent student population among the high schools. I think most high school kids would benefit from more independence,  but let's not confuse correspondence with causation here.[/quote]

Also are you daft? Obviously a parent who pulled their kid out of ATS has experience with the school. You know who doesn’t? The parent who’s kid didn’t get into ATS and is now so bitter about it that all she does is talk about how ATS parents, ATS kids and the school itself sucks on DCUM.

Here we go again. [b]A person who’s kids don’t know to ATS claiming that they know what ATS does.[/b] No ATS doesn’t teach to the test. The reason they have such high scores is because they believe structured literacy and focus on phonics and phonemic awareness as opposed to balanced literacy. While the rest of APS was using Lucy Calkins and does phonics on the fly, ATS was using Wilson’s reading and Heggerty. They also have an ELA curriculum that they made that is knowledge rich (focus on social studies). They were so successful in fact that APS adopted Heggerty a few years ago for all schools. Now the entire country is moving towards structured literacy & knowledge rich ELA curriculums. Virginia passed a literacy act and APS adopted CKLA which is phonics based and is knowledge rich. Hopefully this means that the quality of all APS schools goes up. ATS also has a two hour ELA block as opposed to a much shorter block in other APS schools. [/quote]

Do the same people who insist that ATS families have plenty of friends in the neighborhood also insist that the only way to know about ATS is to have kids who go there? [/quote]

Huh? What are you talking about? I am specifically responding to PP’s insinuating that the reason ATS students do well is because ATS teaches to the test. How would PP know that ATS teaches to the test if PP has no experience with the school?[/quote]

How are you defining "experience with the school"? People who don't send their kids to ATS have friends who do. Parents talk about school. And what makes one parent's socks roll up and down makes another parent vow never to send their kids to a place like that.

If the only people who can comment on ATS are the parents of kids attending ATS, you're going to hear nothing but odes to the wonders of ATS, because parents who aren't happy will pull their kids out. [/quote][/quote]

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