Reply to CHARTERS MAY MERGE AT WALTER REED (The DC International School, IB Diploma Programme)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]  Perhaps public school isn't for you.  If you'd like the benefits of public education (read: no private school tuition), you're just going to have to accept some of those "weak" students.  [/quote]

Haven't posted here yet, but this is the sort of narrow-minded comment that shows just how myopic some of those who frequent DCUM tend to be about school quality in DC above elementary.   It also helps explain why so many parents still end up running off to the suburbs and privates along the way.

Academic magnet middle schools around the country,and school-within-a-school programs like those in the suburbs, don't admit weak  students, and these are every inch public schools.  There's been talk of setting up an academic magnet middle school in DC for years, just not enough momentum.  If you like the benefits of public education in many cities around the country, particularly New York City and Chicago, you don't have to send your advanced learner to sit in the same classes as weak students at any level, but you do here.

Since a policy change would be needed to enable DCI to admit only strong students, or to do extensive ability grouping within the school, or just to lean on the parents of weak students to pull them out (as Basis plans to but probably won't be allowed to) then parents should lobby hard for this now.  Telling the the parents of the strongest students that public school isn't for them just hurts the brightest poor kids, and the city's tax base.  So does pretending that mixing strong and weak students in class will work any better at DCI that it has in other middle schools (and I'm including Washington Latin here - parents of gifted kids sometimes pull out there, consult Latin threads for insight).

The charter-DCPS divide is starting to break down - you see signs of this on the DC City Council, you hear it in the way the Chancellor talks, you hear it in the way parents worry about what comes after the language immersion schools.  The time could be right for bona fide challenge at the middle school level and DCI could be the vehicle.

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