Reply to Is Brent the best school in Capitol hill?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b][b][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Get outside the Brent District and Upper NW and you'll find few PS parents in favor of GT ES ed, or even programs for ES advanced learners going beyond the limiting differentiated learning within the classroom model.  Even most Cluster and Maury PTA parents reject them for now. [/quote][/b][/b]

Why is that?[/quote]  Brent PTA parent here.  The Hill is still brimming with white arch liberals who buy into the concept that elitism in schools in the form of programs for advanced learners, beyond mild differentiation in the classroom, is philosophically offensive and unnecessary.  Also, they prioritize other PTA projects at schools, like building good libraries and playgrounds, and changing out weak principals and teachers.

The irony is that these folks, not the most practical of people, have a strong tendency to go into reactive mode somewhere between 1st and 3rd grade.  They tend to leave the system once they realize that not only are their kids aren't challenged, they're spending a lot of time on test prep/testing from which they don't benefit, and teachers are focued on crowd control, dealing with disruptive low-SES kids (it only takes a handful to monopolize an educator's time/attention).  Other, less liberal parents, generally white, don't want the hassle of being accused of racism in asking for special treatment for their advanced learners.  The fallout from Brent's push, in 2009-2010, to add middle school grades on a temporary basis brought a flood of criticism in this vein, a draining experience for those of us involved.  Many of these parents simply try DCPS from year to year, expecting to hit the wall before middle school, so aren't motivated to lobby for systemic change, yeoman's work in a city where public schools haven't served a large middle-class cohort in decades.

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I don't think so.  It goes completely against the grain of what I have heard from virtually every Hill parent - virtually every parent from the Hill that I talk to DOES want change, DOES want differentiation, G&T and so on - regardless of race - and in fact, the race issue never even enters the conversation.  [/quote]

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