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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here's a draft for everyone work from.

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The Petworth Latin Academy @Roosevelt: A Test-In Magnet School

The Petworth Latin Academy offers a classical liberal arts curriculum with an emphasis on the classics and Latin language instruction. Instruction emphasizes core knowledge of the liberal arts that students will use as the basis for further, more detailed exploration. All students are required to adhere to a core curriculum, with four years of Latin, history, mathematics, English, science, and at least two years of a World Language. In all classes, students can expect a strong - and continuing - emphasis on structured writing and public speaking, as well as an overarching practice of the kind of analytical thinking that will ensure that all PLA@R students are prepared for the rigors of college work.

Our curriculum largely stresses the learning of valuable skills as well as the acquisition of content. In all humanities classes, students can expect a strong emphasis on writing, Socratic Seminars and public speaking exercises (declamation). Non-humanities classes feature labs, math interviews and other inquiry-based methods.

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Sure, that would result in a great school, and it would work immediately, but DCPS would never go for it.  Why?  Because a school like that would suck a lot of high-performing kids out of the school system; and as soon as the magnet schools becomes successful, there would be a push to create additional magnet schools. The result would be a more extreme form of segregation in the school system, not necessarily between the races (although there would be an aspect of that), but between a very few high-proficiency schools and a lot of more horribly performing schools than we have now.

It's about time that we recognize that DCPS is treating our kids like commodities, rather than young people.  They see those test scores on a data sheet like dollars in a bankbook -- and they want to spread the test scores around.  If they created more magnet schools, those scores would be too concentrated in very few schools, while throughout the rest of the city, schools would grow even worse.[/quote]

Yes, this is how DCPS has always worked, but they have to know that the day of reckoning is coming. The neighborhood High Schools (ie Ballou) can still be respectable b/c there will be families that just don't want to commute.  They just need to figure out how to deal with the harder to educate kids and maybe the focus will help them get there.[/quote]

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