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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

How to make them successful, screen out all the low-performing kids and those with troubling behaviors. I mean how students with ankle bracelets do you see at Charter schools, or other extreme behavioral issues. Go into any DCPS school that is low-performing and you see an abundance along with a huge population of low-literate students. Go to any large DCPS non-application high school during lunch-time and before a holiday. There a lot police on standby, does that happen at a Charter. It's the kids STUPID!!!![/quote]

I agree with your premise, but not your conclusion. To the extent charter schools are more successful than DCPS, it is at least partly because they can choose the "best" kids. Kids are only in charter schools if their parents have enough time/literacy/attention to enter them in the lottery in the first place, which means that low-performing DCPSs are stuck with the kids with the least involved/educated parents.

Also, charter schools have much more flexibility about expelling/counseling out kids with low test scores/poor behavior, meaning that DCPS is stuck with them: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/dc-schools-insider/post/charter-schools-suspend-expel-students-at-widely-varying-rates/2012/09/21/8b72ffa0-03f2-11e2-91e7-2962c74e7738_blog.html[/quote]

All of you, please then explain the success of a school model like Appletree.  My kid is only in K, so she's not done the rest of elementary or beyond yet, but a classroom at Appletree may be more economically and racially diverse than some of the most underperforming charters, but after being there for 2 yrs and also after having taught Elementary school in the past, I can tell you that the majority of kids in any given class are absolutely the same types of kids at the lowest performing schools in DC.  I've been around the kids... I've met their parents... and Appletree does not expel or get rid of the "bad kids".

I know it's only PS and PK, but there is a DIFFERENCE in how they handle things.  Both yeas I saw amazing changes in the most off the chain kids, how they behaved, what they knew... that model works.

And who do you think goes to Kipp schools??  Even if Kipp does kick out some kids (and I don't know that they do, I've just heard people assume they do).  But have you ever been in a Kipp school?  It is almost ALL the same kids.  And yet they have dramatically better behavioral and academic outcomes.  Do the kids end up looking like Sidwell kids?  Of course not.  But what is awful about how you're all talking about this is as if some charters (and some creative DCPS as well!) are not making a difference.

If a school consistently shows that kids from the group you're all talking about actually do better... consistently... who are you to dismiss whatever they're doing differently as not worth doing at all?[/quote]

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