Reply to Extended year for 11 schools. Is this a pilot for the rest of the schools?

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[quote=Anonymous]What the children need is a teacher who is not stressed out, not burned out, and has time to take professional development workshops, attend conferences, update license requirements, and simply breathe and enjoy life without having to worry about what DCPS will come up with next to make life miserable. Summer school is an alternative but DCPS has decided that fresh out of school kids with out teaching experience are best suited to teach the kids who qualify for summer school. As the PP said, fix the problems that already exist before creating new initiatives.

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DCPS is desperate. They are trying anything and everything except the obvious...the inclusion classrooms DON'T WORK! It's a stupid idea. Take the really at risk kids and give them the services they need so that everyone, including at risk kids can get the damned education that they deserve!

We don't need an extended school year. We need a system that works instead of this sad veneer of success over a rotten infrastructure. [/quote]

They are following the model that's been successfully done at charters with similar populations (DC Prep and Kipp, to name a couple).

Also I think you need to look up what inclusion means - it has NOTHING to do with at-risk kids. [/quote]

Not the PP but I disagree with this post.

In DCPS most of the inclusion students are indeed at-risk and they severely compromise everyone else's education. Many bring horrible, anti-sociable behaviors into the class with them.

And while the extended year model may have been done with similar populations, I'm willing to bet those students don't exhibit behaviors similar to those in DCPS. If they did, they'd be OUT!!!! I suspect there's more family support and administrative support for classroom teachers as well. They truly want to educate students and create an atmosphere in order for that to happen. All DCPS does is blame teachers for every bad behavior a student exhibits. Teachers were just told during a meeting at one school on Thursday that the reason the students come to class and cuss them out and challenge them to fight is.... :shock:  Of course, teachers in that particular room had been cussed out and invited to rumble by the students. But were the students punished? No, because according to DCPS lore, it's the teachers' fault. Forgot the fact that these were new teachers (the turnover is serious) and those same kids had been behaving that way long before these teachers arrived. I can't imagine those successful charters would allow that type of behavior, much less justify it.

Soooooooo

An extended year in a DCPS school will mean more fights, more anti-sociable behaviors and more failing and/or passing kids along who won't be able to write a paragraph once they've graduated. [/quote]

Are you the DCPS teacher who posted earlier, or another DCPS teacher? I wonder what skin you have in the game. It sounds like you are a DCPS teacher at a school that will have extended year next year, so I'd imagine that you are familiar with the summer learning loss, which affects students from all income levels if they do not read over the summer holiday but affects low income students more profoundly than their middle- or high-income peers. Summer is a hard time for low income parents because camp is expensive, particularly in this area. While summer holiday sounds like an idyllic enrichment time of swimming and family time, for a lot of kids in DC, that isn't what happens. Some go to day camp where they may do art projects and go to parks, but many will stay home by themselves or with an older relative or friend, unsupervised.

Based on your description, it sounds like you consider summer to be a time when you get a break from your students. What about what the students need?[/quote][/quote]

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