Reply to DC's School Report Cards are up. Any surprises?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Look nobody on here cares about the bottom charters.  They are not the ones people DCUM are even considering, just like they don’t consider the bottom DCPS schools either.

It’s pretty pointless to make a sweeping statement about how one is overall better than the other and that can also be arguable.  No parent is going to be looking at that lens.  Instead, families on here are looking at what is the best school for their kid.  And that is school specific not a whole system.

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We should all care about the bottom charters because they are serving children so poorly. With public funds comes public accountability. Millions is being spent on schools that accomplish little, and are passed along by the PCSB with extensions and discretion and &quot;flexibility&quot; to avoid political blowback and embarrassment, until they collapse of their own accord. Those students could be educated better, or at least not worse and more cost-effectively, at the many better-performing charters and DCPS, and the system as a whole would function better if funds were not devoted to propping up failing schools.

The fundamental concept of charter schools is that sustained low performance = closure. When charter schools do well, it's a &quot;movement&quot;. When they do poorly, it's &quot;let's not talk about it&quot;. Success has many fathers but failure is an orphan, as the saying goes.[/quote]

Ok, but a lot of those schools are tiny. Let's talk about schools like Roosevelt High School, a school that's been around for nearly 100 years, which has 1000 students, and which[b] the city has spend a quarter *billion* dollars renovating[/b], and still almost no one there is at grade level on anything. [/quote]

Am i the only one who feels the renovation obssession is kind of insane? Is this just Bowser keeping real estate people happy? It's farcical how much money is spent on renovating these schools that are failing to teach kids. While the two schools with the best college outcomes in the city (Walls and BASIS) have the two worst building (proving that academic success is not related to facility quality).[/quote]
You have not been to SE schools, some of them are very bad. And of course some in other areas. Walls is nothing.[/quote]

Oh you mean like Ballou High School? Which is so off-the-charts fancy that it's featured on an engineering web site? And yet somehow is one of the very worst schools in the city?

https://skaengineers.com/projects/ballou-senior-high-school/

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NP but it’s not about claiming a nice building magically makes test scores drastically improve.  A nice building doesn’t undo the complex things going on in neighborhoods and in kids’ homes.  But kids deserve to not go to a school that feels like a prison (which some HSs did feel like before renovation), has mold/lead/mice, and has up to date resources and technology.  Did you ever step foot in Dunbar before the renovation?  It was an awful building.[/quote]

My kid was in a swim event at Ballou. While we were walking in on backside a full on gun battle took place just up the street. Had a clear view of it. The Ballou security guard came out and told us to hurry up and get in building. When we left a few hours later I inquired as to the result of police activity. The front desk employee told me they didn't think they police came and they didn't call because unless there's dead or hurt people it is a waste of effort.

How nice does a building have to be for parents with ANY options to get their kids away from a school that faces daily gun violence? Heavens to Betsy, Walls doesn't have a gym and BASIS doesn't have a library. So I guess Ballou is a better choice with its 14% ELA proficiency, &lt;1% Math and &lt;1% Science proficiency?

These discussions on DCUM are illustrative of the reason these conversations are so dumb. You aren't debating the same things or talking about the same kids or system. You think someone who is IB for Ballou who has a kid at BASIS cares there's no gym? Or that it is a primary concern? You think they lament that their kid has no theater at Walls? You think someone who live near Ballou is choosing Ballou's football field over Sidwell?  [/quote]

What?

BASIS is a charter school. DCPS is not in charge of their facilities. If BASIS wants a library, go get one.

You do understand there are families who live in the Ballou catchment and DCPS is required by law to provide them with a HS, right? And their old HS was falling apart so they replaced it with a new school and the new school is nice because there is no reason not to build a nice school for kids IB for Ballou. Did you expect them to cheap out because the neighborhood has a lot of poverty and crime? Oh those kids are used to crappy things so why give them a nice school?

And yes, parents and students IB for Ballou have to make the choice of whether to try to get into schools like BASIS or Walls or stay at Ballou. But even if you lottery for charters and apply for application schools, you might not get in, and then what? You go to your IB.

It's like you can't conceptualize that not everyone has the same choices as you because you don't understand that not everyone has your resources. Where did you go to school? Because they didn't do a good job and you missed some key information about the world. [/quote]

+1000[/quote]

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