Reply to New Ward 3 Middle School ???

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There is a legitimate debate about how best to address this mismatch. Do you build more of the schools that everyone wants -- charters and Ward 3 schools? This seems silly when there are so many empty ones. Or do you try to make people want the schools that exist? Sounds reasonable, but how exactly do you do that?

You bribe the best teachers from Ward 3 to teach at the worst schools. You double their salaries and give them curricular freedom for 5 years. You set up community trusts so that neighborhood efforts to improve facilities are matched by government money. You make everything transparent.

I don't think it is even this easy.   Part of the reason you have so many kids coming from the Eastern part of the city to the Western part is that these schools are deeply segregated.  Mostly reflecting the residential patterns of the city.  [/quote]

Not even a bribe could make the best ward 3 teacher into the best ward 7 or 8 teacher.  Parental involvement and the readiness and interest of the kids being taught have a lot to do with teachers' success, as any good teacher knows (but can't say aloud under DCs school reform movement).[/quote]

A lot of the teachers Rhee fired had deep roots in these wards--grandma types who would call kids out on their behavior and stop their mammas in the street.  When basic security in schools is an issue, that's no joke.  I'm fine with bringing in young blood, great PD, and gradual systemic improvements-but I think Rhee made a horrible move in her mass firing of anyone who wasn't a blinking newborm TFA.  Kind of like de-Baathification.  She just didn't get the reality on the ground and how to partner up to improve, while simultaneously introducing improvement.  My two cents.[/quote]

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