Reply to New Jackson-Reed HS (Wilson HS) School Principal

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "New Jackson-Reed HS (Wilson HS) School Principal - Sah Brown from Eastern High School"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]That principal?!

We live on Capitol Hill. My spouse and I met with Brown when when we were looking into the IB Diploma program at Eastern for our oldest in early 2020, before the pandemic began.

Brown seemed clueless about what it would take to attract high SES in-boundary families like ours to Eastern, without any real interest in doing so. He claimed that the program offered "real rigor and challenge to all" repeatedly, and wouldn't answer our questions about Eastern's average IBD points totals. He also wouldn't talk about how many of the "full Diploma" students at Eastern actually earn the Diploma.

Later on, we learned that Eastern's average points total has been mired in the mid 20s, on a 24-45 points pass scale, since the program's inception a decade ago. We also learned that most of the Eastern students who try to earn the Diploma have failed since the get go. We left the meeting unimpressed with Brown and Eastern's IBD program and didn't enroll our child.
[/quote]

So, let me get this right. You walked into this man’s office with your white hood on, took it off, handed it to him and asked him to put it on. He rebuffed your offer and you decided you didn’t like him. Eastern HS kids test poorly due to various reasons (poverty, trauma, inequality, etc). He does not have to explain any of that to you. Your child could have obtained a good education there, but your classism and racism prevented you from entertaining the thought of your child in that school.[/quote]

In the last year pre-covid, the majority of Eastern students were chronically truant. They were not in school. It's really hard to learn the material when you're not in school. Also, the vast majority of in boundary kids choose not to go there. These are not mostly rich white kids. You actually can't obtain a good education anywhere, and a school with abysmal tests scores, high truancy, and where most kids opt not to go there is exactly the school where you can't. [/quote]

I think your summary is accurate. What I love is DCUM somehow believing that the Principal is responsible for those systemic and societal failures. If only he concentrated on the IB program all those truant, food insecure and years-behind grade level students would be transformed![/quote]

DCPS, and thus the principal, is responsible. Kids should not get to hs years behind. DCPS has been resorting for years to gimmicks to make itself snd schools look good on paper, hiding problems (and kids) under the rug. Kids who do well do well, kids who do not well they fudge the numbers and send the kids ahead and then give them a fake diploma. So you remember the Ballou scandal, all the fanfare about the 100% class graduating snd going to college? Then it came out that kids had graduated with 4 month of absences and teachers admitted that some graduating kids were actually illiterate, unable to read and write. But the former chancellor Henderson patted herself on her back for the “success” in improving kids’ education snd went off to a $$$$$$ job in some billionaire’s foundation, all in the back of the kids who were now illiterate adults.

And the principal is not serving thr community. The prior poster may be a high Ses white person gentrifying the area but she was IB for thr school. My kid is at JR and her best friend is a Black kid who is IB for Eastern. Washingtonian for generations, working class-lower middle class family, kid travels every morning to JR where she got a spot as OOB. So a middle class AA kid deeply rooted in the community was also not served by her IB school.

My concern is that DCPS does not care about kids, needs to show improvements in education of disadvantage kids and resort to tricks to make look as if their education is improving when it is not. We have been a JR-Wilson for three years and saw that even in s high performing school: basic classes called “honor” (my kid totally sucks at math-science, really does not understand it, and suddenly at Wilson’s “honor” classes she was a stellar student), AP classes canceled because not enough disadvantage students had signed up (AP World History in sophomore year), attempt to make all English classes AP last year (“AP for all”) because again not enough disadvantage students had signed up for AP classes so the trick was to cancel the regular class snd put all the students in the AP English class. Clearly school under principal Martin (same person who signed the news release about the new principal) could not care less to explain how kids below grade level in English (and there are at JR) would fare in an AP class. The project was scrapped by dcps eventually but the fact that it was thought in the first place tells you everything. The poster above seems to suggest that the new principal is in the same dcps mold, paper over the problem and promote a program that does not work as one that work and that’s it. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics