Reply to OK. I'm game, what's so bad about Peabody/Watkins?

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Reply to "OK. I'm game, what's so bad about Peabody/Watkins?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]Why not? The Brent and Maury PTAs have knocked themsleves out to reinvent their schools as institutions where upper-middle-class families are comfortable first and foremost, while Watkins hasn't kept up with the times. Brent now has a mostly white teaching staff and student body in a mostly white neighborhood. Watkins has a largely AA teaching staff in a mostly white neighborhood. Brent and Maury spend PTA money to hire aides to provide pullout differentiation. To my knowledge, Watkins doesn't. In-class differentiation is half-assed by comparision.

Brent no longer forces students to do structured DC-CAS test prep because the princpal won't play ball with DCPS on that score. What's the point when the school is mostly white, and white kids mostly score advanced? Watkins still does it. And Brent and Maury look a lot better outside than they did around 2005, while Watkins looks worse to me. 
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Total BS.  Watkins staff is very evenly mixed in terms of race, gender, age, etc.  Lots of (good) changes in recent years.  For the record, my child has only had white teachers, a data point that's not particularly instructive.  The new Cluster principal deserves HUGE credit for moving out a number of bad apples who somehow evaded firing for years.  Recent turnover has been all to the good.  There are still a few duds left, but i can absolutely picture a path forward through 5th for my kid with nothing but excellent teachers.

All 1st grade classes have fulltime PTA-funded aides who facilitate all kinds of differentiated small group pull-out learning.  The upper grades (2-5) are very strongly tracked -- new this year! -- with hours-long daily pull-out blocks grouped by ability.  The Cluster PTA has pushed hard on differentiation and challenge for advanced learners.  It may be a bitter pill to swallow if you're bent on tearing down your neighbors, but Brent and Maury don't actually have a monopoly on differentiation (or high-achieving white kids, if that's your primary metric for school quality).  I have lots of friends at both schools and prefer to see us all moving forward together than ripping each other apart.

Oh, and Watkins is in line for modernization next year.  We'll have the same DCPS makeover Maury and Brent already had, which will nicely blend the school building with our already fabulous playground, athletic fields, and award-winning gardens.  There are lots of areas needing real improvement I would gladly point you to at Watkins but exterior cosmetics is not high among them.

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