Reply to New York Times on the miracles of Universal Pre-K in DC

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Reply to "New York Times on the miracles of Universal Pre-K in DC"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I thought PS-3 is available at only a few schools. Our IB school doesn't offer a PS-3 class, so how can that be considered universal? It's not available to us.[/quote]

It's available at the majority of elementary schools in the city -- the schools in Ward 3 are an exception. If you want to take advantage of PS-3 but are IB for a school that doesn't offer it, you can enroll in the lottery and try to secure a spot at an OOB school that offers it -- and then switch your kid IB for PK-4 or K.

PS-3 was first introduced as Head Start, in schools serving lower-income students, which is why there are no PS-3 programs in Ward 3. I believe it's called "universal" b/c it's no longer means-tested.

I'm not sure there are actually enough spots available for every child in the city, but I know at the end of each lottery there are open PS-3 spots available at several schools.[/quote]

This is close, but not quite true.  What spurred DCPS to start providing pre-K 3 rather than "just" Pre-K 4 was the fact that charter schools such as Two Rivers were providing pre 
K-3.  As a parent, I pointed out to my Council Member (Tommy Wells)  that if DCPS wanted to actually survive in the competition with charter schools for students, under-enrolled DCPS schools should start providing pre-K 3.  Mr. Wells ran with the idea to the Chancellor, and the Chancellor embraced it and rather quickly started up the pre-K 3 programs at several Ward 6 DCPS schools.  The success at those "pilot" schools lead DCPS to steadily increase the number, focusing especially on under-enrolled schools.  Ward 3 schools were not included not so much because of the lack of Head Start in those schools, but because those schools have not faced an under-enrollment problem.   
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