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DC Public and Public Charter Schools
Reply to "Not Ward 3 - What changes are you looking for so that you would want to attend local school"
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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Here's my list. Just two points. 1. Teaching at grade level. Currently Kramer MS (my IB) teaches below grade level. You can achieve teaching at grade level only if you: a) do not promote to next level kids who do not show basic level skills at the end of the year. This would turn in keeping in current level about 25% of kids each year on average. b) introduce a two-level teaching at least for Math and English (Math and test-in advanced Math/ English and test-in advanced English) 2. Enhanced security. Full-time professional security officer on duty. Camcorders in main common areas and lockers. Parent IB for Kramer MS[/quote] Please read again my message (above) if you are truly interested in the topic of this thread. Not only did I state what we want, but also said measure that parents of proficient students in Ward 8 have identified are requested since so many years... For political reasons, and against good sense and teaching/learning basic principles, DCPS has never supported or introduced the measures I mentioned a) & b). Teachers are often intimidated by parents (and sometimes kids in HS) and just let them move to next grade level to avoid confrontation. DCPS introduced DC-CAS but has never enforced the common sense principle that all kids "below basic" in, let's say English and Math, should not move up to the next grade. Decision is delegated to teachers and Principals, who have little incentives to get kids to repeat the school year (they do not want to confront the parents; they do not want to keep in the school for more than the due years the lower performing kids -- who are often disruptive too) . DCPS should get rid of political conditioning and take a stand on this matter: "Below basic" students (in Math & English) should not be allowed to move up to the next grade. Since they are instead allowed to move up, in schools like Kramer where the "Below basic" are about 25% of the student population, the consequence is only one: the following year class will teach below grade level. The good and proficient students are unprotected in our schools. "Below basic" are allowed to progress to the next level. At the same time, honor advanced separate classes for proficient/advanced students are not introduced... Hope this helps to understand what we (my partner and I; the parents of proficient kids from my neighborhood) think: we either want DCPS to take a stand against the malpractice of allowing "Below basic" students to progress; or we want advanced/honor separate classes for our proficient kids. [/quote] If below basic kids aren't passed, it eventually affects the graduation rate and DPS cares more about appearances than about educating children -- that was obvious in the cheating scandal. DCPS is obviously doing a poor job of educating students wherever they fall along the proficiency scale. they deny the importance of the role of parents, but somehow only manage to educate the children of parents engaged in their kids education.[/quote] You know I don't think DCPS dismisses parents and I don't think they are all about appearances, lots of pressure yes, but not everyone is a cynical manipulator out there. That said, they have to work with what they have and many parents for many reasons can't contribute enough to their child's educational needs. Given that is a reality for a certain cohort other strategies need to be employed. However, my feeling in DC is that there is a bubble group of kids quite smart and capable of doing more rigorous work that do not because there is so much focus on the cohort in crisis. There are tremendous demands placed on both the school administration and teachers in these circumstances. This is why I like Cantania's focus on redirecting needs. That said ideally there would be smaller number of these type of schools in crisis and more where there is solid performance. Yes it is lovely to have a schools scoring at 90% on test like the DC Cas, but you have to wonder if they are teaching that or parents are providing that through extras. If DC had more solid 75% schools we would not have this boundary crisis because many of us would quit driving across town and help build these type of schools. The problem is that we have a few 80-90 % schools and a lot of 30% and below schools. [/quote]
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