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

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My magnet high school was an IB school growing up, and it helped me get in a great college and grad school. I’m not OP, there are more than one family on the Hill that rose above generational poverty.

My point is that I also met Principal Brown at my local ANC. We were very interested in Eastern’s IB program. Principal Brown believes himself to be a “transformational education leader” by the way. He touted some vague parcc ELA increase at eastern, but couldn’t answer basic questions about the IB program at eastern. I did a lot of research and also visited dci where they answered these questions easily. There is something to be said about someone who refuses to answer basic questions. We also opted not to attend eastern, simply because the academics are weak, and there is a serious problem with lack of rigor. I don’t know how that means I’m racist, but I think my brown kids deserve a good education as well.  I think all kids in dc deserve a great education! But I do not for a second think you’ll find that at Eastern High. I think that principal Brown isn’t to blame for all the problems at Eastern, but I certainly think he did little to nothing to remediate them. He also did little to nothing to attract inbound families to the school. Fwiw charter schools do a lot to attract parents, and I think quite often this benefits the charter. No one is saying entitled white parents get to run the show, but I do think a certain amount of parent buy-in is vital. And Brown gave no indication to me that he was interested in improving anything outside of his own resume. Good luck to JR Families. [/quote]

To me, the issue is not with families that intend to use the public (DCPS or charter) schools asking hard questions of principals or teachers.  God knows, my partner and I did plenty of that in 18 years of having a kid in DCPS.

The issue, to me, is all of the posters who DON'T use the schools but seem to believe that the highest and best aim of DCPS should be implementing one hare-brained scheme after another to chase the dream of maybe, possibly attracting UMC kids instead of focusing on educating the kids who actually show up at the school every day.  Urban school districts all over the country are doing this with immersion programs and all sorts of other specialized programs, some of which seem like odd, fleeting fads, and none of which are clearly improving the lives of the kids in those schools.

It's also insane and infuriating to me that UMC people on DCUM constantly post about how gentrification is great because it "improves the schools" -- by which they seem to mean it raises the average test scores for tests taken by whatever kids happen to be in the building when the test is administered.  It's like they think the building is what matters, not the kids.  They don't seem to care that improved results come by changing the kids who go to the school -- pushing out poor minority kids and replacing them with wealthy white kids.  To me, that's not improving the schools.

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DP:  Research says that gains for high needs students are greatest in integrated schools that are *minority* high needs, like schools with 70% or more grade-level students.  It’s in everyone’s interest for the high SES students to attend. [/quote]

This is exactly right. If you know anything about teaching and education, you would realize it is very difficult to succeed without a mix of kids. It is best for everyone to have inboundary students along with the out of boundary kids. Kids from Ward 8 who attend Eastern would most likely prefer a stronger more vibrant Eastern HS. The school is underenrolled. More students would mean more $$, more sports and clubs, more course offerings. The principal is being short sighted by not making an effort to attract in boundary students [/quote]

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