Reply to Explain to Me How You Fund and Staff a Deal for All-in-Development

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Reply to "Explain to Me How You Fund and Staff a Deal for All-in-Development"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Omg.  The choice of metric is not what makes it expensive!.  Listen to what people are telling you.  Five classrooms=better but expensive, politically difficult, comes with scheduling tradeoffs..  Four classrooms=not much better academically, politically doable but not great, and still comes with some scheduling tradeoffs.  The four classroom model is being done at some schools now, but guess what?  It isn't much better, and people are not much happier.[/quote]

OK, I'm really trying to understand you here.  I'm setting aside for a moment the politics and scheduling to avoid muddying the waters.  You're saying a school with 4 classes of 25, 25, 25, 25 will not have much improvement in outcomes if those classes are differentiated vs randomly sorted.  (And I guess you don't like my 30, 25, 25, 20 alternative either.)  But you're saying that same school would show marked improvement for all students if you have 5 classed of 17, 25, 25, 25, 17.  Is that what you're saying?

You're going to have to point me to some research or something to back that up.  I don't see how that shift of just 8 students from the top and the bottom classes will make a huge difference.  I suppose smaller class sizes are always nice, so those two 17-student classrooms would get some benefit.  But whatever benefit they get costs a lot extra.  And there's zero benefit for the 3 classes that remain at 25 students.

I guess we come back to a "gifted" program.  If what parents really want is a "gifted program" with extra benefits (like a small class size) for the gifted students, then I agree that's a non-starter for DCPS.  Not only will a gifted program face the "optics" of a largely white/Asian gifted class at the top, but everyone will be seeing those white/Asian gifted students getting the extra benefit of more resources.  We can agree there's no way that gets approved.

If you're right the the four-classroom model has no meaningful benefits, and only extra costs of moderate political headwinds + moderate scheduling conflicts, then maybe it's not worth the effort.  But I'd like to see your evidence that there are no meaningful benefits.

I hear you saying it's being done at some schools, but I also hear other posters saying it's not.  Maybe someone with first-hand knowledge can clearly spell out what is and isn't done right now.[/quote]

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