Reply to Did the Takoma MS magnet got MORE white this year?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Did the Takoma MS magnet got MORE white this year?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]After reading this I'm convinced the best way to close the achievement gap isn't through educational reform but by requiring parenting classes for parents of low performing students.[/quote]

What would you "teach" those parents?

Lesson 1) Be born in the United States as a native English speaker

Lesson 2) Have more money

Lesson 3) Have more time

Lesson 4) ...........?[/quote]

Seriously. How you could possibly come to that conclusion from these posts is beyond me. [/quote]

Maybe the poster was thinking of the model of the Harlem Children's Zone, which includes wrap-around services and parenting classes that start when parents are first expecting.  I think they've had some success, but it's expensive, and they have private donors.  And this model shouldn't be mandatory, but perhaps incentivized.

https://hcz.org/[/quote]

Something like this is worth exploring. I don't see how public school can address these problems in isolation.[/quote]

Then what you need isn't parenting classes, which is an offensive suggestion. What you need is wrap-around services, which is enormously expensive. For that to work, you would need every high needs elementary school to have:

* A dedicated psychologist
* A dedicated social worker to handle overflow from the psychologist AND to help folks access services
* A stand-alone food bank
* A medical clinic and maybe monthly dental clinic

All of this needs to be at the school, to make the school the center of the community and services.

That's a lot. It works, but it costs a lot and takes up a lot of real estate in the school. [/quote]

Yep. I used to work at a non-profit that provided evening workshops for parents at failing schools (and by failing, I mean designated as failing by the test scores) in DCPS. The workshops weren't about how to parent--that would've been offensive to the communities there--but rather were about how the parents can advocate for their children's needs. They all desperately wanted to help their kids (despite what DCUM thinks, the vast majority of people want what's best for their kids) but they just didn't understand how the system works.

We covered topics like how to establish a relationship with your child's teacher at the beginning of the year, what it means that your school is designated as failing, how to navigate the charter school lottery (which they ALL wanted to know about), etc.

Because these were high poverty areas where most parents didn't have childcare available, we always provided dinner and activities for the kids while the parents were in the workshop. We also let the kids pick out 2 books to bring home.

The idea was to empower the parents. The organization was on a shoestring budget and it was a pain to get the schools to agree to host us, but parents were desperate for the information we provided to them. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics