Reply to What does PreK Look Like in DCPS?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What a fancy essay you have written here.

Some kids read at 3 regardless of their school's approach and school quality. Some kids wouldn't at even the best school regardless of the approach.

DCPS schools have a choice of certain curricula. Is there a particular curriculum you dislike? You seem to have confused "play-based" instruction with free play recess. They aren't the same thing and aren't intended to be. I doubt anyone is giving lectures to 3 year olds.[/quote]

No, I have equated it to play. Free-play meaning child-directed and teacher supported. Building Blocks Math is a curriculum all PK teachers must use.

And funny, the research definitely does not show it’s ‘just PK.’
And we are also looking at privates, being a private pre-k does not automatically make it a good school.

I will ask teachers, so far it seems other parents equate Pre-K to glorified babysitting…

Not, high strung I’m simply curious what schools look like. Especially as a newer Black mom, in a city mostly failing Black children.[/quote]

I completely get it... and I wish this weren't anonymous and there was some way for me to reach out to you directly. It was really disheartening looking at schools for my [Black] child and realizing that there are basically two (maybe three? I'm looking at you, Whittier. Lol.) elementary schools in DC that I would be comfortable sending my kid to long-term... and things don't look much better w/r/t equity in MoCo, PG, Arlington, or Fairfax. (Note to anyone who infers from my writing that I am educated and who wants to tell me that this is all a class issue and my high SES kid will be academically successful at a school where most Black kids are not doing well and that their [relative] wealth will insulate them, that's not how it works... if most kids who look like them at their school are performing far below grade level, they will be assumed to be low-performing by other kids and teachers, and that's a crappy situation to be in, to spend your time when you should be focused on learning having to prove that you are not low performing and to have to potentially distance yourself from the kids who look like you in order to do so.)

Most of the DCPS schools I visited do a lot of explicit, scripted phonics instruction starting in PK3 that has kids sitting at desks staring at a teacher writing on the whiteboard... which isn't developmentally appropriate and not what we were looking for. (We do want explicit letter recognition and phonics instruction, just not through that method.) Because we did not win the lottery last year, my kid ended up at our top-choice realistic (lottery-wise) school, Dorothy Height in Petworth, and we have been very happy with it... our only real complaint is that my kid hates having to wear a uniform color and it causes our family regular morning angst. Lol. My kid is [i]thriving[/i] there in a very small class (11 kids) with a lead teacher with 25 years of PK3 experience (plus a full-time assistant teacher with 6 years of PK3 experience) and a Reggio Emilia play-based instructional methodology...other DCPS schools seem to use the Creative Curriculum instead. The Dorothy Height PK program is extremely diverse in all sorts of ways (especially racially and w/r/t SES) that are not currently reflected in the upper grades there. I don't know whether we will keep my kid there for all of elementary school... it largely depends on whether the other middle-class families choose to keep their kids there past PK and how the school is doing academically as a result of those choices. That typically doesn't happen because Dorothy Height doesn't have an inbound area and most of the middle class families move their kids to their bilingual inbound (Powell or Bruce Monroe) when they are guaranteed a seat in K, or to a bilingual charter, if they lottery into one. I'm wondering though whether more middle class families may stay now that the school is housed in a beautiful new building and has a good middle class school vibe... tbd.  [/quote]

I might be out-of-date, but I was impressed when I was at Whittier how the staff body had a large number of experienced black teachers (and not Teach for America grads). (I left because of DC cost-of-living, even though the school culture was strong).

Anyway, I’m not in the DMV now, but it doesn’t seem to me Creative Curriculum is necessarily anti-play. Our PK3s have plenty of free-play time, with circle time and a brief craft the only real sit down activities (and circle time is very movement-based). I will say the level of structure varies depending on the teacher though. [/quote]

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