Reply to DC Public and charter - is there interest in year round school?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"When 75% of students are low-income and at risk, the school district needs to adjust to meet and prioritize their needs . Otherwise you are just perpetuating the gaps between rich and poor students."

So we ignore the needs of the smartest and highest-achieving kids who have the abilities to do great things for our city/country?

No, research shows that these kids do NOT do okay when their needs are ignored. In fact, a lot of them end up underachieving and, yes, in jail. (10% of the jail population is gifted, compared to 2-3% of the total population.) [/quote]

Please. Show me how anyone is "ignoring the needs of the smartest and highest-achieving kids." Your post assumes that the 75% of students who are low-income and at-risk are not smart or high achieving and lack the abilities to do great things for our city/country. Why do you assume that there are not kids in that 75% who will benefit from and be able to realize their high achieving status via an extended school year?

I think you sound pretty out of touch with the educational and social needs of a lot of children in this city. I don't doubt that extended year will be resisted in upper NW and the parts of the Hill that are populated by high income families, though I do think that the Hill families may be better acquainted with the needs of at-risk students since there are at-risk students in Hill schools. I don't think you need to worry about your kid missing out on underwater basket-weaving or whatever summer enrichment options the high SES kids are taking advantage of.

I think that a lot of people on this thread are operating in a very different reality than the parents of many kids whose schools are participating in this program. For starters, it sounds like many of you have the option to take weeks-long vacations at least once per summer. If you're talking about any kind of "enriching travel" you have the means to take enriching vacations, including paying for transportation to whatever enriching place and taking the time off work to travel. You are probably taking a paid vacation, which assumes that you work in a position where that's a benefit you have. If you're not taking vacations, and are prioritizing spending quality time with your kids over the summer, it sounds like you are either a stay at home parent or a person who is able to work from home. If you're the SAHP, you probably have a high-earning spouse and your family is solvent on one income.

That isn't true for the vast majority of parents at the schools where the program exists right now, so please spare us the concern about those poor neglected wealthy children and their potential to affect the future being compromised because of an extra 20 school days.[/quote]

Not PP, but no-one on this thread is disputing that behind-grade-level students do better with more school days per year, and it's obvious that not everyone can afford the proverbial Florence museum vacation. But these facts are an argument for more school days for behind-grade-level students. They are not an argument in favor of extended year versus mandatory summer school for students who need it. Can you explain why extended year for all students is superior to summer school targeted at students who need it?

You or someone else mentioned that the 10 or so schools with extended year are Title I and this is true, in fact most or all are in the "priority 40" schools, the worst performing schools in DC. But this looks like a pilot and I think DCPS is even using the word "pilot" so many parents are looking ahead and anticipating a DCPS move to expand this rapidly, possibly to their school.

Also, someone up thread seemed to suggest that the extended year schools are using the extra days to visit museums, not do classwork. Is that true?

[/quote]

I'm the PP. I also posted earlier in the thread that my child goes to one of these schools and was the person who mentioned that the teachers I've spoken with are excited to add more field trips and more expeditionary learning-type projects. We started school the 2nd week of August, and I have noticed that my child's grade has done a lot more "walking field trips" this fall, which takes them out of the classroom, gets them moving, and definitely augments that shamefully limited recess that DCPS allows for. It also seems to have allowed her teacher to do more individualized instruction, which has been helpful in that students who are reading above grade level are not forgotten while the teacher spends extra time on the kids who are struggling. The expeditionary learning stuff seems to be taking the form of "enrichment clusters" for everyone, and there are field trips built into that. My child is in a baking cluster right now, which means they are baking in school and will be visiting some local bakeries to learn about baking as well. I'm not sure how long this one will last, but after that, there will be another one, with another subject. I went to a school that integrated this kind of learning, and it was really wonderful.

I don't know that "pilot" means that this model will be moving to the whole system. I don't know that it will work in the whole system. Certainly schools in upper NW do not have a problem providing enrichment for kids during the 180-day school year and those families have the means as well as the inclination to "prioritize summer" in the ways that a lot of posters are saying that they do. As for the argument that there should be mandatory summer school for kids who need it instead of extended year, I don't know that I agree with that. For me, the extended school year is as much about community as it is about instruction, which is why I think it's great that they're doing additional field trips and projects. I went to summer school one year, and it wasn't like "school" so much as "boot camp." Having the year-round model at schools where MOST of the kids need the additional instruction allows that instruction to happen in a less boot-campy way. They are still doing specials. They are still doing field trips. They are still doing regular classroom stuff and if that is "classwork" sometimes, that is fine with me. Summer school seems like a really great way for it to be classwork all the time, which doesn't seem like a good way to foster a love of learning.

I also think that it's reasonable to keep in mind that the kids who attend these schools aren't getting enriching summer experiences. I don't know what attendance at DCPS's summer school is like, but if the teacher up thread is any indication, it's nothing like what we have going on, which involves kids staying with their cohort, continuing to learn as they have done all year. I personally find this better, but as I mentioned earlier also, it's 2.5 months into the year for us. I can say that fall break was good in that we were able to travel and there was camp at school for people who didn't/couldn't take the week off. I don't know that we'll be doing that for all the breaks, but it is definitely something that the school is discussing.[/quote]

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