Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:True that an adult immigrant who chooses to come here is different than a single teenaged mom who is seemingly stuck in generational poverty.

I think the point is that poverty does not have to equal educational failure.

As a society, wouldn't we all benefit by helping our fellow citizens out of poverty by offering guidance to help prioritize the care of children? Wouldn't that be a great place to start?

Through that, we'd be forced to look at all kinds of issues plaguing our city and therefore the care of our children: drug addiction, no job skills, illiteracy, violence, inadequate housing, poor nutrition, etc.

Come on, there has to be a shift in focus...to children.

Yes, looking at poverty would be a great place-- as well as the logical place -- to start. The current education leaders in DC would say that is exactly where they started. They just erred badly in believing that determined (but not necessarily trained) teachers are the one way out of of poverty. The deal was, because of the teachers' dedication and their fervent belief that all children can succeed, (irrespective of issues outside of school), the children's DC-CAS scores would rise very quickly to proficient and the problem would be solved.

These leaders are still in charge of education in DC. Why is that?

Because as misguided as some (though not all) may be, they're still light years beyond what existed before them.

Even if it were true, it's no reason to keep incompetents.

But it's not true. DC kids were improving slowly (score-wise) before reform and continue to improve slowly -- as a group -- while the achievement gap actually has widened during the reform years. Now the gap may be something Reformers can't address -- but they were sure they could and they didn't.

Also cheating was blatant and millions were spent on programs that put money into the pockets of consultants and have done nothing to improve education.

No, they were not. They were streaming out of the system for over 40 years, until DCPS finally made a comeback in 2009. Even then, the numbers only went up because of parents taking advantage of free PS/PK. As a system DCPS is being out-performed by charters, particularly with respect to the lowest SES students. What little performance boost DCPS exhibited has been exposed as test-cheating "Erasuregate."

You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:True that an adult immigrant who chooses to come here is different than a single teenaged mom who is seemingly stuck in generational poverty.

I think the point is that poverty does not have to equal educational failure.

As a society, wouldn't we all benefit by helping our fellow citizens out of poverty by offering guidance to help prioritize the care of children? Wouldn't that be a great place to start?

Through that, we'd be forced to look at all kinds of issues plaguing our city and therefore the care of our children: drug addiction, no job skills, illiteracy, violence, inadequate housing, poor nutrition, etc.

Come on, there has to be a shift in focus...to children.

Yes, looking at poverty would be a great place-- as well as the logical place -- to start. The current education leaders in DC would say that is exactly where they started. They just erred badly in believing that determined (but not necessarily trained) teachers are the one way out of of poverty. The deal was, because of the teachers' dedication and their fervent belief that all children can succeed, (irrespective of issues outside of school), the children's DC-CAS scores would rise very quickly to proficient and the problem would be solved.

These leaders are still in charge of education in DC. Why is that?

Because as misguided as some (though not all) may be, they're still light years beyond what existed before them.

Even if it were true, it's no reason to keep incompetents.

But it's not true. DC kids were improving slowly (score-wise) before reform and continue to improve slowly -- as a group -- while the achievement gap actually has widened during the reform years. Now the gap may be something Reformers can't address -- but they were sure they could and they didn't.

Also cheating was blatant and millions were spent on programs that put money into the pockets of consultants and have done nothing to improve education.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:True that an adult immigrant who chooses to come here is different than a single teenaged mom who is seemingly stuck in generational poverty.

I think the point is that poverty does not have to equal educational failure.

As a society, wouldn't we all benefit by helping our fellow citizens out of poverty by offering guidance to help prioritize the care of children? Wouldn't that be a great place to start?

Through that, we'd be forced to look at all kinds of issues plaguing our city and therefore the care of our children: drug addiction, no job skills, illiteracy, violence, inadequate housing, poor nutrition, etc.

Come on, there has to be a shift in focus...to children.

Yes, looking at poverty would be a great place-- as well as the logical place -- to start. The current education leaders in DC would say that is exactly where they started. They just erred badly in believing that determined (but not necessarily trained) teachers are the one way out of of poverty. The deal was, because of the teachers' dedication and their fervent belief that all children can succeed, (irrespective of issues outside of school), the children's DC-CAS scores would rise very quickly to proficient and the problem would be solved.

These leaders are still in charge of education in DC. Why is that?

Because as misguided as some (though not all) may be, they're still light years beyond what existed before them.

Anonymous wrote:True that an adult immigrant who chooses to come here is different than a single teenaged mom who is seemingly stuck in generational poverty.

I think the point is that poverty does not have to equal educational failure.

As a society, wouldn't we all benefit by helping our fellow citizens out of poverty by offering guidance to help prioritize the care of children? Wouldn't that be a great place to start?

Through that, we'd be forced to look at all kinds of issues plaguing our city and therefore the care of our children: drug addiction, no job skills, illiteracy, violence, inadequate housing, poor nutrition, etc.

Come on, there has to be a shift in focus...to children.

Yes, looking at poverty would be a great place-- as well as the logical place -- to start. The current education leaders in DC would say that is exactly where they started. They just erred badly in believing that determined (but not necessarily trained) teachers are the one way out of of poverty. The deal was, because of the teachers' dedication and their fervent belief that all children can succeed, (irrespective of issues outside of school), the children's DC-CAS scores would rise very quickly to proficient and the problem would be solved.

These leaders are still in charge of education in DC. Why is that?

True that an adult immigrant who chooses to come here is different than a single teenaged mom who is seemingly stuck in generational poverty.

I think the point is that poverty does not have to equal educational failure.

As a society, wouldn't we all benefit by helping our fellow citizens out of poverty by offering guidance to help prioritize the care of children? Wouldn't that be a great place to start?

Through that, we'd be forced to look at all kinds of issues plaguing our city and therefore the care of our children: drug addiction, no job skills, illiteracy, violence, inadequate housing, poor nutrition, etc.

Come on, there has to be a shift in focus...to children.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My grandpa got off the boat in 1910 after his parents died with nothing and struggled to make ends meet his whole life. He never spoke english well. But he pushed his kids to get educated so the poverty cycle didn't perpetuate.

At some point you gotta take responsibility and move forward.

+1. Hats off to your grandpa and your family.

I love these heartwarming grandpa stories. As an immigrant woman myself, I'd just like to point out that I am not really representative of the average female in my home country, even when you slice and dice by SES etc. Sorry if this sounds boastful. My point is that immigrants are a self-selected group who CHOOSE to leave their home countries and families, whether by boat/land/air, for reasons that are correlated with their eventual performance in the new country. In the olden days, this sometimes meant you could never see your family again because travel was so difficult and expensive. Comparing such immigrants to non-immigrants has a little bit of the apples-oranges flavor to it. It's also not really relevant to the topic of school boundaries in DC so why can't we get back to that?

Anonymous wrote:If the handful if whites left the DCPS school system it wouldn't make a dent in the services or benefits for education. Really you want blacks to believe that blacks who are running the majority of DCPS are only doing so because a droplet of whites attend DCPS. That's not segregation but speculation.

Word salad lady returns