Anonymous wrote:continuity when the administration SUCKS is not a good thing
didn't we all learn this lesson with Marion Barry, may he rest in peace?

Oh right --the dreaded "status quo" has morphed into the desirable "continuity" I can't believe intelligent people are falling for this PR ploy.

Anonymous wrote:The OP seems to have something against Henderson/Rhee personally. I don't personally agree -- I think they've been fairly good -- but what's great about DC is that you have options. If you don't think DCPS would do well for your child, enroll them in one of the 60+ other public school districts in DC (aka charter schools).

No need for it to be personal --just look at the record.

Notice you don't hear DCPS complaining about the status quo anymore? It's because they are the status quo and it's a big bust

Anonymous wrote:The point of this post is that there has been remarkable stability at the top of DCPS with Henderson (and Rhee before her, which is one of the same) which is remarkably rare for large district superintendents. Just look at Montgomery county or Prince george's--how many have they gone through during the same 8 year period?

SO is the stability what caused the achievement gap? kidding, of course, but you can bet if the gaps had closed some, "Stability" of leadership would have gotten the credit.

Anonymous wrote:The OP seems to have something against Henderson/Rhee personally. I don't personally agree -- I think they've been fairly good -- but what's great about DC is that you have options. If you don't think DCPS would do well for your child, enroll them in one of the 60+ other public school districts in DC (aka charter schools).

i

NOT OP, but don't you think it is a bit ironic that Rhee established all these k-8 "education campuses" which Kaya acknowledges are not working, are total failures, and when being grilled by David Catania in a public meeting when he was still chair of the Education Committee about the middle school problem her first response was that we should hand it all over to charter schools because they seem to be doing so well with middle schools? And that her response now after the whole "process" are these mythical middle schools that our kids are going to be sent to that don't EXIST right now? Alice Deal for all? How bout middle schools for everyone.

Too big of an ask, I know.

Rhee closed all those middle schools and set up the "education campuses" that are now widely acknowledged by everyone to be failures. That was "fairly good" decision making? That now they have to reverse completely and some of us are zoned for unicorn middle schools that don't even exist? And Rhee is making millions of dollars because of her "success" in DC, even though her draconian policies led to wide spread cheating on the DC CAS that was conveniently never investigated by her or Kaya, and we are still the worst school system in the nation according to the NAEP.

Please enlighten me on how these two people have done "fairly well" by holding teachers at failing schools responsible for their failing kids without giving the teachers or the kids the support they need to help those kids succeed?

The OP seems to have something against Henderson/Rhee personally. I don't personally agree -- I think they've been fairly good -- but what's great about DC is that you have options. If you don't think DCPS would do well for your child, enroll them in one of the 60+ other public school districts in DC (aka charter schools).

continuity when the administration SUCKS is not a good thing
didn't we all learn this lesson with Marion Barry, may he rest in peace?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS white students have the highest test scores in the country. So some things are ok.

I think it is safe to say that their scores are in spite of the DCPS. Their scores are probably more attributable to outside learning activities and to their parents, not to DCPS.

Right, all the white kids in DC go to school and then run home to be homeschooled by parents and tutors. You should maybe visit a classroom in DCPS someday.

Fact: median incomes are higher in DC
Fact: most white kids in DC go to private schools
Fact: Rhee and Henderson suck
Fact: white kids scores on the NAEP stayed the same during their tenure
so did black and latinos - the gap is huge, and they did nothing to narrow it
but one gap GREW not just grew but DOUBLED under Rhee and Kaya on the NAEP
the difference between the scores of FARMS kids and non-FARMS kids

not narrowing what has proven to be an intractable and huge achievement gap is one thing
doubling another, that has everything to do with poverty and nothing to do with race (since white DCPS and PCS students are only 13% of the population, is really inexcusable.
seems to me that given all this wonderful stability someone has some 'splaining to do

the NAEP scores have all these nifty ways to play with them - you can compare us to detroit, if you want....
instead of Mississipi, which scored above us (as I said, we scored last in the country because there just aren't enough white kids to make up for those poor performing poor kids and kids who are not white...............