Anonymous wrote:How entitled. Just because you "might" enroll the school should cater to what you "may" be interested instead of doing what is best for the CHILDREN who are already there?

Anonymous wrote:So what many of you are saying is that LT would be more appealing to you if there were a GT program (ahh how I hate to equate SES with cognitive capacity but for the sake of understandable jargon I will use it). What you are also saying is that currently the population at LT is not in need of a GT program. Why would a school implement a program that is not intended to meet the needs of CURRENT students? If you want a "GT" program at LT you need to enroll your children there. Pedagogical decisions are made to serve existing populations. Who's to say the new principal would not implement these programs if there were the demand for them? The demand does not exist so the programs don't exist. Get it?

Anonymous wrote:I think dcps is not afraid of black students being in the lower groups. They know which students are underperforming. They are not interested in investing a lot of money into gifted and talented programs that would not benefit the majority of their students.

I think one thing dcps could do is create magnet programs in under enrolled schools. It would alleviate the over crowding, create more parental involvement and investment. However it would also create more enmity across socioeconomic lines within a school.

Anonymous wrote:...besides, you don't even need G&T proper-for which I agree too few kids might qualify-just classes in which ability/skills are distributed as a normal and not a bimodal curve.

Are they too afraid that all the black kids will end up in a lower level class, and thus reveal in stark terms what everyone already knows? If the kids are all alright, then why the fear?

How is segregation by charter/private/moving better ?

Anonymous wrote:The most popular DCPS schools also have 400+ students, or will soon. DCPS won't touch GT (despite Rhee paying lip service to establishing GT programs), or pay for pullouts, because of the sad history of tracking alone race lines in the city in the 60s and 70s post Brown vs. Board of Education, not because in-demand elementary schools don't have enough students!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I posted this before in the thread about G&T/pull-outs, but here goes: If, based on what you see happening in your own child's actual classroom, you think your kid would be best served by pull-outs, that's one thing.

It's completely different, in my view, to use the idea of G&T/pull-outs as a litmus test for whether or not a principal supports IB/high-SES kids (excuse me, I mean advanced learners).

G&T/pull-outs are one way to manage kids with diverse abilities, but they are not the only way. If a principal says her staff is able to differentiate successfully, and if you have zero evidence to the contrary (because I don't think anyone has posted here claiming their child in the upper grades at LT was not educated appropriately -- the examples of failed differentiation I've seen cited on DCUM seem to be from Watkins or other schools), and if the DC-CAS scores back up the principal's claim, then why do people (many of whose kids are still in ECE!) still keep insisting G&T/pullouts are the only acceptable option?

You are asking this in all seriousness when the answer is as plain as day?

If G&T/pull-outs aren't necessary, and advanced ES students can be consistently challenged without them, why do the higher-performing school districts in the DC suburbs bother to committ staff resources to them? The mere existence of G&T and pullouts speaks volumes about the orientation of the school district and school itself. The principal can say whatever she likes without changng the fact that many of our community's best-educated and most dynamic families still vote with their feet for lack of challenge in DC public schools, taking their tax dollars and civic involvement to the burbs. Who benefits?

Go visit Two Rivers, where there are no real pullout groups as a matter of policy, and ask teachers how the K FARMs rate compares to the 5th grade FARMs rate. The school loses two thirds of its middle-class families along the way and has since it was founded. You're calling such attrition zero evidence to the contrary?