Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Catholic school in my neighborhood outperforms my neighborhood PGCPS by a mile. The high performing Catholic school received significantly less money per pupil than the public school. Money is not the problem.

It is not the schools it is the parents and the kids but nobody will admit that. Poor undereducated parents produce poor undereducated kids the majority of the time. Kids who have checked out but are forced to attend then become distractions and drag down a percentage of the engaged kids. It is a game of satistics and you can influnce the outliers but the core will remain static. The myth of economic mobliity in the country is a drug that makes people underestimate the work needed to leave behind their station in life. The entire system simply is not designed to promote young black kids into elite academics and prepare them to take on leadership posistions in this country. Instead social systems create concentrations of poverty where school systems push testing designed for rich kids on them and then use that to hold back funds form under achieving schools causing a cycle of under performance. The few who beat the odds and excel in the system have to pass through disproportionate policing and a college system that rewards generational wealth and credit as much as grades for admission both which are systems that favor "other" demographics to put it kindly.

Even though it is a bad word around here, gentrification shows the true path to better schools. Two simple things must happen; Eradication of poverty inside the boundaries of said system and a politically and economically involved parent base that does not accept the scraps.

THIS. All day long. This.

That said you can either displace the poor people or lift them up but the latter takes generations. And to be politically taken serious you must be affulent to hold an elected officals audience. I see no easy path to this for African American communities who typically get lip service during election years at best.

Truth is PG needs to mobilize and get people elected at the governors level if we ever want to change anything. We could learn from Northern Va on how they turned around and started flexing their political weight with their state politics. If we think we can tax our way out of a social hole we will continue to lose. The tax burden will be another feather in the cap of the anti PG crowd.

Anonymous wrote:I am against this as it will slow PG real estate appreciation that is already lagging behind other areas in the Metro area. I don't think an infusion of capital will be the silver bullet for the schools but I would rather see them increase transit and amenities that would raise our propriety values which would bring in more $$$$ tax wise without affecting our rates.

We have a hard enough time attracting middle class residents without a discount to our area and if the taxes eat up the savings it will only get worse. This could be a growth inhibitor and still not do much for our schools.

Anonymous wrote:What pg county doesn't need is a bunch of scattered charter schools like DC. Most of those school test scores are below average and parents move to one part of the city to try to get their kids into 3 or 4 good schools. Improve upon the existing schools in pg first by creating programs and implementing them in the local neighborhood school. Also focus on business revenue not just taxes based upon housing. That way of thinking needs to die. Pg school system has improved drastically over the last 15 years. They have a done a good job with little funds

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Catholic school in my neighborhood outperforms my neighborhood PGCPS by a mile. The high performing Catholic school received significantly less money per pupil than the public school. Money is not the problem.

It is not the schools it is the parents and the kids but nobody will admit that. Poor undereducated parents produce poor undereducated kids the majority of the time. Kids who have checked out but are forced to attend then become distractions and drag down a percentage of the engaged kids. It is a game of satistics and you can influnce the outliers but the core will remain static. The myth of economic mobliity in the country is a drug that makes people underestimate the work needed to leave behind their station in life. The entire system simply is not designed to promote young black kids into elite academics and prepare them to take on leadership posistions in this country. Instead social systems create concentrations of poverty where school systems push testing designed for rich kids on them and then use that to hold back funds form under achieving schools causing a cycle of under performance. The few who beat the odds and excel in the system have to pass through disproportionate policing and a college system that rewards generational wealth and credit as much as grades for admission both which are systems that favor "other" demographics to put it kindly.

Even though it is a bad word around here, gentrification shows the true path to better schools. Two simple things must happen; Eradication of poverty inside the boundaries of said system and a politically and economically involved parent base that does not accept the scraps.

That said you can either displace the poor people or lift them up but the latter takes generations. And to be politically taken serious you must be affulent to hold an elected officals audience. I see no easy path to this for African American communities who typically get lip service during election years at best.

Truth is PG needs to mobilize and get people elected at the governors level if we ever want to change anything. We could learn from Northern Va on how they turned around and started flexing their political weight with their state politics. If we think we can tax our way out of a social hole we will continue to lose. The tax burden will be another feather in the cap of the anti PG crowd.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is not the schools it is the parents and the kids but nobody will admit that. Poor undereducated parents produce poor undereducated kids the majority of the time. Kids who have checked out but are forced to attend then become distractions and drag down a percentage of the engaged kids.

This makes me think of this cartoon:

http://www.vagabomb.com/This-Comic-Will-Forever-Change-the-Way-You-Look-at-Privilege/

Anonymous wrote:
3) Give parents a $12,000 voucher per kid to decide where they want to send their children (before you ask -- that is LESS than it costs now to "educate" a kid in PG using the system we have today

A new U.S. General Accountability Office report says that the local agency that administers the program — which has used $152 million in federal funds since 2004 for more than 5,000 students from low-income families — lacks the “financial systems, controls, policies, and procedures” to ensure that federal funds are being spent legally. It also says the U.S. Education Department has not exercised its oversight responsibilities well enough.

Created by a Republican-led Congress in 2004, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships Program has been kept alive by Republican leaders in Congress who have ignored every report of mismanagement of the program, as well as opposition from the Obama administration. Last year, legislators even threatened to cut funding to D.C. public schools if the voucher program was shut down.

Where charter authorizers do their jobs, charters vastly outperform traditional public schools, with far less money. Where authorizers fall down on the job, letting failing charters live on just like traditional schools, the average charter performs no better, and sometimes worse.

The original charter idea was to open the public school monopoly to competition from new schools, operated on contract by other organizations: nonprofits, teacher cooperatives, universities, even for-profit businesses. The charter was usually a five-year performance contract, laying out the results expected from the school. Charter authorizers – typically school districts or state boards of education – would reject charter applications from groups that did not appear equipped to succeed, and they would close schools if students did not learn as promised.

Anonymous wrote:
I propose:

1) Close down the bottom 10% of underperforming schools

2) Once there's a rigorous and independent process in place to approve good charter schools, lease those school building to them.

3) Give parents a $12,000 voucher per kid to decide where they want to send their children (before you ask -- that is LESS than it costs now to "educate" a kid in PG using the system we have today

Anonymous wrote:The Catholic school in my neighborhood outperforms my neighborhood PGCPS by a mile. The high performing Catholic school received significantly less money per pupil than the public school. Money is not the problem.

Anonymous wrote:The Catholic school in my neighborhood outperforms my neighborhood PGCPS by a mile. The high performing Catholic school received significantly less money per pupil than the public school. Money is not the problem.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is not the schools it is the parents and the kids but nobody will admit that. Poor undereducated parents produce poor undereducated kids the majority of the time. Kids who have checked out but are forced to attend then become distractions and drag down a percentage of the engaged kids.

This makes me think of this cartoon:

http://www.vagabomb.com/This-Comic-Will-Forever-Change-the-Way-You-Look-at-Privilege/

Anonymous wrote:It is not the schools it is the parents and the kids but nobody will admit that. Poor undereducated parents produce poor undereducated kids the majority of the time. Kids who have checked out but are forced to attend then become distractions and drag down a percentage of the engaged kids.

Anonymous wrote:The Catholic school in my neighborhood outperforms my neighborhood PGCPS by a mile. The high performing Catholic school received significantly less money per pupil than the public school. Money is not the problem.