No school---not KIPP, not Latin, not regular DCPS---can do much to move the needle with at-risk kids unless either the kid or the kid's family are willing to be partners in the educational process. A motivated at-risk kid from a troubled family in a supportive school will succeed. An unmotivated kid with a motivated parent in a supportive school can also succeed (maybe not terribly willingly . . but still). But when both child and family do not care enough to avail themselves of supports and services that are offered, there is not much that any school can do. Schools cannot do it all.

KIPP has a good media story that it does well by at-risk kids. Don’t believe the hype.

Firm

Anonymous wrote:I'm starting to think t hat the New Washington Latin campus is FICTION. Where's the proof that the campus will open at all?

The school wanted to open sooner and has conditional approval to do so. It had to delay a year because it could not find a facility. Once they find a facility, like all charters, it must have that location approved. At that point it must also update the PCSB on its progress toward the conditions surrounding equity.

No reason to think they won’t open, but at this point there is no guarantee or form date either.

I'm starting to think t hat the New Washington Latin campus is FICTION. Where's the proof that the campus will open at all?

can't save

Charles Allen can save DCPS from itself. Only the DC Mayor could do that. She's not interested.

Anonymous wrote:Don't worry, Latin will get its second campus next year, somewhere near Capitol Hill. Charles Allen doesn't want to be deluged with complaints that high SES families can't find a middle school spot in an acceptable program!

Good. Cant inagune why he would be against acceptable middle achiol.roograms which the system.needs.more of.

Don't worry, Latin will get its second campus next year, somewhere near Capitol Hill. Charles Allen doesn't want to be deluged with complaints that high SES families can't find a middle school spot in an acceptable program!

This is BS. They don't dare hope that Campus II will serve a totally different group of students - that would be silly. But, yes, they're hoping for a more diverse student body this time around.

The DCPCB conditions for Latin aren't serious. The second campus will be set up and run more or less as the original has for the last decade. It's inevitable, given how little the by-right middle schools EotP have improved since Latin moved from Georgia Ave. to its Fort Totten location.

Anonymous wrote:OK, but it's the DCPCB that's calling the shots on Latin opening a 2nd campus, not the Secretary of Ed. Latin is really being hassled by the Board on various fronts as their leadership tries to launch Campus II.

I'm not holding my breath that the campus will actually open in 2021, or ever for that matter.

Hassled? Latin doesn’t have a right to replicate. If they can’t or don’t or don’t want to meet the conditions they AGREED to, no one is holding a gun to their head. No shame in saying ‘never mind’ we’re good.

They only ones who will be sad are the gentrifiers who can’t wait to cross the river and go to a school that the Latin Board and administrators hoped was going to serve a different group of students.

OK, but it's the DCPCB that's calling the shots on Latin opening a 2nd campus, not the Secretary of Ed. Latin is really being hassled by the Board on various fronts as their leadership tries to launch Campus II.

I'm not holding my breath that the campus will actually open in 2021, or ever for that matter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, let's lobby our politicians instead, demanding that they ensure that all kids in this city are provided with the inputs they need to reach their academic potential. Let's also demand that DCPS copies our near neighbors in the burbs, creating strong by-right comprehensive middle schools appealing to MOST in-boundary parents. Expecting charters to do the job is ridiculous.

Charters are supposed to be proving new models for schools that can do better than the traditional school system. They are absolutely not supposed to supplant the traditional system. In a city like DC, that should mean charters that find ways to teach kids who the traditional system has failed. Educating students who would be just fine in the traditional system isn’t the point.

We need the at-risk preference and/or set asides. And as the MSDC analysis has shown, that preference must be the top preference - ahead if staff and sibling to make a difference.

?

The Republican legislators (and their donors, like DeVos and DeVos and the Waltons) who forced DC to accept a huge charter sector absolutely DO want charters to supplant the traditional public school system.

Their whole plan is to destroy public schools so they can privatize them, making money on charter schools while also cutting taxes on themselves.

Just check out this speech Mr. DeVos gave in 2002 at insane rightwing think tank Heritage.

The best part about the speech is how he embraces lying to us about their real goals while trying to advance charters.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=H-fTAhc4QC4

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No, let's lobby our politicians instead, demanding that they ensure that all kids in this city are provided with the inputs they need to reach their academic potential. Let's also demand that DCPS copies our near neighbors in the burbs, creating strong by-right comprehensive middle schools appealing to MOST in-boundary parents. Expecting charters to do the job is ridiculous.

Charters are supposed to be proving new models for schools that can do better than the traditional school system. They are absolutely not supposed to supplant the traditional system. In a city like DC, that should mean charters that find ways to teach kids who the traditional system has failed. Educating students who would be just fine in the traditional system isn’t the point.

We need the at-risk preference and/or set asides. And as the MSDC analysis has shown, that preference must be the top preference - ahead if staff and sibling to make a difference.

In this school system charters absolutely supplant the traditional school system where EotP by-right middle schools go. That's the reality of the situation. Pretending otherwise won't help.

As UMC taxpayers who can't afford privates, we don't need at-risk preference to stay in the City. We do need high-performing middle schools like Latin and BASIS. Tell us, what's in it for us to lobby for at-risk preference or set asides?

I seem to recall that Jenny Niles was gun-ho about those preferences back in 2014. Didn't she get fired two years ago?

I'd have agreed with you a few years back. But now that my kid has hit an advanced grade at her DCPS ES in a gentrifying neighborhood, I totally disagree with you.

Her school doesn't exactly knock it out the park on educating easy-to-educate kids, let alone the at-risk variant. There are too many inexperienced teachers, too many classroom and playground disruptions, and little in the way of academic challenge for the brightest students. The two or three at-risk students in her class suck up a disproportionate share of the teachers' time and focus - the already-crowded school doesn't seem equipped to address their needs effectively.

In a high capacity public school system, bring on the at-risk students. In this one, no thanks.