Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, there are poor families who have the internal structure of UMC families, but they are in the minority in DC. KIPP is targeting those kids whose parents don't ask about homework, aren't conditioned to sit and pay attention to a teacher, who don't know the "soft skills" that UMC kids learn. They are in the business of filling gaps.

This is unbelievably racist. You think that the white UMC kids of DC have the soft skills that make them "conditioned to sit and pay attention to a teacher"? No, they have parents who will argue that it's not developmentally appropriate for them to sit still and that they need a yoga ball or fidget or ability to move during lessons or... any number of things. It is the white parents I know who don't ask about homework and argue for less of it. Sheesh.

A good 60-75% of the white women on DCUM are unfortunately ignorant and racist. It's pretty sad given dc is so diverse. We just hope their racist ways don't spill over to their kids...

Listen to yourself. You don't know the races of the posters unless they identify themselves (and honestly at that), and even then you have no idea if it is one or two vocal people or 100% of white people, or trolls of other races or whatever. You don't know the races of the posters who call out others for making ignorant comments-- what percentage of those posters are you assuming are white? Zero? The fact that you would read an anonymous website and then use it to make a judgement about people you don't even know is ... well you know the name for it, don't you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:KIPP is what it is robots, simon says, drill and kill. It's what you need to do when kids don't have basic skills to function because their parents aren't adequately raising their children

Most UMC kids (white, black, hispanic) whatever don't need this approach

DC Prep is the exact same model. DC Prep actually gets better results than KIPP.

Says someone whose never been to a KIPP.

And DC Prep might get better results - they are significantly smaller. Regardless, they are both good schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:KIPP is what it is robots, simon says, drill and kill. It's what you need to do when kids don't have basic skills to function because their parents aren't adequately raising their children

Most UMC kids (white, black, hispanic) whatever don't need this approach

DC Prep is the exact same model. DC Prep actually gets better results than KIPP.

Says someone whose never been to a KIPP.

And DC Prep might get better results - they are significantly smaller. Regardless, they are both good schools.

Anonymous wrote:KIPP is what it is robots, simon says, drill and kill. It's what you need to do when kids don't have basic skills to function because their parents aren't adequately raising their children

Most UMC kids (white, black, hispanic) whatever don't need this approach

DC Prep is the exact same model. DC Prep actually gets better results than KIPP.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, there are poor families who have the internal structure of UMC families, but they are in the minority in DC. KIPP is targeting those kids whose parents don't ask about homework, aren't conditioned to sit and pay attention to a teacher, who don't know the "soft skills" that UMC kids learn. They are in the business of filling gaps.

This is unbelievably racist. You think that the white UMC kids of DC have the soft skills that make them "conditioned to sit and pay attention to a teacher"? No, they have parents who will argue that it's not developmentally appropriate for them to sit still and that they need a yoga ball or fidget or ability to move during lessons or... any number of things. It is the white parents I know who don't ask about homework and argue for less of it. Sheesh.

A good 60-75% of the white women on DCUM are unfortunately ignorant and racist. It's pretty sad given dc is so diverse. We just hope their racist ways don't spill over to their kids...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We applied and was accepted into KIPP for prek4 but decided not to go after DS got into an immersion language school. KIPP is walking distance while the charter is not so KIPP was tempting. What made the decision for us is that we wanted the immersion language starting in pre-K and the fact that I hated the amount of time DS would be at school. Kipp schools follow a year round schedule as well as an extra long school day and require Saturday classes.

My kid is in upper elementary now and he is busy with extracurriculars after school, on weekends and during summer/vacations. Kipp’s School schedule does not work for our family.

I didn’t realize that she has two boys-K and 4th grde-both at JO Wilson.

Legit concerns. Saturday school is no longer part of the curriculum however.

I actually like the long school year - we never make up snow days, and I pay for less summer camp time. After school activities are more difficult, but since they get out at 4 I don't need aftercare - just morning care for an hour.

My then 4 yr old would have had to attend school on Saturday twice a month til 1? Don’t remember. Also, our charter has the option of pickup at 1pm for pre-K which worked better for us.

I did not know about the extended school yr at Kipp until after DS was accepted. If I had, we wouldn’t have applied. Did not apply to El Haynes for pre-K because of their yr round schedule.

You don't say how old your child is, but when we started Saturday school was once a month (and we were told it was mandatory, but that was NEVER enforced and my child missed at least half of the Saturday sessions and there was NO penalty).

I know some people don't like the extended year, but they get 6-7 weeks of summer break which I find to be plenty of time off for my child (and they get the entire week of Thanksgiving off which I love). YMMV of course! From what I've heard, EL Haynes "summer" program is optional, and is meant as a low cost high quality summer option for families that need it - although that's what I remember from many years ago at an open house so I have no idea what it looks like now.

I think I've been pretty clear that the school is not perfect, nor does it work for everyone - its just not the military type environment that people on DCUM make it out to be. I think its a good school, with strong academics/curriculum, and they do not spend all of their time "teaching the test". The demographic of the schools does not define it, and it has changed in pretty big ways since the first middle school opened. The only reason I post on these threads is because the UMC white demographic of DCUM spreads horrible, racist, rumors about KIPP that couldn't be further from the truth so I want to set it straight a bit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We applied and was accepted into KIPP for prek4 but decided not to go after DS got into an immersion language school. KIPP is walking distance while the charter is not so KIPP was tempting. What made the decision for us is that we wanted the immersion language starting in pre-K and the fact that I hated the amount of time DS would be at school. Kipp schools follow a year round schedule as well as an extra long school day and require Saturday classes.

My kid is in upper elementary now and he is busy with extracurriculars after school, on weekends and during summer/vacations. Kipp’s School schedule does not work for our family.

Legit concerns. Saturday school is no longer part of the curriculum however.

I actually like the long school year - we never make up snow days, and I pay for less summer camp time. After school activities are more difficult, but since they get out at 4 I don't need aftercare - just morning care for an hour.

My then 4 yr old would have had to attend school on Saturday twice a month til 1? Don’t remember. Also, our charter has the option of pickup at 1pm for pre-K which worked better for us.

I did not know about the extended school yr at Kipp until after DS was accepted. If I had, we wouldn’t have applied. Did not apply to El Haynes for pre-K because of their yr round schedule.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We applied and was accepted into KIPP for prek4 but decided not to go after DS got into an immersion language school. KIPP is walking distance while the charter is not so KIPP was tempting. What made the decision for us is that we wanted the immersion language starting in pre-K and the fact that I hated the amount of time DS would be at school. Kipp schools follow a year round schedule as well as an extra long school day and require Saturday classes.

My kid is in upper elementary now and he is busy with extracurriculars after school, on weekends and during summer/vacations. Kipp’s School schedule does not work for our family.

Legit concerns. Saturday school is no longer part of the curriculum however.

I actually like the long school year - we never make up snow days, and I pay for less summer camp time. After school activities are more difficult, but since they get out at 4 I don't need aftercare - just morning care for an hour.

Anonymous wrote:We applied and was accepted into KIPP for prek4 but decided not to go after DS got into an immersion language school. KIPP is walking distance while the charter is not so KIPP was tempting. What made the decision for us is that we wanted the immersion language starting in pre-K and the fact that I hated the amount of time DS would be at school. Kipp schools follow a year round schedule as well as an extra long school day and require Saturday classes.

My kid is in upper elementary now and he is busy with extracurriculars after school, on weekends and during summer/vacations. Kipp’s School schedule does not work for our family.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, there are poor families who have the internal structure of UMC families, but they are in the minority in DC. KIPP is targeting those kids whose parents don't ask about homework, aren't conditioned to sit and pay attention to a teacher, who don't know the "soft skills" that UMC kids learn. They are in the business of filling gaps.

This is unbelievably racist. You think that the white UMC kids of DC have the soft skills that make them "conditioned to sit and pay attention to a teacher"? No, they have parents who will argue that it's not developmentally appropriate for them to sit still and that they need a yoga ball or fidget or ability to move during lessons or... any number of things. It is the white parents I know who don't ask about homework and argue for less of it. Sheesh.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, there are poor families who have the internal structure of UMC families, but they are in the minority in DC. KIPP is targeting those kids whose parents don't ask about homework, aren't conditioned to sit and pay attention to a teacher, who don't know the "soft skills" that UMC kids learn. They are in the business of filling gaps.

This is unbelievably racist. You think that the white UMC kids of DC have the soft skills that make them "conditioned to sit and pay attention to a teacher"? No, they have parents who will argue that it's not developmentally appropriate for them to sit still and that they need a yoga ball or fidget or ability to move during lessons or... any number of things. It is the white parents I know who don't ask about homework and argue for less of it. Sheesh.

OFFS. All this stuff is well documented.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/magazine/26tough.html

In public life, the qualities that middle-class children develop are
consistently valued over the ones that poor and working-class children develop.
Middle-class children become used to adults taking their concerns seriously, and so
they grow up with a sense of entitlement, which gives them a confidence, in the
classroom and elsewhere, that less-wealthy children lack. The cultural differences
translate into a distinct advantage for middle-class children in school, on
standardized achievement tests and, later in life, in the workplace.
Taken together, the conclusions of these researchers can be a little unsettling.
Their work seems to reduce a child’s upbringing, which to a parent can feel
something like magic, to a simple algorithm: give a child X, and you get Y. Their
work also suggests that the disadvantages that poverty imposes on children aren’t
primarily about material goods. True, every poor child would benefit from having
more books in his home and more nutritious food to eat (and money certainly makes
it easier to carry out a program of concerted cultivation). But the real advantages
that middle-class children gain come from more elusive processes: the language that
their parents use, the attitudes toward life that they convey. However you measure
child-rearing, middle-class parents tend to do it differently than poor parents — and
the path they follow in turn tends to give their children an array of advantages.

...

When students enroll in one of these schools (usually in fifth or sixth grade), they are
often two or more grade levels behind. Usually they have missed out on many of the
millions of everyday intellectual and emotional stimuli that their better-off peers
have been exposed to since birth. They are, educationally speaking, in deep trouble.
The schools reject the notion that all that these struggling students need are high
expectations; they do need those, of course, but they also need specific types and
amounts of instruction, both in academics and attitude, to compensate for
everything they did not receive in their first decade of life.

...

Students at both KIPP and Achievement First schools follow a system for
classroom behavior invented by Levin and Feinberg called Slant, which instructs
them to sit up, listen, ask questions, nod and track the speaker with their eyes. When
I visited KIPP Academy last month, I was standing with Levin at the front of a music
class of about 60 students, listening to him talk, when he suddenly interrupted
himself and pointed at me. “Do you notice what he’s doing right now?” he asked the
class.
They all called out at once, “Nodding!”
Levin’s contention is that Americans of a certain background learn these
methods for taking in information early on and employ them instinctively. KIPP
students, he says, need to be taught the methods explicitly. Middle-class
Americans know intuitively that “good behavior” is mostly a game with established
rules; the KIPP students seemed to be experiencing the pleasure of being let in on a
joke.

Theres lots of videos of this type of school and teacher posts online, quite frankly this is not the school I want to send my child to and I'm black. If it's for you, go for it...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, there are poor families who have the internal structure of UMC families, but they are in the minority in DC. KIPP is targeting those kids whose parents don't ask about homework, aren't conditioned to sit and pay attention to a teacher, who don't know the "soft skills" that UMC kids learn. They are in the business of filling gaps.

This is unbelievably racist. You think that the white UMC kids of DC have the soft skills that make them "conditioned to sit and pay attention to a teacher"? No, they have parents who will argue that it's not developmentally appropriate for them to sit still and that they need a yoga ball or fidget or ability to move during lessons or... any number of things. It is the white parents I know who don't ask about homework and argue for less of it. Sheesh.

OFFS. All this stuff is well documented.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/magazine/26tough.html

In public life, the qualities that middle-class children develop are
consistently valued over the ones that poor and working-class children develop.
Middle-class children become used to adults taking their concerns seriously, and so
they grow up with a sense of entitlement, which gives them a confidence, in the
classroom and elsewhere, that less-wealthy children lack. The cultural differences
translate into a distinct advantage for middle-class children in school, on
standardized achievement tests and, later in life, in the workplace.
Taken together, the conclusions of these researchers can be a little unsettling.
Their work seems to reduce a child’s upbringing, which to a parent can feel
something like magic, to a simple algorithm: give a child X, and you get Y. Their
work also suggests that the disadvantages that poverty imposes on children aren’t
primarily about material goods. True, every poor child would benefit from having
more books in his home and more nutritious food to eat (and money certainly makes
it easier to carry out a program of concerted cultivation). But the real advantages
that middle-class children gain come from more elusive processes: the language that
their parents use, the attitudes toward life that they convey. However you measure
child-rearing, middle-class parents tend to do it differently than poor parents — and
the path they follow in turn tends to give their children an array of advantages.

...

When students enroll in one of these schools (usually in fifth or sixth grade), they are
often two or more grade levels behind. Usually they have missed out on many of the
millions of everyday intellectual and emotional stimuli that their better-off peers
have been exposed to since birth. They are, educationally speaking, in deep trouble.
The schools reject the notion that all that these struggling students need are high
expectations; they do need those, of course, but they also need specific types and
amounts of instruction, both in academics and attitude, to compensate for
everything they did not receive in their first decade of life.

...

Students at both KIPP and Achievement First schools follow a system for
classroom behavior invented by Levin and Feinberg called Slant, which instructs
them to sit up, listen, ask questions, nod and track the speaker with their eyes. When
I visited KIPP Academy last month, I was standing with Levin at the front of a music
class of about 60 students, listening to him talk, when he suddenly interrupted
himself and pointed at me. “Do you notice what he’s doing right now?” he asked the
class.
They all called out at once, “Nodding!”
Levin’s contention is that Americans of a certain background learn these
methods for taking in information early on and employ them instinctively. KIPP
students, he says, need to be taught the methods explicitly. Middle-class
Americans know intuitively that “good behavior” is mostly a game with established
rules; the KIPP students seemed to be experiencing the pleasure of being let in on a
joke.