- Shifting D.C. school boundaries promises real change
- Student-athlete balances sports and academics [Friendship Collegiate Academy PCS mentioned]
- Girl hopes for Beyonce but gets President Obama instead [Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS mentioned]
Shifting D.C. school boundaries promises real change
The Washington Post
By Natalie Wexler
September 12, 2014
With education set to be a pivotal issue in the D.C. mayor’s race, both of the leading candidates have rejected a plan to redraw school boundaries and feeder patterns. They argue that changing boundaries before improving school quality will drive middle-class families out of the system. But it may be that the best way to improve quality and retain middle-class families is to reassign students first.
There’s only one neighborhood middle- and high-school feeder pattern that middle-class parents want: the Deal Middle School-Wilson High School one in Ward 3. Both schools are too crowded; other D.C. public schools are under-enrolled. The Advisory Committee on Student Assignment , which spent 10 months formulating its recommendations, has tried to correct that imbalance by shrinking the Deal and Wilson boundaries.
Not surprisingly, many families who have been cut out of those boundaries are up in arms. It was easy for Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) to endorse the reassignment plan after he lost his bid for reelection. It’s not as easy for those running for his seat.
Politically unpopular as it may be, keeping the plan would be sensible. Few would disagree that school quality needs to improve. But none of the mayoral candidates has articulated how the city would get schools sufficiently equal in quality that families would happily send their children to any of them.
Delay is built into the reassignment plan. No student now enrolled in a school will be forced to switch. And children in third grade and above can remain in their existing feeder patterns, as can children who have older siblings in those patterns.
That delay — combined with reassignment — may be the ticket to improving quality in some schools, or at least giving middle-class parents the confidence to stay in the system.
Once parents know that, in five or 10 years, their children will be attending School X, they can form friendships and alliances with others in the neighborhood. A group of parents pledging to remain in the feeder pattern could work together to improve the school even before their kids are old enough to attend.
That’s not to say D.C. Public Schools shouldn’t simultaneously try to improve lower-performing schools. For years, the school system has been implementing all sorts of initiatives with varying degrees of success, and no doubt it will continue to do so.
But to attract middle-class parents, DCPS needs more than a plan for improvement. It needs to ensure there will be a critical mass of middle-class students at a given school. And redrawing school boundaries provides the best chance to build that critical mass.
Consider Eastern Senior High School on Capitol Hill. Four years ago, DCPS closed the troubled school for a year and reopened it with a beautifully renovated building, a dynamic new principal and talented new faculty. The school has focused on writing instruction, and last year it initiated the rigorous International Baccalaureate Diploma program.
Eastern has improved. Its test scores are still well below Wilson’s, but they’re significantly above every other neighborhood high school in the District. Its student body is almost entirely low-income, coming largely from east of the Anacostia River rather than from affluent Capitol Hill.
Given the school’s current demographics, it’s doubtful many middle-class families would have enough confidence in Eastern to send their kids there, despite its amenities. That doesn’t mean they’re bigoted or racist. Parents don’t want their children to be “the only one,” or almost the only one, of any category in a school. And parents want their kids to be academically challenged.
Under the new plan, Eastern’s boundaries will run west, through Capitol Hill, rather than east, as they do now. If the plan remains in place, young middle-class families could start planning now to send their children to Eastern, as a few have already committed to doing. Given that there will be space for lower-income students from east of the river, Eastern could become a truly diverse neighborhood school that would rival Wilson in quality.
Of course, the reassignment plan alone won’t guarantee that will happen. DCPS also needs to work to improve Eastern’s feeder middle schools. Even more challenging, the current exodus to charter schools after the elementary grades by middle-class families in neighborhoods such as Capitol Hill will somehow need to be slowed or reversed.
But the plan would at least be a start. If the next mayor jettisons it, he or she will make some constituents happy, but we will be farther from the goal of increasing the number of high-quality neighborhood schools.
The writer is an education blogger for Greater Greater Washington.
Student-athlete balances sports and academics [Friendship Collegiate Academy PCS mentioned]
WUSA 9
September 14, 2014
Diane Roberts introduces a student who puts the 'student' in 'student-athlete'.
Click here to watch the video.
Girl hopes for Beyonce but gets President Obama instead [Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS mentioned]
Today News
Eun Kyung Kim
September 12, 2014
During a service project Thursday at a Washington, D.C., charter school, a young girl working next to President Obama told him she was glad he and the first lady paid their campus a surprise visit — but she actually had hoped for someone else.
“I really wanted it to be Beyoncé,” said Madison, a sixth grader. She and Obama worked together side-by-side stuffing backpacks with books, sidewalk chalk and other items for homeless children.
“I understand,” Obama told the girl, before making a reference to his daughters. “Malia and Sasha would feel the same way.”
Madison then tried to backtrack.
“But then I realized it was going to be you and that’s even better,” she said.
Obama smiled but called her bluff.
“I appreciate you saying that in front of the press,” he told her. “I know it’s not really true.”
The first lady, standing nearby, told Madison she understood how she felt.
“I’d rather see Beyoncé,” she said.
The president and Michelle Obama paid a visit to the school as part of activities commemorating the September 11th National Day of Service and Remembrance.
Click here to watch the video.