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More ‘Ideal School’ Ideas [Apple Tree Early Learning PCS is mentioned]
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No Movement on the Horizon for J.F. Cook School [Youthbuild PCS is mentioned]
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In Ward 5, Calls for More Action on Schools, Less Process
More ‘Ideal School’ Ideas [Apple Tree Early Learning PCS is mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
October 1, 2011
In my column on potentially helpful ideas for ideal schools, I promised to post more details here. These are suggestions I did not have space for in the paper:
Higher Achievement in Washington D.C., CincyAfterSchool in Cincinnati and AfterZone in Providence, R.I. (submitted by Jodi Grant of the Afterschool Alliance). These after-school programs emphasize linkage to the schools they serve, use of community partners and resources, prepared staff and hands-on learning projects. Students who complete the Higher Achievement program increase their grade point average at least one point. Half of the CincyAfterSchool students increased their reading scores in 2008, and about the same number increased their math scores. AfterZone participation led to increased achievement and fewer school absences.
Schools with parent involvement (submitted by PITA Mom). In her e-mail, this blog participant said the two requirements for a good school are parent involvement and schools being held 100 percent accountable “for providing a safe and supportive learning environment.” She said “parents can make an impact by doing something as easy as sitting at the kitchen table with their children as they complete their homework.”
Schools as centers for social services (submitted by Stefanie Weldon). Weldon suggested making “the school the center for providing all manner of social services available to families—housing, food stamps, counseling, job assistance—all the services already provided to them but in disjointed and stove-piped bureaucracies. Make the school the positive center for these services so you can get the parents into the buildings for positive reasons, not just negative ones.”
Educating for Human Greatness (submitted by Anthony Dallmann-Jones and Lynn Stoddard). They recommend that schools adopt several principles. These include “nurturing human differences” to build “student, teacher and parent self-worth,” teaching that “our country is strong because of the great variety of its people,” and recognizing that “students learn more, in a deeper way, when searching for answers to their own questions.”
AppleTree Early Learning Public Charter Schools in Washington D.C. (submitted by Jack McCarthy). The seven school sites for 3- and 4-year-olds have a recipe for success that includes focus on teacher effectiveness, evidence-based curriculum, quality classrooms and commitment to using data. “AppleTree alumni score more than 70 percent higher on oral reading than the average DC student,” McCarthy said.
Appropriate learning environments for every student (submitted by Valerie Natale). She recommends appropriate pacing for each child. “Reading groups are one way to do this,” Natale said. “So is teaching the same subjects at the same time. If math always meets during third period, kids can attend the class that’s best for them. . . . Moving around is perfectly natural and no one is stigmatized.”
No Movement on the Horizon for J.F. Cook School [Youthbuild PCS is mentioned]
The Washington City Paper
By Lydia DePillis
October 3, 2011
For a second there, it looked like Youthbuild public charter school was about to start making progress again on its plan to make use of the vacant J.F. Cook School in Truxton Circle after neighborhood protest killed the participation of the Latin American Youth Center, which brought millions of dollars worth of funding from various sources to house at-risk youth. Now, they're back to the drawing board yet again: Nobody responded to Youthbuild's new request for expressions of interest in partnering to redevelop the school, and Youthbuild doesn't have the capital necessary to renovate the place on their own, meaning potentially years of uncertainty before anything happens at the site.
The Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education hasn't made clear their intentions for the building; they could just decide to throw the school back out to bid. But local Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners' refusal to consider any housing or social services narrows the options quite a bit.
I hope they're happy.
In Ward 5, Calls for More Action on Schools, Less Process
The Washington Post
By Bill Turque
September 30, 2011
“We’re standing in front of you and saying, ‘What do you want for your children?’ And we’re listening,” said Marie Woodward-Graves, an earnest, soft-spoken staffer from the DCPS Office of Family and Public Engagement.
The Ward 5 parents and community leaders who gathered at Luke C. Moore High School Thursday evening didn’t necessarily feel that Graves or anyone else was truly listening. DCPS officials had come to unveil some initial options for overhauling their schools, and got a reception that ranged from underwhelming to hostile.
Chancellor Kaya Henderson did not attend, but she sent an airport shuttle’s worth brass to signal the importance she attaches to what’s been dubbed the “Ward 5 Great Schools Initiative.” The meeting also drew Council member Harry Thomas, Jr. (D-Ward 5) and Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown (D).
Its formation is a response to unhappiness over the 2008 closures and consolidations that left Ward 5 without a traditional, freestanding middle school. It has instead six PS-8 “campuses” that combine elementary and middle school kids under one roof.
While some parents like the continuity that comes with not having to move for middle school, many of the campuses are underenrolled at the middle grades, making it difficult to generate per-pupil funding for the requisite academic and extracurricular programs. Parents and local leaders say many of the PS-8s were never properly renovated for older kids, and lack basics such as decent labs and libraries.
Sentiment runs high for a big middle school along the lines of Alice Deal in Ward 3, with an IB program that would draw between 600 to 800 students. Ward 5 leaders said they are convinced that many residents who now take their kids to schools in other parts of the city would come back for a top-drawer middle school.
Officials included the big middle school scenario as one option, but there was pushback when they mentioned two other possibilities. One was to collapse the ward’s six existing PS-8s into two or three big ones; the other would keep one PS-8 and expand McKinley Technology HS into a 6 -12 model, the same as Columbia Heights Education Campus.
Some at the meeting said they felt that DCPS was going over ground already covered at a town hall last year, and wondered whether they were being steered, for some reason, away from a big middle school. There was also grumbling when Interim Family and Public Engagement Chief Kelly Young explained that it would be a two-year process to decide on the grade configurations, identify which schools to close, renovate the sites of the new school or schools and hire principals and teachers.
DCPS also lost ground when it came to the meeting with nothing in mind for improving the current condition of the PS-8s. A report in The Northwest Current that the newly renovated Deal is already planning an expansion into the historic Reno School building on its site by 2013 only added to the discontent.
“We’ve moved, we’ve merged, and it’s not working. There are things that we need to fix now as well as in the future,” said Aurelia Williams, head of the PTA at Brookland Education Campus@Bunker Hill, one of the PS-8s.
Young said that there was no attempt to steer, and that they would reconvene in November meeting with ideas on how to make the PS-8s more habitable. But she said it was important to bring all the options--not just the middle school-- to the wider Ward 5 community.
“There are many options to get the same quality of education,” Young said.