DCPS Master Planning website and the issue of quality school in urban environments

The Examiner reports today that the DC Public Schools system has created a website "that seeks to gather input from city residents." Here is the link.

Here are "a few" things I've written about this issue, from June and July. I'll do another posting in a few days with entries from August.

-- I think we have no idea about just how difficult is the challenge of urban schooling (from June);
-- Summer, Curfews, and Year-Round School
-- an FT letter writer on business plans to improve schools
Walter Weis (either a student or teacher) of Forest Hills, NYC writes:

Sandy Weill (chair of Citigroup) and John Ferrandino think business can play a bigger role in public education ("American Schools can be saved by business"). Perhaps so, but probably the most importat thing it can do is pay its taxes. Instead of nickel-and-diming municipalities for ever more tax concessions, pay the regular corporate rate. Be a member of the community. Not only will the additional funding help relieve overcrowding of urban schools, but it will broaden the tax base currently being shouldered by the poor and the middle classes....

-- Green infrastructure...public assets, where I wrote:

As long as each government agency, particularly the DC Public Schools, the DC Libraries, and the Parks and Recreation Department see their "asset portfolio" as (1) not being ultimately owned and directed by the citizens; (2) having little connection to other municipal assets; and (3) use doesn't need to be coordinated with meta-objectives such as "enhancing the community's capacity to learn, grow, and apply knowledge" well then it's pretty easy to sell off properties and to continue to underutilize such assets.

--Involving the community in school improvement which includes this email from Marian Knapp:

I am a community improvement consultant who has worked a lot on health and social issues with small groups, mostly in inner city communities.A few years ago, I was involved in the design and implementation of an assessment of a cluster of schools in the Boston Public School System. It was an independent study, sponsored by a consortium of prominent institutions (medical care, universities, public schools among others), to determine how these institutions could help kids do better in school in this inner city community.

I did not use the ABCD model, but developed a framework that captured multiple dimensions related to the goal. These dimensions were:

1. Children: Focus groups with 300 children grades 2 through 12, including older kids who had dropped out of school (some of whom had been in jail and were returning to get a high school diploma. Purpose of the focus groups was to learn
a. what doing well in school meant to them,
b. what helped them do well in school, and
c. what got in the way of doing well in school.
Their responses were categorized and as you would imagine their responses were very enlightening.

2. Parents, guardians, etc.: Focus groups or interviews with parents asking questions similar to those we asked the children, only focusing on what helped them or got in the way of helping their children.

3. Teachers: Similar to parents.

4. School Administrators: Interviews with 12 school principals - similar questions, only more emphasis on the school as a whole and the larger school system.

5. Inventory: Identified all current programs and other resources in each school, as well as what was available in the nearby community.

6. Demogaphics: Primarily to identify different "first" languages spoken by children and families to determine how well schools were addressing language needs. Also looked at distribution of what neighborhoods the kids were coming from to look at whether services were available in their "home" neighborhoods.

7. Analysis and recommendations: Children, parent, teacher and administrator responses were compared for similarities and differences. The inventory was compared to the categories created from the focus groups and interviews to determine how well current programs matched what study participants said.

Recommendations were developed for each school.I have continued to work in several of the schools, including one where I facilitate a parent group, which has recently completed a parent survey to determine areas for improvement. The results of this survey informed the development of and are included in the schools "whole school improvement plan". I am happy to give you more information if you would find it useful.

Also see "Community Education and Neighborhood Schools" from the Neighborhood Planning meta-site.