I had issues with some European teachers as well, because they had pretty weird ideas about DC and America in general based on myths and urban legends and at least one was NOT interested in teaching the kids about America at all and that was just an “Ugly European” attitude.

I remember one discussion about NCLB, I asked a teacher if the school doesn’t meet AYP then what’s the school going to do next year and she said, “Next year doesn’t matter because Obama will get rid of it.” Which is hopefully true, but isn’t it true that the NCLB IS a way to grade a school and if a school isn’t doing well than it means SOMETHING, right?

I also thought the administration at Bancroft was very professional. There are definitely issues though and after my kid had a bad year I felt that I couldn’t risk 2 or 3 bad years out of 8 elementary school years- kids aren’t in school long enough to blow 9 months on a bad teacher. My kid is in DCPS, but at Murch. We’ll see how that goes and if it doesn’t go, then we’re moving out of DC.

Bancroft probably is a pretty good school compared to others east of the park, but we can and will send our kids west of the park if we get in and we got in.

I think that Rhee is on the right track and if teachers who have “Seen it all” and been through the crack wars can be convinced that those crack war kids no longer live in Ward 1 and they have to act like the teachers at schools they compete with then the school system will really change. I’m sure those times were really hard, but so much of me says, “that was 15 years ago” that it’s very hard if not impossibly hard to watch them trot out excuses to your kids and their friends in 2008, 10 years after DC’s real estate boom.

But I really don’t want people to mistakenly think that all the teachers want parental involvement and change, there are those that don’t or more likely pay “lip service”
to the concept without understanding that it means they are no longer “above average” for DC, but are barely keeping their jobs while the ones they were better than get fired.

Again, I really hope Bancroft can get it together, they deserve our help, but we deserve more respect.

But here’s how I believe the teachers experienced this, I will paraphrase a mean quote based on how I was treated:

Those white yuppies move into the city and they want their precious Janey and Jimmy to read and write in kindergarten? There are kids out here with no dad and a mom strung out on crack! If they want their little princess to have the world handed to them on a platter, they need to move “back” to Virginia.

No one ever told me that, but I was absolutely told to my face when I complained about a teacher’s performance in the classroom that this teacher immediately pointed to children in Anacostia who had it worse.

How did your neighbors view you when you bought your house? For me, about half the neighbors loved us but another half called us Ofays or Mr. Charles or threw trash on our lawn or wouldn’t let us pass because we were “white yuppies” even though no one we knew would have called us yuppies. Some of those people, the parents of the kids shooting up Columbia Heights, are teachers. Those teachers do NOT want to be told by a white person or Asian person that they don’t know how to teach EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE TERRIBLE TEACHERS.

So Schweeney, I have donated into the hundreds if not one thousand dollars to Bancroft over the years. I am there to help it change. But I could not be on the forefront of race-related anger, I do not have it within me to be that person because it makes me feel sick inside. And the idea that a group of white people will “Take over” Bancroft is almost literally a FEAR of the teachers, not something they want at all. Think about it.

This has been vexing me for some time. The problem will never be fixed if everyone that has the wherewithall to fix it runs away. It really seems to me (I am a broken record on this) that there are enough people in the MtP neighboorhod to make a difference at Bancroft if everyone is willing to work together.

Nothing will change if children are peeled off to attend charter schools or even worse if their families abandon the city altogether. I kind of hope that all the charter school wait lists fill up and no one can sell their homes so they are forced to Bancroft.

you’re the problem, jackass “not using alias.”

“For instance, I was going to put up a US Flag in my son’s classroom so the kids could learn patriotic songs and the teacher, who was European, told me he didn’t want one.”

Perhaps you should move back to West Virginia where a ridiculous stunt like that might be better received? Thank god the teacher had the good sense to keep that crap out of his classroom.

I’m sure I could describe what my experience was in better detail in-person so that the nuances would shine through. I love Bancroft as a concept and really want the school to succeed. What I believe is working in Bancroft’s favor is that it’s taking Spanish-speaking kids from Columbia Heights and getting them interested and excited about schools even though their parents believe hard work is more important than education. Those kids are coming from let’s say, level 3- in a good apartment with mom and dad working. But the rest of Mt Pleasant is at about level 7- $800k townhouse, one parent with a master’s degree or above, two parents in the household, one or two cars, 100 or more books in the house and entering pre-k from an academic daycare. One of the parents was easily a multi-millionaire if he sold his real estate. You put the Mt Pleasant residents w/ six figure combined incomes in with the Columbia Heights residents and the Mt Pleasant kids start to perform worse than they did in their private programs and the teachers, some of whom I said grew up in post-riot DC, do not understand that MoCo or Fairfax runs 10 times better, those teachers do not believe that they’re making the mistakes they’re making. The teachers focused on bringing the kids from Level 3 up to Level 4 or 5 and they didn’t really care that the kids who started at Level 7 backslid to Level 6 or 5. The kid is reading more over the summer than he did in the spring. He’s doing more art in camp than in school. That cannot be considered normal. Maybe next year will be much better, but I stopped trusting teachers who grew up with substandard educations because all they’re doing is a little bit more than their old teachers when you can get top-notch educations for free in the suburbs.

I really believe the administration is trying hard to improve, but they missed NCLB’s AYP again and they will go into restructuring. No matter what the administration does, there are teachers at that school who truly believe the school is “good” because it’s better than the school near where they live in Northeast. I am sick and tired of people comparing Bancroft to a school in an area with poverty. Mt Pleasant houses can sell for $1 million, that’s not poverty. Teachers thought I was being strange because I demanded more from a school, but I can get a better school in Murch, Eaton or Oyster, let alone in Chevy Chase or Fairfax.

Besides, the DCPS is far less diverse than the suburbs anyway. A friend’s Silver Spring school not only has African American and Latin students, but also Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, Korean, Chinese, Indonesian, African and Brazilian students. The neighborhoods here just aren’t that diverse and the teachers can drop all that “I’m Blessed” Christian stuff without fear that a non-Christian might be attending a DCPS school. That’s just the way it is. So when I realized that lack of cultural diversity was an issue in DCPS? What a total shock that was.