At this point, no-one is sure what the future holds for Jefferson-Houston, where enrollment has fallen from 486 pupils in its first year with arts integration focus to only 281 students for the 2006-2007 academic year. Enrollment at the school in the 1999-2000 academic year before the controversial redistricting took effect had been nearly 700.
For the past four years, Jefferson-Houston has not met State accreditation benchmarks based on the annual Standards of Learning (SOL) exams. At the request of Alexandria City Public Schools, the Virginia Board of Education granted conditional accreditation late last month but required ACPS to create an oversight committee to monitor school performance.
However, the Board of Education questioned the arts integration focus as the school struggles to meet basic academic standards. As a result, ACPS Superintendent Rebecca Perry brought the subject of school focus up for discussion at the school board's annual retreat and also at the the October 4 school board meeting.
At the public meeting the Superintendent laid out the options she gave to the board at the retreat, including redistributing existing student populations to other buildings, dedicating Jefferson-Houston for kids with severe special needs to reduce overall costs of sending them to other districts, shifting to a performing arts focus, and removing the arts integration focus entirely.
According to the Gazette article, Ms. Perry also put forward the idea of closing Jefferson-Houston and carving out new attendance zones. "This would also help us address the overcrowding problem at Tucker Elementary School. One of our biggest fears is that someone will move into Cameron Station and be told that their child cannot attend Tucker because it's full."
On October 18, the board is scheduled to vote on whether to remove Jefferson-Houston's arts integration focus.
What are the consequences for parents in our neighborhood? Once the arts integration focus is gone, they will no longer be able to use it as a justification for opting out. However, they will still be able to opt out based on the school's inability to meet annual standards under No Child Left Behind or through the lottery.
In the meantime, the school district has scheduled a meeting for Jefferson-Houston parents on Thursday, October 11. A dinner will be served at 6:00 PM with the meeting commencing at 6:30 PM. Child care will be provided.
17 comments:
I don't know much about this issue, having no children and not really following J-H. But, at first glance, the obvious answer seems to be to close J-H and integrate those poor kids into the better schools. I'm sure the parents in the rest of Alexandria wouldn't like having the J-H kids come to their schools, but maybe then we can force the City officials (and the rest of the Alexandria citizenry) to deal with the consequences of concentrated public housing.
Am I missing something?
This article: http://www.bu.edu/alumni/bostonia/2007/summer/notes/massel/
discusses how a school (albeit a high school) with a similar focus and problems addressed them with some success. As a non-parent, it does seem to me that for the time being the emphasis has to be on the basics. As a neighbor, it is distressing to hear about the continued failure of the school to meet standards - let's hope a solution can be found soon.
Don't shift the students to another school--create for them the best public school in the nation for educating children from modest backgrounds.
There is a tremendous amount that can be learned from what the leading charter schools are doing, but I don't sense that anyone on the school board or in the community is advocating those as models for J-H.
These schools have dramatically longer school days and school years, and even some classes on Saturday. They go to great lengths to create positive peer pressure and a strong culture of achievement.
I encourage readers to research the KIPP schools and their methods, and consider whether Alexandria should bring some KIPP techniques to J-H in a non-charter format.
http://www.kipp.org/
http://www.kipp.org/08/
Some will argue that KIPP and other charter schools owe their success not to their methods but to their ability to cherry pick their students, and the high level of parental involvement they can not just request but require. Even if both are true, doesn't a KIPP-type school nevertheless seem more likely to bring better results that J-H has achieved so far?
No doubt creating such a school entirely inside a public school system has its challenges, not the least of which is that all students will not respond to a more intense situation, and unlike a charter school, they can't then just be asked to leave. But given the record at J-H, is it time to try something bolder?
Just sending these children to other schools is not going to get them what they need. We've all just learned over the past five years that a regular classroom is not working for them. And whether that classroom is on Cameron Street or in Cameron Station, it's still just a regular classroom.
If the aftermath of separate but unequal, a community would be concerned about both the appearance and reality of creating a school designed for poor children. Would the community believe it was intended to deliver on its promises?
I suggest that the time is right to finally overcome these fears, and to have the confidence in what we have observed over the past five years watching J-H struggle: the best school for a very poor child might be too much school for a child with two parents who are doctors. And the best school for a child with two educated parents might be much too little for a child whose parents never graduated from high school. Pretending that one type of school can cater to these widely divergent needs is just going to lead to more failure at worst, and mediocrity at best.
"Don't shift the students to another school--create for them the best public school in the nation for educating children from modest backgrounds."
Sorry but I have no interest in more experimentation. The arts focus failed and I feel certain that your suggestion will as well. Close the school and disperse the students. Any school whose principals enter through a revolving door is not one I want support. The students surely will benefit from the move.
"Some will argue that KIPP and other charter schools owe their success not to their methods but to their ability to cherry pick their students, and the high level of parental involvement they can not just request but require. Even if both are true, doesn't a KIPP-type school nevertheless seem more likely to bring better results that J-H has achieved so far?"
No, it doesn't seem more likely at all. As everyone knows, the single biggest factor in student success is parental involvement. As long as J-H is overwhelmingly populated by kids from the projects whose parents overwhelmingly do not (and never have, and likely never will) participate in their childrens' education, the school will continue to fail. The only shot those kids will have is if we disperse them to schools populated by students whose parents DO participate. It's time to close J-H and send those kids to better schools.
And, for that matter, it's time to disperse the City's public housing. Speaking of separate but equal, it's a disgrace that the City segregates its public housing and its poor kids in one area. Why won't they admit that the single factor in J-H's failure is the City's policy of concentrated public housing?
"Why won't they admit that the single factor in J-H's failure is the City's policy of concentrated public housing?"
Not all the kids from the projects go to JH but I do agree with your point, as its been said by many a JH parent that the kids from the projects do tend to drag down the education of others through their rudeness and general unwillingness to learn.
If you dont like what u see at Adkins and Bland, I can only imagine what teachers at JH and Maury go through in that exact same regard.
I read the article in this morning's Washington Post about J-H. I was unaware that the school board had intentionally segregated the project kids during the redistricting in 1999. That's truly shocking and shameful.
However, the article failed to mention that such segregation was possible only because the City Council has segregated most of the projects in one section of the City. They are just as much to blame as the school board for J-H's failure, if you ask me.
And if the current council doesn't disperse the projects, now that they have the golden opportunity to do so, then they are just as racist and hypocritical as the 1999 school board and the city council in the past.
As the PTA president said, it seems like you could solve many problems, including the failing J-H, by dispersing the projects. Why, oh why, won't they see this?
""The School Board created this problem. It's by their design," Hanbury said. "They concentrated all the poverty and all the dysfunction of the entire city in one school. It really burns me up."
Thank you Trey Hanbury!
"And indeed, over the years, as test scores and academic achievement remained poor, school officials began dropping pieces of it, letting go the drama teacher and putting an end to the practice of pulling children out of class for Suzuki violin lessons."
I am sure someone in ACPS can explain how teaching the violin to kids that come from broken families and horrible City-approved living conditions is a good idea
"Perry said Maury, which is now a diverse and high-achieving school, is successful because the community came together to support it. And that, she said, is part of what needs to happen at Jefferson-Houston. "But it's a double-edged sword, because until a school is successful, people don't want to send their children, and I understand that," she said. "Once we get the children who are there currently performing and successful, the community would be more than happy to come to their close-by school. There are enough children in that community that, if we get the parents working with us, we can make that school successful."
That's a vision Campbell, the Jefferson-Houston PTA president, desperately wants to see realized. School officials have said that once the school starts meeting standards, they will again open the discussion of creating a focus school. Campbell would like to see an International Baccalaureate or other college prep program, or a KIPP Academy charter school, there. And he would like to see the city break up the concentrated poverty of the projects to give all children a better chance of academic success. "You can waste a lot of time on 'I told you so's,' " he said. "I want to focus on the future." "
Campbell is right on all counts, but what he fails to realize is that as long as we persist in this overconcentration of public housing, you are never going to get interest in that school to rise. Most of us have checked out from that school and from the neighborhood in general; I just take my money elsewhere since I have nothing to spend it on here, and I would never dream of having children in a neighborhood like this since its obvious the City could care less about whats going on here.
When our oldest child starts school next year it will almost certainly not be at JH, even though we live a short walk away. The school system administration itself recognizes the main reason why - the current environment is not conducive to learning at the level we would expect for our children.
Changes to the curriculum or to the governance approach will not address the underlying issues, the most important of which is the high percentage of students from severely disadvantaged backgrounds brought about by the last redistricting effort.
The administration and school board are beginning to deal with JH, but in a purely reactive mode. The items up for discussion seem to stem from a meeting with the State administration, not from any broad, forward-looking thought on the part of the administration or board. Perhaps this will kick start these folks to start doing some heavy lifting and earn their pay.
The idea of the local parents banding together to embrace and improve the school, ceteris paribus, seems to be little more than a pipe dream. What if we did so? What percentage of the student body would we represent - 10%, 20%? Why would the administration want to use its scarce resources on a small percentage of students who, compared to the majority of JH students, do not need as much help to come to school prepared to learn? In addition, the NCLB rules would require them to focus on the disadvantaged folks. According to the recent results and articles, these are 75% to 85% of the current student body.
Improvement efforts, in my mind, require a broader focus, most importantly including some action by the administration to eliminate the concentration of disadvantaged students at JH. Short of that, whatever we were to do would yield little in the way of improved performance, by any standard definition.
"I would never dream of having children in a neighborhood like this since its obvious the City could care less about whats going on here."
I don't believe this. I think the City Council members DO care. They are just ignorant of the realities of our neighborhood. Until you've lived across from the projects and dealt with all the problems on a day to day basis, it's easy to live with your head in the clouds and think that Chatham Square type development is a good idea.
It's like the rec center debate going on in another post. The City spent $15 million for a new rec center because, I believe, they genuinely thought it would be good for the neighborhood. The reality is, though, that us non-Bland residents of the neighborhood won't use it. For example, why bring your kids to play on the playground equipment there, when it is full of little kids (nonsupervised) from Bland whose every other word is Mother F_cker, and the like. You don't want your kids exposed to that.
Just because the facility is new won't make the people who use it behave any better than they do now.
The City's trying. They just don't get it. Maybe it's willful ignorance, maybe it's not.
Just because the facility is new won't make the people who use it behave any better than they do now.
The City's trying. They just don't get it. Maybe it's willful ignorance, maybe it's not.
Maybe they are succeeding in serving their constituency and figure the rest of the neighbors can take care of themselves - preferably by moving elsewhere.
This week's Gazette Packet article on Jefferson-Houston explains that suspending the arts focus would have very little influence over the day-to-day activities at the school. The bigger question is what needs to be done about the attendance zones.
"This week's Gazette Packet article on Jefferson-Houston explains that suspending the arts focus would have very little influence over the day-to-day activities at the school. The bigger question is what needs to be done about the attendance zones."
So what say the City's principal leaders on public housing - Melvin Miller and William Euielle? It would have to be obvious to them by now that the jig is up. Do they propose another deck chari reshuffling that would distribute kids around the City? It doesnt sound like any of the other schools want anything to do with that idea. Guess Alexandria is no more diverse than your average Southern town.
"Maybe they are succeeding in serving their constituency and figure the rest of the neighbors can take care of themselves - preferably by moving elsewhere."
Thats the feeling I get...they would rather house the poor at any economic or social cost in disporportion to the current City population, than actually look at the neighborhood and City as a whole and ask whether the actual policy works correctly.
They have to know there is no way out for current residents since the housing market has declined and to sell your home you have to sell it to someone who is still going to pile taxes into the city coffers while getting little to nothing out of it.
"Just because the facility is new won't make the people who use it behave any better than they do now."
This is the essence of our neighborhood's problem....for every rebuilt unit, for every change in school attendance zones, for every trash can, will these new things change the behavior of those in the neighborhood or not?
The City believes it does, all evidence to the contrary. Its almost comical at this point. Everyone but the City knows whats going to happen when those Bland units get "redeveloped"...
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