I Have a Dream

Photo cribbed from the Internet

In observance of MLK day last week, the fourth graders at Watkins Elementary School - the DC public school where Dear Daughter is a 1st grader - recited King's famous "I Have a Dream Speech"on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. This is the seventh year they have done so, and this year it was prominently featured in the media.  Here is the amazing slide show of photos taken by my friend, neighbor, and fellow school parent, KJ.

The slide show is quite remarkable, as it captures the dream *somewhat* realized almost 50 years later.  A reality where African-American and European-American kids go to school together.  They are classmates, teammates, and *sometimes* actual friends.  These school kids don't know it any other way.

Dear Daughter's school is somewhat of an anomaly in DC, in the DC metro area, and in the country as a whole.  Its demographics are a fascinating socioeconomic study in itself - 64% Black, 30% white, 3% Asian/Pacific, 2% Hispanic.  That ethnic diversity is hard to find anywhere. Twenty-nine percent are eligible for free or reduced lunch  - it's unusual, and I think quite remarkable, to have this mix of economic strata.

Watkins School's reading and math proficiency scores don't knock your socks off - hovering around 60%  and 65% in  math and reading testing proficiency respectively.  This is respectable, if not still totally unacceptable, in light of its demographic and socioeconomic context.  

So-called thriving DC public elementary schools in Upper Northwest - aka, Upper Northwhite or Upper Cupcake - tell a different story...

RSAmazing - Changing Educational Paradigms

[If the embedded video isn't showing here, click here to YouTube Link]

Wow!  I was recently introduced to RSA Animate, and their Vision Video Webcasts (above and more later).  This is such cool stuff!   And here's the scoop...

The 250 year old Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce is now tagged "RSA - 21st Century Enlightenment."  An idea lab and exchange for creative thinking, design, innovation and social progress that hosts a network of RSA Fellows, provides platforms for experts to fuel public discourse, and supports interdisciplinary projects for social change solutions.  Unfortunately, the website is not nearly as well-presented and organized, as their individual products.  Creativity and brilliant minds are messy, I guess.  But I digress.

When I first came across RSA Animate, we were discussing how to present and package relatively complex research and ideas so they are easy to follow, understand, and ultimately stick.  If you take 12 minutes or so to watch the video link, you will see what I mean.  [Please pause to watch video link here, then continue after the jump]  

Michelle Rhee - Rant and Rave (my 25 cents)

Alas, my mayoral candidate, Adrain Fenty, did not win the primary last week, so it is looking more and more likely that his hand-picked, school reform champion and My Hero, Michelle Rhee, will not remain the Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools.  At least that what it looks like here after Rhee and likely mayor-elect Vince Gray met yesterday. (Photo cribbed from the Internet)

As a mom to a child in the DC public schools, I'm pretty discouraged.  Rhee has been a reformer in the true sense of the word, bringing in sweeping and widespread change.  And while I'm usually not much of a radical - I believe that change is generally incremental and requires process - when the situation is as dire as it was when she arrived on the scene, there is no other choice in the matter than to be monomaniacal (City Paper's word - but I love it - check out their other endorsements for the primary, a total hoot!). Seriously, DCPS was an utterly failing system - poor performance, ineffective teachers, crumbling infrastructure, and a systems failure on everything from the timely delivery of textbooks to the opening of schools on time.  And yet somehow, in America, in Washington, DC (our Nation's Capital) that had become good enough.  Good enough for public school, good enough for urban schools, good enough for poor people, good enough for blacks.  Sorry, but that status quo is just plain unacceptable.  

Rhee didn't have the time nor the charge to fix things with finesse and pretty dancing - she needed to make tough, hardcore decisions - and frankly she had results to show for it.  Enrollment stabilized and went up for the first time in years.  Test performance improved.  Infrastructure improvement and schools modernization was plain staggering.  And she took a stand against ineffective teachers - she fired them!  hundreds of them! at a time!  Ouch, ok, that's harsh, and hard, and it did not win her many fans...except people like me who sort of sat there stunned, thinking, "Wow, she's brave...and I'm scared shitless of her."