Posts tagged Education
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School librarian funding slips away in new budget
After parent outcry about librarians in schools last year, a DCPS task force recommended keeping existing full-time librarians and working toward having one in every school in 3 years. Unfortunately, the 2014 budget allocations do not put DCPS on track to meet this commitment. Last year, DCPS moved librarians out of the category of “required staff” and into “flexible… Keep reading…
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DCPS releases more helpful budget information
On Friday DCPS released its initial budget allocations for the 2014 school year. This year’s budget includes more information to help average parents and residents better understand the budget. Easy-to-digest breakouts for individual schools show how DCPS is allocating funds among administrators, classroom teachers, special education, arts, and more. They show… Keep reading…
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Raise DC tries to bring coherence to education chaos
DC is up to its ears in nonprofits and governmental agencies focusing on children and youth, some of them duplicating efforts and others even working at cross-purposes. A new initiative called Raise DC is trying to bring some order to this chaos, and to produce better results. The seed for Raise DC was planted in 2011, when a group of community leaders came to Mayor Vincent Gray with… Keep reading…
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Morning bell: ... Unless it’s about race (or KIPP)
MoCo scores up, racial/ethnic gap too; NoVA Latino students facing ‘resegregating’ schools; Test scores rise at charters, drop in DCPS; Initial DCPS budget stirs opposition; KIPP seeks to build second DC high school; More on Mathematica’s KIPP report; A look at educational reform in New Orleans. Keep reading…
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How school tiers match up with Walk Score
One of the best effects of open data is when people correlate data sets from very different places to generate interesting information. This graph cleverly combines DC’s school quality tiers (known as “accountability categories”) with Walk Score: Keep reading…
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Is pre-K in DC working?
DC has made a major commitment to pre-kindergarten education. Are these programs improving kids’ performance in the rest of their education? Based on information available so far, we don’t know for sure. We do know that a pre-K program has to be high quality to make a difference, and some do better than others. In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed… Keep reading…
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Georgetown walks a mile in Kenilworth’s shoes
On a pleasant, sunny Sunday afternoon, a group of Georgetown University students went for a walk. This was not simply a leisurely stroll. They were taking on the challenge of walking a mile in someone else’s much-smaller shoes: those of the preschool through 5th grade students of Kenilworth Elementary School, who would make this walk daily to their new school once their school… Keep reading…
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See candidate stances on zoning update, results on truancy
After a week off, Let’s Choose DC this week asked the candidates for their positions on DC’s zoning update proposals — removing parking minimums, allowing accessory dwellings, and corner stores. We also have the results of your votes on their responses on school truancy. Keep reading…
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Community of civic hackers for education takes shape
With so many school options, applications, and lotteries, there is a dire need for information that will help parents make the best choices for their children. Code for DC’s DC School Decisions project aims to use data and develop code that helps DC parents and students better navigate school lotteries and decisions. The two of us started the volunteer-run project in late… Keep reading…
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Tackling truancy, part 2: Why won’t they go to school?
Truancy is a massive obstacle to many DC kids getting a good education. Punitive threats to parents and children might be able to suppress some symptoms of truancy, but to reduce the core desire of the child to miss school we must dig deeper, and understand its cause. There are three chief categories of inputs in a child’s life: their own circumstances and self-image, their… Keep reading…