Carver Kids, 13 Years Later

Carver Kids, 13 Years Later

"These Carver children are the sons and daughters of postal workers and bus drivers, musicians and airport workers. Some had parents on drugs. Others grew up without knowing their fathers. At least three had parents who had been incarcerated. Many grew up to the sound of gunshots, and nearly all knew someone who died from one of those bullets.

Many inner-city schools are not equipped to confront the issues these children face. The teachers are often less prepared for a class of children with complicated problems, the facilities and materials are subpar, and parental help, the backbone of success, is sometimes absent."

Dream Schools

Dream Makers

"This past fall, Davis reopened its doors as one of San Francisco's first three "Dream Schools" -- the name for a controversial reform initiative spearheaded by the San Francisco Unified School District's superintendent, Arlene Ackerman. The idea behind the program is to transform some of the city's lowest-performing schools in some of its poorest neighborhoods into high-achieving "academies" whose graduates go on to college. Three Bayview schools, including Davis, were selected as the initiative's first, with seven others in the pipeline for this fall.

[...]

The reality is that underneath the campus facelifts and burgundy blazers that give the Dream Schools a veneer of success, there are deep problems that will take years to work out -- assuming they ever can be."

Waking to Reality

"But staffers and parents are beginning to paint a more nuanced picture that exposes how challenging it can be to reform a neglected school. Almost everyone who's been close to the reform effort acknowledges that it's been exhausting and often confounding. Some voice deep concerns about aspects of the program. Yet for every critic, there is an enthusiastic supporter who believes that in spite of the challenges, the Dream Schools program could truly rehabilitate the educational opportunities in this African American sector and, eventually, throughout the entire southeast part of town."

San Francisco Superintendent's Plan for a Dream School Revealed as a Nightmare

"Thus, the Dream Schools purge the lower performers out of a school, the very kids who need the most support end up getting the least."

Eliminating the achievment gap in New York

The Harlem Miracle

"Promise Academy produced gains of 1.3 and 1.4 standard deviations. That’s off the charts. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students. Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap.

[...]

Over the past decade, dozens of charter and independent schools, like Promise Academy, have become no excuses schools. The basic theory is that middle-class kids enter adolescence with certain working models in their heads: what I can achieve; how to control impulses; how to work hard. Many kids from poorer, disorganized homes don’t have these internalized models. The schools create a disciplined, orderly and demanding counterculture to inculcate middle-class values."

Rumor: Recall on school board because of JROTC?

S.F. Insider: Recall on school board coming?

"The local Democratic Party is ready to do battle against an effort to recall three San Francisco school board members who oppose the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program.

[...]

San Francisco voters in November passed Proposition V, a nonbinding measure supporting the military leadership program, which is scheduled to phase out next month.

The school board is expected to vote on whether to reinstate JROTC on Tuesday."

San Francisco media articles about public schools

Getting Behind the Headlines: Families Leaving SF

"The report sheds light on the simultaneous phenomena of a rising birth rate and a declining school-age population in San Francisco, and the reasons families with children under age 6 are most likely to leave the city. The data reveals that families in all socio-economic and ethnic groups are leaving, although middle income and African American families have shown the greatest decline in the past ten years. Reasons for leaving the city were probed by the researchers and include housing costs, cost of living generally, and school quality."

Group works to halt middle-class exodus

"We were most concerned that if we were locked into San Francisco with a mortgage, then if we got a school that was too far away or we didn't like the way it was run, we'd be trapped," Samaras said. Like many parents, she expressed frustration with San Francisco's school lottery system, which often bars children from attending their own neighborhood schools. School quality and the lottery system were two complaints that came up again and again in the parents' survey."

Mayor battles a trend of families leaving city

"We still see families leaving the city every day," Lee said. "We still feel like we're in the midst of a crisis."

Where Have All the Children Gone?

"When a city loses its children, you lose a core group of citizens who put down roots and make investments in the city," says Margaret Brodkin, cochair of the mayor's Policy Council for Children, Youth, and Families and a rabble-rouser for children's issues. "People with kids play a different role in the community and feel a greater responsibility to the next generation. They're the ones with a vested interest in healthy libraries, public playgrounds, and, of course, schools." If they're leaving in droves, who's left to speak up for their needs?"

San Francisco's School Assignment System

KQED discusses SFUSD's lottery with school officials, parent.