Pros
A beautiful building, lovely students, and (at one point!) career teachers who know the neighborhood and families well.
Cons
I worked here for over 10 years, cleaning out my classroom was among my saddest days. So many notes, student projects, old pictures, etc. I thought I would work in this very classroom until retirement. So what happened? I had a curriculum I had built myself over years---parts I inherited and parts I wrote myself. Students love it, I know the texts by heart. So: The Home Office, most of whom have been with the organization only since after the pandemic, told me I had no choice but to throw out my whole curriculum and use a canned, scripted one they were buying(. Why? "Because your grade's data is terrible." And I believe in data--I agree the data should be better. But here is the thing: it's completely unfair to just single out my grade level as the problem. ALL OF DSST's data is terrible, and getting worse every year. Facts: the network's middle school's underperform DPS middle schools significantly. The network's COSAT data has gotten worse every year for six years. So how is it specifically one subject, and one grade level that's the problem? It's not. Why should I have to trash all the materials I've created in the last dozen years? The issue is the Home Office. The new generation of HO functionaries spends all their time gossiping and cancelling people. They chased off a previous generation of HO leaders who knew teachers names and led the network to far better student results than we are currently producing. So, go ahead and mandate a cookie-cutter curriculum that causes all your experienced teachers to resign. I guarantee you: this year's COSAT will be even worse, and you will have sacrificed many seasoned instructors from the neighborhood for nothing. The current Home Office has no idea how to raise achievement--don't believe me, look at the data.
