The Washington Post – Jay Mathews
“Happy birthday to Vincent E. Reed, one of the best D.C. schools superintendents ever. He turned 87 on March 1. Among the many battles Reed fought for children was the creation of Benjamin Banneker Academic High School. The selective, demanding magnet school in Northwest Washington became a reality in 1980 only because Reed inspired a revolt against a school board that thought challenging low-income students was an elitist pipe dream. That bias against high standards for D.C. kids lives on. Many smart, well-meaning people still think that some programs are just too hard for children whose parents didn’t finish high school or college. Four years ago, staff and consultants for the D.C. Public Charter School Board recommended against approval of a charter for Basis D.C., now one of the city’s highest-achieving schools, in part because its emphasis on Advanced Placement courses for poor kids didn’t seem realistic. (Fortunately, the board overruled them.) Recently, Guy Brandenburg, the most astute blogger on D.C. schools, told me that he thinks Basis’s good test scores in part come from forcing struggling students to leave.”(more)