Education – Page 3 – Truxton Is In Shaw

School for Small Kids is also Childcare

School will be starting up soon.

At the Margaret Murray Washington Vocational School, pre-school guidance as well as free play activities are provided. Miss L.C. Randolph is principal and Mrs. Vivian T. Turner, instructor in the child care and training classes. Taken April 1943

I know it is gauche to equate schools with child care centers, but honestly, for small kids, the ones too young to leave alone, it’s true. I don’t think teachers are glorified babysitters, but think of child care as ‘other duties as assigned’.

When COVID hit and we tried to do virtual learning, it was horrible. Our then 3 year old Destructo had zero interest in staring at a screen unless there were singing dancing cartoons on it.

My spouse, The Help, was a trooper. He tried to hold Descructo still and worked with the child care center and later the Seaton teacher. It was painful and pointless. Never again.

The thing that whole thing taught us was yes, schools offer a babysitting service, in addition to the other things that ‘going to school’ means. In order to do work, I needed someone to care for our child. Yes, education and learning is important, but in order to do what I do, someone has to watch Destructo and keep him away from me so I can get crap done.

Schools, in general, provide many services. One is child care. This is very important for working parents, particularly single working parents, of children too young to leave alone. Virtual learning for really young kids does not work. I have yet to meet a parent in real life who who says it does. Online no one knows you’re a dog or a fake parent.

Going forward, don’t ever close schools beyond the time it takes to clear snow from most of the roads. Or beyond the amount of sick/personal leave a regular adult would have*. It is a complete waste of parents’ time and sanity.

We survived. We were proactive. We reached out to home schoolers we knew. We took turns with child care so we could both work. It helped that we had flexible employers, belong to a class of worker who have the luxury of working on laptops, and had a lot of leave hours. We hired a teenager to babysit for several hours in a day. We went to parks and commiserated with other parents. By November 2020 our daycare reopened for Pre-K. But never doing this again.

*I usually have tons of leave, but I have co-workers who are at a leave deficit. One serious illness years ago can leave you with very little sick leave which is earned at 4 hours a fortnight.

St. Augustine is Seeking Applicants for this coming academic year

Two weeks ago I got an email from the Black Student Fund. I’m now getting around to sharing it with you.

I’ve written about St. Augustine Catholic School before, and the academics for African American students is pretty good, as it is a predominately African American school.

Black Student Fund | 3636 16th Street NW, 4th Floor, Washington, DC 20010

The tuition is fairly affordable, however, there are other costs involved with catholic school in addition to tuition. Uniforms, parent associations, mandatory volunteer hours, before and after care, fundraisers, and lunch.

Armstrong High School March 1942

Let’s take a break from the Washington Sanitary Improvement Company houses and look at some old photos of Truxton Circle schools.

Below is Armstrong Technical High School in March 1942.

Armstrong High School March 1942 — Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information photograph collection (Library of Congress)

If I were to guess this is probably the P Street side of the school. Free free to argue with me in the comments.

Duke Ellington, for whom a bunch of buildings around DC are named, attended Armstrong to study art and design.

Currently, Armstrong is the location of one of the Friendship Charter Schools for Pre-K and elementary aged children.

Back to School, for what?

If you look at data for Black children’s literacy rates in America, it is just so depressing. The shut down of schools during Covid didn’t help. There is lots of blame to go around. Parents, community, culture, education fads, and the kids themselves play a part.

So take your anti-depression meds and lets look at Shaw education as school gets back in session.

Back in the Winter of 2019-2020 I looked at all the Shaw schools I could get data on. To be fair, I’ll stick to the 2018-2019 PARCC data, because in 2020 everything went to Hell in a hand basket. Even if there is 2019-2020 data, it would be worse.

Black students	PARCC Test	Meets/Exceeds	Below Adv & Failing
Dunbar	ELA 2018-19	16.50%	83.50%
Dunbar	Math 2018-19	0.50%	99.50%
Dunbar	Males ELA	13.40%	86.60%
Dunbar	Males Math	0.90%	99.10%
Cleveland E	ELA 2018-19	20.30%	79.70%
Cleveland E	Math 2018-19	20.30%	79.70%
Cleveland E	Males ELA	10.80%	89.20%
Cleveland E	Males Math	24.30%	75.70%
St. Augustine**	ELA 2017-2018	49%	51%
St. Augustine**	Math 2017-2018	51%	49%
Friendship PCS- Armstrong Elementary	ELA 2018-19	9.20%	90.80%
Friendship PCS- Armstrong Elementary	Math 2018-19	22.90%	77.10%
Friendship PCS- Armstrong Elementary	Males ELA	7.30%	92.70%
Friendship PCS- Armstrong Elementary	Males Math	18.20%	81.80%
Center City PCS – Shaw	ELA 2018-19	26.50%	73.50%
Center City PCS – Shaw	Math 2018-19	28.90%	71.10%
Center City PCS – Shaw	Males ELA	13.60%	86.40%
Center City PCS – Shaw	Males Math	31.80%	68.20%
KIPP- LEAD (1-4)	ELA 2018-19	39.70%	60.30%
KIPP- LEAD (1-4)	Math 2018-19	68.60%	31.40%
KIPP- LEAD (1-4)	Males ELA	30.00%	70.00%
KIPP- LEAD (1-4)	Males Math	62.20%	37.80%
KIPP- WILL (5-8)	ELA 2018-19	36.40%	63.60%
KIPP- WILL (5-8)	Math 2018-19	32.10%	67.90%
KIPP- WILL (5-8)	Males ELA	29.30%	70.70%
KIPP- WILL (5-8)	Males Math	28.70%	71.30%
Garrison ES	ELA 2018-19	37.50%	62.50%
Garrison ES	Math 2018-19	27.50%	72.50%
Garrison ES	Males ELA	45.50%	54.50%
Garrison ES	Males Math	36.40%	63.60%
Meridian	ELA 2018-19	16.80%	83.20%
Meridian	Math 2018-19	14.20%	85.80%
Meridian	Males ELA	14.70%	85.30%
Meridian	Males Math	14.70%	85.30%
Mundo Verde	ELA 2018-19	22.00%	78.00%
Mundo Verde	Math 2018-19	22.00%	78.00%
Mundo Verde	Males ELA	20.00%	80.00%
Mundo Verde	Males Math	25.00%	75.00%
Seaton ES	ELA 2018-19	35.00%	65.00%
Seaton ES	Math 2018-19	37.50%	62.50%
Seaton ES	Males ELA	31.60%	68.40%
Seaton ES	Males Math	26.30%	73.70%

**St. Augustine is a predominately African American school and does not break down data by race.

I am left asking myself what percentage of Black students who are below reading level or does not meet expectations in math acceptable? It sure as heck isn’t 99% or 80% as it is at Dunbar.

Rando Alley not in Shaw- More of O’Brien Court NW/ Stevens School Garden

I’m just throwing this out there. It was in a collection of things I had from the National Archives, Still Picture Division. Why I have these, I don’t know.

I previously posted about O’Brien Ct. Here is another page about O’Brien Ct but regarding the Stevens School Garden Project. Look kids, school gardens are nothing new. The Stevens School was a school for Black children at the time, which was 1936. Now, it is a Pre-K school.

Carter G. Woodson- Mis-Education of the Negro -Chapter 3: How We Drifted Away From The Truth

This is a series regarding Shaw resident Carter G. Woodson’s book The Mis-Education of the Negro.

According to Ancestry DNA African American ancestors hail from Cameroon/Congo, Nigeria, and Ivory Coast/ Ghana, sub-Saharan parts of Africa. However, they didn’t have DNA tests in the 1930s, so Carter G. Woodson would not have known this. Even if he did, it probably would not have stopped him from being a booster for all of Africa.

So in this 3rd chapter Woodson is critical of the Eurocentric nature of history and other subjects being taught. His very valid points:

In geography the races were described in conformity with the program of the usual propaganda to engender in whites a race hate of the Negro, and in the Negroes contempt for themselves. A poet of distinction was selected to illustrate the physical features of the white race, a bedecked chief of a tribe those of the red a proud warrior the brown, a prince the yellow, and a savage with a ring in his nose the black the Negro, of course, stood at the foot of the social ladder.

However, there is a very practical problem. Literacy. Until someone literate shows up (usually to complain about you) your history is limited to the best guesses of the anthropologists. Failure to leave behind a written record of your culture, is your fault. Feel free to correct me in the comments, Continue reading Carter G. Woodson- Mis-Education of the Negro -Chapter 3: How We Drifted Away From The Truth

Carter G. Woodson – Mis-Education of the Negro-Chapter 2: How We Missed the Mark

This is a series regarding Shaw resident Carter G. Woodson’s book The Mis-Education of the Negro.

In this chapter Woodson looks at the history of education for African Americans after the Civil War. I had heard an audiobook that threw general criticism of Southern education, and Woodson does here too a bit. “The participation of the freedmen in government for a few years during the period known as the Reconstruction had little bearing on their situation except that they did join with the uneducated poor whites in bringing about certain much-desired social reforms, especially in giving the South its first plan of democratic education in providing for a school system at public expense. ”

In this chapter, the way I’m reading it, Woodson is not happy with the practicality of African American education, in addition to the quality.

Others more narrow-minded than the advocates of industrial education, seized upon the idea, feeling that, although the Negro must have some semblance of education, it would be a fine stroke to be able to make a distinction between the training given the Negro and that provided for the whites. Inasmuch as the industrial educational idea rapidly gained ground, too, many Negroes for political purposes began to espouse it; and schools and colleges hoping thereby to obtain money worked out accordingly makeshift provisions for such instruction, although they could not satisfactorily offer it. A few real industrial schools actually equipped themselves for this work and turned out a number of graduates with such preparation. Continue reading Carter G. Woodson – Mis-Education of the Negro-Chapter 2: How We Missed the Mark

Carter G. Woodson- Mis-Education of the Negro- Chapter 1: The Seat of Trouble

This is a series regarding Shaw resident Carter G. Woodson’s book The Mis-Education of the Negro.

Last year I reviewed this book and I’m updating those posts.

I understand Woodosn was a man of his time and the challenges of what was being taught in the public school system and in Black colleges were real. There are new challenges, but I’m going to ignore them because they make me steaming mad. That challenge then, 100 years ago, was an education system dismissed the Negro (I’m going to use his words) and the African.

“At a Negro summer school two years ago, a white instructor gave a course on the Negro, using for his text a work which teaches that whites are superior to the blacks. When asked by one of the students why he used such a textbook the instructor replied that he wanted them to get that point of view. Even schools for Negroes, then, are places where they must be convinced of their inferiority. “

So that was a problem.

“Practically all of the successful Negroes in this country are of the uneducated type or of that of Negroes who have had no formal education at all. The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people.”

It doesn’t really get any better. He pretty much considers the Black college graduate useless.

“The Negro children, as a rule, come from the homes of tenants and peons who have to migrate annually from plantation to plantation, looking for light which they have never seen. The children from the homes of white planters and merchants live permanently in the midst of calculations, family budgets, and the like, which enable them sometimes to learn more by contact than the Negro can acquire in school. Instead of teaching such Negro children less arithmetic, they should be taught much more of it than the white children, for the latter attend a graded school consolidated by free transportation when the Negroes go to one-room rented hovels to be taught without equipment and by incompetent teachers educated scarcely beyond the eighth grade.”

I have no doubt whatsoever that 100 years ago Black schools lacked equipment. The one room school house or ‘rented hovel’ as Woodson puts it, Continue reading Carter G. Woodson- Mis-Education of the Negro- Chapter 1: The Seat of Trouble

Shaw Schools- A sort of review PARCC scores

The 2019-2020 academic year was…… so it’s kind of pointless to look back at that year. Which leaves me with the 2018-2019, the last normal year. Besides, the PARCC scores posted by OSSE end with the 2018-2019. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that kids’ grasp of math and English language arts did not improve with distance learning.

Let’s get this over with:

From Shaw School Review: Dunbar High School:PARCC by Race

PARCC Scores 2018-19, % meeting & exceeding expectations
	Black	White	Hispanic	Asian
ELA 2018-19	16.5%	N/A	n<10	N/A
Math 2018-19	.5%	N/A	n<10	n<10
Males ELA	13.4%	N/A	n<10	N/A
Males Math	.9%	N/A	n<10	n<10

Continue reading Shaw Schools- A sort of review PARCC scores

1914 Howard University Students in Shaw

I wanted to see if by chance Arthur B. McKinney was in a Howard University yearbook. The yearbooks or student yearbook type publications go as far back as 1914. I did not spot him in that yearbook. I don’t know if those things covered the medical school.

But I did spot something interesting, addresses. This was not repeated in later yearbooks. So here is a small list of the students in Shaw:

Annie H. Catlett- 943 (or 913) St St NW

Frank Robert Cook- 1636 10th St NWCeretta Desmukes- 209 O St NW

Mark E. Rivers- 103 or 403 U St NWWalter S. Savoy- 1325 12th St NW

Herbert L. Stevens- 922 Florida Avenue NW