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Old 01-01-2013, 02:54 PM
 
3 posts, read 3,850 times
Reputation: 13

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Quote:
Originally Posted by selltheburgh View Post
While you might be right about the board and administration, that is up for debate and review. You could always run for school board if you want to change things.

The Obama IB program is what came from Schenley when they closed Schenley. They took that program, moved it to Reizenstein and then later to the Peabody building. The only thing Peabody about this school now is the building, which was ruined a good 50+ years ago anyhow.

I agree that the name is a bad idea because Obama isn't done yet. He could start a war in Iraq or get a BJ from his secretary before he's done. The thing is though, they let the students name the school and it really could have been much worse given that they voted on it and it wasn't up to the board or administration.

The bottom line is that was a failed school. Less than half graduated and the number enrolled was shrinking every year for the past 10-15 years.


Grade 11

Reading Proficiency:
32% (2011)
24% (2010)
26% (2009)
19% (2008)
24% (2007)

Math Proficiency:
23% (2011)
17% (2010)
20% (2009)
20% (2008)
11% (2007)
You're telling me they allowed kids who can't read or compute to vote on the name of the school? Classic. But apparently the other families knew enough to keep their kids out of it, and voted with their feet.

I've been working on ed reform since we moved to Florida in 1969. Generations of kids have been lost while the unions, administration, PTA (yes, PTA is dependent upon the existing structure) and vendors fought kicking and screaming.

A black psychiatrist from Yale, Dr. James P. Comer, who specialized in development of children and youth took the two worst schools in New Haven in the 60's and turned them around. But only one school in Dade County FL in South Beach tried it. That school turned around. No other failing school would try it. The other failing schools voted too.

No one with the power to institute the Comer Process has advocated for it. That's whom the school should've been named after, and his Process should have been instituted. I do have doubts about whether the public education system in this country will continue much longer as presently dysfunctioning, especially for the disadvantaged. That's why charter schools, not all of which are worthwhile, are booming.
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Old 01-01-2013, 03:56 PM
 
Location: 15206
1,860 posts, read 2,564,755 times
Reputation: 1301
Quote:
Originally Posted by Peabody Alum View Post
You're telling me they allowed kids who can't read or compute to vote on the name of the school? Classic. But apparently the other families knew enough to keep their kids out of it, and voted with their feet.
Maybe you didn't understand what I posted. They closed Peabody. The few remaining kids there were either sent to Westinghouse or other schools. The enrollment was declining and the number of kids graduating was less than half. It was declared a dropout factory and as waste of space and resources.

The BUILDING that Peabody once was in was closed for 2 years and the Peabody program was shut down. Then they moved the kids who were once in the gifted IB program at Schenley to Peabody just this year. In the interim those kids were at the former Reizenstein building. They also made the Obama IB program 6-12 instead of 9-12. This is a Magnet program that kids need to be accepted into and are not guaranteed or entitled to automatically be enrolled into.

While the test scores aren't the greatest there, they are much much better than the failed Peabody school.

Pittsburgh Obama 6-12 | School Information Overview

International Baccalaureate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hope that makes sense to you. Peabody is no longer. They didn't change the name and keep it the same. It is a full on different program that has been around in PPS for a while. Just a new location.

===

Edit: They students named it Obama IB when they were on Penn Ave in the former Reizenstein building. This not recently when they moved to N Highland Ave to the Peabody building.

Being that this is Pittsburgh, people will continue to give directions based on the old name. They'll likely say that you need to drive past where Peabody was to get to Highland Park just like they would say to go past the old N Oakland Giant Eagle to get to Schenley HS.

Last edited by selltheburgh; 01-01-2013 at 03:59 PM.. Reason: Edit
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Old 01-03-2013, 10:27 PM
 
Location: The Land of Reason
13,221 posts, read 12,267,396 times
Reputation: 3554
Quote:
Originally Posted by liljuicy2 View Post
Ive always wanted to go to peabody when i was younger but now that i have experienced it i hate this school.

So did I, but I ended up going to Schenley (another great loss) and still lived in Brashear's school district
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Old 01-03-2013, 10:32 PM
 
Location: The Land of Reason
13,221 posts, read 12,267,396 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hopes View Post
I was in it once. My girlfriend's boyfriend attended there. We snuck inside when our school had the day off. We didn't get 10 yards down the hallway before an armed security guard stopped us. This was decades ago---long before other schools had guards, let alone armed guards.


I don't think those students you see downtown at night are Peabody students.

I always thought they were from the Hill District. Some might be from North Side (not sure).

I'm no expert, but I don't think Hill District residents attend Peabody. I always assumed Peabody served from Stanton Heights over to Homewood.

The Hill district kids went to Schenley and Fifth Ave up until the mid seventies, and than they closed Fifth Ave and opened Brashear and bused them and Hazelwood there. Schenley took everyone from Somers St back and Brashear took everyone from Somers Dr towards Downtown Most of the kids that hung out downtown then were from the Northside and the ones today are from the City School and those transferring buses
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Old 01-03-2013, 10:39 PM
 
Location: The Land of Reason
13,221 posts, read 12,267,396 times
Reputation: 3554
Quote:
Originally Posted by h_curtis View Post
It is interesting to see how much shake up is in the city schools. I really liked Schenley and the location, but it is gone. Peabody is now gone. The new Schenley is now in operation. I don't care for the building from the outside, but not sure about the inside. It does have a nice park there to practice sports on though and that is a plus. I wonder what is going on with the city schools? The H.S.'s test in the lowest of low when it comes to state averages. When I read that I was a bit surprised. I just assumed Philly would be much worse than Pitt when it comes to that, but it wasn't. With all these changes and now kids can go where ever they want within the city limits, how is that going to play out? Will a couple of good high schools come out of these moves instead of having them all not doing well? I hope they can sort it out and really have some inner-city pride in some of the city schools. Guess we will see in 4-5 years.
The whole decline in the disapperance in Pittsburgh's City schools in general

Schenley- gone
South Hills - gone
South - gone
Westinghouse - gone
Peabody - gone
Allegheny - gone
Langley - gone
Oliver - gone (?)
5th Ave - (well gone)

I remeber playing football against all of them except 5th Ave but knew someone who did graduated there
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Old 01-04-2013, 09:09 AM
 
3 posts, read 3,850 times
Reputation: 13
[quote=selltheburgh;27576760]Maybe you didn't understand what I posted. They closed Peabody. The few remaining kids there were either sent to Westinghouse or other schools. The enrollment was declining and the number of kids graduating was less than half. It was declared a dropout factory and as waste of space and resources.

The BUILDING that Peabody once was in was closed for 2 years and the Peabody program was shut down. Then they moved the kids who were once in the gifted IB program at Schenley to Peabody just this year. In the interim those kids were at the former Reizenstein building. They also made the Obama IB program 6-12 instead of 9-12. This is a Magnet program that kids need to be accepted into and are not guaranteed or entitled to automatically be enrolled into.

While the test scores aren't the greatest there, they are much much better than the failed Peabody school.

Pittsburgh Obama 6-12 | School Information Overview

International Baccalaureate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hope that makes sense to you. Peabody is no longer. They didn't change the name and keep it the same. It is a full on different program that has been around in PPS for a while. Just a new location.

===

Edit: They students named it Obama IB when they were on Penn Ave in the former Reizenstein building. This not recently when they moved to N Highland Ave to the Peabody building.

Being that this is Pittsburgh, people will continue to give directions based on the old name. They'll likely say that you need to drive past where Peabody was to get to Highland Park just like they would say to go past the old N Oakland Giant Eagle to get to Schenley HS.




I understand. I would compare it to re-arranging the deck chairs....I was referring to the fact that they allowed the disintegration of the school to continue until it had to be shut down instead of fixing it. Of course the enrollment was declining. Few would want their kids to attend such a school.

Allowing students to name any school after any sitting elected official is bad policy, no matter when they did it.

It wouldn't take much to get better test scores, obviously. Time will tell whether the scores get to acceptable levels or it becomes another dropout factory.

Just another example of the failure of public education for poor minorities in this country and why charter schools are booming, even though most of them aren't that much better than traditional public schools.
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Old 01-04-2013, 10:07 AM
 
1,901 posts, read 4,355,724 times
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Quote:
Westinghouse - gone
Westinghouse is still running it's currently a coed (this year it went back after the horrible experiment last year) highschool & middle school for: all of Larimer, most of East Liberty (kids from the Enright go to Alderdice & kids from the sliver west of Langly go to University-Prep), most of Homewood (some kids from a small part of Homewood South go to Alderdice), the East Hills besides the Phase II East Hills Apartments (the kids from the EHP go to Alderdice), most of Lincoln-Lemington (kids from the Lemington-Belmar Chadwick section go to Alderdice), a small part of Point Breeze North (most go to Alderdice) & part of Highland Park (most go to University-Prep)...

The rough neighborhoods that the kids who attended Peabody were from were: Garfield, Larimer, part of Lincoln, & East Liberty. There were kids reppin' red, black and blue, plus there were kids from those Towers... So it was a rough place... Larimer VS Garfield, Lincoln VS Larimer, Garfield VS Lincoln, Garfield VS most East Liberty, most of East Liberty VS Larimer & sometimes East Liberty VS East Liberty.... Like I said it was rough.
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Old 01-04-2013, 10:25 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh, PA (Morningside)
14,361 posts, read 16,879,345 times
Reputation: 12390
Quote:
Originally Posted by Uptown kid View Post
Westinghouse is still running it's currently a coed (this year it went back after the horrible experiment last year) highschool & middle school for: all of Larimer, most of East Liberty (kids from the Enright go to Alderdice & kids from the sliver west of Langly go to University-Prep), most of Homewood (some kids from a small part of Homewood South go to Alderdice), the East Hills besides the Phase II East Hills Apartments (the kids from the EHP go to Alderdice), most of Lincoln-Lemington (kids from the Lemington-Belmar Chadwick section go to Alderdice), a small part of Point Breeze North (most go to Alderdice) & part of Highland Park (most go to University-Prep)...

The rough neighborhoods that the kids who attended Peabody were from were: Garfield, Larimer, part of Lincoln, & East Liberty. There were kids reppin' red, black and blue, plus there were kids from those Towers... So it was a rough place... Larimer VS Garfield, Lincoln VS Larimer, Garfield VS Lincoln, Garfield VS most East Liberty, most of East Liberty VS Larimer & sometimes East Liberty VS East Liberty.... Like I said it was rough.
Do you know the history of why the Allderdice enclaves happened to be in the East Hills and Lincoln-Lemington Belmar?

Otherwise, the new feeder patterns have no enclaves, but these remain. I'm sure it's in part because there's be a firestorm if any black areas were put back into ghetto schools. Though as far as I know, it's neither improved those areas in terms of desirability, or done much for the kids in terms of performance. In general, if you take one kid from the ghetto and have him go to a "good school" he'll improve dramatically (even if he doesn't become a straight-A student). If you take a few dozen, they all just hang out together and do no better than they'd do in the ghetto (although they might be less liable to get into trouble with the law).
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Old 01-04-2013, 11:27 AM
 
1,901 posts, read 4,355,724 times
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If you take a few dozen, they all just hang out together and do no better than they'd do in the ghetto (although they might be less liable to get into trouble with the law).
True, except Alderdice isn't exactly a good school if your from Greenfield/Lincoln Place/Homewood/Hazelwood/Lincoln/East Hills, for the fist to it's average, for the rest it's bad. According to everybody I know who went there Dice is the most institutionally segregated (by class) PPS school of em all.
1st Class Citizens of the school: Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Point Breeze, Regent Square, Swisshelm Park & low income kids from the CAS Program
2nd Class Citizens: Greenfield, Lincoln Place, (probably the Enright section now though historically the went to Peabody last year they went to U-Prep)
3rd Class Citizens: Hazelwood/Glenwood, Glen Hazel, Homewood South, Lincoln & East Hills
Rarely are the average 3rd Class mixed in with the average 1st class in their core classes (so I've been told). Though Alderdice is still a better option than Westinghouse... Simply because its safer and even at it's worst Dice is still better Westinghouse non CAS.
A fair percentage of the kids who are from the 3rd class still fail, though 50% of the failing student is the individual kid (plus parents or the lack their of) fault, 50% of it is the institutional segregation that doesn't give them the resources that their upper-middle class counterparts have. So when non CAS kids from lower income neighborhoods graduate Dice they often go Job Core or CCAC opposed to the SQ Hill kids going to where ever their achievements take them, and that is partially (key word partially because the students will to learn/home environment are also apart of it) Alderdice's fault.

It's hard to explain from an outsider's perceptive though know: a SQ Hill/Shadyside/Point Breeze/Regent Sq perception of Dice isn't the same from a Hazelwood/East Hills/Lincoln/Homewood perspective... If your low income from a PPS lower school to highschool, the odds are truly stacked aginst you, and part of that is PPS fault, and that's even true in "good schools"
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Old 01-04-2013, 01:16 PM
 
Location: 15206
1,860 posts, read 2,564,755 times
Reputation: 1301
Quote:
Originally Posted by Uptown kid View Post
It's hard to explain from an outsider's perceptive though know: a SQ Hill/Shadyside/Point Breeze/Regent Sq perception of Dice isn't the same from a Hazelwood/East Hills/Lincoln/Homewood perspective... If your low income from a PPS lower school to highschool, the odds are truly stacked aginst you, and part of that is PPS fault, and that's even true in "good schools"
While you are partially right, you can't really blame PPS or the teachers. I know teachers who teach or taught in low income Pgh Public Schools. They put a lot of effort into teaching and it isn't their fault that the kids are not doing well. PPS has a higher budget per child than most suburban schools. Put all of those same low income kids in an empty classroom in Mt Lebonan and with Mt Lebo teachers and they probably won't excel there either. Mix a few of those kids into a classroom full of "high achievers" and they'l likely do better. Mix the high achievers into a classroom full of kids who have absolutely no interest in school and no parental motivation to do well and they likely won't do nearly as well.

The issue is poverty & problems associated with poverty. It is not the school district or the teachers. Raising a kid in a 2 parent household with an above average income has been difficult and stressful, but possible. I couldn't imagine doing that as a single poor parent. The stress of having a child just compounds when you can barely afford food, gas bills, rent, etc. The chances of there being a single mother, substance abuse problems, or domestic violence are much higher in lower income households than average or upper income households.
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