Charter school parents: why are you okay with diverting resources from public schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish charter schools didn't exist. If they were outlawed tomorrow, my neighborhood school would basically immediately become great. However, because they exist, and because I got into a good one, I'm going to use it.

If charter schools didn't exist with their solid 15 year history in the District of Columbia, you would also not be enjoying the results of the citywide gentrification that has come along with it. Your neighborhood school would not necessarily be better, those families would have left for the suburbs. You would not have the great playgrounds, you would not have dog parks, you would not have the award winning restaurants you enjoy on the weekend.

Gentrification is not driven by parents. It's driven by childless yuppies and DINKs. Just look at where gentrification is happening now. Do you see a lot of high SES parents moving to Ivy City?

Which is why it is laughable that PP thinks her IB would "flip" if charters weren't around. Those students would not be in her neighborhood if not for charters.

Reading is fundamental. What I said is, if they were outlawed tomorrow (not if they never existed) my neighborhood school would flip.

On the Hill, the schools would weaken if there weren't good charter MS and HS options. The MS wouldn't get better and less families would stick around once their children hit late elementary-age. Privates or the suburbs, like the bad old days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High income parents send their kids to private school, not charter schools or other public schools (unless it's TJ in Virginia).

Nope. Wrong again.

But I think this brings up an interesting question. I'm in Ward 5. If all our charters were "outlawed tomorrow" (not realistic but just imagine), would those high income parents move their kids to private, or "immediately" flip the local DCPS? Or would the just move away? As one of those parents...I'd probably test the waters, but my guess is a combination of the three. There would be no immediate flip. It might improve, but only if it happened to suddenly listen to a band of high income parents (not only white btw) about what to do with the school. Unlikely. Personally I might try it out but make other plans for upper grades, much like parents are doing now who I know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High income parents send their kids to private school, not charter schools or other public schools (unless it's TJ in Virginia).

You really should come out of your bubble. It's nice out here in the big world. You don't need to be scared.

Signed,
High income parent of a DCPS student

+1 non-JKLM DCPS parent with HHI of >$500K.

+1+1 non-JKLM parent of Charter School with HHI >$500k

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High income parents send their kids to private school, not charter schools or other public schools (unless it's TJ in Virginia).

Nope. Wrong again.

But I think this brings up an interesting question. I'm in Ward 5. If all our charters were "outlawed tomorrow" (not realistic but just imagine), would those high income parents move their kids to private, or "immediately" flip the local DCPS? Or would the just move away? As one of those parents...I'd probably test the waters, but my guess is a combination of the three. There would be no immediate flip. It might improve, but only if it happened to suddenly listen to a band of high income parents (not only white btw) about what to do with the school. Unlikely. Personally I might try it out but make other plans for upper grades, much like parents are doing now who I know.

+1. I live there too, and I think the lower grades in elementary schools would drastically improve. But having seen the struggles at Stuart-Hobson and Eliot-Hine, I simply have no faith in DCPS' competence in managing a middle school. The conditions are there, parents are trying, and it is still really hard. Why would I expect any different in Ward 5, which is so much less affluent?

This isn't about the kids being a problem. The more I work and learn, the more I realize that downtown is the heart of the matter. They are incompetent, they make terrible decisions, and I don't know how to change it. That is why people like me go to charters eventually. I can't un-know the things I know about how DCPS really works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please do share?

Oh please.

Thinks like an entitled parasite, talks like an entitled parasite, smells like an entitled parasite -- aren't you a true parasite?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish charter schools didn't exist. If they were outlawed tomorrow, my neighborhood school would basically immediately become great. However, because they exist, and because I got into a good one, I'm going to use it.

If charter schools didn't exist with their solid 15 year history in the District of Columbia, you would also not be enjoying the results of the citywide gentrification that has come along with it. Your neighborhood school would not necessarily be better, those families would have left for the suburbs. You would not have the great playgrounds, you would not have dog parks, you would not have the award winning restaurants you enjoy on the weekend.

Gentrification is not driven by parents. It's driven by childless yuppies and DINKs. Just look at where gentrification is happening now. Do you see a lot of high SES parents moving to Ivy City?

Which is why it is laughable that PP thinks her IB would "flip" if charters weren't around. Those students would not be in her neighborhood if not for charters.

Reading is fundamental. What I said is, if they were outlawed tomorrow (not if they never existed) my neighborhood school would flip.

No, it wouldn't. Charter families would attempt to flee the city en masse before they would enroll -tomorrow - at their neighborhood school. Myself included.

[Anonymous]

Research shows that charter schools improve student achievement in the surrounding district schools. So there's that.

https://www.the74million.org/article/when-charter-schools-open-neighboring-schools-get-better-a-new-study-finds-7-reasons-why

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Research shows that charter schools improve student achievement in the surrounding district schools. So there's that.

https://www.the74million.org/article/when-charter-schools-open-neighboring-schools-get-better-a-new-study-finds-7-reasons-why

This seems to be referencing NYC where Charters give in bound preference and often share building space and resources with the neighborhood public school. I'm not sure how much of this carries over into DC where those things do not happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish charter schools didn't exist. If they were outlawed tomorrow, my neighborhood school would basically immediately become great. However, because they exist, and because I got into a good one, I'm going to use it.

If charter schools didn't exist with their solid 15 year history in the District of Columbia, you would also not be enjoying the results of the citywide gentrification that has come along with it. Your neighborhood school would not necessarily be better, those families would have left for the suburbs. You would not have the great playgrounds, you would not have dog parks, you would not have the award winning restaurants you enjoy on the weekend.

Gentrification is not driven by parents. It's driven by childless yuppies and DINKs. Just look at where gentrification is happening now. Do you see a lot of high SES parents moving to Ivy City?

Which is why it is laughable that PP thinks her IB would "flip" if charters weren't around. Those students would not be in her neighborhood if not for charters.

Reading is fundamental. What I said is, if they were outlawed tomorrow (not if they never existed) my neighborhood school would flip.

How do you know that? I live in a neighborhood with not-so-good schools. If charters didn't exist, we'd either 1. try to find the money to send our kids to private school or 2. move somewhere else. And pretty much every other higher-SES parent in our shoes is similar in thought.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish charter schools didn't exist. If they were outlawed tomorrow, my neighborhood school would basically immediately become great. However, because they exist, and because I got into a good one, I'm going to use it.

False. Charter schools have only been around a few years. Its wishful thinking to assume that high income parents would just attend their local if they didn't have a charter option. We would be back to the way things were 10 years ago when parents just moved to burbs or went private.

Nah. My IB school is close enough. It would for sure flip if it was the only option.

But it's not possible for it to be the only option, unless you're going to outlaw people from moving to a different neighborhood/the suburbs, or outlaw private schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish charter schools didn't exist. If they were outlawed tomorrow, my neighborhood school would basically immediately become great. However, because they exist, and because I got into a good one, I'm going to use it.

If charter schools didn't exist with their solid 15 year history in the District of Columbia, you would also not be enjoying the results of the citywide gentrification that has come along with it. Your neighborhood school would not necessarily be better, those families would have left for the suburbs. You would not have the great playgrounds, you would not have dog parks, you would not have the award winning restaurants you enjoy on the weekend.

Gentrification is not driven by parents. It's driven by childless yuppies and DINKs. Just look at where gentrification is happening now. Do you see a lot of high SES parents moving to Ivy City?

Which is why it is laughable that PP thinks her IB would "flip" if charters weren't around. Those students would not be in her neighborhood if not for charters.

Reading is fundamental. What I said is, if they were outlawed tomorrow (not if they never existed) my neighborhood school would flip.

No, it wouldn't. Charter families would attempt to flee the city en masse before they would enroll -tomorrow - at their neighborhood school. Myself included.

Well you clearly live in a different neighborhood than I do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish charter schools didn't exist. If they were outlawed tomorrow, my neighborhood school would basically immediately become great. However, because they exist, and because I got into a good one, I'm going to use it.

If charter schools didn't exist with their solid 15 year history in the District of Columbia, you would also not be enjoying the results of the citywide gentrification that has come along with it. Your neighborhood school would not necessarily be better, those families would have left for the suburbs. You would not have the great playgrounds, you would not have dog parks, you would not have the award winning restaurants you enjoy on the weekend.

Gentrification is not driven by parents. It's driven by childless yuppies and DINKs. Just look at where gentrification is happening now. Do you see a lot of high SES parents moving to Ivy City?

Which is why it is laughable that PP thinks her IB would "flip" if charters weren't around. Those students would not be in her neighborhood if not for charters.

Reading is fundamental. What I said is, if they were outlawed tomorrow (not if they never existed) my neighborhood school would flip.

No, it wouldn't. Charter families would attempt to flee the city en masse before they would enroll -tomorrow - at their neighborhood school. Myself included.

Well you clearly live in a different neighborhood than I do.

You wouldn't see people fleeing to the burbs until after they benefited from the universal PK3 & 4- and if they had guaranteed access to their neighborhood school and no charter options, I think we'd see more people staying, and many more schools improving much faster. Alas all the middle class folks are afraid of the poors, so opt for whatever HRCS they can get into (which tend to be far from public transportation or have barriers that make them inconvenient to those same poors).

The system sucks and is as full of corruption as the rest of DC. Good luck trying to change it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most people probably choose charters based on a broad, deep-seated desire to avoid failing schools. They recognize that there is a collective action problem in establishing diverse school communities as well as corrective government intervention needed to make things work.

Successful families choosing school communities where most students fail is not normal in America, and that is, effectively, the choice presented to most (but not all) families in DC east of Rock Creek Park. Confidence in success for your children in such a situation is based on going against the flow, not acting like most people like you. It is an affirmative choice. And many are unwilling to make it.

Many families that have not succeeded in DCPS for generations also have a right to be displeased with this situation. They want alternatives to failure. The American educational system does not appear to have come up with good answers for students whose parents have poor educational attainment in schools surrounded by students with poor educational attainment. (Best I've heard of for this situation is taking small numbers of would-be striver children of uneducated parents and placing them in schools surrounded by only high achievers, in schools with minimal disruptions and deep student support, i.e., rich suburbs, which is not a solution for entire DC wards' worth of children.)

Charter schools have been posed as the alternative. They certainly have served as such, and have grown with the frustration with DCPS as people have sought alternatives.

I believe that charter openings were too easily allowed and it made joining a charter community rather than joining a DCPS community too easy a choice. I believe that there are differing intensities of interest in (1) alternatives-to-DCPS or (2) the niche-bases of certain charters, and the rapid expansion of these schools as DC family numbers have rebounded since that Mayor Williams inflection point of interest in living in DC has made them easier to wrap your head around than joining schools made up exclusively of failing students from cultures considered less-than by most Americans and parents resentful of your place in society.

The right answer would be a carrot-and-stick approach to encourage a desegregation of DC's schools. Desegregating DC's schools is probably the best way to see them succeed over time. Successful parents' their political voices in DC politics can help demand their transformation. A mix of at-grade, above-grade, and below-grade students can help make success more normal for all students.

DCPS has not moved fast enough to encourage the development of schools that create mixed communities, e.g., bilingual schools. Nothing says DCPS couldn't have its next elementary school in booming Ward 4 be an Amharic bilingual school, just to cite one example, or make Hardy a straight-up just-sue-me knockoff of BASIS MS, but that kind of creativity and entrepreneurial approach is only being pursued in the charter sector. DCPS could throw more money at must-have programming or niche staff than at building empty cathedrals, but has instead favored the buildings.

DC government could also work some sticks in that will make people whine, then turn to put in some elbow grease. Actually place limits on the expansion of the charter sector so that it can't just be the mindless choice of every white upper-class couple with a condo, dog and a 3 year-old in Ward 1 or 5. Take a hardass approach to boundary changes that will reliably place successful students a path from places like Bancroft through Roosevelt. Don't like it? Don't want to or can't move or get your kid into WLPCS or DCI? Well, maybe in the end you and yours get a differentiated program through MS and HS that means your snowflakes only have to mix with the children of the ghetto at lunch and recess, but that's the start of investment and involvement rather than out-and-out shunning, and mark my words it's the start of a move toward an integrated, reasonable system.

People can call it "social engineering," but how do you think you live your lives? Why does my family speak English rather than Spanish? Why can we afford mortgages? Does the trash get picked up if you leave it behind your house? How do we have 13 Council members and zero Congressmen? WE make choices that create societal outcomes, and I think we can design better ones in this area based on what we know and what's happened.

Let's go beyond complaints about people acting the best way the system lets them and the side-effects and problems the system hasn't fixed and design what we want.

Wonder why nobody else has commented on this post, which is a macro view gem (other than the mindless snowflake reference) though I'm not sure why you haven't mentioned test-in MS programs as a valuable tool in DC's resource-rich public school toolbox. Test-in MS/HS programs have worked to attract, and retain, thousands of high SES families to public schools in US inner cities across the country for decades, and in Boston's case, for several hundred years. Yet DC shuns these programs in knee-jerk fashion under each successive one-term mayor, as though we're stuck in the 60s and 70s, when poorly done academic tracking along racial lines was the inevitable outcome.

As a graduate of Boston Latin who isn't white, I'm stumped by the "building empty cathedrals" approach to ed reform in the traditional public schools sector in DC. DCPS leadership seems incompetent under one schools chancellor after another, leading many of us to wish that far less power vested in the chancellor here in 2017, making the system more accountable. Cities can build academic programs where all the kids mix during electives and extra-curriculars, not just at lunch and recess. But I'm nitpicking, so thanks for a smart, literate, birds-eye look at this calculus.

[Anonymous]

46% of public school students are in charters. There are more charter MS than DCPS MS. It's neither possible nor feasible to outlaw them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:46% of public school students are in charters. There are more charter MS than DCPS MS. It's neither possible nor feasible to outlaw them.

(ETA: Possible in a political sense, nor feasible in a facility sense.)