Integration and DC Schools -- A high priority? Yay or nay?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Zoning restrictions aren’t creating segregation. Let developers do what they want without zoning and they will build more 1 and 2 bedroom apartments with lots of amenities to attract young people without children. They aren’t going to start building small affordable family friendly home.

Agree but what I think matters more in this context is that consultant types have gotten the cause and effect completely opposite.

Housing prices are correlated with the perceived quality of schools. But it's not high housing costs that create good schools. It's good schools creating high housing costs.

Teachers and facilities are roughly the same across the district. Good schools have good students from solid families. They are created by excluding underperforming students with behavioral issues. And yes, once you have that in place, people will definitely pay a premium to buy into a neighborhood school that is sufficiently segregated.

How does this work in the IB by-right traditional school model that is DCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Zoning restrictions aren’t creating segregation. Let developers do what they want without zoning and they will build more 1 and 2 bedroom apartments with lots of amenities to attract young people without children. They aren’t going to start building small affordable family friendly home.

Agree but what I think matters more in this context is that consultant types have gotten the cause and effect completely opposite.

Housing prices are correlated with the perceived quality of schools. But it's not high housing costs that create good schools. It's good schools creating high housing costs.

Teachers and facilities are roughly the same across the district. Good schools have good students from solid families. They are created by excluding underperforming students with behavioral issues. And yes, once you have that in place, people will definitely pay a premium to buy into a neighborhood school that is sufficiently segregated.

How does this work in the IB by-right traditional school model that is DCPS?

At risk families cannot afford to buy an in bound spot at schools like Ross or Janney. At risk students are also much more likely to underperform and have behavioral issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Zoning restrictions aren’t creating segregation. Let developers do what they want without zoning and they will build more 1 and 2 bedroom apartments with lots of amenities to attract young people without children. They aren’t going to start building small affordable family friendly home.

Agree but what I think matters more in this context is that consultant types have gotten the cause and effect completely opposite.

Housing prices are correlated with the perceived quality of schools. But it's not high housing costs that create good schools. It's good schools creating high housing costs.

Teachers and facilities are roughly the same across the district. Good schools have good students from solid families. They are created by excluding underperforming students with behavioral issues. And yes, once you have that in place, people will definitely pay a premium to buy into a neighborhood school that is sufficiently segregated.

How does this work in the IB by-right traditional school model that is DCPS?

The schools with the highest test scores and best outcomes in DC are located in places where most lower income families are excluded from the housing market. A lot of the highest achieving elementary schools in DC are in areas with almost no rental housing at all, for instance.

I feel like the PP either has kids at Maury on the Hill or is familiar with that situation, because it's the only school in DCPS that I think had this trajectory, of going from a low achieving school to a high achieving one before housing prices in the zone went way up. But I think this ignores some key factors. Maury has a unique boundary on the Hill with pretty limited multi-family and rental housing. There are both in the broader neighborhood, but they are largely zoned for other schools (Miner, L-T, Watkins, Payne). At the time that Maury improved, housing in zone was relatively inexpensive for DC, as at the time, Hill East and especially the area past Lincoln Park was considered somewhat dangerous, at least by many on the Hill. But it was still mostly SFHs. That made it a good place for dual income feds and other MC or UMC families to buy into the Hill for a bargain. These families then banded together to embrace the IB school rather than send their kids to charters. Part of this was practical -- Maury is not convenient to the vast majority of charters. A handful of families could get into SWS or CHML, but even TR4 is a bit of a hike, especially if you want a neighborhood school. The Brookland charters, LAMB, ITDS, DCB -- the commutes to these places all suck from the Maury catchment, especially if you work at the Capitol or downtown.

So a group of well-educated, upper income families basically made a pact to stick with Maury and not bail out. And it really did transform the school. In the midst of this, the school got a nice new renovation which helped pull in more families who were new to the neighborhood, and those families quickly recognized the committed PTO and community for what it was and stuck around too.

Because most of Maury's at risk population prior to this happening was OOB, students from EOTR or from the Miner and Payne catchment's (Watkins-Peabody at the time was considered one of the better elementaries on the Hill, so few Cluster families were lotterying to Maury at that time), this surge in IB interest had the effect of replacing low income families coming in via the lottery, with higher income families coming in via boundary rights.

A somewhat similar thing is happening at Payne, but again, Payne has more multifamily and low income housing in its catchment. Maury's boundary is unique in the percent of SFHs, so the gentrification of those homes had a much more significant impact on Maury's IB population than at adjacent schools. JO Wilson has, I think, attempted a similar path, but there are is a lot more multi-family housing in that boundary as well.

Most schools can't really do what Maury did because their catchment doesn't have those features. One to maybe watch is Wheatley, in Trinidad, as real estate in Trinidad has gone bonkers and it's mostly SFHs and small apartment buildings, many of which have been converted to 2-3 bedroom condos in recent years. But if Wheatley is on the Maury track, it's probably 15 years behind. If it's going to make that shift, it will depend on the families currently entering PK and K there now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

socioeconomically diverse public schools are big picture a really good thing. schools run better when a majority of the students are not economically at-risk and/or have a significant level of family/community support. but thats mostly keeping the often overlooked middle class of all races in dc public schools.

When a school becomes comprised over more than 30% at-risk students, the middle class families generally tend to leave. They may stick around for k-2 but once third grade hits and it is more about reading to learn instead of learning to read, the middle class families will peel off if they believe that their children's needs are not being met because the school is having to focus the bulk of its resources on the most struggling kids. And, as the strength of the charter sector has shown, not only did a significant amount of middle class families turn to the charter world, but a large number of working and at-risk families will also peel off from regular DCPS if they think that the charters can provide a more attentive and rigorous environment with respect to academics and behavior.

This would not happen if there was tracking but of course we can’t have that because of equity. Also the reality is DCPS doesn’t care about meeting the needs of the higher performing kids. All they care about and concentrate resources to is the bottom.

They will be “OK” however you define that, even if bored to death and not learning much. But hey, they can be helpers for the other students.

DCPS isn't actually doing much for kids at the bottom either. They say they are focusing on kids with the most needs, but where's the evidence? As many have pointed out, you're much better off being a poor black child in a Mississippi school than in DCPS. Poor kids in DC are used as an excuse by DCPS not to help UMC kids.

Yeah, the longer I witness this system (and have had kids at a Title 1 DCPS school and a low-risk Charter), I think the problem is the low expectations baked into DCPS. It actually breaks my heart to see these kids whose parents are trusting the system to challenge their kids and give them a pathway to success.

Raising academic standards through the system would help everyone. Unfortunately we elect social justice warriors to office (looking at you Janeese Lewis George) who will never in a million years agree to that.

Politicians on the left will never admit their education policies are a failure, but the evidence is becoming harder and harder to ignore.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/opinion/red-states-good-schools.html

"Louisiana ranks No. 1 in the country in recovery from pandemic losses in reading, while Alabama ranks No. 1 in math recovery.

The state with the lowest chronic absenteeism in schools is Alabama, according to a tracker with data from 40 states.

Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.

Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil)."

Cherry-picked data. Using the Urban Institute’s demographically adjusted numbers (https://www.urban.org/research/publication/states-demographically-adjusted-performance-2024-national-assessment), Alabama (which you tout as a model of math instruction), is 46th in 8th grade math. Massachusetts (which you insist must have “failed education policies” because of how the state votes in presidential elections), is in the top five in all four metrics, and has the best demographically-adjusted 8th grade reading scores in the country.

Maybe it’s not as simple as a 1:1 correlation between presidential vote and education policy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

socioeconomically diverse public schools are big picture a really good thing. schools run better when a majority of the students are not economically at-risk and/or have a significant level of family/community support. but thats mostly keeping the often overlooked middle class of all races in dc public schools.

When a school becomes comprised over more than 30% at-risk students, the middle class families generally tend to leave. They may stick around for k-2 but once third grade hits and it is more about reading to learn instead of learning to read, the middle class families will peel off if they believe that their children's needs are not being met because the school is having to focus the bulk of its resources on the most struggling kids. And, as the strength of the charter sector has shown, not only did a significant amount of middle class families turn to the charter world, but a large number of working and at-risk families will also peel off from regular DCPS if they think that the charters can provide a more attentive and rigorous environment with respect to academics and behavior.

This would not happen if there was tracking but of course we can’t have that because of equity. Also the reality is DCPS doesn’t care about meeting the needs of the higher performing kids. All they care about and concentrate resources to is the bottom.

They will be “OK” however you define that, even if bored to death and not learning much. But hey, they can be helpers for the other students.

DCPS isn't actually doing much for kids at the bottom either. They say they are focusing on kids with the most needs, but where's the evidence? As many have pointed out, you're much better off being a poor black child in a Mississippi school than in DCPS. Poor kids in DC are used as an excuse by DCPS not to help UMC kids.

Yeah, the longer I witness this system (and have had kids at a Title 1 DCPS school and a low-risk Charter), I think the problem is the low expectations baked into DCPS. It actually breaks my heart to see these kids whose parents are trusting the system to challenge their kids and give them a pathway to success.

Raising academic standards through the system would help everyone. Unfortunately we elect social justice warriors to office (looking at you Janeese Lewis George) who will never in a million years agree to that.

Politicians on the left will never admit their education policies are a failure, but the evidence is becoming harder and harder to ignore.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/opinion/red-states-good-schools.html

"Louisiana ranks No. 1 in the country in recovery from pandemic losses in reading, while Alabama ranks No. 1 in math recovery.

The state with the lowest chronic absenteeism in schools is Alabama, according to a tracker with data from 40 states.

Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.

Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil)."

Cherry-picked data. Using the Urban Institute’s demographically adjusted numbers (https://www.urban.org/research/publication/states-demographically-adjusted-performance-2024-national-assessment), Alabama (which you tout as a model of math instruction), is 46th in 8th grade math. Massachusetts (which you insist must have “failed education policies” because of how the state votes in presidential elections), is in the top five in all four metrics, and has the best demographically-adjusted 8th grade reading scores in the country.

Maybe it’s not as simple as a 1:1 correlation between presidential vote and education policy?

The difference is standards. That's it. A little accountability would go a long way. DC instead believes in social promotion and eliminating racial disparities by making school so easy that no one can possibly fail. We see where that's gotten us. No other school system in this country spends so much money and has so little to show for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

socioeconomically diverse public schools are big picture a really good thing. schools run better when a majority of the students are not economically at-risk and/or have a significant level of family/community support. but thats mostly keeping the often overlooked middle class of all races in dc public schools.

When a school becomes comprised over more than 30% at-risk students, the middle class families generally tend to leave. They may stick around for k-2 but once third grade hits and it is more about reading to learn instead of learning to read, the middle class families will peel off if they believe that their children's needs are not being met because the school is having to focus the bulk of its resources on the most struggling kids. And, as the strength of the charter sector has shown, not only did a significant amount of middle class families turn to the charter world, but a large number of working and at-risk families will also peel off from regular DCPS if they think that the charters can provide a more attentive and rigorous environment with respect to academics and behavior.

This would not happen if there was tracking but of course we can’t have that because of equity. Also the reality is DCPS doesn’t care about meeting the needs of the higher performing kids. All they care about and concentrate resources to is the bottom.

They will be “OK” however you define that, even if bored to death and not learning much. But hey, they can be helpers for the other students.

DCPS isn't actually doing much for kids at the bottom either. They say they are focusing on kids with the most needs, but where's the evidence? As many have pointed out, you're much better off being a poor black child in a Mississippi school than in DCPS. Poor kids in DC are used as an excuse by DCPS not to help UMC kids.

Yeah, the longer I witness this system (and have had kids at a Title 1 DCPS school and a low-risk Charter), I think the problem is the low expectations baked into DCPS. It actually breaks my heart to see these kids whose parents are trusting the system to challenge their kids and give them a pathway to success.

Raising academic standards through the system would help everyone. Unfortunately we elect social justice warriors to office (looking at you Janeese Lewis George) who will never in a million years agree to that.

Politicians on the left will never admit their education policies are a failure, but the evidence is becoming harder and harder to ignore.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/opinion/red-states-good-schools.html

"Louisiana ranks No. 1 in the country in recovery from pandemic losses in reading, while Alabama ranks No. 1 in math recovery.

The state with the lowest chronic absenteeism in schools is Alabama, according to a tracker with data from 40 states.

Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.

Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil)."

Cherry-picked data. Using the Urban Institute’s demographically adjusted numbers (https://www.urban.org/research/publication/states-demographically-adjusted-performance-2024-national-assessment), Alabama (which you tout as a model of math instruction), is 46th in 8th grade math. Massachusetts (which you insist must have “failed education policies” because of how the state votes in presidential elections), is in the top five in all four metrics, and has the best demographically-adjusted 8th grade reading scores in the country.

Maybe it’s not as simple as a 1:1 correlation between presidential vote and education policy?

Isn't the whole thing that the south recently adopted new policies for elementary grades that are driving improvements? I wouldn't expect to see impacts from that in upper grades yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Integration is very important to me and I am engaged in it, but it is generally overtaken by other priorities on this board.

I'd say mostly, this board wants differentiation and to not have children of board participants in the same schools as students with behavior problems. Those goals do not go well with generalized integration.

There are also more general segregation/race and class relations issues, with a major one being a distribution of income and educational attainment that is at the edges with nobody in the middle (we have a bunch of high income advanced degree holders and HS-or-worse educated low income parents, nothing in between in DC).

If you actually think this, it's a reflection of your own limited social circle. It's wrong. DC has plenty of families that are middle income. Lots of people just have college degrees and no advanced degree, plus plenty of fields offer steady income but not high income. We can afford to own homes (condos or houses in part so the city outside the most gentrified neighborhoods, and also if you bought before rates went up) and care about education, but also money is tight because this is an expensive city and it gets more expensive all the time. On the other hand, living in the city often gives us the ability to live without a car or with just one car, living in small homes keep us from accumulating so much stuff, and there are real cost savings to being close in to work and lots of free entertainment. So a lot of us are loathe to move out of the city where we might get cheaper housing and food but more expensive and longer commutes and a host of other expenses just by virtue of living far away from things.

I regularly feel completely invisible in discussions about education in the city because so many people think as you do. That there are only two kinds of people in the city: (1) rich, mostly white people with advanced degrees, and (2) poor black and hispanic people with a HS education or less. I'm sure your in group #1 and it's actually an embarrassment to your education that you are so ignorant of the many many families of every race in this city that are dual income, have college degrees, are not rich, can still pay our bills, and obviously send our kids to public schools because where the hell else are we going to send them?

What's funny is that we send our kids to school with rich people and poor people, and people just lack the observational skills or common sense to understand that we are middle class. Some of the rich people at our school just assume we are also rich, because we wear professional clothes and have read books, and they seem confused when we don't have opinions on whether Colorado or Vermont is better for New Year's skiing. Other rich people at our school just group us in with the poor people. The poor people all think we are rich, which is fair, because compared to them we are. Literally no one cares if our family's needs are being met by the school system.

Eh--while there are definite divides between income/wealth amongst the college educated and above class--fundamentally everyone in this group is well-educated and want their kids to be well-educated. How are they not aligned on educational priorities? They both want better public schools. Isn't that the common ground. What does it matter that some can afford luxury hobbies/travel and some can't.

[Anonymous]

Not as high a priority as getting the best education as possible for my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Integration is very important to me and I am engaged in it, but it is generally overtaken by other priorities on this board.

I'd say mostly, this board wants differentiation and to not have children of board participants in the same schools as students with behavior problems. Those goals do not go well with generalized integration.

There are also more general segregation/race and class relations issues, with a major one being a distribution of income and educational attainment that is at the edges with nobody in the middle (we have a bunch of high income advanced degree holders and HS-or-worse educated low income parents, nothing in between in DC).

If you actually think this, it's a reflection of your own limited social circle. It's wrong. DC has plenty of families that are middle income. Lots of people just have college degrees and no advanced degree, plus plenty of fields offer steady income but not high income. We can afford to own homes (condos or houses in part so the city outside the most gentrified neighborhoods, and also if you bought before rates went up) and care about education, but also money is tight because this is an expensive city and it gets more expensive all the time. On the other hand, living in the city often gives us the ability to live without a car or with just one car, living in small homes keep us from accumulating so much stuff, and there are real cost savings to being close in to work and lots of free entertainment. So a lot of us are loathe to move out of the city where we might get cheaper housing and food but more expensive and longer commutes and a host of other expenses just by virtue of living far away from things.

I regularly feel completely invisible in discussions about education in the city because so many people think as you do. That there are only two kinds of people in the city: (1) rich, mostly white people with advanced degrees, and (2) poor black and hispanic people with a HS education or less. I'm sure your in group #1 and it's actually an embarrassment to your education that you are so ignorant of the many many families of every race in this city that are dual income, have college degrees, are not rich, can still pay our bills, and obviously send our kids to public schools because where the hell else are we going to send them?

What's funny is that we send our kids to school with rich people and poor people, and people just lack the observational skills or common sense to understand that we are middle class. Some of the rich people at our school just assume we are also rich, because we wear professional clothes and have read books, and they seem confused when we don't have opinions on whether Colorado or Vermont is better for New Year's skiing. Other rich people at our school just group us in with the poor people. The poor people all think we are rich, which is fair, because compared to them we are. Literally no one cares if our family's needs are being met by the school system.

Eh--while there are definite divides between income/wealth amongst the college educated and above class--fundamentally everyone in this group is well-educated and want their kids to be well-educated. How are they not aligned on educational priorities? They both want better public schools. Isn't that the common ground. What does it matter that some can afford luxury hobbies/travel and some can't.

IME, rich people often have different educational priorities than me, a well-educated middle class person. They don't have the same worries about their kids being left behind or failing to acquire necessary skills for HS, college, or the job market, because they have enough money not to have to worry about it. There are lots of culture clashes between the rich parents at our school and those who are middle class, even when the middle class parents are actually better educated. If anything, college-educated middle class people have the most anxiety about education because they (we) have the least stable class status and have the most to lose in the AI revolution and the K-shaped economy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

socioeconomically diverse public schools are big picture a really good thing. schools run better when a majority of the students are not economically at-risk and/or have a significant level of family/community support. but thats mostly keeping the often overlooked middle class of all races in dc public schools.

When a school becomes comprised over more than 30% at-risk students, the middle class families generally tend to leave. They may stick around for k-2 but once third grade hits and it is more about reading to learn instead of learning to read, the middle class families will peel off if they believe that their children's needs are not being met because the school is having to focus the bulk of its resources on the most struggling kids. And, as the strength of the charter sector has shown, not only did a significant amount of middle class families turn to the charter world, but a large number of working and at-risk families will also peel off from regular DCPS if they think that the charters can provide a more attentive and rigorous environment with respect to academics and behavior.

I've heard this 30% threshold quoted before. Do you have a source by any chance?

It’s actually 20%. FCPS did their own study of this years ago also and got same.

20 or 30%—but how can this be sustainable in a community with 45% at risk students?

I'd love to see the actual studies/reports and what they were measuring. Is the threshold related to parental decision-making? Shifts in student resource allocation? Something else?

If the former, I suspect parents with students in DCPS and DCPCS have a higher threshold than parents with students in FCPS or other wealthier school districts with no/limited school choice.

Many of the schools frequently and positively discussed here are over 20% at risk. Even Jackson-Reed is 26% at risk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Integration is very important to me and I am engaged in it, but it is generally overtaken by other priorities on this board.

I'd say mostly, this board wants differentiation and to not have children of board participants in the same schools as students with behavior problems. Those goals do not go well with generalized integration.

There are also more general segregation/race and class relations issues, with a major one being a distribution of income and educational attainment that is at the edges with nobody in the middle (we have a bunch of high income advanced degree holders and HS-or-worse educated low income parents, nothing in between in DC).

If you actually think this, it's a reflection of your own limited social circle. It's wrong. DC has plenty of families that are middle income. Lots of people just have college degrees and no advanced degree, plus plenty of fields offer steady income but not high income. We can afford to own homes (condos or houses in part so the city outside the most gentrified neighborhoods, and also if you bought before rates went up) and care about education, but also money is tight because this is an expensive city and it gets more expensive all the time. On the other hand, living in the city often gives us the ability to live without a car or with just one car, living in small homes keep us from accumulating so much stuff, and there are real cost savings to being close in to work and lots of free entertainment. So a lot of us are loathe to move out of the city where we might get cheaper housing and food but more expensive and longer commutes and a host of other expenses just by virtue of living far away from things.

I regularly feel completely invisible in discussions about education in the city because so many people think as you do. That there are only two kinds of people in the city: (1) rich, mostly white people with advanced degrees, and (2) poor black and hispanic people with a HS education or less. I'm sure your in group #1 and it's actually an embarrassment to your education that you are so ignorant of the many many families of every race in this city that are dual income, have college degrees, are not rich, can still pay our bills, and obviously send our kids to public schools because where the hell else are we going to send them?

What's funny is that we send our kids to school with rich people and poor people, and people just lack the observational skills or common sense to understand that we are middle class. Some of the rich people at our school just assume we are also rich, because we wear professional clothes and have read books, and they seem confused when we don't have opinions on whether Colorado or Vermont is better for New Year's skiing. Other rich people at our school just group us in with the poor people. The poor people all think we are rich, which is fair, because compared to them we are. Literally no one cares if our family's needs are being met by the school system.

Eh--while there are definite divides between income/wealth amongst the college educated and above class--fundamentally everyone in this group is well-educated and want their kids to be well-educated. How are they not aligned on educational priorities? They both want better public schools. Isn't that the common ground. What does it matter that some can afford luxury hobbies/travel and some can't.

IME, rich people often have different educational priorities than me, a well-educated middle class person. They don't have the same worries about their kids being left behind or failing to acquire necessary skills for HS, college, or the job market, because they have enough money not to have to worry about it. There are lots of culture clashes between the rich parents at our school and those who are middle class, even when the middle class parents are actually better educated. If anything, college-educated middle class people have the most anxiety about education because they (we) have the least stable class status and have the most to lose in the AI revolution and the K-shaped economy.

Can you provide some examples? We are talking about public schools here, the ultra rich are all in privates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Integration is very important to me and I am engaged in it, but it is generally overtaken by other priorities on this board.

I'd say mostly, this board wants differentiation and to not have children of board participants in the same schools as students with behavior problems. Those goals do not go well with generalized integration.

There are also more general segregation/race and class relations issues, with a major one being a distribution of income and educational attainment that is at the edges with nobody in the middle (we have a bunch of high income advanced degree holders and HS-or-worse educated low income parents, nothing in between in DC).

If you actually think this, it's a reflection of your own limited social circle. It's wrong. DC has plenty of families that are middle income. Lots of people just have college degrees and no advanced degree, plus plenty of fields offer steady income but not high income. We can afford to own homes (condos or houses in part so the city outside the most gentrified neighborhoods, and also if you bought before rates went up) and care about education, but also money is tight because this is an expensive city and it gets more expensive all the time. On the other hand, living in the city often gives us the ability to live without a car or with just one car, living in small homes keep us from accumulating so much stuff, and there are real cost savings to being close in to work and lots of free entertainment. So a lot of us are loathe to move out of the city where we might get cheaper housing and food but more expensive and longer commutes and a host of other expenses just by virtue of living far away from things.

I regularly feel completely invisible in discussions about education in the city because so many people think as you do. That there are only two kinds of people in the city: (1) rich, mostly white people with advanced degrees, and (2) poor black and hispanic people with a HS education or less. I'm sure your in group #1 and it's actually an embarrassment to your education that you are so ignorant of the many many families of every race in this city that are dual income, have college degrees, are not rich, can still pay our bills, and obviously send our kids to public schools because where the hell else are we going to send them?

What's funny is that we send our kids to school with rich people and poor people, and people just lack the observational skills or common sense to understand that we are middle class. Some of the rich people at our school just assume we are also rich, because we wear professional clothes and have read books, and they seem confused when we don't have opinions on whether Colorado or Vermont is better for New Year's skiing. Other rich people at our school just group us in with the poor people. The poor people all think we are rich, which is fair, because compared to them we are. Literally no one cares if our family's needs are being met by the school system.

Eh--while there are definite divides between income/wealth amongst the college educated and above class--fundamentally everyone in this group is well-educated and want their kids to be well-educated. How are they not aligned on educational priorities? They both want better public schools. Isn't that the common ground. What does it matter that some can afford luxury hobbies/travel and some can't.

IME, rich people often have different educational priorities than me, a well-educated middle class person. They don't have the same worries about their kids being left behind or failing to acquire necessary skills for HS, college, or the job market, because they have enough money not to have to worry about it. There are lots of culture clashes between the rich parents at our school and those who are middle class, even when the middle class parents are actually better educated. If anything, college-educated middle class people have the most anxiety about education because they (we) have the least stable class status and have the most to lose in the AI revolution and the K-shaped economy.

Until very recently in DC people in the middle class who wanted to stay in DC but couldn’t afford top private schools sent their kids to parochial schools. Those schools were affordable and good (many are still!). That’s still true to a degree. But the makeup of middle class parents have changed (to a group that’s less likely to send a kid to a religious school) and parochial schools have gotten a lot more competitive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Zoning restrictions aren’t creating segregation. Let developers do what they want without zoning and they will build more 1 and 2 bedroom apartments with lots of amenities to attract young people without children. They aren’t going to start building small affordable family friendly home.

Agree but what I think matters more in this context is that consultant types have gotten the cause and effect completely opposite.

Housing prices are correlated with the perceived quality of schools. But it's not high housing costs that create good schools. It's good schools creating high housing costs.

Teachers and facilities are roughly the same across the district. Good schools have good students from solid families. They are created by excluding underperforming students with behavioral issues. And yes, once you have that in place, people will definitely pay a premium to buy into a neighborhood school that is sufficiently segregated.

How does this work in the IB by-right traditional school model that is DCPS?

The schools with the highest test scores and best outcomes in DC are located in places where most lower income families are excluded from the housing market. A lot of the highest achieving elementary schools in DC are in areas with almost no rental housing at all, for instance.

I feel like the PP either has kids at Maury on the Hill or is familiar with that situation, because it's the only school in DCPS that I think had this trajectory, of going from a low achieving school to a high achieving one before housing prices in the zone went way up. But I think this ignores some key factors. Maury has a unique boundary on the Hill with pretty limited multi-family and rental housing. There are both in the broader neighborhood, but they are largely zoned for other schools (Miner, L-T, Watkins, Payne). At the time that Maury improved, housing in zone was relatively inexpensive for DC, as at the time, Hill East and especially the area past Lincoln Park was considered somewhat dangerous, at least by many on the Hill. But it was still mostly SFHs. That made it a good place for dual income feds and other MC or UMC families to buy into the Hill for a bargain. These families then banded together to embrace the IB school rather than send their kids to charters. Part of this was practical -- Maury is not convenient to the vast majority of charters. A handful of families could get into SWS or CHML, but even TR4 is a bit of a hike, especially if you want a neighborhood school. The Brookland charters, LAMB, ITDS, DCB -- the commutes to these places all suck from the Maury catchment, especially if you work at the Capitol or downtown.

So a group of well-educated, upper income families basically made a pact to stick with Maury and not bail out. And it really did transform the school. In the midst of this, the school got a nice new renovation which helped pull in more families who were new to the neighborhood, and those families quickly recognized the committed PTO and community for what it was and stuck around too.

Because most of Maury's at risk population prior to this happening was OOB, students from EOTR or from the Miner and Payne catchment's (Watkins-Peabody at the time was considered one of the better elementaries on the Hill, so few Cluster families were lotterying to Maury at that time), this surge in IB interest had the effect of replacing low income families coming in via the lottery, with higher income families coming in via boundary rights.

A somewhat similar thing is happening at Payne, but again, Payne has more multifamily and low income housing in its catchment. Maury's boundary is unique in the percent of SFHs, so the gentrification of those homes had a much more significant impact on Maury's IB population than at adjacent schools. JO Wilson has, I think, attempted a similar path, but there are is a lot more multi-family housing in that boundary as well.

Most schools can't really do what Maury did because their catchment doesn't have those features. One to maybe watch is Wheatley, in Trinidad, as real estate in Trinidad has gone bonkers and it's mostly SFHs and small apartment buildings, many of which have been converted to 2-3 bedroom condos in recent years. But if Wheatley is on the Maury track, it's probably 15 years behind. If it's going to make that shift, it will depend on the families currently entering PK and K there now.

Pretty accurate summary - although I would add for JO Wilson, for many years a lot of their in boundary kids peeled off for 2 Rivers or NE charters which were a less horrible commute from their boundary. But as 2 Rivers has decreased in appeal, and the expansion of NoMA/Union Market (not sure where different boundaries of neighborhoods are) -- the neighborhood has changed a lot. And, JO Wilson is getting a renovation as well, which doesn't hurt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Integration is very important to me and I am engaged in it, but it is generally overtaken by other priorities on this board.

I'd say mostly, this board wants differentiation and to not have children of board participants in the same schools as students with behavior problems. Those goals do not go well with generalized integration.

There are also more general segregation/race and class relations issues, with a major one being a distribution of income and educational attainment that is at the edges with nobody in the middle (we have a bunch of high income advanced degree holders and HS-or-worse educated low income parents, nothing in between in DC).

If you actually think this, it's a reflection of your own limited social circle. It's wrong. DC has plenty of families that are middle income. Lots of people just have college degrees and no advanced degree, plus plenty of fields offer steady income but not high income. We can afford to own homes (condos or houses in part so the city outside the most gentrified neighborhoods, and also if you bought before rates went up) and care about education, but also money is tight because this is an expensive city and it gets more expensive all the time. On the other hand, living in the city often gives us the ability to live without a car or with just one car, living in small homes keep us from accumulating so much stuff, and there are real cost savings to being close in to work and lots of free entertainment. So a lot of us are loathe to move out of the city where we might get cheaper housing and food but more expensive and longer commutes and a host of other expenses just by virtue of living far away from things.

I regularly feel completely invisible in discussions about education in the city because so many people think as you do. That there are only two kinds of people in the city: (1) rich, mostly white people with advanced degrees, and (2) poor black and hispanic people with a HS education or less. I'm sure your in group #1 and it's actually an embarrassment to your education that you are so ignorant of the many many families of every race in this city that are dual income, have college degrees, are not rich, can still pay our bills, and obviously send our kids to public schools because where the hell else are we going to send them?

What's funny is that we send our kids to school with rich people and poor people, and people just lack the observational skills or common sense to understand that we are middle class. Some of the rich people at our school just assume we are also rich, because we wear professional clothes and have read books, and they seem confused when we don't have opinions on whether Colorado or Vermont is better for New Year's skiing. Other rich people at our school just group us in with the poor people. The poor people all think we are rich, which is fair, because compared to them we are. Literally no one cares if our family's needs are being met by the school system.

Eh--while there are definite divides between income/wealth amongst the college educated and above class--fundamentally everyone in this group is well-educated and want their kids to be well-educated. How are they not aligned on educational priorities? They both want better public schools. Isn't that the common ground. What does it matter that some can afford luxury hobbies/travel and some can't.

IME, rich people often have different educational priorities than me, a well-educated middle class person. They don't have the same worries about their kids being left behind or failing to acquire necessary skills for HS, college, or the job market, because they have enough money not to have to worry about it. There are lots of culture clashes between the rich parents at our school and those who are middle class, even when the middle class parents are actually better educated. If anything, college-educated middle class people have the most anxiety about education because they (we) have the least stable class status and have the most to lose in the AI revolution and the K-shaped economy.

Can you provide some examples? We are talking about public schools here, the ultra rich are all in privates.

I don’t think that’s the case, actually. The marginal ROI of Beauvoir or NPS isn’t obviously better than Janney, so it becomes a matter of taste and background. The rich to Very Rich in DC come from pretty diverse backgrounds and there isn’t an easy way to predict where they’ll send their kids besides if they themselves went to private school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Zoning restrictions aren’t creating segregation. Let developers do what they want without zoning and they will build more 1 and 2 bedroom apartments with lots of amenities to attract young people without children. They aren’t going to start building small affordable family friendly home.

Agree but what I think matters more in this context is that consultant types have gotten the cause and effect completely opposite.

Housing prices are correlated with the perceived quality of schools. But it's not high housing costs that create good schools. It's good schools creating high housing costs.

Teachers and facilities are roughly the same across the district. Good schools have good students from solid families. They are created by excluding underperforming students with behavioral issues. And yes, once you have that in place, people will definitely pay a premium to buy into a neighborhood school that is sufficiently segregated.

How does this work in the IB by-right traditional school model that is DCPS?

The schools with the highest test scores and best outcomes in DC are located in places where most lower income families are excluded from the housing market. A lot of the highest achieving elementary schools in DC are in areas with almost no rental housing at all, for instance.

I feel like the PP either has kids at Maury on the Hill or is familiar with that situation, because it's the only school in DCPS that I think had this trajectory, of going from a low achieving school to a high achieving one before housing prices in the zone went way up. But I think this ignores some key factors. Maury has a unique boundary on the Hill with pretty limited multi-family and rental housing. There are both in the broader neighborhood, but they are largely zoned for other schools (Miner, L-T, Watkins, Payne). At the time that Maury improved, housing in zone was relatively inexpensive for DC, as at the time, Hill East and especially the area past Lincoln Park was considered somewhat dangerous, at least by many on the Hill. But it was still mostly SFHs. That made it a good place for dual income feds and other MC or UMC families to buy into the Hill for a bargain. These families then banded together to embrace the IB school rather than send their kids to charters. Part of this was practical -- Maury is not convenient to the vast majority of charters. A handful of families could get into SWS or CHML, but even TR4 is a bit of a hike, especially if you want a neighborhood school. The Brookland charters, LAMB, ITDS, DCB -- the commutes to these places all suck from the Maury catchment, especially if you work at the Capitol or downtown.

So a group of well-educated, upper income families basically made a pact to stick with Maury and not bail out. And it really did transform the school. In the midst of this, the school got a nice new renovation which helped pull in more families who were new to the neighborhood, and those families quickly recognized the committed PTO and community for what it was and stuck around too.

Because most of Maury's at risk population prior to this happening was OOB, students from EOTR or from the Miner and Payne catchment's (Watkins-Peabody at the time was considered one of the better elementaries on the Hill, so few Cluster families were lotterying to Maury at that time), this surge in IB interest had the effect of replacing low income families coming in via the lottery, with higher income families coming in via boundary rights.

A somewhat similar thing is happening at Payne, but again, Payne has more multifamily and low income housing in its catchment. Maury's boundary is unique in the percent of SFHs, so the gentrification of those homes had a much more significant impact on Maury's IB population than at adjacent schools. JO Wilson has, I think, attempted a similar path, but there are is a lot more multi-family housing in that boundary as well.

Most schools can't really do what Maury did because their catchment doesn't have those features. One to maybe watch is Wheatley, in Trinidad, as real estate in Trinidad has gone bonkers and it's mostly SFHs and small apartment buildings, many of which have been converted to 2-3 bedroom condos in recent years. But if Wheatley is on the Maury track, it's probably 15 years behind. If it's going to make that shift, it will depend on the families currently entering PK and K there now.

Pretty accurate summary - although I would add for JO Wilson, for many years a lot of their in boundary kids peeled off for 2 Rivers or NE charters which were a less horrible commute from their boundary. But as 2 Rivers has decreased in appeal, and the expansion of NoMA/Union Market (not sure where different boundaries of neighborhoods are) -- the neighborhood has changed a lot. And, JO Wilson is getting a renovation as well, which doesn't hurt.

I really don't think you can talk about demographic changes at Payne without talking about the closure of the homeless shelter. That's a big, very high needs group that left the school fairly rapidly as families were moved elsewhere. The plan to close was first proposed in the SY15-16 school year, when Payne was 57% at risk. By the time DC General fully closed at the beginning of the SY18-19 school year, Payne was 44% at risk. It's been hovering between 33-36% for the past five years.