How many does it take

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of you should (re)read Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

If our society could function with everyone only caring about themselves and their own kids, that would be great. The system does, in fact, work best when it uses this individualistic tendency to try to promote the common good. Perhaps the problem isn't the parents who refuse to send their kids to the underperforming schools, perhaps it's the system that has allowed individualism to run rampant in such a way that the underprivileged have been left without their help and resources. Maybe this is just what happens when we run schools like businesses and not pieces of the community - just another example of the 99% and 1% forming.

That's a pretty non-controversial statement - of course it does. But you're still using your kids to promote that common good.

Good point. Reminds me of those assholes who take their kids to volunteer in a soup kitchen, or the like. Being all PC and using their kids for their little social experiment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Quick point: no one sends their child to a school which they think is going to be bad for them. That's pure projection. Instead they evaluate the situation, and send their kid to whatever school they judge best. For some that might be a local 99% FARMS school (though obviously that's not often the case, since, well, it wouldn't be 99% FARMS).

But there are a lot of parents who decided to enroll their kids in the early grades of marginal DCPS elementary schools. And those schools have improved. You may decide some exurban school with a high median HHI is better for your kid. That's great. Meanwhile, there's someone else sending their kid to St Albans or Maret wondering how you can subject your kid to that shithole.

At the end of the day, kids of mothers with high educational attainment, and whose parents are involved tend to have similar outcomes.

Well, I agree with this statement generally. Except that there's one poster who is repeatedly advocating that parents should send their kids to the school that will help "the system." I haven't seen one time where she's included the welfare of HER OWN child int he calculation.

But you're right that she's likely being intentionally obtuse and hyperbolic - which just makes me an idior for engaging her. I should just go back to egging on Bannaker-hating McKinley parent instead.

Yep, I think PP is grandstanding. I don't think you're an idior, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of you should (re)read Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

If our society could function with everyone only caring about themselves and their own kids, that would be great. The system does, in fact, work best when it uses this individualistic tendency to try to promote the common good. Perhaps the problem isn't the parents who refuse to send their kids to the underperforming schools, perhaps it's the system that has allowed individualism to run rampant in such a way that the underprivileged have been left without their help and resources. Maybe this is just what happens when we run schools like businesses and not pieces of the community - just another example of the 99% and 1% forming.

That's a pretty non-controversial statement - of course it does. But you're still using your kids to promote that common good.

Good point. Reminds me of those assholes who take their kids to volunteer in a soup kitchen, or the like. Being all PC and using their kids for their little social experiment.

You are comparing apples to oranges and you know it. Volunteering in a soup kitchen for a day is quite different to spending years in an underperforming school. Would you leave your kid to live in a shelter for a few weeks? In the name of helping the underprivileged and all?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree with the posters who say it's about SES, not race (although I wouldn't want my kid to be the only white in his class, either). Let me explain.

I work for the World Bank, arguably the most diverse employer in Washington, DC and possibly in the US. We are all colors, all languages, all ethnicities. We are very diverse.

And yet we are very not. Because regardless of color or national origin, we share the following characteristics: everyone has a graduate degree, at least. Everyone speaks 2+ languages. Everyone has traveled to dozens of countries. Everyone has gone to a handful of top universities internationally. Everyone is highly literate. Most people come from solid families that cared about education. Many come from their country elites.

So our kids get along very well regardless of their color. And I wouldn't feel comfortable putting my mixed-race son into a classroom of kids from poor, uneducated, untraveled families, no matter what their skin color is. At the WB we became completely color-blind, but inferior schooling or manner of speaking or insufficient worldliness would make you an outsider just as efficiently as the wrong skin color somewhere else.

And truth be told, we give lip service to diversity, but we want diversity only of a particular kind, especially for our children, because we want them to learn only one kind of normal - highly educated, international and literate. We are OK with them getting exposed to other lifestyles, but only after they learn what normal is.

So the long answer is that it doesn't matter what the majority/minority proportion is, as long as they don't come from poor, uneducated background. As a side note, in DC diversity tends to be framed as Black/White mix, but in real life there are many other shades and colors, so sometimes neither Black nor White are majorities.

Very well said. I think living in DC, sometimes I do become color blind. I don't notice what color someone is...but I do notice if someone is Ghetto. Or if someone is poor. I don't think I would mind if my DD was the only white face in a school full of rich black kids or brown kids or purple kids. But, mix in the poor kids.....

Yep. Given the choice between putting my kid in a situation where DD is the only white face, or a situation where she's the only one who's not an ignorant meth-smoking hillbilly, I'll take the former over the latter every time.

[Anonymous]

OP, I think my answer is becoming pretty clear on how many will it take.

[Anonymous]

We should unpack this a little bit. To start with, I think the original question is a bit offensive. I should hope that people are not merely looking at race to determine anything about the quality of a school. Not all that helpful, even in DC.

But this whole thing about school choice versus civic responsibility: isn't it just a really complicated weighing of trade offs and priorities? And every family will weigh those trade offs differently, even for different siblings in the same family. Proximity, easy commute, arts focus, science focus, diverse teaching staff, diverse student body, particular curriculum, a trusted principal, a renovated building, green space, family friends who also go there, ability to carpool, proximity to work, a good music program, a well run k run after care program, a safe neighborhood, and on and on and on.

These are all things that people may weigh differently. And please don't misunderstand that being committed to a struggling neighborhood school and being willing to make trade offs in the early years will almost certainly change by the middle school years. The calculus becomes completely different.

I have no point to make except that judging others as "not caring about the community, the city, poor kids etc". Or conversely judging that they " are sacrificing their own children to a social experiment and are therefore bad parents" is soooooo unhelpful. Especially when it is impossible to know all of the weighing of priorities and trade offs that went into a particular family's decision.
If you have a policy level problem with school choice, argue that. But no one should judge others for exercising choice when it is available ( including a choice to value civic responsibility and community building above other factors)

[Anonymous]

Good points, PP. But to flip it around, I think the reason there's some defensiveness on the part of parents who don't send their kids to some homogenously upper-middle-class institution in the exurbs is a form of child-abuse.

Whatever the positive social side-effects no one exposes their kid to a situation that they think is--on net--detrimental to their child.

So there's a fundamental difference between the two sides, where one is saying, "You should consider the social effects of where you send your kids", and the other is saying, "You're abusing your child."

One is legitimate discourse; the other is just being an asshole.

[Anonymous]

If your child has been subject to vulgar language or behavior on a daily basis in DCPS, you'll do anything to get them out and into a better school. I don't care if every other child is purple. I'm not going to ruin my children's one chance at a good education. IMHO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We should unpack this a little bit. To start with, I think the original question is a bit offensive. I should hope that people are not merely looking at race to determine anything about the quality of a school. Not all that helpful, even in DC.

But this whole thing about school choice versus civic responsibility: isn't it just a really complicated weighing of trade offs and priorities? And every family will weigh those trade offs differently, even for different siblings in the same family. Proximity, easy commute, arts focus, science focus, diverse teaching staff, diverse student body, particular curriculum, a trusted principal, a renovated building, green space, family friends who also go there, ability to carpool, proximity to work, a good music program, a well run k run after care program, a safe neighborhood, and on and on and on.

These are all things that people may weigh differently. And please don't misunderstand that being committed to a struggling neighborhood school and being willing to make trade offs in the early years will almost certainly change by the middle school years. The calculus becomes completely different.

I have no point to make except that judging others as "not caring about the community, the city, poor kids etc". Or conversely judging that they " are sacrificing their own children to a social experiment and are therefore bad parents" is soooooo unhelpful. Especially when it is impossible to know all of the weighing of priorities and trade offs that went into a particular family's decision.
If you have a policy level problem with school choice, argue that. But no one should judge others for exercising choice when it is available ( including a choice to value civic responsibility and community building above other factors)

What are you doing on this thread?! Don't you understand that you're far too reasonable for this slime-fest?

[Anonymous]

9:50, You are probably the person who does what is stated by the poster. How can you assume that a racist overtone was the motive. I am the AA at the school who always has to interpret the baited questions from the White parents. I have come to the conclusion once you throw a rock into a pack of dogs, the one who yelps the loudest is the slimiest. Did you not cringe to read that a white candidate for the Eastern Principal job wanted to know where are the White children? Again, if a potential leader of school who's white asks that question then why can't I assume that white parents don't have a concern?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agreed but in DC race and low income has historically led to low academic standards and poor behavior. Parents who want better get in OOB, charter, or move out so you have schools with deep issues that can't be fixed with token middle class students. BTDT. Your children shouldn't be guinea pigs or pawns.

Anonymous wrote:For me it has never been how many XX. It's about academic accomplishment and behavior.

By immersing your child in a homogenous environment of white, wealthy peers you are also using them as a guinea pig and a pawn, with repercussions that you probably don't even recognize.

There were plenty of f'up kids at my private high school and the worst ones were always the rich kids, most of whom started there in the early grades. The kind who drop their garbarge in the hall and then say "But Eduardo will clean it up." Complete lack of self-awareness of their own racist and classist notions. Some of the public school transfers would joke that those kids needed to be dropped off in a poor part of town and we could take bets on whether they would make it home alive. But maybe we shouldn't have worried, after all they got left alone with a nanny for weeks at a time while their parents globe trotted.

[Anonymous]

My DC is a mix of white and another race and is in a majority black school. DC has told me that kids are using aweful language and teased DC... I suspect b/c of DC's look. For that reason alone, I won't want DC to be in that kind of environment.

[Anonymous]

Okay, I am just going to say it bad language is bad language. This reference about it being worst because someone is preferencing a "color" is absolutely ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

I think that's what the OP has in mind. Color IS the topic of this thread. Take it or leave it!