When are boundary changes being announced?
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Anonymous
Because there's a portion of DC that's afraid of "the plan" and though it's a large portion it is shrinking. DC is getting wealthier and more diverse, and not everyone thinks that's a good thing. Some people would like to reverse that trend, which is what the Gray vs. Fenty campaign was about. Gray (old guard) won. Mucking up the schools would certainly benefit that crowd. |
Anonymous
| Except now the plan is the paranoia of the rich white folks in Ward 3. Is it possible you might actually have people who are considering the voices of a lot of people throughout the city and feel a larger obligation to the needs of a not just rich folks?? Call me crazy but maybe not everyone is self-serving and corrupt. |
Anonymous
What is it that makes Wilson a good school compared to other high schools in DC? Is it the teachers are different? |
Anonymous
| I don't get how this is even an argument. Good public schools, schools with high test scores, high SAT scores, low to non-existent crime and low truancy rates are highly, HIGHLY correlated with students from higher SES families and highly educated parents. There is no myth here. It is not |
Anonymous
Or is it the well-prepared students who attend (because they have gone to strong elementary/middle schools)? I think everyone knows the answer to this one. |
Anonymous
Then why would making Wilson a lottery school improve the school? Not getting the logic on a city-wide lottery for Wilson. |
Anonymous
|
"The Plan" to drive poor people out of the city sounds about as kooky as "the Plan" to drive out the (upper) middle class.
Get a grip, people. Or maybe a therapist. |
Anonymous
| 22:48 is right. While either "plan" conspiracy is an extreme view, what is the craziest behavior of all is for DCPS to ignore all the points that 22:48 succinctly summarizes. |
Anonymous
Conspiracy Theory 1 (private school lobbying) and Conspiracy Theory 2 (attempts by the "old guard guys" to get the demanding, educated parents and gentrifiers out of the DCPS system) and attempts by parents-voters-residents to try to explain and find a rationale to the un-explainable and irrational proposal to introduce a "controlled choice system" for HS (and maybe MS) . "Controlled choice" makes no sense in its assumptions , in the proposed application to DC, and in its outcomes , which will inexorably be the abandonment of DCPS by a significant share of valuable families (which will eventually go private or to the suburbs). |
Anonymous
|
Conspiracy Theory 1 (private school lobbying) and Conspiracy Theory 2 (attempts by the "old guard guys" to get the demanding, educated parents and gentrifiers out of the DCPS system) are attempts by parents-voters-residents to try to explain and find a rationale to the un-explainable and irrational proposal to introduce a "controlled choice system" for HS (and maybe MS) . "Controlled choice" makes no sense in its assumptions , in the proposed application to DC, and in its outcomes , which will inexorably be the abandonment of DCPS by a significant share of valuable families (which will eventually go private or to the suburbs). Current Wilson IB parent : I will sue DCPS (on the ground that overcrowding at Wilson is a result of the feeder rights introduced 5 yrs ago). If not successful, at least this will buy me time to get my two kids 6th and 7th graders) into Wilson. |
Anonymous
Current Wilson IB parent : I will sue DCPS (on the ground that overcrowding at Wilson is a result of the feeder rights introduced 5 yrs ago). If not successful, at least this will buy me time to get my two kids 6th and 7th graders) into Wilson. Conspiracy Theory 3: Controlled Choice is the result of lobbying from the City attorneys, who reasonably foresee increased revenues from the forthcoming lawsuits by Wilson IBs !! |
Anonymous
+1000. The reality is that if Wilson's served all low income students, it would not be desirable. Income directly correlates to school performance. Making the city's schools all lottery and offering equitable access for all does not eliminate poverty and the problems students face when coming from a poor background. That's the real problem and it starts way before HS. |
Anonymous
Personally I agree with you. Unfortunately, a lot of DC voters really believe it, and more importantly: the old-style DC pols know that, milk it, and will pay to get them out to vote. |
Anonymous
if Deal and/or Wilson become all lottery admission, I believe that preference levels would still come into play, just like for PK. I bet there would be preference for proximity or those living in the historic Wilson boundaries...at least for several years, while other middle and high schools across the district are made more desirable. It won't be a free for all. Plus DCPS has said several times that there would be "significant grandfathering" and parents will have to hold the Chancellor to that. I think commenters like those above, while making what I think are reasonable points, are going to lose if they keep articulating arguments that feel like they're waging war on the poor. I feel as if I can almost see the spittle forming from the corners of your mouth. It's all in the messaging, folks. |
Anonymous
I don't think you quite get it. They have already tried to make other high schools more "desirable" by spending multimillions of dollars on renovations, while Ward 3 and Washington Latin have spent a lot of time in trailers. The outside does not matter. Those schools are still empty. There is no way to make them more "desirable" except by giving them the same population Wilson has but we don't have enough people to do it. THAT is why there is only one Wilson. If Wilson becomes lottery (my kids are in ES), we will leave DC before Deal so that my kids have a good group of friends before they go to high school. I am not worried about my kids. I am worried about having an even greater gap between rich and poor than we do now, about going back to the time I grew up where white kids only went to one ES (Mann) and then went private in DC (or like me and my cousins never went to a public school) when it was affordable on one UMC income. It is not anymore. We could not afford private school. But we can afford to move. Here is the fundamental problem with all this nonsense: studies have shown that there is a tipping point, maybe 20%, maybe 30% after which FARMS students get no benefit from being in a more integrated school. At 35%, they perform just as poorly as those who are in schools that are 85% FARMS, and they bring down the performance of the non-FARMS students. Deal is 23% FARMS. Wilson is 37% but still a success. BASIS DC did as well on the DC CAS last year with 40% FARMS (a title I school) as Washington Latin Middle school, which is 18.3 % FARMS. So sometimes it can be done, but probably only at a charter like BASIS or a charter that focuses on poor minority kids and teaches to the test like KIPP. But our population in DCPS (not including charters) is 76% FARMS. So there is no way that you can split 76 up among 24 to get the percentages that this study, which is really great done in 2010 in MoCo by the 21st century foundation (I'll get the cite) showed would benefit the kids who need help. What you will get is white flight, again. The 13% of white students who took the NAEP (and no charter students take it) have consistently scored the highest in the country. You will lose them. And then the rest of the numbers will start to look much worse without that 13%, even though DC as a whole did still score lowest in the nation and lowest among urban districts last year again. Non Farms population was 24%, so there are 11% non white non farms 4th grade kids who might stay, but I doubt it. This is not about race, it is about economics. Deal is majority AA but only 23% FARMS. Wilson is majority AA but only 37% FARMS. Here are the Farms Stats on 4th grade reading vs the white stats (since the whites are factored into non-farms) race % avg score at or above basic at or above proficient advanced white 13 260 96 78 39 FARMS 76 192 37 12 2 What is even more incredible is that while there is a significant achievement gap between whites and blacks and whites and latinos it has stayed relatively constant over the last ten years and is getting better little by little (2013 gap between blacks and whites 68, 2002 60, for Latinos 2013 50, 2002 55. What has widened astronomically is the gap between FARMS and non FARMS, and the lowest and highest performing students. In 2002 FARMS kids scored on average 25 points lower than whites. In 2013 FARMS kids scored on average 58 points lower than whites. This means it more than doubled in the last ten years. In 2002 the gap between the kids in the top 75% of performance and the bottom 25% was 48. In 2013 the gap was 61, and all these numbers just get worse in math, including this gap. Please tell me how, when these scores are so clearly linked to SES NOT RACE, this sounds racist. Yes it may discriminate against having more than a certain number of poor kids to keep from destroying the school, but it is to keep from destroying the school, not just to keep poor kids out for sheer spite. How much more offended would people be if we WERE talking about race? But we are talking about poverty, the kind of poverty that ruins most kids' chances before they are even born. Why don't they get back to focusing on early education and social programs and if they are going to tinker with schools, DON'T BREAK the schools that are functioning when it is pretty much certain not to help anyone and to hurt that 37% at Wilson, that 23% at Deal, and the other AA and Latino kids at those schools because yes, diversity is a good thing, as long as it does not destroy education. And helping disadvantaged kids is a good thing. And the evidence is that in small doses over long periods of time, it can lift those kids up (if you assume, as I mostly do, that not many whites in DC are FARMS.) So here you have a bunch of FARMS kids plus a majority AA population that is benefiting from attending these two schools. If you turn this into a lottery, you are destroying their schools for them as well, their academic futures, and they probably will not / cannot move. So this is not really about race, except that here most of the minority population is AA, elsewhere it might be Latino, etc, it is about economics. And the 13% of white students are not going to stick around for highs school if they cannot be guaranteed Wilson, because School Without Walls (also majority AA but only 17% FARMS) cannot guarantee any 4th grader or 8th grader acceptance. I would not put my kid into this kind of social experiment where empirically it makes no sense from the get go because we do not have the numbers we need on the high end. I would move or go to a Charter that goes through 12th that I think is good enough. I'm not sure there will be one by the time my oldest hits 4th grade. In 2013 FARMS kids scored on average 58 points lower than whites. The issue is how to narrow that gap. The one thing that ALL the studies say WILL NOT WORK is to overpopulate those schools that are now working with a relatively low % of FARMS kids with more FARMS kids and lose all the high SES kids. And yes, because privates are so expensive now this will mean white flight - not to private schools, to charters and then to other states if those charters end before high school. I don't see why this is confusing to anyone. Probably the three most important decisions in life are if you marry, if you have children, and how you raise them to be happy and successful. You do not do that by sending them to crappy schools for the sake of diversity, or continuing to live in the city, unless you have no other options or are a kind of parent I have never met and hope never to meet................... I feel like Marion Barry is running the school system. Once he breaks it he will never be able to put it back together again - or at least not for another generation. Not for my kids. Not for yours. The pp sounds very secure I guess because their kids are closer to high school. But you don't stay around for an ES and a MS when by moving you can get a HS as well, a larger house, a school bus. In Barry tradition, the people these folks are screwing over here are their own and they don't even see it. Wilson draws from all over the city. It is majority AA, 37% FARMS, has lousy DC CAS scores, yet everyone wants to go there. So they want to give EVERYONE a CHANCE of going there by making sure that the people who made everyone want to go there leave because where there was certainty there is now a lottery? This makes the least sense of anything I have heard from DCPS in a long long time. So hopefully they are not THAT stupid. |