Are "choice sets" back with Maury-Miner?

[Anonymous]

For those who remember the 2013 redistricting, one of the ideas that was floated was "choice sets." Instead of having by-right in-boundary schools, there would be "sets" of schools and you'd be guaranteed a seat at one of them. Everyone would have to play the lottery, and if your neighborhood school didn't have enough seats you might end up at another one nearby.

This was pushed hard by DCPS in 2013. And nobody was fooled. You can go back into the DCUM archives and read the discussion from 2013, but everyone saw through it as a way to pretend to be doing something without addressing the fundamental problem that there are stark differences in quality among DCPS schools. But it was an idea that just wouldn't die, DCPS officials just kept bringing it up, meeting after meeting, even though nobody wanted it.

Flash forward to today, it seems like once again the idea refuses to die.

[Anonymous]

At least you could have both your kids in one place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those who remember the 2013 redistricting, one of the ideas that was floated was "choice sets." Instead of having by-right in-boundary schools, there would be "sets" of schools and you'd be guaranteed a seat at one of them. Everyone would have to play the lottery, and if your neighborhood school didn't have enough seats you might end up at another one nearby.

This was pushed hard by DCPS in 2013. And nobody was fooled. You can go back into the DCUM archives and read the discussion from 2013, but everyone saw through it as a way to pretend to be doing something without addressing the fundamental problem that there are stark differences in quality among DCPS schools. But it was an idea that just wouldn't die, DCPS officials just kept bringing it up, meeting after meeting, even though nobody wanted it.

Flash forward to today, it seems like once again the idea refuses to die.

I agree with everything you wrote here except I would replace the word "quality" with "income and wealth"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those who remember the 2013 redistricting, one of the ideas that was floated was "choice sets." Instead of having by-right in-boundary schools, there would be "sets" of schools and you'd be guaranteed a seat at one of them. Everyone would have to play the lottery, and if your neighborhood school didn't have enough seats you might end up at another one nearby.

This was pushed hard by DCPS in 2013. And nobody was fooled. You can go back into the DCUM archives and read the discussion from 2013, but everyone saw through it as a way to pretend to be doing something without addressing the fundamental problem that there are stark differences in quality among DCPS schools. But it was an idea that just wouldn't die, DCPS officials just kept bringing it up, meeting after meeting, even though nobody wanted it.

Flash forward to today, it seems like once again the idea refuses to die.

I agree with everything you wrote here except I would replace the word "quality" with "income and wealth"

+1. Slice most schools data by ethnicity and you'll see it's not actually that different. SES would be better but DCPS doesn't provide that as a data point in test scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those who remember the 2013 redistricting, one of the ideas that was floated was "choice sets." Instead of having by-right in-boundary schools, there would be "sets" of schools and you'd be guaranteed a seat at one of them. Everyone would have to play the lottery, and if your neighborhood school didn't have enough seats you might end up at another one nearby.

This was pushed hard by DCPS in 2013. And nobody was fooled. You can go back into the DCUM archives and read the discussion from 2013, but everyone saw through it as a way to pretend to be doing something without addressing the fundamental problem that there are stark differences in quality among DCPS schools. But it was an idea that just wouldn't die, DCPS officials just kept bringing it up, meeting after meeting, even though nobody wanted it.

Flash forward to today, it seems like once again the idea refuses to die.

I agree with everything you wrote here except I would replace the word "quality" with "income and wealth"

And i, a different poster, would reject your replacement and keep the word quality. Sorry not sorry.

[Anonymous]

I think choice sets are preferable to the cluster model if DME is adamant that the boundaries have to be merged. Choice sets would avoid basically closing and reopening two schools, spreading one elementary school across two campuses, and having a huge school population with very large numbers of classes in each grade.

[Anonymous]

This was all a sneaky plan to make choice sets look good by comparison.

[Anonymous]

Just want to be clear that no one from DCPS has suggested choice sets as a solution. It's been floated (I think mostly just on DCUM) as an alternative to the cluster.

I actually think in this specific instance, it could make sense. The identified problem with Maury and Miner is that you have two schools in close proximity where there are stark differences in both demographics and test scores. The goal of the cluster is to eliminate those inequities by merging the populations.

Choice sets would, instead of merging populations, remix them. If everyone IB for either Maury or Miner could rank those two schools in their preferred order and then a computer program could sort them based on lottery number and ranking, you'd presumably get two schools with roughly similar populations demographically (which would also lead to more similar test score results, since I agree with PPs that demographics are the big predictor of test scores, much more than the school you attend). So it would accomplish the DME's goal without having to create a huge cluster school. It would also be easier to phase in -- current students would be grandfathered in but all new seats would be assigned via choice sets.

The big drawback is that I think a lot of families would simply rank Maury first and, if they didn't get it, would use the lottery to go to a charter or OOB. So in the short run it might have almost no impact on demographics. I'm also unsure how it would work if someone was assigned to Miner but wanted to try again for Maury each year until they got it. However, I think in the long run, you'd get enough buy in from MC and UMC families in both boundaries to make both schools desirable enough to really boost IB buy in at Miner, and you'd spread out the at risk student population in a way that would be easier for both schools to manage, istead of the present situation in which the concentration of at risk kids at Miner scares of IB families who are MC or UMC, creating a kind of sinking effect there that can't seem to be reversed.