Failing Schools Almost Impossible to "Turnaround"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These poor people would have to move very far away to use these vouchers. Tony DC suburbs with good schools are more or as expensive as DC.

Anonymous wrote:It's suburban America's worst nightmare.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/housing-vouchers-a-golden-ticket-to-pricey-suburbs/2011/06/23/AGDNc7kH_story.html

Took me all of five minutes:

http://www.gosection8.com/Section-8-housing-in-Rockville-MD/2-bedroom-2-bathroom-rental-Condo/4249200#.ULPMUIbhd3g

Rosemont ES, Forest Oak MS, Gaithersburg HS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:regarding deconcentration --seems like some of those poor kids could just be bussed to good DC schools instead of moving to the suburbs.

Sounds an awful lot like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to me.

Sounds a lot like giving poor kids a chance to get educated around more functional kids (as per the study mentioned above) without requiring a family move.

Of course, this strategy would also prevent gentrifiers from moving into the deposed poor people's homes

Try to think with your brain instead of your heart for just a second. Where exactly are you going to bus these kids? I'm serious, I'd really like to know. Should we just send every child in the city to Deal and Wilson? Think.

The optimal situation would be to have regional busing, where kids from the poorest neighborhoods are bused to good schools, and vice versa. But, conveniently, MD and VA school districts happen to be segregated from the districts where the poor people live. So, like countless middle-class parents before them, we're going to have to enable a larger proportion of poor folks to get their kids a decent education in the suburbs.

Fine, bus them to the suburbs - OK with me, if there's a legal way of pulling it off. I bet this won't satisfy some gentrifiers who want the poor people's DC real estate at least as much as they want the poor children to get a good education -- somewhere else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's nonsense. 80% of DC is not in deep poverty. And even so, poverty does not have to automatically correlate with poor school performance - take for example latinos and immigrants who arrive as refugees from horrible conditions and deep poverty - typically they close the performance and income gap within a single generation.

As for affordable housing, what is forcing poor families to stay in DC? It's obviously not for work. And if we are supposed to consider that it's for family or community, consider that family and community is the biggest part of what is contributing to poor performance and continued poverty.

If you don't get it you don't get it. As the previous poster noted, poverty "in general" is closely related to a number of factors. Lack of education, absent parents, lack of resources, hunger, lack of healthcare (illness and poor nutrition cause frequent absences and lack of healthcare in elementary grades often lead to undiagnosed health/SpEd issues). Children of immigrants cannot be compared to low SES children because many immigrants are not low SES, they maybe in their new adopted country but at the school where my child goes many of them had middle-class jobs in their country. There are many African children whose parents are driving cabs that were teachers and professors in their country, they also came here so their children could have the opportunity for a better education. There are huge differences in educational success between the children of refugees that come from countries of high literacy and those that don't, overall the children from El Salvador that had intermittent education are not doing well. Many of their parents are illiterate, we even have children who are not highly literate in Spanish. Many Americans lump all immigrant, refugees and ELLs together but statistics show that family literacy and poverty play a huge role. Additionally, many families in NW who are low income live with multiple generations and relatives to afford the rents or have moved to Maryland. There are many domestics in my school, do you really think they can afford the astronomical rents in DC? If the parents are absent, often traveling as far as Baltimore to clean - who do you think is looking after the children and making sure they do their homework. If they themselves don't speak English, how can they help? Of course, they want a better life for their children and support their child's education but poverty plays a huge role in many ways as it does for all low-SES children native or otherwise.

You forgot another important factor: the immigrant pool is pre-selected and therefore hugely skewed in favor of the very motivated. Poverty or literacy rates notwithstanding, an average immigrant will be distinguished by the increased motivation to change their life for the better.

From an immigrant family myself, this is true. The unmotivated and less educated stayed behind in my mother's homeland and are not doing so well. Good point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's nonsense. 80% of DC is not in deep poverty. And even so, poverty does not have to automatically correlate with poor school performance - take for example latinos and immigrants who arrive as refugees from horrible conditions and deep poverty - typically they close the performance and income gap within a single generation.

As for affordable housing, what is forcing poor families to stay in DC? It's obviously not for work. And if we are supposed to consider that it's for family or community, consider that family and community is the biggest part of what is contributing to poor performance and continued poverty.

If you don't get it you don't get it. As the previous poster noted, poverty "in general" is closely related to a number of factors. Lack of education, absent parents, lack of resources, hunger, lack of healthcare (illness and poor nutrition cause frequent absences and lack of healthcare in elementary grades often lead to undiagnosed health/SpEd issues). Children of immigrants cannot be compared to low SES children because many immigrants are not low SES, they maybe in their new adopted country but at the school where my child goes many of them had middle-class jobs in their country. There are many African children whose parents are driving cabs that were teachers and professors in their country, they also came here so their children could have the opportunity for a better education. There are huge differences in educational success between the children of refugees that come from countries of high literacy and those that don't, overall the children from El Salvador that had intermittent education are not doing well. Many of their parents are illiterate, we even have children who are not highly literate in Spanish. Many Americans lump all immigrant, refugees and ELLs together but statistics show that family literacy and poverty play a huge role. Additionally, many families in NW who are low income live with multiple generations and relatives to afford the rents or have moved to Maryland. There are many domestics in my school, do you really think they can afford the astronomical rents in DC? If the parents are absent, often traveling as far as Baltimore to clean - who do you think is looking after the children and making sure they do their homework. If they themselves don't speak English, how can they help? Of course, they want a better life for their children and support their child's education but poverty plays a huge role in many ways as it does for all low-SES children native or otherwise.

You forgot another important factor: the immigrant pool is pre-selected and therefore hugely skewed in favor of the very motivated. Poverty or literacy rates notwithstanding, an average immigrant will be distinguished by the increased motivation to change their life for the better.

So basically you are saying the poor remain poor because they are lazy and unmotivated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
So basically you are saying the poor remain poor because they are lazy and unmotivated.

or unadventurous, or resistant to change, or can't pull together the money for passage, or are doing fine financially and don't feel a need to leave, or have someone or something holding them back.

Whatever, once the emigrants leave they have to be motivated or they won't survive in the strange new environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's nonsense. 80% of DC is not in deep poverty. And even so, poverty does not have to automatically correlate with poor school performance - take for example latinos and immigrants who arrive as refugees from horrible conditions and deep poverty - typically they close the performance and income gap within a single generation.

As for affordable housing, what is forcing poor families to stay in DC? It's obviously not for work. And if we are supposed to consider that it's for family or community, consider that family and community is the biggest part of what is contributing to poor performance and continued poverty.

If you don't get it you don't get it. As the previous poster noted, poverty "in general" is closely related to a number of factors. Lack of education, absent parents, lack of resources, hunger, lack of healthcare (illness and poor nutrition cause frequent absences and lack of healthcare in elementary grades often lead to undiagnosed health/SpEd issues). Children of immigrants cannot be compared to low SES children because many immigrants are not low SES, they maybe in their new adopted country but at the school where my child goes many of them had middle-class jobs in their country. There are many African children whose parents are driving cabs that were teachers and professors in their country, they also came here so their children could have the opportunity for a better education. There are huge differences in educational success between the children of refugees that come from countries of high literacy and those that don't, overall the children from El Salvador that had intermittent education are not doing well. Many of their parents are illiterate, we even have children who are not highly literate in Spanish. Many Americans lump all immigrant, refugees and ELLs together but statistics show that family literacy and poverty play a huge role. Additionally, many families in NW who are low income live with multiple generations and relatives to afford the rents or have moved to Maryland. There are many domestics in my school, do you really think they can afford the astronomical rents in DC? If the parents are absent, often traveling as far as Baltimore to clean - who do you think is looking after the children and making sure they do their homework. If they themselves don't speak English, how can they help? Of course, they want a better life for their children and support their child's education but poverty plays a huge role in many ways as it does for all low-SES children native or otherwise.

You forgot another important factor: the immigrant pool is pre-selected and therefore hugely skewed in favor of the very motivated. Poverty or literacy rates notwithstanding, an average immigrant will be distinguished by the increased motivation to change their life for the better.

So basically you are saying the poor remain poor because they are lazy and unmotivated.

No, that is not what I'm saying. I'm responding to those that make the opposite assumption that all immigrants are doing "wonderfully" well in DCPS. Follow the plot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:regarding deconcentration --seems like some of those poor kids could just be bussed to good DC schools instead of moving to the suburbs.

Sounds an awful lot like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to me.

Sounds a lot like giving poor kids a chance to get educated around more functional kids (as per the study mentioned above) without requiring a family move.

Of course, this strategy would also prevent gentrifiers from moving into the deposed poor people's homes

Try to think with your brain instead of your heart for just a second. Where exactly are you going to bus these kids? I'm serious, I'd really like to know. Should we just send every child in the city to Deal and Wilson? Think.

The optimal situation would be to have regional busing, where kids from the poorest neighborhoods are bused to good schools, and vice versa. But, conveniently, MD and VA school districts happen to be segregated from the districts where the poor people live. So, like countless middle-class parents before them, we're going to have to enable a larger proportion of poor folks to get their kids a decent education in the suburbs.

Fine, bus them to the suburbs - OK with me, if there's a legal way of pulling it off. I bet this won't satisfy some gentrifiers who want the poor people's DC real estate at least as much as they want the poor children to get a good education -- somewhere else.

Sure, but there is no way to bus them to the suburbs. Therefore, housing policy is our only remedy. Your monomania about "poor people's real estate" is pretty touching, but there's absolutely zero evidence that poor homeowners are being forced from their property by gentrifiers. When they sell, it's either to make a killing, or because they've died and their children & grandchildren want to sell and divide up the proceeds. Gentrification-driven displacement is almost nonexistent.

[Anonymous]

How many of DC's poor are actually homeowners, as opposed to renting?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's nonsense. 80% of DC is not in deep poverty. And even so, poverty does not have to automatically correlate with poor school performance - take for example latinos and immigrants who arrive as refugees from horrible conditions and deep poverty - typically they close the performance and income gap within a single generation.

As for affordable housing, what is forcing poor families to stay in DC? It's obviously not for work. And if we are supposed to consider that it's for family or community, consider that family and community is the biggest part of what is contributing to poor performance and continued poverty.

If you don't get it you don't get it. As the previous poster noted, poverty "in general" is closely related to a number of factors. Lack of education, absent parents, lack of resources, hunger, lack of healthcare (illness and poor nutrition cause frequent absences and lack of healthcare in elementary grades often lead to undiagnosed health/SpEd issues). Children of immigrants cannot be compared to low SES children because many immigrants are not low SES, they maybe in their new adopted country but at the school where my child goes many of them had middle-class jobs in their country. There are many African children whose parents are driving cabs that were teachers and professors in their country, they also came here so their children could have the opportunity for a better education. There are huge differences in educational success between the children of refugees that come from countries of high literacy and those that don't, overall the children from El Salvador that had intermittent education are not doing well. Many of their parents are illiterate, we even have children who are not highly literate in Spanish. Many Americans lump all immigrant, refugees and ELLs together but statistics show that family literacy and poverty play a huge role. Additionally, many families in NW who are low income live with multiple generations and relatives to afford the rents or have moved to Maryland. There are many domestics in my school, do you really think they can afford the astronomical rents in DC? If the parents are absent, often traveling as far as Baltimore to clean - who do you think is looking after the children and making sure they do their homework. If they themselves don't speak English, how can they help? Of course, they want a better life for their children and support their child's education but poverty plays a huge role in many ways as it does for all low-SES children native or otherwise.

You forgot another important factor: the immigrant pool is pre-selected and therefore hugely skewed in favor of the very motivated. Poverty or literacy rates notwithstanding, an average immigrant will be distinguished by the increased motivation to change their life for the better.

So basically you are saying the poor remain poor because they are lazy and unmotivated.

No, that is not what I'm saying. I'm responding to those that make the opposite assumption that all immigrants are doing "wonderfully" well in DCPS. Follow the plot.

Following along, the suggestion was made above that unmotivated immigrants don't do wonderfully. We are still at the correlation of motivation = success, lack of motivation = failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Sure, but there is no way to bus them to the suburbs. Therefore, housing policy is our only remedy. Your monomania about "poor people's real estate" is pretty touching, but there's absolutely zero evidence that poor homeowners are being forced from their property by gentrifiers. When they sell, it's either to make a killing, or because they've died and their children & grandchildren want to sell and divide up the proceeds. Gentrification-driven displacement is almost nonexistent.

I don't know if gentrification-driven displacement doesn't exist, but I do know (from reading here) that gentrifiers want poor people to leave quietly so there won't be too many poor kids in the schools. A few are fine - desirable even, giving the neighborhood that "diverse" feel, but too many are disconcerting.

Wait -- Maybe a way could be devised to bus kids to suburban schools, instead of uprooting people from their homes to get them out of a city where they are no longer welcomed because gentrifiers want to get most of them out of the schools.

If they want to leave, fine, but they should not be forced out. Nobody should be forced out of their homes because it's in someone else's best interest that they leave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Sure, but there is no way to bus them to the suburbs. Therefore, housing policy is our only remedy. Your monomania about "poor people's real estate" is pretty touching, but there's absolutely zero evidence that poor homeowners are being forced from their property by gentrifiers. When they sell, it's either to make a killing, or because they've died and their children & grandchildren want to sell and divide up the proceeds. Gentrification-driven displacement is almost nonexistent.

I don't know if gentrification-driven displacement doesn't exist, but I do know (from reading here) that gentrifiers want poor people to leave quietly so there won't be too many poor kids in the schools. A few are fine - desirable even, giving the neighborhood that "diverse" feel, but too many are disconcerting.

Wait -- Maybe a way could be devised to bus kids to suburban schools, instead of uprooting people from their homes to get them out of a city where they are no longer welcomed because gentrifiers want to get most of them out of the schools.

If they want to leave, fine, but they should not be forced out. Nobody should be forced out of their homes because it's in someone else's best interest that they leave.

Your cartoonish take on gentrification is pretty common, but not particularly accurate.

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/9280/ggw-discusses-displacement-versus-gentrification/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Sure, but there is no way to bus them to the suburbs. Therefore, housing policy is our only remedy. Your monomania about "poor people's real estate" is pretty touching, but there's absolutely zero evidence that poor homeowners are being forced from their property by gentrifiers. When they sell, it's either to make a killing, or because they've died and their children & grandchildren want to sell and divide up the proceeds. Gentrification-driven displacement is almost nonexistent.

I don't know if gentrification-driven displacement doesn't exist, but I do know (from reading here) that gentrifiers want poor people to leave quietly so there won't be too many poor kids in the schools. A few are fine - desirable even, giving the neighborhood that "diverse" feel, but too many are disconcerting.

Wait -- Maybe a way could be devised to bus kids to suburban schools, instead of uprooting people from their homes to get them out of a city where they are no longer welcomed because gentrifiers want to get most of them out of the schools.

If they want to leave, fine, but they should not be forced out. Nobody should be forced out of their homes because it's in someone else's best interest that they leave.

Your cartoonish take on gentrification is pretty common, but not particularly accurate.

http://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/9280/ggw-discusses-displacement-versus-gentrification/

No one is being forced out. CM Michael Brown peddled this line and lost.