Hope for DCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

I have plenty of criticism for DCPS but this is a very uneducated position. I have family in districts in places like Alabama and Oklahoma where they won't even pay for 5 days of school a week and where teachers barely make a livable wage even with the low cost of living and there is zero enrichment and there are schools that routinely fail to have any child meet expectations on statewide assessments. I have kids at a Title 1 school in DC that many people would describe as struggling and for all of DCPS's faults it is light years ahead of many public schools especially in the south. Not to mention all the political issues those districts have that restrict kids' access to basic history or literature. I mean come on.

Also for the billionth time on these boards: you cannot compare standardized test scores from an urban district like DC against state-wide results. The state-wide results in mississippi include the wealthiest areas where there is no concentrated poverty. You can compare DC against other urban areas but you also must be careful to look at whether the comparison includes metro areas with inner suburbs. DC's assessments cannot include close in suburbs because of our unique designation as a non-state district and our kids don't take the same assessments as those in the suburbs. So it's actually hard to do a 1:1 comparison of test scores in DC versus cities like San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia (and in any case kids take different assessments with different scoring so this furthers the challenge).

DCPS has issues but your talking points are bad and uninformed.

this is just a bunch of nonsensical excuses.

dc is far, far wealthier than mississippi. we spend exponentially more than mississippi on schools. and yet our kids do worse on tests.

maybe the difference is expectations. in dc, we dont count kids as absent unless they show up for school *after 2pm*. in mississippi, if third graders can't pass a state reading test, they automatically flunk third grade.

dc could learn a lot from mississppi.

The New York Times:

"Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html

Google "The Mississippi Miracle"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

I have plenty of criticism for DCPS but this is a very uneducated position. I have family in districts in places like Alabama and Oklahoma where they won't even pay for 5 days of school a week and where teachers barely make a livable wage even with the low cost of living and there is zero enrichment and there are schools that routinely fail to have any child meet expectations on statewide assessments. I have kids at a Title 1 school in DC that many people would describe as struggling and for all of DCPS's faults it is light years ahead of many public schools especially in the south. Not to mention all the political issues those districts have that restrict kids' access to basic history or literature. I mean come on.

Also for the billionth time on these boards: you cannot compare standardized test scores from an urban district like DC against state-wide results. The state-wide results in mississippi include the wealthiest areas where there is no concentrated poverty. You can compare DC against other urban areas but you also must be careful to look at whether the comparison includes metro areas with inner suburbs. DC's assessments cannot include close in suburbs because of our unique designation as a non-state district and our kids don't take the same assessments as those in the suburbs. So it's actually hard to do a 1:1 comparison of test scores in DC versus cities like San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia (and in any case kids take different assessments with different scoring so this furthers the challenge).

DCPS has issues but your talking points are bad and uninformed.

this is just a bunch of nonsensical excuses.

dc is far, far wealthier than mississippi. we spend exponentially more than mississippi on schools. and yet our kids do worse on tests.

maybe the difference is expectations. in dc, we dont count kids as absent unless they show up for school *after 2pm*. in mississippi, if third graders can't pass a state reading test, they automatically flunk third grade.

dc could learn a lot from mississppi.

The New York Times:

"Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html

How many years would DC give kids to pass 3rd grade? Social promotion exists because no one wants a 14 year old in elementary school

if kids were afraid they might flunk a grade (and most would probably consider that to be deeply embarrassing), they might find the motivation to put in a little more effort to learn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, you are on to something. I mean this with no disrespect (I’m a white man) white families expect to be part of the majority and treated like their norms and expectations are majority (ie democratically rewarded) norms. In DC you can feel othered and exasperated that what you consider normal isn’t what’s happening.

This creates some bad outcomes. Self segregation. Concentrated radicalized poverty. But why do we have to just give up on integration because of the feeling of white people that we expect to be the majority culture? I feel like there’s some maturing that needs to happen to white people culturally. I mean Asian people in this country are othered every damn day. Black people are concentrated together because other people want them fully excluded from “their” spaces. We have to do better than this. And some of how we got to a bad place came from putting “our kids” (ourselves?) first.

It's less about being the minority and more about not wanting to send your kid to a failing school. By any metric you can find, almost every middle and high school in DC qualifies as failing. Parents who can't afford to live in the right neighborhood and strike out in the lottery opt for charters or move. You can call it self segregation, but black families who care about education make the same choices

Then explain why there aren't more white kids at Banneker.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, you are on to something. I mean this with no disrespect (I’m a white man) white families expect to be part of the majority and treated like their norms and expectations are majority (ie democratically rewarded) norms. In DC you can feel othered and exasperated that what you consider normal isn’t what’s happening.

This creates some bad outcomes. Self segregation. Concentrated radicalized poverty. But why do we have to just give up on integration because of the feeling of white people that we expect to be the majority culture? I feel like there’s some maturing that needs to happen to white people culturally. I mean Asian people in this country are othered every damn day. Black people are concentrated together because other people want them fully excluded from “their” spaces. We have to do better than this. And some of how we got to a bad place came from putting “our kids” (ourselves?) first.

It's less about being the minority and more about not wanting to send your kid to a failing school. By any metric you can find, almost every middle and high school in DC qualifies as failing. Parents who can't afford to live in the right neighborhood and strike out in the lottery opt for charters or move. You can call it self segregation, but black families who care about education make the same choices

Then explain why there aren't more white kids at Banneker.

https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/9

4% exceeding expectations in math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, you are on to something. I mean this with no disrespect (I’m a white man) white families expect to be part of the majority and treated like their norms and expectations are majority (ie democratically rewarded) norms. In DC you can feel othered and exasperated that what you consider normal isn’t what’s happening.

This creates some bad outcomes. Self segregation. Concentrated radicalized poverty. But why do we have to just give up on integration because of the feeling of white people that we expect to be the majority culture? I feel like there’s some maturing that needs to happen to white people culturally. I mean Asian people in this country are othered every damn day. Black people are concentrated together because other people want them fully excluded from “their” spaces. We have to do better than this. And some of how we got to a bad place came from putting “our kids” (ourselves?) first.

It's less about being the minority and more about not wanting to send your kid to a failing school. By any metric you can find, almost every middle and high school in DC qualifies as failing. Parents who can't afford to live in the right neighborhood and strike out in the lottery opt for charters or move. You can call it self segregation, but black families who care about education make the same choices

Then explain why there aren't more white kids at Banneker.

My question is how much of that is on Banneker- what does the applicant pool look like- and how much of that is on applicants or lack thereof? We’ll probably never know

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

I have plenty of criticism for DCPS but this is a very uneducated position. I have family in districts in places like Alabama and Oklahoma where they won't even pay for 5 days of school a week and where teachers barely make a livable wage even with the low cost of living and there is zero enrichment and there are schools that routinely fail to have any child meet expectations on statewide assessments. I have kids at a Title 1 school in DC that many people would describe as struggling and for all of DCPS's faults it is light years ahead of many public schools especially in the south. Not to mention all the political issues those districts have that restrict kids' access to basic history or literature. I mean come on.

Also for the billionth time on these boards: you cannot compare standardized test scores from an urban district like DC against state-wide results. The state-wide results in mississippi include the wealthiest areas where there is no concentrated poverty. You can compare DC against other urban areas but you also must be careful to look at whether the comparison includes metro areas with inner suburbs. DC's assessments cannot include close in suburbs because of our unique designation as a non-state district and our kids don't take the same assessments as those in the suburbs. So it's actually hard to do a 1:1 comparison of test scores in DC versus cities like San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia (and in any case kids take different assessments with different scoring so this furthers the challenge).

DCPS has issues but your talking points are bad and uninformed.

this is just a bunch of nonsensical excuses.

dc is far, far wealthier than mississippi. we spend exponentially more than mississippi on schools. and yet our kids do worse on tests.

maybe the difference is expectations. in dc, we dont count kids as absent unless they show up for school *after 2pm*. in mississippi, if third graders can't pass a state reading test, they automatically flunk third grade.

dc could learn a lot from mississppi.

The New York Times:

"Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html

How many years would DC give kids to pass 3rd grade? Social promotion exists because no one wants a 14 year old in elementary school

if kids were afraid they might flunk a grade (and most would probably consider that to be deeply embarrassing), they might find the motivation to put in a little more effort to learn.

Nope. They would drop out/stop coming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

This simply isn't true. Let me get the NAEP TUDA data for you.

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/districtprofile?chort=1&sub=RED&sj=XQ&sfj=NL&st=MN&year=2022R3

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

I have plenty of criticism for DCPS but this is a very uneducated position. I have family in districts in places like Alabama and Oklahoma where they won't even pay for 5 days of school a week and where teachers barely make a livable wage even with the low cost of living and there is zero enrichment and there are schools that routinely fail to have any child meet expectations on statewide assessments. I have kids at a Title 1 school in DC that many people would describe as struggling and for all of DCPS's faults it is light years ahead of many public schools especially in the south. Not to mention all the political issues those districts have that restrict kids' access to basic history or literature. I mean come on.

Also for the billionth time on these boards: you cannot compare standardized test scores from an urban district like DC against state-wide results. The state-wide results in mississippi include the wealthiest areas where there is no concentrated poverty. You can compare DC against other urban areas but you also must be careful to look at whether the comparison includes metro areas with inner suburbs. DC's assessments cannot include close in suburbs because of our unique designation as a non-state district and our kids don't take the same assessments as those in the suburbs. So it's actually hard to do a 1:1 comparison of test scores in DC versus cities like San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia (and in any case kids take different assessments with different scoring so this furthers the challenge).

DCPS has issues but your talking points are bad and uninformed.

On this note, it would be great if there were an actual national assessment test.

It's called the National Assessment of Education Progress - as close as we're going to get

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

I have plenty of criticism for DCPS but this is a very uneducated position. I have family in districts in places like Alabama and Oklahoma where they won't even pay for 5 days of school a week and where teachers barely make a livable wage even with the low cost of living and there is zero enrichment and there are schools that routinely fail to have any child meet expectations on statewide assessments. I have kids at a Title 1 school in DC that many people would describe as struggling and for all of DCPS's faults it is light years ahead of many public schools especially in the south. Not to mention all the political issues those districts have that restrict kids' access to basic history or literature. I mean come on.

Also for the billionth time on these boards: you cannot compare standardized test scores from an urban district like DC against state-wide results. The state-wide results in mississippi include the wealthiest areas where there is no concentrated poverty. You can compare DC against other urban areas but you also must be careful to look at whether the comparison includes metro areas with inner suburbs. DC's assessments cannot include close in suburbs because of our unique designation as a non-state district and our kids don't take the same assessments as those in the suburbs. So it's actually hard to do a 1:1 comparison of test scores in DC versus cities like San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia (and in any case kids take different assessments with different scoring so this furthers the challenge).

DCPS has issues but your talking points are bad and uninformed.

this is just a bunch of nonsensical excuses.

dc is far, far wealthier than mississippi. we spend exponentially more than mississippi on schools. and yet our kids do worse on tests.

maybe the difference is expectations. in dc, we dont count kids as absent unless they show up for school *after 2pm*. in mississippi, if third graders can't pass a state reading test, they automatically flunk third grade.

dc could learn a lot from mississppi.

The New York Times:

"Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html

How many years would DC give kids to pass 3rd grade? Social promotion exists because no one wants a 14 year old in elementary school

if kids were afraid they might flunk a grade (and most would probably consider that to be deeply embarrassing), they might find the motivation to put in a little more effort to learn.

You think the problem with the education system in DC is the motivation level of 8 year olds? Wow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

I have plenty of criticism for DCPS but this is a very uneducated position. I have family in districts in places like Alabama and Oklahoma where they won't even pay for 5 days of school a week and where teachers barely make a livable wage even with the low cost of living and there is zero enrichment and there are schools that routinely fail to have any child meet expectations on statewide assessments. I have kids at a Title 1 school in DC that many people would describe as struggling and for all of DCPS's faults it is light years ahead of many public schools especially in the south. Not to mention all the political issues those districts have that restrict kids' access to basic history or literature. I mean come on.

Also for the billionth time on these boards: you cannot compare standardized test scores from an urban district like DC against state-wide results. The state-wide results in mississippi include the wealthiest areas where there is no concentrated poverty. You can compare DC against other urban areas but you also must be careful to look at whether the comparison includes metro areas with inner suburbs. DC's assessments cannot include close in suburbs because of our unique designation as a non-state district and our kids don't take the same assessments as those in the suburbs. So it's actually hard to do a 1:1 comparison of test scores in DC versus cities like San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia (and in any case kids take different assessments with different scoring so this furthers the challenge).

DCPS has issues but your talking points are bad and uninformed.

this is just a bunch of nonsensical excuses.

dc is far, far wealthier than mississippi. we spend exponentially more than mississippi on schools. and yet our kids do worse on tests.

maybe the difference is expectations. in dc, we dont count kids as absent unless they show up for school *after 2pm*. in mississippi, if third graders can't pass a state reading test, they automatically flunk third grade.

dc could learn a lot from mississppi.

The New York Times:

"Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html

How many years would DC give kids to pass 3rd grade? Social promotion exists because no one wants a 14 year old in elementary school

if kids were afraid they might flunk a grade (and most would probably consider that to be deeply embarrassing), they might find the motivation to put in a little more effort to learn.

I think it might put some pressure on their parents. I also think repeaters should go to a special intensive program -- at least for a year.

Clearly the social promotion thing is not working and doing no favors for the struggling kids or their peers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, you are on to something. I mean this with no disrespect (I’m a white man) white families expect to be part of the majority and treated like their norms and expectations are majority (ie democratically rewarded) norms. In DC you can feel othered and exasperated that what you consider normal isn’t what’s happening.

This creates some bad outcomes. Self segregation. Concentrated radicalized poverty. But why do we have to just give up on integration because of the feeling of white people that we expect to be the majority culture? I feel like there’s some maturing that needs to happen to white people culturally. I mean Asian people in this country are othered every damn day. Black people are concentrated together because other people want them fully excluded from “their” spaces. We have to do better than this. And some of how we got to a bad place came from putting “our kids” (ourselves?) first.

It's less about being the minority and more about not wanting to send your kid to a failing school. By any metric you can find, almost every middle and high school in DC qualifies as failing. Parents who can't afford to live in the right neighborhood and strike out in the lottery opt for charters or move. You can call it self segregation, but black families who care about education make the same choices

Then explain why there aren't more white kids at Banneker.

Some guesses:

Being an extreme minority can be hard, no matter the race/ethnicity.

A lot of the DCPS "white flight" happens earlier, at the middle school level. Banneker is a good school, but probably not enough of a draw to get people to unenroll from a good charter or private or to move back from the burbs after middle school.

The old location was less accessible, especially from where most high school age white kids live. And the new location opened less than 3 years ago.

The acceptance criteria are somewhat subjective. The school is big on "Black excellence." Possibly there's some unintentional bias in student selection. People on here have even accused the school of doing this intentionally for funding and/or cultural purposes.

[Anonymous]

And there's the woman above who doesn't want whites and others in "Black schools." Not everyone thinks like this, thank goodness. But some people like Banneker being an HBCUish.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, you are on to something. I mean this with no disrespect (I’m a white man) white families expect to be part of the majority and treated like their norms and expectations are majority (ie democratically rewarded) norms. In DC you can feel othered and exasperated that what you consider normal isn’t what’s happening.

This creates some bad outcomes. Self segregation. Concentrated radicalized poverty. But why do we have to just give up on integration because of the feeling of white people that we expect to be the majority culture? I feel like there’s some maturing that needs to happen to white people culturally. I mean Asian people in this country are othered every damn day. Black people are concentrated together because other people want them fully excluded from “their” spaces. We have to do better than this. And some of how we got to a bad place came from putting “our kids” (ourselves?) first.

It's less about being the minority and more about not wanting to send your kid to a failing school. By any metric you can find, almost every middle and high school in DC qualifies as failing. Parents who can't afford to live in the right neighborhood and strike out in the lottery opt for charters or move. You can call it self segregation, but black families who care about education make the same choices

Then explain why there aren't more white kids at Banneker.

https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/9

4% exceeding expectations in math.

It's 1% at JR and that's not keeping white kids away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And there's the woman above who doesn't want whites and others in "Black schools." Not everyone thinks like this, thank goodness. But some people like Banneker being an HBCUish.

Feels like you could FOIA the applicant demographics if you really wanted to know

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

I have plenty of criticism for DCPS but this is a very uneducated position. I have family in districts in places like Alabama and Oklahoma where they won't even pay for 5 days of school a week and where teachers barely make a livable wage even with the low cost of living and there is zero enrichment and there are schools that routinely fail to have any child meet expectations on statewide assessments. I have kids at a Title 1 school in DC that many people would describe as struggling and for all of DCPS's faults it is light years ahead of many public schools especially in the south. Not to mention all the political issues those districts have that restrict kids' access to basic history or literature. I mean come on.

Also for the billionth time on these boards: you cannot compare standardized test scores from an urban district like DC against state-wide results. The state-wide results in mississippi include the wealthiest areas where there is no concentrated poverty. You can compare DC against other urban areas but you also must be careful to look at whether the comparison includes metro areas with inner suburbs. DC's assessments cannot include close in suburbs because of our unique designation as a non-state district and our kids don't take the same assessments as those in the suburbs. So it's actually hard to do a 1:1 comparison of test scores in DC versus cities like San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia (and in any case kids take different assessments with different scoring so this furthers the challenge).

DCPS has issues but your talking points are bad and uninformed.

this is just a bunch of nonsensical excuses.

dc is far, far wealthier than mississippi. we spend exponentially more than mississippi on schools. and yet our kids do worse on tests.

maybe the difference is expectations. in dc, we dont count kids as absent unless they show up for school *after 2pm*. in mississippi, if third graders can't pass a state reading test, they automatically flunk third grade.

dc could learn a lot from mississppi.

The New York Times:

"Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html

How many years would DC give kids to pass 3rd grade? Social promotion exists because no one wants a 14 year old in elementary school

if kids were afraid they might flunk a grade (and most would probably consider that to be deeply embarrassing), they might find the motivation to put in a little more effort to learn.

I think it might put some pressure on their parents. I also think repeaters should go to a special intensive program -- at least for a year.

Clearly the social promotion thing is not working and doing no favors for the struggling kids or their peers.

The kids who are flunking 3rd grade in DCPS do not have parents who are motivated by pressure. They have parents who had kids in their mid to late teens and are in single parent households where the single parent may be minimally employed. They often have one or more parents who are or have been in prison or have or have had substance abuse issues. They often have housing insecurity and may be shuffled between parental and grandparent homes. They may be hungry all the time.

You can put these kids in a special intensive program. You can threaten their parents. You can try to impress upon the kids the value of school. But if you cannot address the fundamental issues with their lives most of it is unlikely to matter.

This is based on extensive experience with at risk DCPS students and their families -- these aren't generic stereotypes. I'm describing kids and parents I have encountered over and over again through at risk out reach programming and within DCPS schools with high numbers of at risk kids.