Integration and DC Schools -- A high priority? Yay or nay?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

socioeconomically diverse public schools are big picture a really good thing. schools run better when a majority of the students are not economically at-risk and/or have a significant level of family/community support. but thats mostly keeping the often overlooked middle class of all races in dc public schools.

When a school becomes comprised over more than 30% at-risk students, the middle class families generally tend to leave. They may stick around for k-2 but once third grade hits and it is more about reading to learn instead of learning to read, the middle class families will peel off if they believe that their children's needs are not being met because the school is having to focus the bulk of its resources on the most struggling kids. And, as the strength of the charter sector has shown, not only did a significant amount of middle class families turn to the charter world, but a large number of working and at-risk families will also peel off from regular DCPS if they think that the charters can provide a more attentive and rigorous environment with respect to academics and behavior.

This would not happen if there was tracking but of course we can’t have that because of equity. Also the reality is DCPS doesn’t care about meeting the needs of the higher performing kids. All they care about and concentrate resources to is the bottom.

They will be “OK” however you define that, even if bored to death and not learning much. But hey, they can be helpers for the other students.

DCPS isn't actually doing much for kids at the bottom either. They say they are focusing on kids with the most needs, but where's the evidence? As many have pointed out, you're much better off being a poor black child in a Mississippi school than in DCPS. Poor kids in DC are used as an excuse by DCPS not to help UMC kids.

+1

Yes - it’s all a shell game. But that can’t optically justify spare resources going to on-grade level kids.

My kids are HS age now, but when my their charter elementary school had new leadership who held an an open forum to meet the school community, it was the parents who would not stfu about the achievement gap, as if fixing that is the only reason to even have a school.

Some of the parents pressing the hardest, I had assumed their kids were pretty bright, but they must have been absolute imbeciles at test taking for their parents to be so fired up to the exclusion of any other issue.

Oh, it’s the opposite. The “achievement gap” UMC white parents are the ones who later on are all like, “Oh, Larla got into Walls and we will let her decide even though I think [crappy IB HS] is just terrific!” Or have family money on tap to pay for privates, and fully funded 529.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. So my sanctimonious (white) neighbor who screamed at me that I was hurting my brown children by not sending them to eastern high school (they were 10 years old) was advocating for segregation. Totally tracks.

Makes me think of my church community - Catholic, mostly Black. For the black families, I think Catholic schools make a lot of sense. They help integration, connecting their kids with power structures. But for white families like mine, I think the same opportunities can be too elitist, so I prefer the DCPS selective schools.

A lot of what is right is based on where you are situated. And a lot of what people can bear is based on their personal circumstances as well. For integration purposes, I just hope that people will consider those individual circumstances and give an eye toward the common good. Otherwise positive change won't happen fast enough to avoid the forces that keep working to undo it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. So my sanctimonious (white) neighbor who screamed at me that I was hurting my brown children by not sending them to eastern high school (they were 10 years old) was advocating for segregation. Totally tracks.

Makes me think of my church community - Catholic, mostly Black. For the black families, I think Catholic schools make a lot of sense. They help integration, connecting their kids with power structures. But for white families like mine, I think the same opportunities can be too elitist, so I prefer the DCPS selective schools.

A lot of what is right is based on where you are situated. And a lot of what people can bear is based on their personal circumstances as well. For integration purposes, I just hope that people will consider those individual circumstances and give an eye toward the common good. Otherwise positive change won't happen fast enough to avoid the forces that keep working to undo it.

Regardless of the underlying motivations, PP's neighbor sucks for so aggressively trying to impose her ideals on someone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. So my sanctimonious (white) neighbor who screamed at me that I was hurting my brown children by not sending them to eastern high school (they were 10 years old) was advocating for segregation. Totally tracks.

Makes me think of my church community - Catholic, mostly Black. For the black families, I think Catholic schools make a lot of sense. They help integration, connecting their kids with power structures. But for white families like mine, I think the same opportunities can be too elitist, so I prefer the DCPS selective schools.

A lot of what is right is based on where you are situated. And a lot of what people can bear is based on their personal circumstances as well. For integration purposes, I just hope that people will consider those individual circumstances and give an eye toward the common good. Otherwise positive change won't happen fast enough to avoid the forces that keep working to undo it.

So glad you “prefer” the selective schools. The majority of students cannot just “prefer” Walls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. So my sanctimonious (white) neighbor who screamed at me that I was hurting my brown children by not sending them to eastern high school (they were 10 years old) was advocating for segregation. Totally tracks.

Makes me think of my church community - Catholic, mostly Black. For the black families, I think Catholic schools make a lot of sense. They help integration, connecting their kids with power structures. But for white families like mine, I think the same opportunities can be too elitist, so I prefer the DCPS selective schools.

A lot of what is right is based on where you are situated. And a lot of what people can bear is based on their personal circumstances as well. For integration purposes, I just hope that people will consider those individual circumstances and give an eye toward the common good. Otherwise positive change won't happen fast enough to avoid the forces that keep working to undo it.

So glad you “prefer” the selective schools. The majority of students cannot just “prefer” Walls.

It's a GPA cutoff + essentially a lottery. A lot of families self-select out because they're not interested or they perceive it as not for them. The school is not shutting them out: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/school-without-walls-admissions-test-diversity/2021/08/27/6959cec2-0293-11ec-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. So my sanctimonious (white) neighbor who screamed at me that I was hurting my brown children by not sending them to eastern high school (they were 10 years old) was advocating for segregation. Totally tracks.

Makes me think of my church community - Catholic, mostly Black. For the black families, I think Catholic schools make a lot of sense. They help integration, connecting their kids with power structures. But for white families like mine, I think the same opportunities can be too elitist, so I prefer the DCPS selective schools.

A lot of what is right is based on where you are situated. And a lot of what people can bear is based on their personal circumstances as well. For integration purposes, I just hope that people will consider those individual circumstances and give an eye toward the common good. Otherwise positive change won't happen fast enough to avoid the forces that keep working to undo it.

So glad you “prefer” the selective schools. The majority of students cannot just “prefer” Walls.

It's a GPA cutoff + essentially a lottery. A lot of families self-select out because they're not interested or they perceive it as not for them. The school is not shutting them out: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/school-without-walls-admissions-test-diversity/2021/08/27/6959cec2-0293-11ec-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html

And your point is …? Plenty of kids don’t make the GPA cutoff and plenty of kids that do won’t get an offer. The idea of “preferring” Walls is just as tone deaf as private school being your plan. Nice for the few who can afford it but irrelevant when it comes to the overall policy discussion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Integration is very important to me and I am engaged in it, but it is generally overtaken by other priorities on this board.

I'd say mostly, this board wants differentiation and to not have children of board participants in the same schools as students with behavior problems. Those goals do not go well with generalized integration.

There are also more general segregation/race and class relations issues, with a major one being a distribution of income and educational attainment that is at the edges with nobody in the middle (we have a bunch of high income advanced degree holders and HS-or-worse educated low income parents, nothing in between in DC).

If you actually think this, it's a reflection of your own limited social circle. It's wrong. DC has plenty of families that are middle income. Lots of people just have college degrees and no advanced degree, plus plenty of fields offer steady income but not high income. We can afford to own homes (condos or houses in part so the city outside the most gentrified neighborhoods, and also if you bought before rates went up) and care about education, but also money is tight because this is an expensive city and it gets more expensive all the time. On the other hand, living in the city often gives us the ability to live without a car or with just one car, living in small homes keep us from accumulating so much stuff, and there are real cost savings to being close in to work and lots of free entertainment. So a lot of us are loathe to move out of the city where we might get cheaper housing and food but more expensive and longer commutes and a host of other expenses just by virtue of living far away from things.

I regularly feel completely invisible in discussions about education in the city because so many people think as you do. That there are only two kinds of people in the city: (1) rich, mostly white people with advanced degrees, and (2) poor black and hispanic people with a HS education or less. I'm sure your in group #1 and it's actually an embarrassment to your education that you are so ignorant of the many many families of every race in this city that are dual income, have college degrees, are not rich, can still pay our bills, and obviously send our kids to public schools because where the hell else are we going to send them?

What's funny is that we send our kids to school with rich people and poor people, and people just lack the observational skills or common sense to understand that we are middle class. Some of the rich people at our school just assume we are also rich, because we wear professional clothes and have read books, and they seem confused when we don't have opinions on whether Colorado or Vermont is better for New Year's skiing. Other rich people at our school just group us in with the poor people. The poor people all think we are rich, which is fair, because compared to them we are. Literally no one cares if our family's needs are being met by the school system.

Eh--while there are definite divides between income/wealth amongst the college educated and above class--fundamentally everyone in this group is well-educated and want their kids to be well-educated. How are they not aligned on educational priorities? They both want better public schools. Isn't that the common ground. What does it matter that some can afford luxury hobbies/travel and some can't.

IME, rich people often have different educational priorities than me, a well-educated middle class person. They don't have the same worries about their kids being left behind or failing to acquire necessary skills for HS, college, or the job market, because they have enough money not to have to worry about it. There are lots of culture clashes between the rich parents at our school and those who are middle class, even when the middle class parents are actually better educated. If anything, college-educated middle class people have the most anxiety about education because they (we) have the least stable class status and have the most to lose in the AI revolution and the K-shaped economy.

Can you provide some examples? We are talking about public schools here, the ultra rich are all in privates.

Examples:

- Getting hung up on a public school inconvenience that middle class parents just accept and move on from, and wanting to dedicate resources to it. For instance, throwing a fit over DCPS absence policies when they conflict with international travel, and hijacking PTA meetings to discuss it.
- Expecting the school to provide tutoring to help on-grade-level kids become above grade level, and not understanding why that's different from tutoring kids who are lagging behind grade level.
- Assuming families can always spend extra money to provide the kids with something. For instance advocating for programming that can't be subsidized by PTA funds and expecting all families to kick in $50 or $100 to supplement it. This is often accompanied by a promise to pay the fee for at risk or low-income kids, without understanding that middle class families don't fall in that bucket and that more families might struggle with a fee like that then they realize.
- Pushing for programming based on status markers or upper class ideals that they don't understand aren't important to middle class kids or get in the way of practicalities, like pushing for French or Mandarin over Spanish.

These are good examples. Add to it "required" PTO donations of hundreds of dollars and telling parents that it's cheaper than sending your kids to private school. And focusing effort on improving the playground or getting a new gym when existing facilities are adequate.


I disagree with the above grade level point though. Kids should be challenged and offering those opportunities to at risk and middle class kids is a better investment than offering it to upper middle class kids. But supporting below grade level students is so a priority (that's not a place you have to choose)

Yes all kids should be challenged but it is very common for the UMC parents to suck up all the air in the room demanding special attention to their above average kid (sometimes in the form of elaborate 504s or IEPs) as opposed to realistically understanding what is good for the majority. Sometimes the UMC parents have actually caused the issues by advocating against teaching methods that don’t conform to Dr Becky or whatever (like being against homework or drilling math facts).

The abuse of the IEP/504 system to secure advantages for kids who do not need them drives me nuts. It also impacts every level of the school. It changes how teachers and administrators interact with all parents, including those of us who are not trying to exploit the system. Having even a handful of parents in a school who are constantly angling for any advantage for their kids makes all parents suspect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Integration is very important to me and I am engaged in it, but it is generally overtaken by other priorities on this board.

I'd say mostly, this board wants differentiation and to not have children of board participants in the same schools as students with behavior problems. Those goals do not go well with generalized integration.

There are also more general segregation/race and class relations issues, with a major one being a distribution of income and educational attainment that is at the edges with nobody in the middle (we have a bunch of high income advanced degree holders and HS-or-worse educated low income parents, nothing in between in DC).

If you actually think this, it's a reflection of your own limited social circle. It's wrong. DC has plenty of families that are middle income. Lots of people just have college degrees and no advanced degree, plus plenty of fields offer steady income but not high income. We can afford to own homes (condos or houses in part so the city outside the most gentrified neighborhoods, and also if you bought before rates went up) and care about education, but also money is tight because this is an expensive city and it gets more expensive all the time. On the other hand, living in the city often gives us the ability to live without a car or with just one car, living in small homes keep us from accumulating so much stuff, and there are real cost savings to being close in to work and lots of free entertainment. So a lot of us are loathe to move out of the city where we might get cheaper housing and food but more expensive and longer commutes and a host of other expenses just by virtue of living far away from things.

I regularly feel completely invisible in discussions about education in the city because so many people think as you do. That there are only two kinds of people in the city: (1) rich, mostly white people with advanced degrees, and (2) poor black and hispanic people with a HS education or less. I'm sure your in group #1 and it's actually an embarrassment to your education that you are so ignorant of the many many families of every race in this city that are dual income, have college degrees, are not rich, can still pay our bills, and obviously send our kids to public schools because where the hell else are we going to send them?

What's funny is that we send our kids to school with rich people and poor people, and people just lack the observational skills or common sense to understand that we are middle class. Some of the rich people at our school just assume we are also rich, because we wear professional clothes and have read books, and they seem confused when we don't have opinions on whether Colorado or Vermont is better for New Year's skiing. Other rich people at our school just group us in with the poor people. The poor people all think we are rich, which is fair, because compared to them we are. Literally no one cares if our family's needs are being met by the school system.

Eh--while there are definite divides between income/wealth amongst the college educated and above class--fundamentally everyone in this group is well-educated and want their kids to be well-educated. How are they not aligned on educational priorities? They both want better public schools. Isn't that the common ground. What does it matter that some can afford luxury hobbies/travel and some can't.

IME, rich people often have different educational priorities than me, a well-educated middle class person. They don't have the same worries about their kids being left behind or failing to acquire necessary skills for HS, college, or the job market, because they have enough money not to have to worry about it. There are lots of culture clashes between the rich parents at our school and those who are middle class, even when the middle class parents are actually better educated. If anything, college-educated middle class people have the most anxiety about education because they (we) have the least stable class status and have the most to lose in the AI revolution and the K-shaped economy.

Can you provide some examples? We are talking about public schools here, the ultra rich are all in privates.

Examples:

- Getting hung up on a public school inconvenience that middle class parents just accept and move on from, and wanting to dedicate resources to it. For instance, throwing a fit over DCPS absence policies when they conflict with international travel, and hijacking PTA meetings to discuss it.
- Expecting the school to provide tutoring to help on-grade-level kids become above grade level, and not understanding why that's different from tutoring kids who are lagging behind grade level.
- Assuming families can always spend extra money to provide the kids with something. For instance advocating for programming that can't be subsidized by PTA funds and expecting all families to kick in $50 or $100 to supplement it. This is often accompanied by a promise to pay the fee for at risk or low-income kids, without understanding that middle class families don't fall in that bucket and that more families might struggle with a fee like that then they realize.
- Pushing for programming based on status markers or upper class ideals that they don't understand aren't important to middle class kids or get in the way of practicalities, like pushing for French or Mandarin over Spanish.

These are good examples. Add to it "required" PTO donations of hundreds of dollars and telling parents that it's cheaper than sending your kids to private school. And focusing effort on improving the playground or getting a new gym when existing facilities are adequate.


I disagree with the above grade level point though. Kids should be challenged and offering those opportunities to at risk and middle class kids is a better investment than offering it to upper middle class kids. But supporting below grade level students is so a priority (that's not a place you have to choose)

Yes all kids should be challenged but it is very common for the UMC parents to suck up all the air in the room demanding special attention to their above average kid (sometimes in the form of elaborate 504s or IEPs) as opposed to realistically understanding what is good for the majority. Sometimes the UMC parents have actually caused the issues by advocating against teaching methods that don’t conform to Dr Becky or whatever (like being against homework or drilling math facts).

The abuse of the IEP/504 system to secure advantages for kids who do not need them drives me nuts. It also impacts every level of the school. It changes how teachers and administrators interact with all parents, including those of us who are not trying to exploit the system. Having even a handful of parents in a school who are constantly angling for any advantage for their kids makes all parents suspect.

Yes it's a scandal IMO. I remember how shocked I was as a private school teacher and realized just how many of the students had extended time. We also moved to a school with a privileged student body and it was offered to our child to maximize their score on one very specific section of the CAPE, even though he is a completely typical kid who does well on all other assessments. This is how Standford ends up with a student body where 40 percent of them have a "disability."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

socioeconomically diverse public schools are big picture a really good thing. schools run better when a majority of the students are not economically at-risk and/or have a significant level of family/community support. but thats mostly keeping the often overlooked middle class of all races in dc public schools.

When a school becomes comprised over more than 30% at-risk students, the middle class families generally tend to leave. They may stick around for k-2 but once third grade hits and it is more about reading to learn instead of learning to read, the middle class families will peel off if they believe that their children's needs are not being met because the school is having to focus the bulk of its resources on the most struggling kids. And, as the strength of the charter sector has shown, not only did a significant amount of middle class families turn to the charter world, but a large number of working and at-risk families will also peel off from regular DCPS if they think that the charters can provide a more attentive and rigorous environment with respect to academics and behavior.

This would not happen if there was tracking but of course we can’t have that because of equity. Also the reality is DCPS doesn’t care about meeting the needs of the higher performing kids. All they care about and concentrate resources to is the bottom.

They will be “OK” however you define that, even if bored to death and not learning much. But hey, they can be helpers for the other students.

DCPS isn't actually doing much for kids at the bottom either. They say they are focusing on kids with the most needs, but where's the evidence? As many have pointed out, you're much better off being a poor black child in a Mississippi school than in DCPS. Poor kids in DC are used as an excuse by DCPS not to help UMC kids.

This

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. So my sanctimonious (white) neighbor who screamed at me that I was hurting my brown children by not sending them to eastern high school (they were 10 years old) was advocating for segregation. Totally tracks.

Makes me think of my church community - Catholic, mostly Black. For the black families, I think Catholic schools make a lot of sense. They help integration, connecting their kids with power structures. But for white families like mine, I think the same opportunities can be too elitist, so I prefer the DCPS selective schools.

A lot of what is right is based on where you are situated. And a lot of what people can bear is based on their personal circumstances as well. For integration purposes, I just hope that people will consider those individual circumstances and give an eye toward the common good. Otherwise positive change won't happen fast enough to avoid the forces that keep working to undo it.

So glad you “prefer” the selective schools. The majority of students cannot just “prefer” Walls.

It's a GPA cutoff + essentially a lottery. A lot of families self-select out because they're not interested or they perceive it as not for them. The school is not shutting them out: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/school-without-walls-admissions-test-diversity/2021/08/27/6959cec2-0293-11ec-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html

And your point is …? Plenty of kids don’t make the GPA cutoff and plenty of kids that do won’t get an offer. The idea of “preferring” Walls is just as tone deaf as private school being your plan. Nice for the few who can afford it but irrelevant when it comes to the overall policy discussion.

Bottom line: when it comes to getting the best education for my kids, I do not care about the overall policy discussion and I am not thinking of how to maximize the common good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. So my sanctimonious (white) neighbor who screamed at me that I was hurting my brown children by not sending them to eastern high school (they were 10 years old) was advocating for segregation. Totally tracks.

Makes me think of my church community - Catholic, mostly Black. For the black families, I think Catholic schools make a lot of sense. They help integration, connecting their kids with power structures. But for white families like mine, I think the same opportunities can be too elitist, so I prefer the DCPS selective schools.

A lot of what is right is based on where you are situated. And a lot of what people can bear is based on their personal circumstances as well. For integration purposes, I just hope that people will consider those individual circumstances and give an eye toward the common good. Otherwise positive change won't happen fast enough to avoid the forces that keep working to undo it.

Regardless of the underlying motivations, PP's neighbor sucks for so aggressively trying to impose her ideals on someone else.

She is well known for being a vile POS in the eastern community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting. So my sanctimonious (white) neighbor who screamed at me that I was hurting my brown children by not sending them to eastern high school (they were 10 years old) was advocating for segregation. Totally tracks.

Makes me think of my church community - Catholic, mostly Black. For the black families, I think Catholic schools make a lot of sense. They help integration, connecting their kids with power structures. But for white families like mine, I think the same opportunities can be too elitist, so I prefer the DCPS selective schools.

A lot of what is right is based on where you are situated. And a lot of what people can bear is based on their personal circumstances as well. For integration purposes, I just hope that people will consider those individual circumstances and give an eye toward the common good. Otherwise positive change won't happen fast enough to avoid the forces that keep working to undo it.

So glad you “prefer” the selective schools. The majority of students cannot just “prefer” Walls.

It's a GPA cutoff + essentially a lottery. A lot of families self-select out because they're not interested or they perceive it as not for them. The school is not shutting them out: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/school-without-walls-admissions-test-diversity/2021/08/27/6959cec2-0293-11ec-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html

And your point is …? Plenty of kids don’t make the GPA cutoff and plenty of kids that do won’t get an offer. The idea of “preferring” Walls is just as tone deaf as private school being your plan. Nice for the few who can afford it but irrelevant when it comes to the overall policy discussion.

The people you vote for will never raise standards in the classroom. They just won't. Voting for JLG because you want to schools to get better is like voting for Republicans because you want taxes on the rich to go up. You're voting for the wrong people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Integration is very important to me and I am engaged in it, but it is generally overtaken by other priorities on this board.

I'd say mostly, this board wants differentiation and to not have children of board participants in the same schools as students with behavior problems. Those goals do not go well with generalized integration.

There are also more general segregation/race and class relations issues, with a major one being a distribution of income and educational attainment that is at the edges with nobody in the middle (we have a bunch of high income advanced degree holders and HS-or-worse educated low income parents, nothing in between in DC).

If you actually think this, it's a reflection of your own limited social circle. It's wrong. DC has plenty of families that are middle income. Lots of people just have college degrees and no advanced degree, plus plenty of fields offer steady income but not high income. We can afford to own homes (condos or houses in part so the city outside the most gentrified neighborhoods, and also if you bought before rates went up) and care about education, but also money is tight because this is an expensive city and it gets more expensive all the time. On the other hand, living in the city often gives us the ability to live without a car or with just one car, living in small homes keep us from accumulating so much stuff, and there are real cost savings to being close in to work and lots of free entertainment. So a lot of us are loathe to move out of the city where we might get cheaper housing and food but more expensive and longer commutes and a host of other expenses just by virtue of living far away from things.

I regularly feel completely invisible in discussions about education in the city because so many people think as you do. That there are only two kinds of people in the city: (1) rich, mostly white people with advanced degrees, and (2) poor black and hispanic people with a HS education or less. I'm sure your in group #1 and it's actually an embarrassment to your education that you are so ignorant of the many many families of every race in this city that are dual income, have college degrees, are not rich, can still pay our bills, and obviously send our kids to public schools because where the hell else are we going to send them?

What's funny is that we send our kids to school with rich people and poor people, and people just lack the observational skills or common sense to understand that we are middle class. Some of the rich people at our school just assume we are also rich, because we wear professional clothes and have read books, and they seem confused when we don't have opinions on whether Colorado or Vermont is better for New Year's skiing. Other rich people at our school just group us in with the poor people. The poor people all think we are rich, which is fair, because compared to them we are. Literally no one cares if our family's needs are being met by the school system.

Eh--while there are definite divides between income/wealth amongst the college educated and above class--fundamentally everyone in this group is well-educated and want their kids to be well-educated. How are they not aligned on educational priorities? They both want better public schools. Isn't that the common ground. What does it matter that some can afford luxury hobbies/travel and some can't.

IME, rich people often have different educational priorities than me, a well-educated middle class person. They don't have the same worries about their kids being left behind or failing to acquire necessary skills for HS, college, or the job market, because they have enough money not to have to worry about it. There are lots of culture clashes between the rich parents at our school and those who are middle class, even when the middle class parents are actually better educated. If anything, college-educated middle class people have the most anxiety about education because they (we) have the least stable class status and have the most to lose in the AI revolution and the K-shaped economy.

Can you provide some examples? We are talking about public schools here, the ultra rich are all in privates.

Examples:

- Getting hung up on a public school inconvenience that middle class parents just accept and move on from, and wanting to dedicate resources to it. For instance, throwing a fit over DCPS absence policies when they conflict with international travel, and hijacking PTA meetings to discuss it.
- Expecting the school to provide tutoring to help on-grade-level kids become above grade level, and not understanding why that's different from tutoring kids who are lagging behind grade level.
- Assuming families can always spend extra money to provide the kids with something. For instance advocating for programming that can't be subsidized by PTA funds and expecting all families to kick in $50 or $100 to supplement it. This is often accompanied by a promise to pay the fee for at risk or low-income kids, without understanding that middle class families don't fall in that bucket and that more families might struggle with a fee like that then they realize.
- Pushing for programming based on status markers or upper class ideals that they don't understand aren't important to middle class kids or get in the way of practicalities, like pushing for French or Mandarin over Spanish.

These are good examples. Add to it "required" PTO donations of hundreds of dollars and telling parents that it's cheaper than sending your kids to private school. And focusing effort on improving the playground or getting a new gym when existing facilities are adequate.


I disagree with the above grade level point though. Kids should be challenged and offering those opportunities to at risk and middle class kids is a better investment than offering it to upper middle class kids. But supporting below grade level students is so a priority (that's not a place you have to choose)

Yes all kids should be challenged but it is very common for the UMC parents to suck up all the air in the room demanding special attention to their above average kid (sometimes in the form of elaborate 504s or IEPs) as opposed to realistically understanding what is good for the majority. Sometimes the UMC parents have actually caused the issues by advocating against teaching methods that don’t conform to Dr Becky or whatever (like being against homework or drilling math facts).

The abuse of the IEP/504 system to secure advantages for kids who do not need them drives me nuts. It also impacts every level of the school. It changes how teachers and administrators interact with all parents, including those of us who are not trying to exploit the system. Having even a handful of parents in a school who are constantly angling for any advantage for their kids makes all parents suspect.

Yes. I’m not sure it’s knowing abuse but it’s definitely parents who believe in extracting every possible benefit. My kid actually has an IEP but I try to avoid the IEP team as much as possible lol. With some very small exceptions the bulk of support has come from people not on the IEP team. I find that if I ask for things my kid obviously needs it’s very easy. Everything else slides.

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Anonymous wrote:Interesting. So my sanctimonious (white) neighbor who screamed at me that I was hurting my brown children by not sending them to eastern high school (they were 10 years old) was advocating for segregation. Totally tracks.

Makes me think of my church community - Catholic, mostly Black. For the black families, I think Catholic schools make a lot of sense. They help integration, connecting their kids with power structures. But for white families like mine, I think the same opportunities can be too elitist, so I prefer the DCPS selective schools.

A lot of what is right is based on where you are situated. And a lot of what people can bear is based on their personal circumstances as well. For integration purposes, I just hope that people will consider those individual circumstances and give an eye toward the common good. Otherwise positive change won't happen fast enough to avoid the forces that keep working to undo it.

Regardless of the underlying motivations, PP's neighbor sucks for so aggressively trying to impose her ideals on someone else.

She is well known for being a vile POS in the eastern community.

So curious about who this person is.

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Anonymous wrote:Integration is very important to me and I am engaged in it, but it is generally overtaken by other priorities on this board.

I'd say mostly, this board wants differentiation and to not have children of board participants in the same schools as students with behavior problems. Those goals do not go well with generalized integration.

There are also more general segregation/race and class relations issues, with a major one being a distribution of income and educational attainment that is at the edges with nobody in the middle (we have a bunch of high income advanced degree holders and HS-or-worse educated low income parents, nothing in between in DC).

If you actually think this, it's a reflection of your own limited social circle. It's wrong. DC has plenty of families that are middle income. Lots of people just have college degrees and no advanced degree, plus plenty of fields offer steady income but not high income. We can afford to own homes (condos or houses in part so the city outside the most gentrified neighborhoods, and also if you bought before rates went up) and care about education, but also money is tight because this is an expensive city and it gets more expensive all the time. On the other hand, living in the city often gives us the ability to live without a car or with just one car, living in small homes keep us from accumulating so much stuff, and there are real cost savings to being close in to work and lots of free entertainment. So a lot of us are loathe to move out of the city where we might get cheaper housing and food but more expensive and longer commutes and a host of other expenses just by virtue of living far away from things.

I regularly feel completely invisible in discussions about education in the city because so many people think as you do. That there are only two kinds of people in the city: (1) rich, mostly white people with advanced degrees, and (2) poor black and hispanic people with a HS education or less. I'm sure your in group #1 and it's actually an embarrassment to your education that you are so ignorant of the many many families of every race in this city that are dual income, have college degrees, are not rich, can still pay our bills, and obviously send our kids to public schools because where the hell else are we going to send them?

What's funny is that we send our kids to school with rich people and poor people, and people just lack the observational skills or common sense to understand that we are middle class. Some of the rich people at our school just assume we are also rich, because we wear professional clothes and have read books, and they seem confused when we don't have opinions on whether Colorado or Vermont is better for New Year's skiing. Other rich people at our school just group us in with the poor people. The poor people all think we are rich, which is fair, because compared to them we are. Literally no one cares if our family's needs are being met by the school system.

Eh--while there are definite divides between income/wealth amongst the college educated and above class--fundamentally everyone in this group is well-educated and want their kids to be well-educated. How are they not aligned on educational priorities? They both want better public schools. Isn't that the common ground. What does it matter that some can afford luxury hobbies/travel and some can't.

IME, rich people often have different educational priorities than me, a well-educated middle class person. They don't have the same worries about their kids being left behind or failing to acquire necessary skills for HS, college, or the job market, because they have enough money not to have to worry about it. There are lots of culture clashes between the rich parents at our school and those who are middle class, even when the middle class parents are actually better educated. If anything, college-educated middle class people have the most anxiety about education because they (we) have the least stable class status and have the most to lose in the AI revolution and the K-shaped economy.

Can you provide some examples? We are talking about public schools here, the ultra rich are all in privates.

Examples:

- Getting hung up on a public school inconvenience that middle class parents just accept and move on from, and wanting to dedicate resources to it. For instance, throwing a fit over DCPS absence policies when they conflict with international travel, and hijacking PTA meetings to discuss it.
- Expecting the school to provide tutoring to help on-grade-level kids become above grade level, and not understanding why that's different from tutoring kids who are lagging behind grade level.
- Assuming families can always spend extra money to provide the kids with something. For instance advocating for programming that can't be subsidized by PTA funds and expecting all families to kick in $50 or $100 to supplement it. This is often accompanied by a promise to pay the fee for at risk or low-income kids, without understanding that middle class families don't fall in that bucket and that more families might struggle with a fee like that then they realize.
- Pushing for programming based on status markers or upper class ideals that they don't understand aren't important to middle class kids or get in the way of practicalities, like pushing for French or Mandarin over Spanish.

These are good examples. Add to it "required" PTO donations of hundreds of dollars and telling parents that it's cheaper than sending your kids to private school. And focusing effort on improving the playground or getting a new gym when existing facilities are adequate.


I disagree with the above grade level point though. Kids should be challenged and offering those opportunities to at risk and middle class kids is a better investment than offering it to upper middle class kids. But supporting below grade level students is so a priority (that's not a place you have to choose)

Yes all kids should be challenged but it is very common for the UMC parents to suck up all the air in the room demanding special attention to their above average kid (sometimes in the form of elaborate 504s or IEPs) as opposed to realistically understanding what is good for the majority. Sometimes the UMC parents have actually caused the issues by advocating against teaching methods that don’t conform to Dr Becky or whatever (like being against homework or drilling math facts).

The abuse of the IEP/504 system to secure advantages for kids who do not need them drives me nuts. It also impacts every level of the school. It changes how teachers and administrators interact with all parents, including those of us who are not trying to exploit the system. Having even a handful of parents in a school who are constantly angling for any advantage for their kids makes all parents suspect.

Yes it's a scandal IMO. I remember how shocked I was as a private school teacher and realized just how many of the students had extended time. We also moved to a school with a privileged student body and it was offered to our child to maximize their score on one very specific section of the CAPE, even though he is a completely typical kid who does well on all other assessments. This is how Standford ends up with a student body where 40 percent of them have a "disability."

Ha. I tried to remove testing accommodations because my kid doesn’t really need extra time and I wanted him to learn how to handle testing normally. The school kept giving them anyway and I finally figured out the school wants to max its own test scores. So I just let them handle it how they want.