DCPS and “Equity”

[Anonymous]

I see it all the time in our citywide lottery school. There are some parents who are just … bad. What is DCPS supposed to do about that in schools where LOTS of parents are really really bad.


As you allude to, parenting is the tip of the iceberg to address the material conditions created by historical injustice. With that said, yes... it's easy to reduce the issue of student academic outcomes to parenting. While parents play a big part, a child's access to a quality education is impacted by nutrition, access to healthcare, exposure to violence/trauma... the list goes on. In my years working in schools, I met parents who had advanced degrees, knew all the right levers for student success (homework involvement, extracurriculars, access to caring adults) and yet the day-to-day impact of living in deep poverty still took a toll on their child's success. All of that to say-- parents, nor schools, can control for all of these powerful social forces. I'm sure that folks could point to the success of high-performing magnets and charter schools as evidence that this can be done. My counterpoint would be that we have yet to see this at-scale...

And in all my years of working in inner-city health care, I would like to counter that "access" to top-notch preventative care, nutrition, counseling, and various wrap-around services like parenting classes .... doesn't actually make a dent. Because the recipients, as a cohort, are so dysfunctional.

As an example, I provide amazing prenatal care -- actually far better than the prenatal care I received. It's free, it's often delivered to your residence. Nobody wants it. Especially, nobody wants the microscope of medicine looking at them if they continue to enjoy smoking, to exchange their food vouchers for eyelashes and braiding services, to willingling sleep with men who give them recurring STIs, to refuse to check their blood sugar at home with FREE supplies because they "hate needles," to refuse to get flu shots because they "hate needles," and on and on and on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think any additional funding would go a long way if it was used to help end generational trauma by providing expecting parents with the tools and support necessary to raise a child in a manner that will allow for financial stability and the education one needs to raise a child in a trauma-free home. Once a child is of school age (even 3 in DC), it is unfortunately most often too late to undo the damage caused by a family that has suffered from discipline in the form of abuse and the trauma growing up in a home struggling to make ends meet.

Meh. We've been doing what you suggest for about 6 or 7 generations now in the District of Columbia. It does. not. matter.

I don’t think you know what a generation is. Unless you’re suggesting that we’ve been supporting low income families with mental health supports since ~1870

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I see it all the time in our citywide lottery school. There are some parents who are just … bad. What is DCPS supposed to do about that in schools where LOTS of parents are really really bad.


As you allude to, parenting is the tip of the iceberg to address the material conditions created by historical injustice. With that said, yes... it's easy to reduce the issue of student academic outcomes to parenting. While parents play a big part, a child's access to a quality education is impacted by nutrition, access to healthcare, exposure to violence/trauma... the list goes on. In my years working in schools, I met parents who had advanced degrees, knew all the right levers for student success (homework involvement, extracurriculars, access to caring adults) and yet the day-to-day impact of living in deep poverty still took a toll on their child's success. All of that to say-- parents, nor schools, can control for all of these powerful social forces. I'm sure that folks could point to the success of high-performing magnets and charter schools as evidence that this can be done. My counterpoint would be that we have yet to see this at-scale...

And in all my years of working in inner-city health care, I would like to counter that "access" to top-notch preventative care, nutrition, counseling, and various wrap-around services like parenting classes .... doesn't actually make a dent. Because the recipients, as a cohort, are so dysfunctional.

As an example, I provide amazing prenatal care -- actually far better than the prenatal care I received. It's free, it's often delivered to your residence. Nobody wants it. Especially, nobody wants the microscope of medicine looking at them if they continue to enjoy smoking, to exchange their food vouchers for eyelashes and braiding services, to willingling sleep with men who give them recurring STIs, to refuse to check their blood sugar at home with FREE supplies because they "hate needles," to refuse to get flu shots because they "hate needles," and on and on and on.

Damn

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:School performance very rarely reflects the quality of school, but more the income of the students. Parent income is the strongest predictor of student achievement, so you could change around the schools that go into Wilson all you want but it wouldn’t impact the actual issue of the achievement gap and equity.

Families that can't afford Wilson overwhelmingly don't use their neighborhood middle or high schools, frequently at great cost in terms of time. Even if all you were to do is get them the same experience and outcomes at their neighborhood schools as they're currently getting elsewhere that would be a huge improvement in terms of equity. And you'd save money you could allocate to other things because it's costlier per-student to run under enrolled schools. But of course there are also students who better schools would make a difference for as well -- we see this with the charters who are serving identical student populations and doing better with them.

[Anonymous]

Schools in DC are lavishly funded, including the terrible ones. The facilities are gorgeous; teachers' salaries are very, very generous. Money isn't the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Schools in DC are lavishly funded, including the terrible ones. The facilities are gorgeous; teachers' salaries are very, very generous. Money isn't the problem.

Yep, it's something else. And until that something else is addressed, the outcome will be the same.

[Anonymous]

You can't say this in liberal areas like DC, but many, many poor people don't give a sh*t about education. We pretend they care every much as doctors in Cleveland Park but it's not true. Some people care and try really hard, and some people don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't say this in liberal areas like DC, but many, many poor people don't give a sh*t about education. We pretend they care every much as doctors in Cleveland Park but it's not true. Some people care and try really hard, and some people don't.

Ok, but a lot do, or they wouldn't send their kids to charters which require more from the families than DCPS does. If you look at DCPS schools where only 20% of the neighborhood kids are going, you're missing a lot of involved parents who are going elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your tax dollars recently funded a nationwide study of indicators of educational equity.

https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25389/monitoring-educational-equity

“ Education is sometimes characterized as the "great equalizer," but to date, the country has not found ways to successfully address the adverse effects of socioeconomic circumstances, prejudice, and discrimination that suppress performance for some groups.”

I guess that settles that then. We can close the thread now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can't say this in liberal areas like DC, but many, many poor people don't give a sh*t about education. We pretend they care every much as doctors in Cleveland Park but it's not true. Some people care and try really hard, and some people don't.

Ok, but a lot do, or they wouldn't send their kids to charters which require more from the families than DCPS does. If you look at DCPS schools where only 20% of the neighborhood kids are going, you're missing a lot of involved parents who are going elsewhere.

It's not poor people who are sending their kids to charters. It's highly educated white people who can't afford to buy a home in Ward 3, who consider the neighborhood schools in their non-Ward 3 wards to be unacceptable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can't say this in liberal areas like DC, but many, many poor people don't give a sh*t about education. We pretend they care every much as doctors in Cleveland Park but it's not true. Some people care and try really hard, and some people don't.

Ok, but a lot do, or they wouldn't send their kids to charters which require more from the families than DCPS does. If you look at DCPS schools where only 20% of the neighborhood kids are going, you're missing a lot of involved parents who are going elsewhere.

It's not poor people who are sending their kids to charters. It's highly educated white people who can't afford to buy a home in Ward 3, who consider the neighborhood schools in their non-Ward 3 wards to be unacceptable.

It is absolutely poor people. KIPP and DC Prep, just to name a couple of popular LEAs, are not getting highly-educated white people. None of the DCPS neighborhood high schools besides Wilson are getting more than about a quarter of their zoned students, and only a small fraction of those are white kids. You just don't know about the charters that aren't aimed at you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can't say this in liberal areas like DC, but many, many poor people don't give a sh*t about education. We pretend they care every much as doctors in Cleveland Park but it's not true. Some people care and try really hard, and some people don't.

Ok, but a lot do, or they wouldn't send their kids to charters which require more from the families than DCPS does. If you look at DCPS schools where only 20% of the neighborhood kids are going, you're missing a lot of involved parents who are going elsewhere.

It's not poor people who are sending their kids to charters. It's highly educated white people who can't afford to buy a home in Ward 3, who consider the neighborhood schools in their non-Ward 3 wards to be unacceptable.

This isn't accurate. Ward 8 has one of the highest rate of charter attendance in the city.

E.g., "Even though students in Ward 8 are those most likely to live and attend school in the same ward, they are also among the least likely to attend their in-boundary public school, as only 20 percent of Ward 8 students go to the school in their neighborhood boundary."
https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/new-education-data-urban/

Ward 8 is 92% AA: https://www.dchealthmatters.org/demographicdata?id=131495

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can't say this in liberal areas like DC, but many, many poor people don't give a sh*t about education. We pretend they care every much as doctors in Cleveland Park but it's not true. Some people care and try really hard, and some people don't.

Ok, but a lot do, or they wouldn't send their kids to charters which require more from the families than DCPS does. If you look at DCPS schools where only 20% of the neighborhood kids are going, you're missing a lot of involved parents who are going elsewhere.

It's not poor people who are sending their kids to charters. It's highly educated white people who can't afford to buy a home in Ward 3, who consider the neighborhood schools in their non-Ward 3 wards to be unacceptable.

It is absolutely poor people. KIPP and DC Prep, just to name a couple of popular LEAs, are not getting highly-educated white people. None of the DCPS neighborhood high schools besides Wilson are getting more than about a quarter of their zoned students, and only a small fraction of those are white kids. You just don't know about the charters that aren't aimed at you.

There's obviously a wide range of charters, some good, some bad, but the really good ones are very, very white.

[Anonymous]

Also: "Charter school students currently make up about 46 percent of the student body in DC (with enrollment trending upward), and more than 90 percent of these charter students are black and Latino. Over 80 percent of these students are low-income."

https://ggwash.org/view/65216/should-charter-schools-help-integrate-dc

[Anonymous]

Actually white kids are more likely to go to DCPS than charters: https://myteacher.dc.gov/page/about-dc-public-education#:~:text=Charter%20Students%3A,6%25%20of%20students%20are%20White

DCPS Students:

59% of students are Black
20% of students are Latinx
16% of students are White
5% of students are Asian/multiracial/other

Charter Students:

74% of students are Black
16% of students are Latinx
6% of students are White
4% of students are Asian/Multiracial/other