Parents of Black Children, Please Let Me Know Your Thoughts
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Anonymous
| Or even consider private school. Sometimes there are greater numbers in private schools. You’d be surprised. |
Anonymous
| Can’t believe you are worried about this. MCPS is one of the most diverse school systems in the country. |
Anonymous
| To the poster that moved to Potomac from silver spring for better schools. Why are they better? |
Anonymous
Have you seen what the proficiencies in ELA and Math are for Black students in MCPS? They're not good. OP has plenty of reason to worry. |
Anonymous
| OP, do not limit yourself to just the elementary school years. What does the middle school and high school feeder schools for both homes look like? I find the middle school years to be the toughest years socially for a child. |
Anonymous
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Demographics are crucially important these days given the political climate, more so if you are not a FBA but are a black immigrant. Secondly, one must also consider do you want your child/ren to be the only black child in the class? Some years it's very likely they might be, so proceed with caution if this is an important issue to you.
Personally, because I have an educational background DH and I decided against a wealthier neighborhood and favored something more aligned with our racial background. Education is not just in school. Education starts at home, education is travel, education is history, education is new experiences, hobbies, crafts, volunteering, etc. Would you rather be house strapped or have enough money to vacation multiple times a year and have enough for resources to do your hobbies? |
Anonymous
I wasn’t asking about diversity in general. I’m asking about the presence of OTHER Black children. Period. |
Anonymous
It doesn't sound likey they were if you read the posts. |
Anonymous
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Another dynamic is the level of Black diversity in MoCo. Black families / kids often socialize within ethnic groups making Black social circles even smaller in some aspects.
We are a mixed white and African American family and we are finding that my child goes to school with relatively few African American children for instance- even at quite a diverse school. There are also a wide range of cultures around out of school time get togethers, birthday parties, sleep overs etc. Extra curricular activities are very important for cultivating deeper friendships/ broadening social circles. Agree with the people talking about focusing on middle and high school as well. Friend groups often segregate more as years go on. |
Anonymous
They are NOT better in terms of curriculum (same curriculum for a given class across all schools) or mostly in terms of teachers (same teacher pool, pay, etc. across the county though some teachers may have a slight preference for W schools). Depending on home school, they may offer more APs and you're generally surrounded by a set of kids who push themselves hard academically. This last point leads to higher average test scores overall. |
Anonymous
Unfortunately I think this is mostly tied to income. Wealthy Black students do just as well as wealthy white students. |
Anonymous
Uh, no they don’t. I don’t know what data you’re looking at but it’s not MCPS’s. Non-FARMS Black kids don’t match the academic proficiencies of non-FARMS white kids. This was outlined in MCPS Antiracism audit. You should read it. |
Anonymous
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That zipcode goes mostly to very diverse high schools.
IME race has not made a difference for playdates and was not really anything that came up in elementary for myself or the kids. Once kids get into HS as PP pointed out it's more of a discussion when they take U.S. history and talk about current events. It is nice not to be the "lone" anything in a class when that happens but that would not be an issue at QO or Gaithersburg HS. |
Anonymous
My spouse is African American. We picked QO cluster because of it’s almost equal parts of each major ethnic group. There has been no racial issues whatsoever, unlike how I grew up, and I like how they have friends from all cultures. My kids have never been bullied. QO has a good segment of high performers and good number of AP classes, nice kids, good sports. It’s an all-American feel. In MS and ES you may want to help with enrichment, but that’s true no matter which school you’re at. People tend to be down to earth. |
Anonymous
Not the PP, but the Anti-Racism Audit was not about test scores/outcomes. It was about workplace and school culture, access to opportunities, whether kids were seeing their experiences reflected in the curriculum, etc. Here is the top line summary: "MAEC was charged with evaluating MCPS’s efforts toward achieving racial equity across the district, examining six domains: (1) school culture, (2) workforce diversity, (3) work conditions, (4) Pre-K–12 curriculum, (5) community relations and engagement, and (6) equity of access." |