School Segregation and the Boundary Issues

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think services follow white children in DC. They dont need them and the extras are (in my opinion correctly) directed elsewhere. Look at all the shiny new under-enrolled schools and per pupil spending outide of ward 3.

Extras at w3 schools come from parents not the city.

What hit me was the studies of what was available at the middle school level between schools East of the River and at Deal. They are huge. I have had children attend a 90% minority/ 70% Farm school and one that is 50% minority/20 % farm. What was available at each school was huge. The extras that go to poor schools are an extra school pychologist or new coats and backpacks. It is not the extra computer lab or IPADs or robotics programs. You cannot even imagine unless you have lived it the difference. I don't know that I would have believed how different the benefits are withou the experience

As to the point that parents provide the benefits you are right, and then they use it as a tax break. Well off parents use real estate prices to segregate SES, they use their money to provide extras and then use both of those factors to decrease the general taxation they would have paid to help the general treasury that might have helped poorer kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think services follow white children in DC. They dont need them and the extras are (in my opinion correctly) directed elsewhere. Look at all the shiny new under-enrolled schools and per pupil spending outide of ward 3.

Extras at w3 schools come from parents not the city.

What hit me was the studies of what was available at the middle school level between schools East of the River and at Deal. They are huge. I have had children attend a 90% minority/ 70% Farm school and one that is 50% minority/20 % farm. What was available at each school was huge. The extras that go to poor schools are an extra school pychologist or new coats and backpacks. It is not the extra computer lab or IPADs or robotics programs. You cannot even imagine unless you have lived it the difference. I don't know that I would have believed how different the benefits are withou the experience

+1

I live EoTP too, inbounds for Coolidge. It's laughable that Coolidge and Wilson are in the same school district-- they are so far apart in terms of OFFERINGS. Not just color of student body, or SES levels, but offerings at the school. AP? IB? Specials? Clubs? ETc Etc Etc. I couldn't consider it at all for my DC. I pay taxes, and I had to try for DC to get into specialized HSs. If DC hadn't gotten accepted, we'd have to pay $30,000 for private high school for four years. I want what Wilson has. Or even 50% of what Wilson has!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Listening to this piece on NPR this morning, I could not help thinking that this is the future of Deal/Wilson if we don't figure out how to get all parties to buy in.

She says in the interview that services follow white children. That happens here, today in Washington, DC.


Segregation Now: The Resegregation of America's Schools
by Nikole Hannah-Jones | @nhannahjones

In Tuscaloosa today, nearly one in three black students attends a school that looks as if Brown v. Board of Education never happened.

Read our first chapter on James Dent here.
And tune in tomorrow for Melissa's story or read the full text version now.
http://www.propublica.org/article/segregation-now-the-resegregation-of-americas-schools?utm_source=et&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailynewsletter

OP, please name 10 reasons why DC is not Tuscaloosa. I know you can.

[Anonymous]

Can someone please post a link to one of these studies? I get that student test scores are far different. But I'd like to see the difference in what amenities are offered. TIA

[Anonymous]

In McLean we have a lot of Asians in high performing schools along with whites. It isn't a racial thing it's a SES thing.

[Anonymous]

One part of this debate that is missing is how much parent support the "good" schools that are the subject of this are getting. You can't talk disparate treatment without acknowledging that the parents in these neighborhoods do a tremendous amount of fundraising and support the schools in other ways as well. There was a WaPo article a year or so ago, for example, that noted that the Parent's Association at Murch raised 250k and was funding several teaching positions and facility upgrades. Will these parents continue to do so if there kids are forced to go out of bounds or will they pull the plug, move to Mo Co or VA, send to private thereby dragging these schools down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think services follow white children in DC. They dont need them and the extras are (in my opinion correctly) directed elsewhere. Look at all the shiny new under-enrolled schools and per pupil spending outide of ward 3.

Extras at w3 schools come from parents not the city.

What hit me was the studies of what was available at the middle school level between schools East of the River and at Deal. They are huge. I have had children attend a 90% minority/ 70% Farm school and one that is 50% minority/20 % farm. What was available at each school was huge. The extras that go to poor schools are an extra school pychologist or new coats and backpacks. It is not the extra computer lab or IPADs or robotics programs. You cannot even imagine unless you have lived it the difference. I don't know that I would have believed how different the benefits are withou the experience

As to the point that parents provide the benefits you are right, and then they use it as a tax break. Well off parents use real estate prices to segregate SES, they use their money to provide extras and then use both of those factors to decrease the general taxation they would have paid to help the general treasury that might have helped poorer kids.

Please don't make it sound like well-off parents are purposely doing the things you mention to get a tax break. Everyone who owns real estate gets a tax break and the most valuable the real estate the bigger the tax break -- which means that some of the biggest real estate holders are paying the most into city coffers and not getting any return for their own children's education -- because their children are in private schools. These rich people are not purposely giving extra - they are just paying their damn taxes like everyone else.

[Anonymous]

DCPS tried to pull the librarian and other basics fro hardy because of low enrollment. It is not just eotp schools, it is DCPS way of thinking.

Regarding robotics clubs etc, should that be where the money goes in a school where kids can't read at grade level? How many at coolidge are ready for AP classes?

Eotp schools get more money, and spend it on different things because their kids need them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One part of this debate that is missing is how much parent support the "good" schools that are the subject of this are getting. You can't talk disparate treatment without acknowledging that the parents in these neighborhoods do a tremendous amount of fundraising and support the schools in other ways as well. There was a WaPo article a year or so ago, for example, that noted that the Parent's Association at Murch raised 250k and was funding several teaching positions and facility upgrades. Will these parents continue to do so if there kids are forced to go out of bounds or will they pull the plug, move to Mo Co or VA, send to private thereby dragging these schools down.

This one won't.

[Anonymous]

At root is a funding system that creates virtuous and vicious cycles. There are many ways in which DCPS could choose to fund its students. Its use of a standard per-pupil allocation disproportionately hurts small schools and gives larger schools an advantage in terms of being able to afford extras through economies of scale. Wilson has almost as many students as Coolidge, Roosevelt and Cardozo combined. It's size allows it to provide the offerings that the other schools simply can't afford.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS tried to pull the librarian and other basics fro hardy because of low enrollment. It is not just eotp schools, it is DCPS way of thinking.

Regarding robotics clubs etc, should that be where the money goes in a school where kids can't read at grade level? How many at coolidge are ready for AP classes?

Eotp schools get more money, and spend it on different things because their kids need them.

Part of being ready for AP is all the culmulative experiences that you have. It is why parents fundraise and do so much for their children if they have the means. If you don't have the means, you don't have the knowledge and you don't have schools where the adults can think aobut those things, then your kid is screwed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think services follow white children in DC. They dont need them and the extras are (in my opinion correctly) directed elsewhere. Look at all the shiny new under-enrolled schools and per pupil spending outide of ward 3.

Extras at w3 schools come from parents not the city.

What hit me was the studies of what was available at the middle school level between schools East of the River and at Deal. They are huge. I have had children attend a 90% minority/ 70% Farm school and one that is 50% minority/20 % farm. What was available at each school was huge. The extras that go to poor schools are an extra school pychologist or new coats and backpacks. It is not the extra computer lab or IPADs or robotics programs. You cannot even imagine unless you have lived it the difference. I don't know that I would have believed how different the benefits are withou the experience

As to the point that parents provide the benefits you are right, and then they use it as a tax break. Well off parents use real estate prices to segregate SES, they use their money to provide extras and then use both of those factors to decrease the general taxation they would have paid to help the general treasury that might have helped poorer kids.

What,, do you think that DC taxes are too low? Do you have any idea what many people in this town pay in income, property, sales and other fees to Dysfunctional City? That DC, all-in, is one of the most high taxed jurisdictions in the whole country? That DCPS already spends per pupil a lot of money? That people watch as their taxes are spent on things like multi-million dollar sweetheart contracts to people like Jeffrey Thompson? Or stolen outright by council members like Harry Thomas? Or wasted like Vincent Orange's $350K party fund for an emancipation day concert the other day? People contribute and, yes, volunteer many hours to raise money for their kids' schools because despite all the tax money, DCPS has been unable regularly to fund things like enrichment programs, science teachers, music teachers, full-time liibrarians and, until recently, even playgrounds.

The problem in DCPS is not money. It is how it is spent and other management issues. It is too much of a focus on feel-good goals like diversity, esteem and egalitarianism, rather than on making rigorous, quality schools in every neighborhood of our city.

[Anonymous]

It's not parents fundraising that make Deal and Wilson have more offerings - it's because the schools are large and the per pupil funding, while less per kid than most schools - adds up when you are talking about a large student body.

The Deal PTA raises money, but from my perspective the fundraising is a lot less aggressive than at the elementary level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The real problem is income segregation. In DC it is all rich white people, all poor brown/black people. It's not like that everywhere. I think here we correlate success to race, but instead it's really success to SES.

DC also has plenty of well-educated, high SES black folks. For some reason, they tend to get left out of the conversation frequently.

Jesus, "all poor brown/black"??? The President of the United States is Black, if you didn't notice.

As long as you're being apocryphal, you could say "there are few poor white people in DC", and be closer to the mark.

This is really the point. There are brown/black people all over the SES map, however there haven't been any poor white people since white flight. All the white people here are middle class and higher. Ergo, "white" becomes shorthand for "middle class and higher." The next step is that race becomes conflated with SES.

For the record, I think that's mostly a WotP thing. Everybody east of the park knows higher SES brown/black people no matter what race they personally happen to be.

[Anonymous]

The kids have to want the clubs, and participate in them. And the teachers have to support it.