Why are so many DC schools so bad?

[Anonymous]

Generational poverty

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm familiar with that concept. Are there really 80-90 percent of parents in DC who are not talking/reading to their children enough? What do these people do for a living and how do they afford to live in DC?

I know people say this but I personally find it really hard to believe. I used to work in a poor school district and most of those parents DID really care about their kids and helped them with their homework, read to them at night, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Real issue is no one has solutions to poverty's multigenerational effects on education. No one likes to tell poor people their children will end up the same. It's just one more way the promise of the American Dream isn't available to all.

This is not true you know. There IS a solution and it is called extreme taxation, aka redistribution of wealth. It's just unpopular. If you taxed the UMC and rich at extremely high rates and redistributed this money to the poor such that every family had a living wage, you would see some progress. There is little support for it however.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm familiar with that concept. Are there really 80-90 percent of parents in DC who are not talking/reading to their children enough? What do these people do for a living and how do they afford to live in DC?

I know people say this but I personally find it really hard to believe. I used to work in a poor school district and most of those parents DID really care about their kids and helped them with their homework, read to them at night, etc.

I work in ward 8 and it is really extreme poverty. Please, try to spend some time volunteering with these families. You will be astounded. There really is minimal emphasis on education.

[Anonymous]

It's not just poverty. As some people pointed out, their parents / grandparents / etc. were extremely poor, but worked hard and gave something better to their children.

I think the difference is opportunity and hope. Those parents / grandparents of ours saw a path to work hard and provide a better opportunity. Many people in DC don't see that opportunity for themselves so they don't even try. That's the "generational poverty" that's so much worse for kids than just poverty. It's uncomfortably tied to our historic and present institutional racism, so really not so easy to solve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm familiar with that concept. Are there really 80-90 percent of parents in DC who are not talking/reading to their children enough? What do these people do for a living and how do they afford to live in DC?

I know people say this but I personally find it really hard to believe. I used to work in a poor school district and most of those parents DID really care about their kids and helped them with their homework, read to them at night, etc.

I work in ward 8 and it is really extreme poverty. Please, try to spend some time volunteering with these families. You will be astounded. There really is minimal emphasis on education.

This. Plus distrust of public institutions of any sort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm familiar with that concept. Are there really 80-90 percent of parents in DC who are not talking/reading to their children enough? What do these people do for a living and how do they afford to live in DC?

I know people say this but I personally find it really hard to believe. I used to work in a poor school district and most of those parents DID really care about their kids and helped them with their homework, read to them at night, etc.

I work in ward 8 and it is really extreme poverty. Please, try to spend some time volunteering with these families. You will be astounded. There really is minimal emphasis on education.

This. Plus distrust of public institutions of any sort.

Before you can improve the lives of tomorrow's DCPS kindergartners you need to reach TODAY's 9th grade girls to educate them on consequences of out of wed childbirth and not completing their education. Maybe some sort of scared straight program is required where you bring in teen mom's with 2, 3, 4 kids to talk about their lives. I know couples in upper NWDC who make $400K and are on the fence about whether they can afford a 3rd child. Can't even imagine getting by in this city on minimum wage with even one kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Real issue is no one has solutions to poverty's multigenerational effects on education. No one likes to tell poor people their children will end up the same. It's just one more way the promise of the American Dream isn't available to all.

Headstart was supposed to ameliorate the effects of poverty on education...it has helped some, but has not been the equalizer that proponents promised. Concentrated poverty ( compared to areas with mixed incomes), and multigenerational illiteracy can be difficult to overcome, add to that institutional racism and learned helplessness and it can be nearly impossible.

I am white, and grew up in poverty with 2 brothers. My mother dropped out of middle school to work because her father had black lung. My father quit school at 16 to leave an abusive home. My parents were literate and always emphasized education as THE way out of poverty. It was a dysfunctional, often volatile family fueled by bipolar depression, alcohol addiction, unemployment and money woes. Despite that my eldest brother and I were able to overcome the odds to earn master's degrees, the other brother started college but never finished. He has a blue collar job and has continued to live in poverty with his wife and children. The psychological effects of poverty are still with me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real issue is no one has solutions to poverty's multigenerational effects on education. No one likes to tell poor people their children will end up the same. It's just one more way the promise of the American Dream isn't available to all.

This is not true you know. There IS a solution and it is called extreme taxation, aka redistribution of wealth. It's just unpopular. If you taxed the UMC and rich at extremely high rates and redistributed this money to the poor such that every family had a living wage, you would see some progress. There is little support for it however.

I actually think the opposite. I worked a minimum wage job in college. My coworkers knew exactly how much they could make before their welfare benefits would decrease and they wouldn't work any more than that. The benefits were holding them back. I had some really crazy stories. But basically they worked the job with me, got assistance with housing and food and had kids to get child support.

I believe in temporary assistance like TANF, but not continued assistance.

[Anonymous]

Because poverty. Because inequity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm familiar with that concept. Are there really 80-90 percent of parents in DC who are not talking/reading to their children enough? What do these people do for a living and how do they afford to live in DC?

I know people say this but I personally find it really hard to believe. I used to work in a poor school district and most of those parents DID really care about their kids and helped them with their homework, read to them at night, etc.

I work in ward 8 and it is really extreme poverty. Please, try to spend some time volunteering with these families. You will be astounded. There really is minimal emphasis on education.

This. Plus distrust of public institutions of any sort.

Before you can improve the lives of tomorrow's DCPS kindergartners you need to reach TODAY's 9th grade girls to educate them on consequences of out of wed childbirth and not completing their education. Maybe some sort of scared straight program is required where you bring in teen mom's with 2, 3, 4 kids to talk about their lives. I know couples in upper NWDC who make $400K and are on the fence about whether they can afford a 3rd child. Can't even imagine getting by in this city on minimum wage with even one kid.

Actually you need to do both simultaneously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Real issue is no one has solutions to poverty's multigenerational effects on education. No one likes to tell poor people their children will end up the same. It's just one more way the promise of the American Dream isn't available to all.

This is not true you know. There IS a solution and it is called extreme taxation, aka redistribution of wealth. It's just unpopular. If you taxed the UMC and rich at extremely high rates and redistributed this money to the poor such that every family had a living wage, you would see some progress. There is little support for it however.

I actually think the opposite. I worked a minimum wage job in college. My coworkers knew exactly how much they could make before their welfare benefits would decrease and they wouldn't work any more than that. The benefits were holding them back. I had some really crazy stories. But basically they worked the job with me, got assistance with housing and food and had kids to get child support.

I believe in temporary assistance like TANF, but not continued assistance.

But do the math, could you have worked enough min. wage hours and OT (probably wouldn't have been allowed to even if physically possible) to pay rent, utilities, health insurance for a family, feed and cloth kids, pay for transportation, and all the other life expense that a family has that you as a college student probably did not have?

[Anonymous]

What if high quality daycare from infancy on was suddenly offered to poor families? Like the $2k a month Bright Horizons infant programs and so on through prek. Would that make a difference, do you think?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm familiar with that concept. Are there really 80-90 percent of parents in DC who are not talking/reading to their children enough? What do these people do for a living and how do they afford to live in DC?

Maybe not in upper NW, but in some of the most expensive zips on Capitol Hill you will still find known drug houses or idiot landlords who didn't understand what it meant to rent to Section 8.

[Anonymous]

give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

people are too lazy and entitled