Hope for DCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, you are on to something. I mean this with no disrespect (I’m a white man) white families expect to be part of the majority and treated like their norms and expectations are majority (ie democratically rewarded) norms. In DC you can feel othered and exasperated that what you consider normal isn’t what’s happening.

This creates some bad outcomes. Self segregation. Concentrated radicalized poverty. But why do we have to just give up on integration because of the feeling of white people that we expect to be the majority culture? I feel like there’s some maturing that needs to happen to white people culturally. I mean Asian people in this country are othered every damn day. Black people are concentrated together because other people want them fully excluded from “their” spaces. We have to do better than this. And some of how we got to a bad place came from putting “our kids” (ourselves?) first.

It's less about being the minority and more about not wanting to send your kid to a failing school. By any metric you can find, almost every middle and high school in DC qualifies as failing. Parents who can't afford to live in the right neighborhood and strike out in the lottery opt for charters or move. You can call it self segregation, but black families who care about education make the same choices

Then explain why there aren't more white kids at Banneker.

https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/9

4% exceeding expectations in math.

It's 1% at JR and that's not keeping white kids away.

JR is a traditional school. 4% for a magnet is pathetic

[Anonymous]

I know this sounds weird, but we're longtime white residents in a blacker part of DC, participating in local institutions like mostly black church, etc., and the "Black excellence" thing at Banneker is kind of appealing. When we interviewed and I met people, my child met people, we were all like, "We get this. We like this." Way more our style than

I'm sure I could get myself in trouble for talking like this but I like the "work hard and prove a world that wasn't built for you wrong" more than I like the look out for number one where's my A thing I get from a lot of white people around here. (Probably helps I didn't grow up like a lot of white DC.)

[Anonymous]

Way more our style than Walls, I meant to write.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

This simply isn't true. Let me get the NAEP TUDA data for you.

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/districtprofile?chort=1&sub=RED&sj=XQ&sfj=NL&st=MN&year=2022R3

Thank you for the data link. This shows that DCPS (not including charters or privates) has gone from significantly worse than the average urban district in the early 2000’s to similar to significantly better at the 4th grade level and has shown substantial growth but is still a bit below the average in 8th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And there's the woman above who doesn't want whites and others in "Black schools." Not everyone thinks like this, thank goodness. But some people like Banneker being an HBCUish.

Feels like you could FOIA the applicant demographics if you really wanted to know

You can't FOIA data that's not getting collected. The Post was able to get applicant middle school data on Walls a few years ago, but had to rely on student data for anything else. Maybe they didn't ask for other applicant data, but I doubt it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

I have plenty of criticism for DCPS but this is a very uneducated position. I have family in districts in places like Alabama and Oklahoma where they won't even pay for 5 days of school a week and where teachers barely make a livable wage even with the low cost of living and there is zero enrichment and there are schools that routinely fail to have any child meet expectations on statewide assessments. I have kids at a Title 1 school in DC that many people would describe as struggling and for all of DCPS's faults it is light years ahead of many public schools especially in the south. Not to mention all the political issues those districts have that restrict kids' access to basic history or literature. I mean come on.

Also for the billionth time on these boards: you cannot compare standardized test scores from an urban district like DC against state-wide results. The state-wide results in mississippi include the wealthiest areas where there is no concentrated poverty. You can compare DC against other urban areas but you also must be careful to look at whether the comparison includes metro areas with inner suburbs. DC's assessments cannot include close in suburbs because of our unique designation as a non-state district and our kids don't take the same assessments as those in the suburbs. So it's actually hard to do a 1:1 comparison of test scores in DC versus cities like San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia (and in any case kids take different assessments with different scoring so this furthers the challenge).

DCPS has issues but your talking points are bad and uninformed.

this is just a bunch of nonsensical excuses.

dc is far, far wealthier than mississippi. we spend exponentially more than mississippi on schools. and yet our kids do worse on tests.

maybe the difference is expectations. in dc, we dont count kids as absent unless they show up for school *after 2pm*. in mississippi, if third graders can't pass a state reading test, they automatically flunk third grade.

dc could learn a lot from mississppi.

The New York Times:

"Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html

How many years would DC give kids to pass 3rd grade? Social promotion exists because no one wants a 14 year old in elementary school

if kids were afraid they might flunk a grade (and most would probably consider that to be deeply embarrassing), they might find the motivation to put in a little more effort to learn.

I think it might put some pressure on their parents. I also think repeaters should go to a special intensive program -- at least for a year.

Clearly the social promotion thing is not working and doing no favors for the struggling kids or their peers.

The kids who are flunking 3rd grade in DCPS do not have parents who are motivated by pressure. They have parents who had kids in their mid to late teens and are in single parent households where the single parent may be minimally employed. They often have one or more parents who are or have been in prison or have or have had substance abuse issues. They often have housing insecurity and may be shuffled between parental and grandparent homes. They may be hungry all the time.

You can put these kids in a special intensive program. You can threaten their parents. You can try to impress upon the kids the value of school. But if you cannot address the fundamental issues with their lives most of it is unlikely to matter.

This is based on extensive experience with at risk DCPS students and their families -- these aren't generic stereotypes. I'm describing kids and parents I have encountered over and over again through at risk out reach programming and within DCPS schools with high numbers of at risk kids.

I'm with you, but an intensive program has more chance of working than social promotion -- especially before middle school!

And that would harm their peers less, because it does harm other MS and HS students when kids are in their classes that can't read nor do basic arithmetic.

The problem is a bigger societal one, but the schools have to deal somehow, and just dropping all requirements for academic achievement conflicts with the basic concept of a school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

I have plenty of criticism for DCPS but this is a very uneducated position. I have family in districts in places like Alabama and Oklahoma where they won't even pay for 5 days of school a week and where teachers barely make a livable wage even with the low cost of living and there is zero enrichment and there are schools that routinely fail to have any child meet expectations on statewide assessments. I have kids at a Title 1 school in DC that many people would describe as struggling and for all of DCPS's faults it is light years ahead of many public schools especially in the south. Not to mention all the political issues those districts have that restrict kids' access to basic history or literature. I mean come on.

Also for the billionth time on these boards: you cannot compare standardized test scores from an urban district like DC against state-wide results. The state-wide results in mississippi include the wealthiest areas where there is no concentrated poverty. You can compare DC against other urban areas but you also must be careful to look at whether the comparison includes metro areas with inner suburbs. DC's assessments cannot include close in suburbs because of our unique designation as a non-state district and our kids don't take the same assessments as those in the suburbs. So it's actually hard to do a 1:1 comparison of test scores in DC versus cities like San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia (and in any case kids take different assessments with different scoring so this furthers the challenge).

DCPS has issues but your talking points are bad and uninformed.

this is just a bunch of nonsensical excuses.

dc is far, far wealthier than mississippi. we spend exponentially more than mississippi on schools. and yet our kids do worse on tests.

maybe the difference is expectations. in dc, we dont count kids as absent unless they show up for school *after 2pm*. in mississippi, if third graders can't pass a state reading test, they automatically flunk third grade.

dc could learn a lot from mississppi.

The New York Times:

"Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html

How many years would DC give kids to pass 3rd grade? Social promotion exists because no one wants a 14 year old in elementary school

if kids were afraid they might flunk a grade (and most would probably consider that to be deeply embarrassing), they might find the motivation to put in a little more effort to learn.

I think it might put some pressure on their parents. I also think repeaters should go to a special intensive program -- at least for a year.

Clearly the social promotion thing is not working and doing no favors for the struggling kids or their peers.

The kids who are flunking 3rd grade in DCPS do not have parents who are motivated by pressure. They have parents who had kids in their mid to late teens and are in single parent households where the single parent may be minimally employed. They often have one or more parents who are or have been in prison or have or have had substance abuse issues. They often have housing insecurity and may be shuffled between parental and grandparent homes. They may be hungry all the time.

You can put these kids in a special intensive program. You can threaten their parents. You can try to impress upon the kids the value of school. But if you cannot address the fundamental issues with their lives most of it is unlikely to matter.

This is based on extensive experience with at risk DCPS students and their families -- these aren't generic stereotypes. I'm describing kids and parents I have encountered over and over again through at risk out reach programming and within DCPS schools with high numbers of at risk kids.

We don't have to solve poverty in order for kids to get a good education. If Mississippi can do it, we can do it too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

DC is the most educated city in the country. Many families have advance degrees and are highly educated. Yes, it is a damn low bar if your kid is going to UDC or just some below average college.

Also to some minority families including blacks, it’s a low bar so it’s not just whites.

And no, I’m not white and I’m not asking DCPS to be centered on my kids. What I am asking is for my kids academic needs to be met in appropriate classes to their level.

Your response is exactly why DCPS will never get better and the kids that are sadly most left behind are the smart, poor FARMS kids like myself growing up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, you are on to something. I mean this with no disrespect (I’m a white man) white families expect to be part of the majority and treated like their norms and expectations are majority (ie democratically rewarded) norms. In DC you can feel othered and exasperated that what you consider normal isn’t what’s happening.

This creates some bad outcomes. Self segregation. Concentrated radicalized poverty. But why do we have to just give up on integration because of the feeling of white people that we expect to be the majority culture? I feel like there’s some maturing that needs to happen to white people culturally. I mean Asian people in this country are othered every damn day. Black people are concentrated together because other people want them fully excluded from “their” spaces. We have to do better than this. And some of how we got to a bad place came from putting “our kids” (ourselves?) first.

It's less about being the minority and more about not wanting to send your kid to a failing school. By any metric you can find, almost every middle and high school in DC qualifies as failing. Parents who can't afford to live in the right neighborhood and strike out in the lottery opt for charters or move. You can call it self segregation, but black families who care about education make the same choices

Then explain why there aren't more white kids at Banneker.

https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/9

4% exceeding expectations in math.

It's 1% at JR and that's not keeping white kids away.

JR is a traditional school. 4% for a magnet is pathetic

PARCC scores at the high school level are different because not everyone takes the PARCC. I believe students in AP classes are opted out or something like that. Anyhow, it's not apples to apples with the 3-8th PARCC scores or whatever the new acronym is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

I have plenty of criticism for DCPS but this is a very uneducated position. I have family in districts in places like Alabama and Oklahoma where they won't even pay for 5 days of school a week and where teachers barely make a livable wage even with the low cost of living and there is zero enrichment and there are schools that routinely fail to have any child meet expectations on statewide assessments. I have kids at a Title 1 school in DC that many people would describe as struggling and for all of DCPS's faults it is light years ahead of many public schools especially in the south. Not to mention all the political issues those districts have that restrict kids' access to basic history or literature. I mean come on.

Also for the billionth time on these boards: you cannot compare standardized test scores from an urban district like DC against state-wide results. The state-wide results in mississippi include the wealthiest areas where there is no concentrated poverty. You can compare DC against other urban areas but you also must be careful to look at whether the comparison includes metro areas with inner suburbs. DC's assessments cannot include close in suburbs because of our unique designation as a non-state district and our kids don't take the same assessments as those in the suburbs. So it's actually hard to do a 1:1 comparison of test scores in DC versus cities like San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia (and in any case kids take different assessments with different scoring so this furthers the challenge).

DCPS has issues but your talking points are bad and uninformed.

this is just a bunch of nonsensical excuses.

dc is far, far wealthier than mississippi. we spend exponentially more than mississippi on schools. and yet our kids do worse on tests.

maybe the difference is expectations. in dc, we dont count kids as absent unless they show up for school *after 2pm*. in mississippi, if third graders can't pass a state reading test, they automatically flunk third grade.

dc could learn a lot from mississppi.

The New York Times:

"Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html

How many years would DC give kids to pass 3rd grade? Social promotion exists because no one wants a 14 year old in elementary school

if kids were afraid they might flunk a grade (and most would probably consider that to be deeply embarrassing), they might find the motivation to put in a little more effort to learn.

I think it might put some pressure on their parents. I also think repeaters should go to a special intensive program -- at least for a year.

Clearly the social promotion thing is not working and doing no favors for the struggling kids or their peers.

The kids who are flunking 3rd grade in DCPS do not have parents who are motivated by pressure. They have parents who had kids in their mid to late teens and are in single parent households where the single parent may be minimally employed. They often have one or more parents who are or have been in prison or have or have had substance abuse issues. They often have housing insecurity and may be shuffled between parental and grandparent homes. They may be hungry all the time.

You can put these kids in a special intensive program. You can threaten their parents. You can try to impress upon the kids the value of school. But if you cannot address the fundamental issues with their lives most of it is unlikely to matter.

This is based on extensive experience with at risk DCPS students and their families -- these aren't generic stereotypes. I'm describing kids and parents I have encountered over and over again through at risk out reach programming and within DCPS schools with high numbers of at risk kids.

We don't have to solve poverty in order for kids to get a good education. If Mississippi can do it, we can do it too.

NYT:

In the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a series of nationwide tests better known as NAEP, Mississippi has moved from near the bottom to the middle for most of the exams — and near the top when adjusted for demographics. Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math....

“Mississippi is a huge success story and very exciting,” David Deming, a Harvard economist and education expert, told me. What’s so significant, he said, is that while Mississippi hasn’t overcome poverty or racism, it still manages to get kids to read and excel.

“You cannot use poverty as an excuse. That’s the most important lesson,” Deming added. “It’s so important, I want to shout it from the mountaintop.” What Mississippi teaches, he said, is that “we shouldn’t be giving up on children.”

The revolution here in Mississippi is incomplete, and race gaps persist, but it’s thrilling to see the excitement and pride bubbling in the halls of de facto segregated Black schools in some of the nation’s poorest communities...."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

DC is the most educated city in the country. Many families have advance degrees and are highly educated. Yes, it is a damn low bar if your kid is going to UDC or just some below average college.

Also to some minority families including blacks, it’s a low bar so it’s not just whites.

And no, I’m not white and I’m not asking DCPS to be centered on my kids. What I am asking is for my kids academic needs to be met in appropriate classes to their level.

Your response is exactly why DCPS will never get better and the kids that are sadly most left behind are the smart, poor FARMS kids like myself growing up.

I agree. Given the parents in DC, the expectations and challenge level for kids in DC should be higher. Not sure what it will take to change things. Fenty tried and made a real dent, but he didn't exactly get a parade for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

Lotta goofy woke catchphrases here. I think the issue is that people think the schools shouldn't be so incredibly shitty. DCPS is arguably the worst public school system in the entire country. Our kids on average do worse on standardized tests than kids in Mississippi.

I have plenty of criticism for DCPS but this is a very uneducated position. I have family in districts in places like Alabama and Oklahoma where they won't even pay for 5 days of school a week and where teachers barely make a livable wage even with the low cost of living and there is zero enrichment and there are schools that routinely fail to have any child meet expectations on statewide assessments. I have kids at a Title 1 school in DC that many people would describe as struggling and for all of DCPS's faults it is light years ahead of many public schools especially in the south. Not to mention all the political issues those districts have that restrict kids' access to basic history or literature. I mean come on.

Also for the billionth time on these boards: you cannot compare standardized test scores from an urban district like DC against state-wide results. The state-wide results in mississippi include the wealthiest areas where there is no concentrated poverty. You can compare DC against other urban areas but you also must be careful to look at whether the comparison includes metro areas with inner suburbs. DC's assessments cannot include close in suburbs because of our unique designation as a non-state district and our kids don't take the same assessments as those in the suburbs. So it's actually hard to do a 1:1 comparison of test scores in DC versus cities like San Francisco or Chicago or Philadelphia (and in any case kids take different assessments with different scoring so this furthers the challenge).

DCPS has issues but your talking points are bad and uninformed.

this is just a bunch of nonsensical excuses.

dc is far, far wealthier than mississippi. we spend exponentially more than mississippi on schools. and yet our kids do worse on tests.

maybe the difference is expectations. in dc, we dont count kids as absent unless they show up for school *after 2pm*. in mississippi, if third graders can't pass a state reading test, they automatically flunk third grade.

dc could learn a lot from mississppi.

The New York Times:

"Among just children in poverty, Mississippi fourth graders now are tied for best performers in the nation in NAEP reading tests and rank second in math."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/opinion/mississippi-education-poverty.html

How many years would DC give kids to pass 3rd grade? Social promotion exists because no one wants a 14 year old in elementary school

if kids were afraid they might flunk a grade (and most would probably consider that to be deeply embarrassing), they might find the motivation to put in a little more effort to learn.

You think the problem with the education system in DC is the motivation level of 8 year olds? Wow.

PP here. I think the main problems with the education system in DC are its painfully low standards and the lack of consequences for poor behavior. Also, have you ever had an eight year old? They are extremely responsive to the expectations set for them.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:This has actually been an interesting discussion with some thoughtful comments.

But the problem remains the same - most people with options leave DCPS. They'll give it a try in early elementary, but then they're done. One can say whatever about race, but no one gives a damn about larger cultural issues when it comes to the wellbeing of their own child. It's disheartening to read that there are parents who are extremely exclusionary when it comes to race. And that drives the exodus, which of course is exactly what such families want.

Bold is the answer. Overwhelming majority of families place the top priority on their kid’s education and well being. This is true at the expense of all else. Those few parents here saying community trumps their kid are outliers.

DCPS has proven time and time again that they don’t care about all the kids. The higher performing kids will be “fine” which they equate as finishing school and going to any college which is a very low bar as the majority of resources go to the lowest performing.

Considering that most Americans don’t go to college, that’s not as low a bar as you think. It just might seem low in a city where a lot of people have a lot of fancy education.

To use a tired term, white parents in DCPS don’t feel like their children and their wants/needs are “centered” in DCPS. And yall are unaccustomed to that treatment and can’t stand it. Because everything has to be oriented around what you think is important, and if it isn’t, yall gonna try to change it so it is. Colonizer mindset on full display.

DC is the most educated city in the country. Many families have advance degrees and are highly educated. Yes, it is a damn low bar if your kid is going to UDC or just some below average college.

Also to some minority families including blacks, it’s a low bar so it’s not just whites.

And no, I’m not white and I’m not asking DCPS to be centered on my kids. What I am asking is for my kids academic needs to be met in appropriate classes to their level.

Your response is exactly why DCPS will never get better and the kids that are sadly most left behind are the smart, poor FARMS kids like myself growing up.

I agree. Given the parents in DC, the expectations and challenge level for kids in DC should be higher. Not sure what it will take to change things. Fenty tried and made a real dent, but he didn't exactly get a parade for it.

The parents with education and expectations are not going to experiment with their kids. DCPS is far better than when I was growing up here, but there are still only a handful of middle schools (including charters) that anyone with options would find acceptable. Parents whose kids miss out are going to send their kids to private or move

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I mean, you are on to something. I mean this with no disrespect (I’m a white man) white families expect to be part of the majority and treated like their norms and expectations are majority (ie democratically rewarded) norms. In DC you can feel othered and exasperated that what you consider normal isn’t what’s happening.

This creates some bad outcomes. Self segregation. Concentrated radicalized poverty. But why do we have to just give up on integration because of the feeling of white people that we expect to be the majority culture? I feel like there’s some maturing that needs to happen to white people culturally. I mean Asian people in this country are othered every damn day. Black people are concentrated together because other people want them fully excluded from “their” spaces. We have to do better than this. And some of how we got to a bad place came from putting “our kids” (ourselves?) first.

It's less about being the minority and more about not wanting to send your kid to a failing school. By any metric you can find, almost every middle and high school in DC qualifies as failing. Parents who can't afford to live in the right neighborhood and strike out in the lottery opt for charters or move. You can call it self segregation, but black families who care about education make the same choices

Then explain why there aren't more white kids at Banneker.

https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/9

4% exceeding expectations in math.

It's 1% at JR and that's not keeping white kids away.

JR is a traditional school. 4% for a magnet is pathetic

PARCC scores at the high school level are different because not everyone takes the PARCC. I believe students in AP classes are opted out or something like that. Anyhow, it's not apples to apples with the 3-8th PARCC scores or whatever the new acronym is.

It's DC CAPE. 9th and 10th graders take it. It doesn't go past algebra 2, so there are some issues where your most accelerated math students are only in your math data for 0-1 years instead of 2, but that's not driving the numbers in a big way at either Banneker or JR. But they both have significant groups of kids who are at grade level.

Anyway, I don't know why you would look at the 5s if what you were interested in was above grade level kids, since there's also AP data available and the kids are probably trying a lot more at that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, you are on to something. I mean this with no disrespect (I’m a white man) white families expect to be part of the majority and treated like their norms and expectations are majority (ie democratically rewarded) norms. In DC you can feel othered and exasperated that what you consider normal isn’t what’s happening.

This creates some bad outcomes. Self segregation. Concentrated radicalized poverty. But why do we have to just give up on integration because of the feeling of white people that we expect to be the majority culture? I feel like there’s some maturing that needs to happen to white people culturally. I mean Asian people in this country are othered every damn day. Black people are concentrated together because other people want them fully excluded from “their” spaces. We have to do better than this. And some of how we got to a bad place came from putting “our kids” (ourselves?) first.

It's less about being the minority and more about not wanting to send your kid to a failing school. By any metric you can find, almost every middle and high school in DC qualifies as failing. Parents who can't afford to live in the right neighborhood and strike out in the lottery opt for charters or move. You can call it self segregation, but black families who care about education make the same choices

Then explain why there aren't more white kids at Banneker.

https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/9

4% exceeding expectations in math.

It's 1% at JR and that's not keeping white kids away.

JR is a traditional school. 4% for a magnet is pathetic

PARCC scores at the high school level are different because not everyone takes the PARCC. I believe students in AP classes are opted out or something like that. Anyhow, it's not apples to apples with the 3-8th PARCC scores or whatever the new acronym is.

It's DC CAPE. 9th and 10th graders take it. It doesn't go past algebra 2, so there are some issues where your most accelerated math students are only in your math data for 0-1 years instead of 2, but that's not driving the numbers in a big way at either Banneker or JR. But they both have significant groups of kids who are at grade level.

Anyway, I don't know why you would look at the 5s if what you were interested in was above grade level kids, since there's also AP data available and the kids are probably trying a lot more at that.

Banneker is IB. Their AP offerings, particularly in science, are almost nonexistent. The percentages getting IB, and which IB diploma are a lot harder to find than PARCC scores