New to looking at Capitol Hill DCPS. Any majority high SES schools?

[Anonymous]

Whoa now. Study after study show that a school less than 30% of its students coming from poor households is better for the poor and not poor kids alike.

So as distasteful as it is for people to shop around for the richest school, there is a certain threshhold of concentrated poverty that puts the school at a disadvanatge and have a higher likelihood of concenttrating resources and time on struggling learners.

You are wrong, most of us could care less what color the students in a school are. But many people of all races try to stay away from high poverty schools when they can.

[Anonymous]

Actually, I'm a pragmatist, and frankly I don't see any of these MS scenarios as compelling, much less inevitable.

Why am I such a cynic? It could be that I'm having a bad day, but let's consider the option that the choices are just. not. very. good.

Oh, and yes that absolutely includes Deal. To listen to some of you go on, one might think there's a yellow-brick-road leading right to 3815 Fort Drive.

Go Basis, good try. Go Latin, you're the leader of the pack. Go DCI, hope you happen and make our schools cosmopolitan. Go Deal, but don't think you can kick out the brown kids from East of the Park and no-one will notice. Go Hardy - with whatever your "gifted for all!" program is supposed to be. Somewhere, Jay Matthews is silently cheering for you, or more likely writing a book or article or speech or something that promotes him.

[Anonymous]

Whoa now. Study after study show that a school less than 30% of its students coming from poor households is better for the poor and not poor kids alike.

The researchers involved certainly aren't talking to me. The poor students in my kid's class, nearly a third, are a problem to us. Most struggle with skills my kid mastered around two years ago and monopolize the teacher's time, attention and energy as a result. They pull down the level of teaching somewhat. I don't doubt that the poor kids benefit from sitting next to high SES kids in class, but I can't see what affluent kids growing up in cosmopolitan settings gain from the arrangement if all the poor kids aren't advanced learners. We hardly live in a gated community and volunteer at a local soup kitchen as a family. We're not at a private because we can't afford one, and don't like the snobbery, but I'm not going to kid myself by believing that having kids from poor AA households who aren't exceptionally bright and discplined in class with my kid is doing anything but holding him back a tad at school. We make up for the slight challenge deficit at home and in museums on weekends. Now if the poor kids were from Asian immigrant households, we'd surely be rushing to hire tutors to keep up! No Basis or Latin for us, too many poor AA kids and no ability grouping outside math. I'm on the same page as you OP if you're still out there - don't let the grease sink in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Disagree, OP sounds practical and forthright. If you value diversity over high SES representation, more power to you. If she doesn't, and wants her kid in a majority high SES school like Brent, more power to her. To each her own in a free society.

OP equates school success with SES, which is an ecological fallacy. You can diversity in more than skin color, and I'll tell you from experience that you may be surprised at what you learn from the "other" kids. "Diversity" "high SES" -- in this context these are thinly veiled coded statements for saying you don't want your kid in a school with any significant African American representation. Everyone on this board knows exactly what that means.

Private schools are full of high "SES" families -- why not just take the obvious route? There's always CHDS for $30K/yr. You won't have to worry about "rowdy" classrooms there. Unless of course OP is just a CHEAP status seeker.

OP isn't concerned with what's best for kid educationally -- OP is concerned with what's best for status conscious self. It's pretty sad.

You are just completely wrong here, Word Salad. As usual. It is not racial. There are plenty of high SES AA families at our school - Brent. Plenty. High SES is not at all a code for non-AA. Maybe for you though, who lack vision.

[Anonymous]

^Oh give us all a break, almost all the high-SES kids at Brent are white and almost all the poor kids are AA. A few of the high SES kids are Asian or AA (some of the most affluent families) or black but not AA. That's DC for you, a traditionally majority AA city where rednecks can't afford homes.

I'm with PPs who think that "gifted" programs are the answer to keeping far more upper-middle-class families on board through middle and high school. Most of the high SES parents will tell whatever story serves them the best about why they stay until they bolt, usually between 4th and 6th grades, or 8th and 9th. Nobody enjoys being browbeaten by strident leftists with bulldozer intellects, so you keep your plans to jump ship to privates or the burbs to yourself.

I strong suspect that the researchers doing the studies on how poor and affluent kids alike accrue the benefit of "diverse" classroom settings haven't studied this particular city, the one with the widest achievement gap between low-income minority kids and the offspring over over-educated whites and Asians. Even Philly, with a bigger low-income AA population, doesn't exhibit as wide a gap. Yea, sure, great socioeconomic diversity works swimmingly in Iowa or somewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not going to kid myself by believing that having kids from poor AA households who aren't exceptionally bright and discplined in class with my kid is doing anything but holding him back a tad at school. We make up for the slight challenge deficit at home and in museums on weekends. Now if the poor kids were from Asian immigrant households, we'd surely be rushing to hire tutors to keep up! No Basis or Latin for us, too many poor AA kids and no ability grouping outside math. I'm on the same page as you OP if you're still out there - don't let the grease sink in.

So is there a prereq that the non AA kids also be "exceptionally bright and discplined" too? You are such an absurd racist.

[Anonymous]

You are just completely wrong here, Word Salad. As usual. It is not racial. There are plenty of high SES AA families at our school - Brent. Plenty. High SES is not at all a code for non-AA. Maybe for you though, who lack vision.

Ah yes -- the other coded word for anyone who calls BS on the lowest common denominator on the board. Your juvenile taunt aside, everyone knows Brent is getting whiter and whiter, especially in the lower levels. Not much different than a number of other Ward 6 ES. That trend will continue at Brent, probably on the akin to Janney.

And sweetie -- we turned down an IB spot in your school, so enjoy your perch

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some pps seem to think Tommy Wells has a lot of power and he is declining to use it. Folks, the Chancellor is appointed by the Mayor. You need to take this to Gray. Wells has little say so over the school system.

Agree to some degree that ultimately the Mayor and Chancellor are in mostly control of DC public education.

But Wells has a pulpit from which to advocate and coalesce a movement that will affect change. The thing is he has a few constituencies that strongly diverge, and he's taking a muddy middle path as he plots a path to be mayor.

He needs to appeal to old school African American interests (in Ward Six many voted for Kelvin Robinson).

Meanwhile he needs to keep his Ward Six base in tact - and that group does not agree on school reform. The old school traditional Ward Six liberals are anti-charter, and amongst them there is not agreement on how to proceed. Other Ward Six progressives just want something that works -- be it charter, DCPS, whatever -- and so they are generally pro-charter.

Wells does not have a silver bullet at his disposal. What he has is disparate groups stuck in a dysfunctional system who lack consensus. Plus, urban school reform in teh US has few success stories to model how DC can fix things.

Wells is in la-la-land if he thinks he has a shot at mayor. Who exactly is his constituency? Exactly what has he accomplished to date for Ward 6 residents, that is aside from advocating for bike lanes, a trolley line to nowhere along H Street and Ballpark District Parking restrictions? Where was his leadership on Hine post bait-and-switch? Let's face it, Wells got hoodwinked on Reservation 13 and was forced to take parts of Ward 1 that Jack Evans had no interest in serving. Wells has alienated most of the Council, as evidenced by the fact that no one came to his defense after Kwame unceremoniously booted him from the Transp. Committee post for questioning leases of multiple SUVs. From what I can discern, he has no "big picture" vision for Ward 6, much less the students who reside there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You are just completely wrong here, Word Salad. As usual. It is not racial. There are plenty of high SES AA families at our school - Brent. Plenty. High SES is not at all a code for non-AA. Maybe for you though, who lack vision.

Ah yes -- the other coded word for anyone who calls BS on the lowest common denominator on the board. Your juvenile taunt aside, everyone knows Brent is getting whiter and whiter, especially in the lower levels. Not much different than a number of other Ward 6 ES. That trend will continue at Brent, probably on the akin to Janney.

And sweetie -- we turned down an IB spot in your school, so enjoy your perch

OK, I will bite. If you turned down an IB spot at Brent (not that I believe you), where did you send your child?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[Wells does not have a silver bullet at his disposal....From what I can discern, he has no "big picture" vision for Ward 6, much less the students who reside there.

Obviously. So parents, please, organize to tell him Hit the Road, Jack. We've got two years to pull together before his term is up. There must be somebody with moxie and smarts around here ready to jump into the race to advocate for all sorts of great improvements to Hill schools, particularly closing one or two ES to concentrate the middle-class cohort at fewer and letting Brent and Maury to feed to SH.

2014 will be a critical year on the school district redistricting front. If Wells won't to go to bat for us to improve matters, let's find and elect a pol who will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: So is there a prereq that the non AA kids also be "exceptionally bright and discplined" too? You are such an absurd racist.

Yes, a prereq for participation in advanced pullout groups at any rate, you knee-jerk cretin. The salient issues are class, culture, expectations and screening for giftedness. The National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) site tells me that the DC achievement gap between white and AA 4th graders is not only is the largest in the country, it's more than twice as wide as that of the highest-achieving states (all in New England).

I recently visited a 4th and 5th grade "Center for the Highly Gifted" in MoCo at which more than half the kids were non-white. No scope for that sort of program in DC? Why not? We've got the kids, of various races.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not going to kid myself by believing that having kids from poor AA households who aren't exceptionally bright and discplined in class with my kid is doing anything but holding him back a tad at school. We make up for the slight challenge deficit at home and in museums on weekends. Now if the poor kids were from Asian immigrant households, we'd surely be rushing to hire tutors to keep up! No Basis or Latin for us, too many poor AA kids and no ability grouping outside math. I'm on the same page as you OP if you're still out there - don't let the grease sink in.

So is there a prereq that the non AA kids also be "exceptionally bright and discplined" too? You are such an absurd racist

So with you pp. I am a teacher and the idea that rich kids of any race are disciplined and bright is not right. Does the poster worry that the bratty, chatty, hugely disruptive white kids are holding their son back "a tad". I think what she/he really needs is a genetically engineered class full of stepford children for her kid to get the most out of school. Eugenics anyone?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

You are just completely wrong here, Word Salad. As usual. It is not racial. There are plenty of high SES AA families at our school - Brent. Plenty. High SES is not at all a code for non-AA. Maybe for you though, who lack vision.

Ah yes -- the other coded word for anyone who calls BS on the lowest common denominator on the board. Your juvenile taunt aside, everyone knows Brent is getting whiter and whiter, especially in the lower levels. Not much different than a number of other Ward 6 ES. That trend will continue at Brent, probably on the akin to Janney.

And sweetie -- we turned down an IB spot in your school, so enjoy your perch

OK, I will bite. If you turned down an IB spot at Brent (not that I believe you), where did you send your child?

turned it down 2 years ago for private

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not going to kid myself by believing that having kids from poor AA households who aren't exceptionally bright and discplined in class with my kid is doing anything but holding him back a tad at school. We make up for the slight challenge deficit at home and in museums on weekends. Now if the poor kids were from Asian immigrant households, we'd surely be rushing to hire tutors to keep up! No Basis or Latin for us, too many poor AA kids and no ability grouping outside math. I'm on the same page as you OP if you're still out there - don't let the grease sink in.

So is there a prereq that the non AA kids also be "exceptionally bright and discplined" too? You are such an absurd racist

So with you pp. I am a teacher and the idea that rich kids of any race are disciplined and bright is not right. Does the poster worry that the bratty, chatty, hugely disruptive white kids are holding their son back "a tad". I think what she/he really needs is a genetically engineered class full of stepford children for her kid to get the most out of school. Eugenics anyone?

Yes there's a lot of generalizing going on there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

And sweetie -- we turned down an IB spot in your school, so enjoy your perch

OK, I will bite. If you turned down an IB spot at Brent (not that I believe you), where did you send your child?

turned it down 2 years ago for private

You go private and taunt Brent parents on their "perch"? So you meant that ironically i guess!