Boundary review can’t come soon enough

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. By the time of the boundary review it will be clear that all of the WITP schools are full. That will be a key fact.

We get to make choices about that. Fundamentally I see three choices, maybe four.

First, we can decide to go along with the residential segregation and transportation patterns and say they’re full and out-of-boundary students are basically excluded. Sounds bad, but it might have the most impact for neighborhoods from which students travel west for elementary and feed upward in terms of keeping their best students in those schools.

Second, we could keep everything the same and start construction WOTP to meet demand. Build out bigger elementary schools, build more middle and high schools.

Third, we could make a rule that reserves some spots in each of these schools for OOB students. Maybe based on at-risk status and maybe not. Would have good effects but could create stigma. Could exclude or include people who don’t need access to schools like this.

Fourth, we could equalize further by establishing a lottery not tied to residence of applicant, i.e., no inboundary preference. I see this as the best choice functionally but politically unachievable. This forum’s reaction to that choice is always that every person with a better than 9th grade education and a tent will move to some suburb and leave DC to the zombies if that’s even mentioned and while that’s handwringing bullshit it’s politically reflective of something for sure. That’s why I only say it’s 3 choices really.

Other choices like choice grouped pyramids were run up the flagpole and failed during the last go round. I doubt we’re more likely to turn those choices into reality than last time.

What do you all think?

Good post. I think #1 is the most feasible option. I too see the appeal of #4 but don’t think it’s politically viable. San Francisco has a system similar to #4 but it’s pretty unpopular even if well-intentioned and pretty effective at integrating schools. And that’s with SF having many more good schools than DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I honestly think people in here are upset about over crowding but don’t really care what is done about it as long as their child gets to stay in a “good” school and feeder. I don’t think anyone here cares enough about low performing schools to actively try to change anything for the better.

This is true. I don’t care about low performing schools. I don’t live there. It’s not my issue to fix. I’m here for my kids and their education in my community. Anyone who tells you anything else is either working for someone or lying to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I honestly think people in here are upset about over crowding but don’t really care what is done about it as long as their child gets to stay in a “good” school and feeder. I don’t think anyone here cares enough about low performing schools to actively try to change anything for the better.

This is true. I don’t care about low performing schools. I don’t live there. It’s not my issue to fix. I’m here for my kids and their education in my community. Anyone who tells you anything else is either working for someone or lying to you.

I’m glad you can admit you don’t care about the other dc youth. I’m curious if this is something you say out loud to people in your life or just something you admit to here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Poverty and race go hand in hand in dc. It’s not racist to point that out.

WRONG. All low income in DC may be AA or Hispanic but not all Hispanic or AA are low income. PP ought to mean what’s she says and say what she means. Her comment was racist. Period. I get it that you and other PPs coming to her defense don’t understand. I deal with people like you every day. Regardless it was a racist comment. She and you should take this as a learning opportunity so a not to generalize about people and kids in the future. You live in DC. And whether you like it or not, there are minorities that live here, rich and poor. And no, you should not let your dog poop at a private university campus.

[Anonymous]

PP in DC it’s a fact
That the majority of low income families are AA or Latino. Of course that doesn’t mean all AA or Latino families are
Also poor. But these are the demographic facts in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Poverty and race go hand in hand in dc. It’s not racist to point that out.

WRONG. All low income in DC may be AA or Hispanic but not all Hispanic or AA are low income. PP ought to mean what’s she says and say what she means. Her comment was racist. Period. I get it that you and other PPs coming to her defense don’t understand. I deal with people like you every day. Regardless it was a racist comment. She and you should take this as a learning opportunity so a not to generalize about people and kids in the future. You live in DC. And whether you like it or not, there are minorities that live here, rich and poor. And no, you should not let your dog poop at a private university campus.

Nobody said the bolded. No one's disputing that there are UMC/UC Hispanic and AA living in DC. You're making things up to justify your attacking people. The only racism I'm seeing is coming from you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP in DC it’s a fact
That the majority of low income families are AA or Latino. Of course that doesn’t mean all AA or Latino families are
Also poor. But these are the demographic facts in DC.

This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Poverty and race go hand in hand in dc. It’s not racist to point that out.

WRONG. All low income in DC may be AA or Hispanic but not all Hispanic or AA are low income. PP ought to mean what’s she says and say what she means. Her comment was racist. Period. I get it that you and other PPs coming to her defense don’t understand. I deal with people like you every day. Regardless it was a racist comment. She and you should take this as a learning opportunity so a not to generalize about people and kids in the future. You live in DC. And whether you like it or not, there are minorities that live here, rich and poor. And no, you should not let your dog poop at a private university campus.

That’s not what I said but ok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Poverty and race go hand in hand in dc. It’s not racist to point that out.

WRONG. All low income in DC may be AA or Hispanic but not all Hispanic or AA are low income. PP ought to mean what’s she says and say what she means. Her comment was racist. Period. I get it that you and other PPs coming to her defense don’t understand. I deal with people like you every day. Regardless it was a racist comment. She and you should take this as a learning opportunity so a not to generalize about people and kids in the future. You live in DC. And whether you like it or not, there are minorities that live here, rich and poor. And no, you should not let your dog poop at a private university campus.

That’s not what I said but ok.

What conclusion should one come to with this statement: “I think a lot of schools that are like 99% black/Latino face these issues.”

Why not just say “I think a lot of schools that are like 99% low income face these issues.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Poverty and race go hand in hand in dc. It’s not racist to point that out.

WRONG. All low income in DC may be AA or Hispanic but not all Hispanic or AA are low income. PP ought to mean what’s she says and say what she means. Her comment was racist. Period. I get it that you and other PPs coming to her defense don’t understand. I deal with people like you every day. Regardless it was a racist comment. She and you should take this as a learning opportunity so a not to generalize about people and kids in the future. You live in DC. And whether you like it or not, there are minorities that live here, rich and poor. And no, you should not let your dog poop at a private university campus.

That’s not what I said but ok.

What conclusion should one come to with this statement: “I think a lot of schools that are like 99% black/Latino face these issues.”

Why not just say “I think a lot of schools that are like 99% low income face these issues.”

THAT wasn’t me. You quoted my comment about race and poverty going hand in hand and inserted your assumption that I meant all black and Hispanic families are low income. You inserted that. It’s a fact that race and poverty go hand in hand in dc. No where did I say that it means ALL minority families are low income. That would be absurd. Please don’t quote someone and add extra to what they said with what you assume they meant. I was not the PP that said ““I think a lot of schools that are like 99% black/Latino face these issues.” Two different posters so take it up with that person directly and quote them. I stand by my statement that race and poverty go hand in hand in dc.

[Anonymous]

Part of the confusion here is from the correlation between race and education and income here. This isn’t Baltimore. DC White people are hyper-educated (masters degree or above being normal) and the only poor ones are mentally ill and living in tents or addicted to something or both. Obviously that class also includes some black people (decent numbers in some neighborhoods especially), Asian, Hispanic people and everyone else. But below that there is very little middle. There are Hispanic DC residents, mostly Central Americans, who are also very little educated. Some have high school degrees from home, some from here, very little college, and first generation immigrants often have very limited English. Then there is black and uneducated DC, living mostly in insular communities where high school completion isn’t that common, college completion is rare, poverty is intergenerational and wealth/capital hardly exists at all. Further these two communities were very firmly segregated, and mixing is only occurring as people from the upper class look for affordable housing and poor people experience housing insecurity.

People try to use shorthand to represent these above - which are already shorthand stereotypes that don’t reflect individual experiences.

We should be more careful laying these out but they are things we have to talk about because they are part of school segregation. White families don’t want their kids with black students in DC partly because of racial conflict, partly because of huge gaps in relative educational attainment in background, and class and social differences. They’re all part of it.

[Anonymous]

At least the charters are catering to the middle class in D.C. Without charters, there probably would be even less middle class residents.

The challenge of this thread I think is how to duplicate some of the charters' success in elementary schools. Boundary review, combined with incentives to retain middle class students at the schools (like advanced classes and so forth) are one of the obvious approaches.

[Anonymous]

"Honors for all" at Wilson at 9th grade is an example of a DCPS policy used to de-segregate the social classes. If all those white parents want those free AP classes badly enough, then they'll sit their kids down with all the other kids during 9th grade. Carrot then stick (sorry!!) policy.

It would be interesting to see if there is any improvement in test scores at Wilson, for the lower-income students, after being immersed in "honors for all" during the 9th grade year. That result would support the theory that academic performance increases for the lower-income social classes when they are integrated in the classroom with wealthier students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At least the charters are catering to the middle class in D.C. Without charters, there probably would be even less middle class residents.

The challenge of this thread I think is how to duplicate some of the charters' success in elementary schools. Boundary review, combined with incentives to retain middle class students at the schools (like advanced classes and so forth) are one of the obvious approaches.

What?

Most charters are serving mostly disadvantaged kids with a very few exceptions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At least the charters are catering to the middle class in D.C. Without charters, there probably would be even less middle class residents.

The challenge of this thread I think is how to duplicate some of the charters' success in elementary schools. Boundary review, combined with incentives to retain middle class students at the schools (like advanced classes and so forth) are one of the obvious approaches.

What?

Most charters are serving mostly disadvantaged kids with a very few exceptions.

Most all of DCPS serves mostly disadvantaged kids with very few exceptions, too. Yet I assume your desire is to integrate DCPS with what little middle class students exist. Charters have been successful in this regard, to the degree that middle class students even exist. What's yer point?