“We need to preserve diversity and mitigate the projected whitening of the feeder pattern”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the issue that everyone is dancing around is class. It’s considered fine to be “diverse” so long as they aren’t poor. And we all know that DCUM is afraid of the poor students - who in DC are predominantly Black and Hispanic - coming from homes with anything less than white-collar jobs with highly educated parents. It’s terrifying. Washingtonians aren’t necessarily racists as much as elitist and classist. And in DC class is divided by class. We don’t have a large population of working poor whites. If we did, those students wouldn’t be wanted at the high performing schools either.

I really don't think it's this. The problem is massive and overcrowded elementary schools, feeding 1 (soon to be 2) massive and overcrowded MS, feeding 1 massive and overcrowded HS.

DC government wants set aside seats for (1) At-Risk kids AND (2) extra capacity for well-to-do OOB kids whose parents don't want to utilize their local schools because these are both influential political constituencies. DC politicos don't want to make the hard choice of taking away Hardy-Deal/Wilson from the wealthy OOB kids, which this is EXACTLY what needs to happen to make Cardozo, Coolidge, and other under-enrolled facilities become "the next Wilson."

And this is why DC has frantically started construction on two new schools WOTP, hopefully in time for the next Mayoral election. The Mayor is buttering her bread.

But the reaction of many the in-bound parents in the WOTP schools to all of this has been to say the solution is just to keep the schools in-bound only and kick OOB students out, regardless of race or class, which is... unhelpful in yet a third way.

No one is getting "kicked out." The problem - in the eyes of DCPS - is that the natural demographic growth rate of folks opting in to their local public school is too white. Per DCPS parlance - "whitening."
All of this crashing up against the fact that the Mayors and OSSE has sat on their hands for nearly two decades and didn't proactively invest in WOTP schools. They'd add a trailer or undertake a renovation 10 years too late.

And now? The number of seats for OOB will be a big fat ZERO right before the next Mayoral election. That's why DCPS is in a hurry to build two new schools.

The reaction of folks I know is that they would actually applaud an At-Risk preference in the lottery and even set-asides. Why? Because (1) they value giving a helping hand to those who need it most and (2) it would force DCPS to hire more resources and expand classroom space to accomodate At-Risk kids.

What really chafes folks is DCPS forcing OOB seats to be added haphazardly to schools and classes with zero transparency, no budgeting for space or resources, swelling class sizes, and those OOB kids actually coming from privileged backgrounds and stable homes.

What are your views on Affirmative Action? Do you feel that it is fair as a race based initiative? Or do you think it should be based on SES? Plenty of privileged Black, African American, and Hispanic people benefit over people of all races that are economically depressed.

There are all kinds of privileges but the strongest privilege is being white or perceived as being white.

Then you should understand why the ‘whitening’ of schools is harmful for those not White.

Sorry, I'm not PP. I just wanted to add in case somehow was ignorantly going to say 'AHA!'

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe the issue is the word whitening. I’ve never heard that and it does sound hostile or just offensive even if trie. You’d never be caught dead saying blackening that’s for sure.

Right — concentration of white students would have been less awkward

But the problem isn’t the white students (who are IB and just following the rules and attending thei IB schools.) The problem is that black kids’ IB schools are failing.

What if “the rules” were changed to be less inclined to increasing levels of segregation? Eg, end by right high school, real set asides, synchronized middle and high school entry years. Would that fix every failing school? No. But it would address the inequalities that are unavoidable with segregated schools in America.

if it was persistent enough, you'd just see a new generation of white flight schools. No parent in Chevy Chase is sending their kid to Ballou

100%. Families will move out of the city or go private. I don't want to schlep across the city for a GREAT school and I definitely wouldn't put up with it for a poorly rated school. We want a school we can walk to, who's proximity makes it easy to be an active participant/parent, who's population is largely in the neighborhood (for easy after school socialization). If by right schools go away, we'd move to MoCo.

I'm okay with tightening up the boundaries to make room for at risk OOB students, but I think preserving neighborhood schools is extremely important.

I don't know why you guys bring up whites leaving. DCPS has made it very clear they don't care. They DO care about donors whose kids are already in private leaving or their childless donors. Not white families like yours, DCPS is actually interested in serving low SES families most of the time and they tend to not be white.

I used to believe that DCPS is interested in serving low SES families but I no longer do. We have failing schools full of low SES kids across the city with no improvement in their outcomes. DCPS is interested in covering up their failures by sending these kids to schools with higher performing kids, or sending higher performing kids to these schools. It’s lazy and doomed to fail because the higher performing kids have the means to leave if they don’t like the hand they are dealt. I feel for DCPS in a way because there is no way that school alone can help the issues plaguing many children in wards 7 & 8.

Nor is it their job or responsibility to. These kids' issues start at home. Until we are willing to call that out as a society, this is a continuing downward spiral.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe the issue is the word whitening. I’ve never heard that and it does sound hostile or just offensive even if trie. You’d never be caught dead saying blackening that’s for sure.

Right — concentration of white students would have been less awkward

But the problem isn’t the white students (who are IB and just following the rules and attending thei IB schools.) The problem is that black kids’ IB schools are failing.

What if “the rules” were changed to be less inclined to increasing levels of segregation? Eg, end by right high school, real set asides, synchronized middle and high school entry years. Would that fix every failing school? No. But it would address the inequalities that are unavoidable with segregated schools in America.

if it was persistent enough, you'd just see a new generation of white flight schools. No parent in Chevy Chase is sending their kid to Ballou

100%. Families will move out of the city or go private. I don't want to schlep across the city for a GREAT school and I definitely wouldn't put up with it for a poorly rated school. We want a school we can walk to, who's proximity makes it easy to be an active participant/parent, who's population is largely in the neighborhood (for easy after school socialization). If by right schools go away, we'd move to MoCo.

I'm okay with tightening up the boundaries to make room for at risk OOB students, but I think preserving neighborhood schools is extremely important.

I don't know why you guys bring up whites leaving. DCPS has made it very clear they don't care. They DO care about donors whose kids are already in private leaving or their childless donors. Not white families like yours, DCPS is actually interested in serving low SES families most of the time and they tend to not be white.

I used to believe that DCPS is interested in serving low SES families but I no longer do. We have failing schools full of low SES kids across the city with no improvement in their outcomes. DCPS is interested in covering up their failures by sending these kids to schools with higher performing kids, or sending higher performing kids to these schools. It’s lazy and doomed to fail because the higher performing kids have the means to leave if they don’t like the hand they are dealt. I feel for DCPS in a way because there is no way that school alone can help the issues plaguing many children in wards 7 & 8.

Nor is it their job or responsibility to. These kids' issues start at home. Until we are willing to call that out as a society, this is a continuing downward spiral.

I agree it’s not DCPS’s responsibility. However, many people — politicians, parents, etc — apparently expect schools to fix the ills of poverty, and many educational leaders seem to want to take on the mission as though it’s noble, even if it dilutes focus on the job of education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe the issue is the word whitening. I’ve never heard that and it does sound hostile or just offensive even if trie. You’d never be caught dead saying blackening that’s for sure.

Right — concentration of white students would have been less awkward

But the problem isn’t the white students (who are IB and just following the rules and attending thei IB schools.) The problem is that black kids’ IB schools are failing.

What if “the rules” were changed to be less inclined to increasing levels of segregation? Eg, end by right high school, real set asides, synchronized middle and high school entry years. Would that fix every failing school? No. But it would address the inequalities that are unavoidable with segregated schools in America.

if it was persistent enough, you'd just see a new generation of white flight schools. No parent in Chevy Chase is sending their kid to Ballou

100%. Families will move out of the city or go private. I don't want to schlep across the city for a GREAT school and I definitely wouldn't put up with it for a poorly rated school. We want a school we can walk to, who's proximity makes it easy to be an active participant/parent, who's population is largely in the neighborhood (for easy after school socialization). If by right schools go away, we'd move to MoCo.

I'm okay with tightening up the boundaries to make room for at risk OOB students, but I think preserving neighborhood schools is extremely important.

I don't know why you guys bring up whites leaving. DCPS has made it very clear they don't care. They DO care about donors whose kids are already in private leaving or their childless donors. Not white families like yours, DCPS is actually interested in serving low SES families most of the time and they tend to not be white.

I used to believe that DCPS is interested in serving low SES families but I no longer do. We have failing schools full of low SES kids across the city with no improvement in their outcomes. DCPS is interested in covering up their failures by sending these kids to schools with higher performing kids, or sending higher performing kids to these schools. It’s lazy and doomed to fail because the higher performing kids have the means to leave if they don’t like the hand they are dealt. I feel for DCPS in a way because there is no way that school alone can help the issues plaguing many children in wards 7 & 8.

Nor is it their job or responsibility to. These kids' issues start at home. Until we are willing to call that out as a society, this is a continuing downward spiral.

I agree it’s not DCPS’s responsibility. However, many people — politicians, parents, etc — apparently expect schools to fix the ills of poverty, and many educational leaders seem to want to take on the mission as though it’s noble, even if it dilutes focus on the job of education.

Spoken like a privileged person.

Yea sure let's focus on education, I'm sure while mom is getting beaten, gun shots are being fired, food is not on the table, drugs are being used, homeless, etc. those kids are focused on their ABC's and 123's. Dang DCPS! Don't they know they should JUST focus on education?!

[Anonymous]

The whole spiel is very tooth-pastey.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parent of white kids in the Deal/Wilson feeder pattern here: I don't have a problem with this language. It's a little clumsy, obviously, but I'm fine with the goal of diverse schools.

OP here:
If you want to promote equity, you discuss the positives - seats for OOB, at risk preferences, benefits for those populations, etc.
You don’t talk about an entire ethnicity as if it’s a “problem” to be solved. This isn’t clumsy; it’s hostile.

Disagreeing with the statement “we need to preserve diversity” would mean you think segregation is okay. Or preferred. Which is probably not something most of us would say is true about our beliefs. Which makes me think it’s the second part of the sentence that was triggering for some people like OP. But if you can see from the data that your child’s school is becoming less racially diverse over time, in other words you acknowledge “the projected whitening of the feeder pattern”, and you don’t believe that segregation is okay or preferable, then you probably want to “mitigate” this. I think people have different comfort levels and preferences towards certain terms when talking about race, but hope we can all agree we want our children to grow up in an integrated and equitable society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the issue that everyone is dancing around is class. It’s considered fine to be “diverse” so long as they aren’t poor. And we all know that DCUM is afraid of the poor students - who in DC are predominantly Black and Hispanic - coming from homes with anything less than white-collar jobs with highly educated parents. It’s terrifying. Washingtonians aren’t necessarily racists as much as elitist and classist. And in DC class is divided by class. We don’t have a large population of working poor whites. If we did, those students wouldn’t be wanted at the high performing schools either.

I really don't think it's this. The problem is massive and overcrowded elementary schools, feeding 1 (soon to be 2) massive and overcrowded MS, feeding 1 massive and overcrowded HS.

DC government wants set aside seats for (1) At-Risk kids AND (2) extra capacity for well-to-do OOB kids whose parents don't want to utilize their local schools because these are both influential political constituencies. DC politicos don't want to make the hard choice of taking away Hardy-Deal/Wilson from the wealthy OOB kids, which this is EXACTLY what needs to happen to make Cardozo, Coolidge, and other under-enrolled facilities become "the next Wilson."

And this is why DC has frantically started construction on two new schools WOTP, hopefully in time for the next Mayoral election. The Mayor is buttering her bread.

But the reaction of many the in-bound parents in the WOTP schools to all of this has been to say the solution is just to keep the schools in-bound only and kick OOB students out, regardless of race or class, which is... unhelpful in yet a third way.

No one is getting "kicked out." The problem - in the eyes of DCPS - is that the natural demographic growth rate of folks opting in to their local public school is too white. Per DCPS parlance - "whitening."
All of this crashing up against the fact that the Mayors and OSSE has sat on their hands for nearly two decades and didn't proactively invest in WOTP schools. They'd add a trailer or undertake a renovation 10 years too late.

And now? The number of seats for OOB will be a big fat ZERO right before the next Mayoral election. That's why DCPS is in a hurry to build two new schools.

The reaction of folks I know is that they would actually applaud an At-Risk preference in the lottery and even set-asides. Why? Because (1) they value giving a helping hand to those who need it most and (2) it would force DCPS to hire more resources and expand classroom space to accomodate At-Risk kids.

What really chafes folks is DCPS forcing OOB seats to be added haphazardly to schools and classes with zero transparency, no budgeting for space or resources, swelling class sizes, and those OOB kids actually coming from privileged backgrounds and stable homes.

What are your views on Affirmative Action? Do you feel that it is fair as a race based initiative? Or do you think it should be based on SES? Plenty of privileged Black, African American, and Hispanic people benefit over people of all races that are economically depressed.

There are all kinds of privileges but the strongest privilege is being white or perceived as being white.

No, it’s actually money. You apparently don’t know many whites living in poverty, do you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe the issue is the word whitening. I’ve never heard that and it does sound hostile or just offensive even if trie. You’d never be caught dead saying blackening that’s for sure.

Right — concentration of white students would have been less awkward

But the problem isn’t the white students (who are IB and just following the rules and attending thei IB schools.) The problem is that black kids’ IB schools are failing.

What if “the rules” were changed to be less inclined to increasing levels of segregation? Eg, end by right high school, real set asides, synchronized middle and high school entry years. Would that fix every failing school? No. But it would address the inequalities that are unavoidable with segregated schools in America.

if it was persistent enough, you'd just see a new generation of white flight schools. No parent in Chevy Chase is sending their kid to Ballou

100%. Families will move out of the city or go private. I don't want to schlep across the city for a GREAT school and I definitely wouldn't put up with it for a poorly rated school. We want a school we can walk to, who's proximity makes it easy to be an active participant/parent, who's population is largely in the neighborhood (for easy after school socialization). If by right schools go away, we'd move to MoCo.

I'm okay with tightening up the boundaries to make room for at risk OOB students, but I think preserving neighborhood schools is extremely important.

I don't know why you guys bring up whites leaving. DCPS has made it very clear they don't care. They DO care about donors whose kids are already in private leaving or their childless donors. Not white families like yours, DCPS is actually interested in serving low SES families most of the time and they tend to not be white.

I used to believe that DCPS is interested in serving low SES families but I no longer do. We have failing schools full of low SES kids across the city with no improvement in their outcomes. DCPS is interested in covering up their failures by sending these kids to schools with higher performing kids, or sending higher performing kids to these schools. It’s lazy and doomed to fail because the higher performing kids have the means to leave if they don’t like the hand they are dealt. I feel for DCPS in a way because there is no way that school alone can help the issues plaguing many children in wards 7 & 8.

Nor is it their job or responsibility to. These kids' issues start at home. Until we are willing to call that out as a society, this is a continuing downward spiral.

I agree it’s not DCPS’s responsibility. However, many people — politicians, parents, etc — apparently expect schools to fix the ills of poverty, and many educational leaders seem to want to take on the mission as though it’s noble, even if it dilutes focus on the job of education.

Spoken like a privileged person.

Yea sure let's focus on education, I'm sure while mom is getting beaten, gun shots are being fired, food is not on the table, drugs are being used, homeless, etc. those kids are focused on their ABC's and 123's. Dang DCPS! Don't they know they should JUST focus on education?!

On the contrary! I think we should focus far, far more on investing in social services! I think specifically trained and qualified people should be focused on the things you mention. The school and those social services professionals should coordinate, but those other things should happen well enough outside of school so the teachers and kids *can* focus on their ABC’s.

There is no way to stop the cycle without intensive investment. Having the schools be the ones to solve nutrition and safety, so they don’t have time to get to education, is a losing formula.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Re-draw the boundaries for WOTP schools to reduce the number of IB students, actually implement a 20% at-risk set aside for these schools, send all the other OOBs back to their IB and force other families to use their IB if they are in DCPS. The at-risk kids would have the right to go through to HS. Anyone who moves OOB can stay through that school year and then has to move to their IB - no principal discretion.

But DCPS/OSSE/the Mayor have no stomach for the hard choices that would benefit at-risk kids and kids IB for non-WOTP schools.

And that is why what you present as an easy peasy solution will fail every time. You can’t force families who have other options to send their children to a failing school. Will never happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the issue that everyone is dancing around is class. It’s considered fine to be “diverse” so long as they aren’t poor. And we all know that DCUM is afraid of the poor students - who in DC are predominantly Black and Hispanic - coming from homes with anything less than white-collar jobs with highly educated parents. It’s terrifying. Washingtonians aren’t necessarily racists as much as elitist and classist. And in DC class is divided by class. We don’t have a large population of working poor whites. If we did, those students wouldn’t be wanted at the high performing schools either.

I really don't think it's this. The problem is massive and overcrowded elementary schools, feeding 1 (soon to be 2) massive and overcrowded MS, feeding 1 massive and overcrowded HS.

DC government wants set aside seats for (1) At-Risk kids AND (2) extra capacity for well-to-do OOB kids whose parents don't want to utilize their local schools because these are both influential political constituencies. DC politicos don't want to make the hard choice of taking away Hardy-Deal/Wilson from the wealthy OOB kids, which this is EXACTLY what needs to happen to make Cardozo, Coolidge, and other under-enrolled facilities become "the next Wilson."

And this is why DC has frantically started construction on two new schools WOTP, hopefully in time for the next Mayoral election. The Mayor is buttering her bread.

But the reaction of many the in-bound parents in the WOTP schools to all of this has been to say the solution is just to keep the schools in-bound only and kick OOB students out, regardless of race or class, which is... unhelpful in yet a third way.

No one is getting "kicked out." The problem - in the eyes of DCPS - is that the natural demographic growth rate of folks opting in to their local public school is too white. Per DCPS parlance - "whitening."
All of this crashing up against the fact that the Mayors and OSSE has sat on their hands for nearly two decades and didn't proactively invest in WOTP schools. They'd add a trailer or undertake a renovation 10 years too late.

And now? The number of seats for OOB will be a big fat ZERO right before the next Mayoral election. That's why DCPS is in a hurry to build two new schools.

The reaction of folks I know is that they would actually applaud an At-Risk preference in the lottery and even set-asides. Why? Because (1) they value giving a helping hand to those who need it most and (2) it would force DCPS to hire more resources and expand classroom space to accomodate At-Risk kids.

What really chafes folks is DCPS forcing OOB seats to be added haphazardly to schools and classes with zero transparency, no budgeting for space or resources, swelling class sizes, and those OOB kids actually coming from privileged backgrounds and stable homes.

What are your views on Affirmative Action? Do you feel that it is fair as a race based initiative? Or do you think it should be based on SES? Plenty of privileged Black, African American, and Hispanic people benefit over people of all races that are economically depressed.

There are all kinds of privileges but the strongest privilege is being white or perceived as being white.

Such nonsense. The strongest privilege is being very wealthy of course, at least if you come from a loving, stable family. Hint: seriously rich AA kids attend tony private schools and colleges, and inherit vast wealth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re-draw the boundaries for WOTP schools to reduce the number of IB students, actually implement a 20% at-risk set aside for these schools, send all the other OOBs back to their IB and force other families to use their IB if they are in DCPS. The at-risk kids would have the right to go through to HS. Anyone who moves OOB can stay through that school year and then has to move to their IB - no principal discretion.

But DCPS/OSSE/the Mayor have no stomach for the hard choices that would benefit at-risk kids and kids IB for non-WOTP schools.

And that is why what you present as an easy peasy solution will fail every time. You can’t force families who have other options to send their children to a failing school. Will never happen.

Of course it’s not easy hence “hard choices.” Part of why these are hard choices is that they will piss people off and many will choose to leave. That’s the price we would pay for a system that better serves more students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Re-draw the boundaries for WOTP schools to reduce the number of IB students, actually implement a 20% at-risk set aside for these schools, send all the other OOBs back to their IB and force other families to use their IB if they are in DCPS. The at-risk kids would have the right to go through to HS. Anyone who moves OOB can stay through that school year and then has to move to their IB - no principal discretion.

But DCPS/OSSE/the Mayor have no stomach for the hard choices that would benefit at-risk kids and kids IB for non-WOTP schools.

And that is why what you present as an easy peasy solution will fail every time. You can’t force families who have other options to send their children to a failing school. Will never happen.

Of course it’s not easy hence “hard choices.” Part of why these are hard choices is that they will piss people off and many will choose to leave. That’s the price we would pay for a system that better serves more students.

What are you smoking? The price we would pay in DCPS and DCPC for breaking what's working, in the guise of making necessary "hard choices," is a system that serves far fewer students well, or adequately, period. We'd be back to the early 2000s, maybe even the 90s, in the ed sector as a city.

Pissing off more UMC parents than have already been pissed off by wrong-headed, year-long Covid shutdowns will achieve nothing for low-income students. This is a no brainer.

[Anonymous]

No, it’s really not okay to speak, in an official school system document, about too many white people being a problem. We need to start speaking about diversity in terms of culture and socio-economics. It is a worthy goal to have schools that represent a diversity of culture, sociology-economics and races. Students learn to understand each other if the topics are addressed effectively. But language and respect matter. If you alienate people, they become less willing to engage. We should not make anyone feel unwelcome or as though there is an undesirable number of a particular group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ward 3 parent here- I have zero problem with the language. In fact, I applaud it.

I assume that you send your child EOTR for school so that you can be part of the solution

The solution is to have good schools in every neighborhood so no kid has travel across the city to get a good education. Do you disagree?

Schools are only as good the kids and families in them. Put all the Janney kids into the lowest performing school east of the river and like magic, the test scores would go up 75%, suspensions down, PTA fundraising in triple digits. So now its a "good school"--put the East o the River kids in Janney and now its a "bad school"--folks its not the buildings of the teachers, its systemic poverty, lack of parenting, multi generational poverty and dysfunction.

[Anonymous]

You're painting with too broad a brush, PP. There are in fact elementary and middle schools in this city full of low-income black and Latino kids with test scores that look like Janney's. But they aren't DCPS programs (neighborhood schools). Look at some of the KIPP test scores and those of DC Prep and Seed.