“We need to preserve diversity and mitigate the projected whitening of the feeder pattern”
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Anonymous
And once again, DCPS was explicit in the powerpoit that this is about class, not really race: "The general profile of the OOB student is they are from Ward 1 and Ward 4 and students of color. But they are not families who qualify as at-risk. Implementing an at-risk preference for OOB seats can help with this." So student of color who are not at risk don't really count in DCPS calculations. |
Anonymous
Walkability is huge! It’s good for the kids and good for the family’s logistics. |
Anonymous
So it is your belief that DCPS should try to address domestic violence, gun control, violent crime, drug use, and homelessness? That's quite a task list you've come up with. Talk about setting the system up to fail. |
Anonymous
right. that’s why the idea that we’re going to solve poverty in DC by getting at-risk families to somehow get their kids to a different sector of the city and home every day on their own (no buses) is absurd. The focus on helping a handful of at-risk families through OOB set asides is 100% optics and has nothing to do with solving problems. ironically it also likely functions as a de facto gifted program for at-risk kids. it’s just the height of 2021 to focus on OOB seats as the solution for at-risk families so motivated that they will figure out a way to get from Ward 8 to Ward 3, as opposed to creating gifted programs in their own schools. |
Anonymous
Aside from the issue the PP raised, there are two additional obvious problems with this "solution:" - If you redraw boundaries to make IB populations smaller, you're going to need more schools WOTP. - This just further serves to concentrate student populations WOTP. It's absurd that the "solution" is to make at-risk kids travel clear across the city to go to school. |
Anonymous
Also, that’s a racist daydream. Shame. |
Anonymous
They "try to cram" into their IB schools. As in, go to the school that they can walk to, that their friends attend. It seems like you really want to prevent white people with kids from buying houses in certain neighborhoods. |
Anonymous
Exactly this. |
Anonymous
Maybe, just maybe, most of the white families wouldn't cram into the same 15 schools if three things were true: 1) there were more supports for at-risk students across the board, particularly much improved instructor to student ratios, 2) social promotion was no longer automatic in DC public elementary or middle schools, and 3) DC were to pass a law on Gifted education mandating funded support for advanced learners, like MD and VA did 25 years ago. When I was a kid in public school, consistently disruptive kids were routinely removed from general classrooms, and kids who didn't meet standards for grade-level work were commonly held back, forced to attend summer school and/or repeat grades. Not in DCPS or DCPC. All it takes are 3 or 4 kids in your kids class who are seriously disruptive, and working 2 or 3 years behind grade level, to derail the learning experience for the others. In DC, such kids are generally poor and AA. Where I grew up, they were poor and white. |
Anonymous
Then why have a headline about "whitening"? It's completely unnecessary and also not true, given the increase in other POC's - Middle Eastern, Asian, Latin/Hispanic - in the catchment. Instead, the should've kept the focus on "decreasing SES diversity in the feeder pattern". No need to shame white families for existing. |
Anonymous
But it’s actually not working. It’s broken. And the only way not to piss off UMC is to do nothing. |
Anonymous
No silly, but educators should focus on how to teach children to cope with such things, have parent outreach, etc. And FYI we ARE expected to do that, you seriously though teachers were just teachers? Seriously? Why do you think we always want more money? As a special education teacher I do my job, I am a case manager, the gen ed teacher, the counselor, the social worker, mandated reported, child care provider, nurse, cook, parent therapist, etc. Before covid I had received my LICSW. Many of the families I serve are going through trauma or went through it. Is it right that teachers should have to do this? No. But I wanted to. And I do not do this for the whole school, I do have boundaries. And do all teachers encompass all of the roles I listed? No, *cough title 2 teachers. Just kidding, kind of. Do I think DC should step up more for the community side of things? ABSOLUTELY!!! But generational issues keep going, and I do think I can help break the cycle for the students I serve. |
Anonymous
This sums it up. No parent, regardless of race or SES, who cares about their child's education will voluntarily place their child in that environment. |
Anonymous
No silly, but educators should focus on how to teach children to cope with such things, have parent outreach, etc. And FYI we ARE expected to do that, you seriously though teachers were just teachers? Seriously? Why do you think we always want more money? As a special education teacher I do my job, I am a case manager, the gen ed teacher, the counselor, the social worker, mandated reported, child care provider, nurse, cook, parent therapist, etc. Before covid I had received my LICSW. Many of the families I serve are going through trauma or went through it. Is it right that teachers should have to do this? No. But I wanted to. And I do not do this for the whole school, I do have boundaries. And do all teachers encompass all of the roles I listed? No, *cough title 2 teachers. Just kidding, kind of. Do I think DC should step up more for the community side of things? ABSOLUTELY!!! But generational issues keep going, and I do think I can help break the cycle for the students I serve. It would also be great if Ward 3 parents would stop complaining about their budget allocations compared to Title I schools. On the one hand, you say - sending them to our schools won't fix anything and then on the other hand, you say don't give them any extra funding compared to what we get (and ignore all the fundraising we do to support our schools). |
Anonymous
I know you do all those things, that you work harder than you are supposed to, and that you care a lot. But you describe exactly what I think is a big problem. You shouldn’t get paid more; someone additional should get paid for one of the jobs — teacher or social worker. It would cost more, but then you both could do your jobs more fully. Now, you can make a difference for some kids, but you can’t change the trajectory for a wise-swath of students on your own. The system works the way it does now — teacher as social worker — because it’s cheap and the providers find it personally rewarding. But it’s a bad choice on the managers’ (eg, the mayor) parts because it won’t lead to the level of change needed. Same short-shrift solution; same results.... |