Anonymous wrote:To me it's clear something needs to be done to lower the at risk percentage at Miner. I understand the objections to the cluster, but you can make similar objections to any proposal.
It feels like a lot of people are basically arguing for the status quo, which means Miner remains a school with a lot of at risk kids who it ultimately fails.
It feels like no matter what is proposed, it will be rejected as infeasible, and nothing will change.
OK word police of DCUM. Why is it ok for PP say the % of at risk needs to be lowered at Miner but it isn't ok for Maury parents to be concerned about an increase in at risk? In the former at risk is a problem to be solved and a net negative to the school's trajectory? I'll wait.
Because Maury parents 'being concerned about an increase in at risk' is just projection. My kids are at Miner. They are at or above grade level and have done just fine. The mere presence of at risk kids in their classroom has had no effect on their learning.
+1, we have kids in middle and lower grades at a school with similar at risk percentages as Miner, and both are at or above grade level in all subjects. My older child learned to read extremely well in Kindergarten thanks to an amazing teacher and now in 3rd writes short stories with proper punctuation and grammar (spelling needs work) and we struggle to find books for her because she goes through them so quickly and also reads so far above grade level that it can be a challenge to find age-appropriate books that still challenge her. My younger child was diagnosed with an LD in 1st thanks to school screening tests and has received excellent support for it in school and on grade level with reading now despite early difficulties. Both kids love math and are a mix of at and above grade level there.
They also have diverse groups of friends, are already learning to navigate differences in backgrounds and experiences with peers, and show a high level of emotional regulation thanks to the school's high emphasis on social-emotional learning which I think was aimed at at risk kids but benefits everyone.
I don't know what is going to happen with the cluster and these aren't my schools, but reading some of the comments on this thread, I think the fear that the mere presence of more at risk students in your kids classrooms is very unlikely to have the negative impact you all think it will. I think Maury would be fine with more at risk kids, and I agree with some of the PPs who noted that there are real benefits to a more socioeconomically diverse school environment.
So many DC parents believe this and then are shocked when HS does role around and their kids aren’t actually fine.
It happens way before HS. Ask any parent who peeled off in MS or even 5th grade how their kids stacked up when the metric wasn't at risk, good insecure kids who have been failed by their parents, society and DCPS.
The only parents I know who have expressed this sent their kids to Mundo Verde and Stokes EE campus, both immersion charters. They moved kids to suburban schools in mid-elementary and were pretty upset to discover their kids basically had no math skills.
I know lots of people who moved to suburban schools after elementary in DCPS and it's been totally fine. And that includes Title 1 schools and other DCPS schools with much higher at risk percentages than Maury has. DCPS also was one of the earliest districts in the area to cotton on to the problems with the Lucy Caulkins reading model and start really pushing phonics in K and 1st -- I know people with kids in in MoCo schools who were still doing LC as of last year, but my DCPS kids have been doing intensive phonics work in early grades for the last 4 years, since before some of the exposés on the problems with LC came out.
The idea that kids aren't being educated in DCPS outside of Ward 3 and a handful of Hill elementaries is false.
Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.
The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.
So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.
My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).
Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?
I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.
Say more about what you mean by this -- I think this plan can be accomplished if you tighten the Maury boundary by expanding Miner's boundary to capture some of the Maury border houses (assuming that you don't capture Maury's current at-risk kids), but not sure if what you are suggesting is finding Maury's highest SES housing and adding that to Miner even if non-contiguous. When it comes down to it, MC kids you reallocate from Maury to Miner are unlikely to attend if they can lottery anywhere else (just the same as MC kids currently in the Miner boundary). But would need to change the border to make room for low-income housing kids at Maury.
It would certainly do something to change the numbers, but strikes me as having a similar effect as the high-risk set aside. Which I think is fine—I think the only responsible way to do something like this is to do it gradually, to avoid overwhelming Maury and making two schools that are considered undesirable instead of one. Your thesis seems to be that the only acceptable solution is one that creates even numbers of at-risk kids at Maury and Miner instantly -- which I think is neither realistic/possible nor at all desirable.
PP here and I want to clarify that this is not my thesis at all. Rather, people on this thread have stated that they are not opposed to increasing Maury's at risk percentage from 12%, but opposed using the cluster as the means. I very much understand the concerns about the proposed cluster and share many of them, but I'm interested in how else we might increase Maury's at risk percentage.
Some have suggested at risk set asides for Maury, but I have a lot of experience looking at how the EA preferences have worked at other schools and the truth is -- they haven't really. And most of those are charter schools where everyone is littering in, so you'd expect the EA preference to be more effective. What you see over and over is that EA spots go unfilled, and this actually causes problems for the schools because it becomes difficult to asses how many EA and regular lottery slots to offer in subsequent years, and also raises questions as to whether those unfilled EA slots maybe given over to people on the non-EA waitlist, and if so at what point. At risk set asides in the lottery sound like an easy fix, but like a lot of things that sound great and easy, they have not shown to be particularly effective.
Also, my goal is not to make the at risk numbers between Maury and Miner equal. I don't really care what the specific numbers are. I just think it's valid in a district with 46% at risk kids to say that Maury needs to take on more at risk students, and I'm wondering how we might achieve that given Maury's current boundary has few at risk families and the school has very high IB buy in. So I'm curious what people would think of a gerrymandered boundary between Maury and Miner, as that looks like the most likely way to increase Maury's at-risk percentage.
I agree that you likely would not see a lot of the Maury families re-zoned to Miner going to Miner. I view that as a separate question. It's obvious that Miner needs to fix some things if they ever hope to attract more non-at-risk families, whether IB or OOB. I'm focused on Maury at the moment.
I'm PP, and I really appreciate you clarifying (and apologize for putting words in your mouth!). I see what you are saying. I think essentially tacking on some of the public housing to Maury and tightening the Maury boundary along Miner's borders (assuming again that it wouldn't re-zone Maury's current at-risk kids) would make sense. The big challenge I see would be that it would be pretty clear, if not to the kids then at least to the parents, that the kids coming into Maury from non-contiguous areas are coming from low-income housing. I like to think that wouldn't affect how anyone treats them or their own perception of their experience at Maury (alienation etc.), but potentially there could be impacts there. The other big challenge is if the commute or some other logistical issue puts a larger burden on the families re-zoned into Maury that makes their lives more difficult, or potentially leads to increased truancy for the kids. I'd be fine with a shuttle or something, but I guess there we are edging into busing?
Comparing the merits of the at-risk set aside to the proposed cluster, my question would be that if an at-risk set aside at Maury would go unfilled with so many at-risk students in the next boundary over, doesn't that indicate that a cluster wouldn't work for those families either? They would have to go to Maury in that case, but they won't volunteer to go right now? If it's a matter of families of at-risk students not necessarily being aware of at-risk set asides, I would think that information could be targeted toward the Miner boundary pretty easily.
PP again and thanks for the good faith conversation. I definitely agree with your assessment and I do see this as some of the obstacles as well. Perhaps there would be a way to draw the boundary that mitigates some of the potential worst effects (specifically addressing the issue of transportation which I agree could be a major concern).
I do think there should be a way to ensure that any low-income kids re-zoned for Maury are welcomed by the community. I tend to think some of the voices on this thread that are most opposed to more at-risk kids at Maury are outliers at the school (and also the people most likely to leave before the terminal grade and obviously unlikely to send their kids to EH).
The question about why an at risk set aside wouldn't work for low-income families now zones for Miner I think can be answered if you really put yourself in that position. Which is more appealing to you if you are a black, low-income parent living IB for Miner and want the best for your children and your family:
1) You can apply for a lottery spot at a nearby elementary with great test scores and an involved community of families, but the schools has only 12% at risk students and just 20% black students. If you receive a lottery spot, you have no idea what other families like yours might also receive a spot there, where they might live, whether you will have anything in common with them, or even whether that spot will get filled. So you have to decide whether or not to send your child to a school where they will be an outlier with no guarantee of many kids like them at the school.
or
2) You and all the families who live in your housing complex is suddenly zoned out of Miner and into Maury. Yes, Maury currently has a very low at risk percentage and is only 20% black, BUT you get to enroll your kids in Maury alongside all the other families in your housing complex. You can talk to your neighbors and find out what they plan to do, you can make arrangements to share the burden of commuting to the new school, you will have friendly faces at drop off and pick up, and when your kids come home, they will be able to play with school classmates without having to commute to another part of the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, did you really just suggest that families in public housing trying to get their kids a good education would opt for a failing school instead of a proximately located one because there aren't enough uneducated kids for them to be around? JFC.
Tell you are a white person trying too hard to be an "ally" without telling me.
(1) That's not what I said.
(2) These scenarios are based on first hand experience.
I will allow it is not what you intended. It is most certainly what you said/wrote.
Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.
The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.
So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.
My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).
Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?
I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.
Say more about what you mean by this -- I think this plan can be accomplished if you tighten the Maury boundary by expanding Miner's boundary to capture some of the Maury border houses (assuming that you don't capture Maury's current at-risk kids), but not sure if what you are suggesting is finding Maury's highest SES housing and adding that to Miner even if non-contiguous. When it comes down to it, MC kids you reallocate from Maury to Miner are unlikely to attend if they can lottery anywhere else (just the same as MC kids currently in the Miner boundary). But would need to change the border to make room for low-income housing kids at Maury.
It would certainly do something to change the numbers, but strikes me as having a similar effect as the high-risk set aside. Which I think is fine—I think the only responsible way to do something like this is to do it gradually, to avoid overwhelming Maury and making two schools that are considered undesirable instead of one. Your thesis seems to be that the only acceptable solution is one that creates even numbers of at-risk kids at Maury and Miner instantly -- which I think is neither realistic/possible nor at all desirable.
PP here and I want to clarify that this is not my thesis at all. Rather, people on this thread have stated that they are not opposed to increasing Maury's at risk percentage from 12%, but opposed using the cluster as the means. I very much understand the concerns about the proposed cluster and share many of them, but I'm interested in how else we might increase Maury's at risk percentage.
Some have suggested at risk set asides for Maury, but I have a lot of experience looking at how the EA preferences have worked at other schools and the truth is -- they haven't really. And most of those are charter schools where everyone is littering in, so you'd expect the EA preference to be more effective. What you see over and over is that EA spots go unfilled, and this actually causes problems for the schools because it becomes difficult to asses how many EA and regular lottery slots to offer in subsequent years, and also raises questions as to whether those unfilled EA slots maybe given over to people on the non-EA waitlist, and if so at what point. At risk set asides in the lottery sound like an easy fix, but like a lot of things that sound great and easy, they have not shown to be particularly effective.
Also, my goal is not to make the at risk numbers between Maury and Miner equal. I don't really care what the specific numbers are. I just think it's valid in a district with 46% at risk kids to say that Maury needs to take on more at risk students, and I'm wondering how we might achieve that given Maury's current boundary has few at risk families and the school has very high IB buy in. So I'm curious what people would think of a gerrymandered boundary between Maury and Miner, as that looks like the most likely way to increase Maury's at-risk percentage.
I agree that you likely would not see a lot of the Maury families re-zoned to Miner going to Miner. I view that as a separate question. It's obvious that Miner needs to fix some things if they ever hope to attract more non-at-risk families, whether IB or OOB. I'm focused on Maury at the moment.
I'm PP, and I really appreciate you clarifying (and apologize for putting words in your mouth!). I see what you are saying. I think essentially tacking on some of the public housing to Maury and tightening the Maury boundary along Miner's borders (assuming again that it wouldn't re-zone Maury's current at-risk kids) would make sense. The big challenge I see would be that it would be pretty clear, if not to the kids then at least to the parents, that the kids coming into Maury from non-contiguous areas are coming from low-income housing. I like to think that wouldn't affect how anyone treats them or their own perception of their experience at Maury (alienation etc.), but potentially there could be impacts there. The other big challenge is if the commute or some other logistical issue puts a larger burden on the families re-zoned into Maury that makes their lives more difficult, or potentially leads to increased truancy for the kids. I'd be fine with a shuttle or something, but I guess there we are edging into busing?
Comparing the merits of the at-risk set aside to the proposed cluster, my question would be that if an at-risk set aside at Maury would go unfilled with so many at-risk students in the next boundary over, doesn't that indicate that a cluster wouldn't work for those families either? They would have to go to Maury in that case, but they won't volunteer to go right now? If it's a matter of families of at-risk students not necessarily being aware of at-risk set asides, I would think that information could be targeted toward the Miner boundary pretty easily.
PP again and thanks for the good faith conversation. I definitely agree with your assessment and I do see this as some of the obstacles as well. Perhaps there would be a way to draw the boundary that mitigates some of the potential worst effects (specifically addressing the issue of transportation which I agree could be a major concern).
I do think there should be a way to ensure that any low-income kids re-zoned for Maury are welcomed by the community. I tend to think some of the voices on this thread that are most opposed to more at-risk kids at Maury are outliers at the school (and also the people most likely to leave before the terminal grade and obviously unlikely to send their kids to EH).
The question about why an at risk set aside wouldn't work for low-income families now zones for Miner I think can be answered if you really put yourself in that position. Which is more appealing to you if you are a black, low-income parent living IB for Miner and want the best for your children and your family:
1) You can apply for a lottery spot at a nearby elementary with great test scores and an involved community of families, but the schools has only 12% at risk students and just 20% black students. If you receive a lottery spot, you have no idea what other families like yours might also receive a spot there, where they might live, whether you will have anything in common with them, or even whether that spot will get filled. So you have to decide whether or not to send your child to a school where they will be an outlier with no guarantee of many kids like them at the school.
or
2) You and all the families who live in your housing complex is suddenly zoned out of Miner and into Maury. Yes, Maury currently has a very low at risk percentage and is only 20% black, BUT you get to enroll your kids in Maury alongside all the other families in your housing complex. You can talk to your neighbors and find out what they plan to do, you can make arrangements to share the burden of commuting to the new school, you will have friendly faces at drop off and pick up, and when your kids come home, they will be able to play with school classmates without having to commute to another part of the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, did you really just suggest that families in public housing trying to get their kids a good education would opt for a failing school instead of a proximately located one because there aren't enough uneducated kids for them to be around? JFC.
Tell you are a white person trying too hard to be an "ally" without telling me.
Right back at you. Given the charter options it seems clear that many at-risk families choose IB schools like Miner. This discussion hasn’t actually considered their preferences at all. I know one at-risk kid whose parents deliberately moved them to an almost 100% black high at-risk elementary from an affluent “diverse” elementary specifically because they believed the school had low expectations for the at-risk, black kids.
KIPP would like a word. Thanks for the chuckle though. "I know an at risk person that did this" is the equivalent of having a black or jewish friend.
Anonymous wrote:Here is a truth that I think some folks need to wrap their heads around:
If you send your kids to public schools in a district with 46% at risk kids, you are not entitled to a school with 12% at risk kids even if you buy IB for one. They can move the kids around.
No, this does not mean I think DC should try to achieve perfect demographic equity across all schools -- that's obviously not possible geographically and would be bad policy.
However, the idea that Maury families *deserve* to keep their at risk percentage as low as it is because they bought homes there, is false. Boundaries change all the time in school districts. These boundary studies are actually regularly scheduled and the whole point is to evaluate imbalances in the district, whether it's population imbalances leading to over- and under-subscribed schools (which, by the way, also exists between Maury and Miner, though technically Maury is not yet overcrowded), or imbalances in at-risk kids, racial segregation, etc. There's no perfect solutions, but all school districts regularly evaluate school boundaries and shift them to achieve both practical and value-based goals.
This is not an endorsement of the cluster, which I think is an impractical solution. But people on this thread keep demanding that others *prove* that it's necessary to move at risk kids to Maury, like you need to prove it will improve Maury or be better for the at risk kids. You don't. The district can just say "we've got this school with a ton of at-risk kids and this one nearby with hardly any, we're gonna balance that out a bit." Happens all the time. This is public school.
Maury response: "Oh yeah well what grade is YOUR kid in?"
Lol, exactly.
The funny thing to me about this is that there's a perception that this conversation is unique and that these argument against any changes to Maury are original and specific to this proposal.
Nope. I mentioned upthread the fact that Howard County regularly shifts school boundaries and rebalances zones (more aggressively than many districts even) and that people complain but also it's just accepted that it's how it is. I didn't share to directly compare DCPS and HoCo schools (obviously very different), but to explain that this conversation is COMMON. These arguments people are making about how if Maury has too many at risk kids, it will ruin the educations of the higher SES kids there without benefiting the at-risk kids? This is the #1 most common argument made to oppose boundary shifts that will move more poor kids into schools with mostly MC and UMC kids. Like some of these comments are verbatim what I've heard at meetings to discuss boundary shifts in other districts.
Please send an example from HoCo that involved such drastic changes including merging two disparate schools into two wholly new schools. HoCo’s demographics are far different from DCPS and they can make tweaks that are much less forced and drastic.
That was a systemic shift across the entire system. It was also roundly criticized by those whose schools were to be degraded, just like here. It was also a first of its kind change. I love when DC wanna be elites think reading a NYT article makes them experts.
Anonymous wrote:Hey all. Billy Lynch here, your local fair housing attorney who specializes in housing and school integration. Thought I’d drop some evidenced-based research into this riveting anonymous discussion. TLDR- integrated schools help all students and do not affect white student performance.
Integrationists in this thread: I see you and applaud you.
Ok Billy: #1. Maury IS integrated
#2. There will never be enough white students in DCPS to integrate it
#3. There is no evidence that this particular change will help at-risk kids
#4. Integration could happen if DCPS adopted a voluntary approached that considered the IB parents preferences, but for some reason this is considered verboten
#5. Where do your kids go to school?
#6. Gonzaga (where Billy went to high school) is private and 75% white
#7. Loyola Chicago (where Billy went to undergrad) is private and 7% AA
#8. Catholic (where Billy went to law school) is private, 70% white and 6% AA
#9. Harvard Kennedy School (where Billy was a Fellow)...well, you know
By all means, Billy. Lecture us some more from your glass house and pristine throne.
No matter how this school decision shakes out you will still be the loser who took the time to pull this personal information.
Also, my take away from that is that the person in question might recognize that his education was severely lacking specifically because of how not diverse his experience was, and might be looking to rectify that for his kids. I attended very diverse K-12 schools and a diverse state flagship university, but then attended an "elite" law school where for the first time in my life I encountered a large population of people who had never attended public schools and had very little experience with people from less privileged backgrounds than their own. My perception is that these folks were/are very myopic and lacked some basic understanding about how the world works. So if one such person might choose to give his kids a different experience, I am personally very supportive of that.
I also think punishing a PP who chose to drop anonymity specifically to have a more open discussion in this way is incredibly counterproductive. Notice that not a single person has taken him up on his offer to discuss his family's experience at Miner -- they don't care. Instead all questions have been personal questions about his kid and his background. And most haven't been questions at all, just attacks lobbed from behind the safety of anonymity.
Some of you should be ashamed of yourselves. You won't be, I know, you don't have to tell me. But you should be.
That is one way to look at it. Another way is that he's a total hypocrite. Why is it that people like you think only your way of looking at the world can be right? You are so convinced of your moral clarity and superiority that you don't for a minute consider that someone with divergent views is entitled to theirs. I didn't know Billy was a product of lily white private schools until it was explained to me. That's relevant for me. But I guess I don't get an opinion if doesn't conform to those of the Woke mob?
+1. Ironically, PP can't see their own myopia while accusing others of being myopic.
It looks like he popped in to post a link to some statistics. That it makes you somehow feel attacked and inferior is your own deal. I think the term you all use for that is 'snowflake'. Is that right?
This. Billy basically advocated for integrated schools and offered some backing for this viewpoint, and the response was "you're wrong! you went to private school! you're a hypocrite." Like just an extremely outside reaction.
No, he popped into the thread to lecture Maury parents as racist for having reservations about the cluster with Miner. Meanwhile he lotteried his own kids out of Miner to LT! And went to private school. The hypocrisy is instructive and can be found with almost every scold. Joe Weedon most famously!
Ok! We get it! Why don’t you share where you went to school so we can vet you for authenticity.
Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.
The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.
So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.
My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).
Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?
I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.
Say more about what you mean by this -- I think this plan can be accomplished if you tighten the Maury boundary by expanding Miner's boundary to capture some of the Maury border houses (assuming that you don't capture Maury's current at-risk kids), but not sure if what you are suggesting is finding Maury's highest SES housing and adding that to Miner even if non-contiguous. When it comes down to it, MC kids you reallocate from Maury to Miner are unlikely to attend if they can lottery anywhere else (just the same as MC kids currently in the Miner boundary). But would need to change the border to make room for low-income housing kids at Maury.
It would certainly do something to change the numbers, but strikes me as having a similar effect as the high-risk set aside. Which I think is fine—I think the only responsible way to do something like this is to do it gradually, to avoid overwhelming Maury and making two schools that are considered undesirable instead of one. Your thesis seems to be that the only acceptable solution is one that creates even numbers of at-risk kids at Maury and Miner instantly -- which I think is neither realistic/possible nor at all desirable.
PP here and I want to clarify that this is not my thesis at all. Rather, people on this thread have stated that they are not opposed to increasing Maury's at risk percentage from 12%, but opposed using the cluster as the means. I very much understand the concerns about the proposed cluster and share many of them, but I'm interested in how else we might increase Maury's at risk percentage.
Some have suggested at risk set asides for Maury, but I have a lot of experience looking at how the EA preferences have worked at other schools and the truth is -- they haven't really. And most of those are charter schools where everyone is littering in, so you'd expect the EA preference to be more effective. What you see over and over is that EA spots go unfilled, and this actually causes problems for the schools because it becomes difficult to asses how many EA and regular lottery slots to offer in subsequent years, and also raises questions as to whether those unfilled EA slots maybe given over to people on the non-EA waitlist, and if so at what point. At risk set asides in the lottery sound like an easy fix, but like a lot of things that sound great and easy, they have not shown to be particularly effective.
Also, my goal is not to make the at risk numbers between Maury and Miner equal. I don't really care what the specific numbers are. I just think it's valid in a district with 46% at risk kids to say that Maury needs to take on more at risk students, and I'm wondering how we might achieve that given Maury's current boundary has few at risk families and the school has very high IB buy in. So I'm curious what people would think of a gerrymandered boundary between Maury and Miner, as that looks like the most likely way to increase Maury's at-risk percentage.
I agree that you likely would not see a lot of the Maury families re-zoned to Miner going to Miner. I view that as a separate question. It's obvious that Miner needs to fix some things if they ever hope to attract more non-at-risk families, whether IB or OOB. I'm focused on Maury at the moment.
I'm PP, and I really appreciate you clarifying (and apologize for putting words in your mouth!). I see what you are saying. I think essentially tacking on some of the public housing to Maury and tightening the Maury boundary along Miner's borders (assuming again that it wouldn't re-zone Maury's current at-risk kids) would make sense. The big challenge I see would be that it would be pretty clear, if not to the kids then at least to the parents, that the kids coming into Maury from non-contiguous areas are coming from low-income housing. I like to think that wouldn't affect how anyone treats them or their own perception of their experience at Maury (alienation etc.), but potentially there could be impacts there. The other big challenge is if the commute or some other logistical issue puts a larger burden on the families re-zoned into Maury that makes their lives more difficult, or potentially leads to increased truancy for the kids. I'd be fine with a shuttle or something, but I guess there we are edging into busing?
Comparing the merits of the at-risk set aside to the proposed cluster, my question would be that if an at-risk set aside at Maury would go unfilled with so many at-risk students in the next boundary over, doesn't that indicate that a cluster wouldn't work for those families either? They would have to go to Maury in that case, but they won't volunteer to go right now? If it's a matter of families of at-risk students not necessarily being aware of at-risk set asides, I would think that information could be targeted toward the Miner boundary pretty easily.
PP again and thanks for the good faith conversation. I definitely agree with your assessment and I do see this as some of the obstacles as well. Perhaps there would be a way to draw the boundary that mitigates some of the potential worst effects (specifically addressing the issue of transportation which I agree could be a major concern).
I do think there should be a way to ensure that any low-income kids re-zoned for Maury are welcomed by the community. I tend to think some of the voices on this thread that are most opposed to more at-risk kids at Maury are outliers at the school (and also the people most likely to leave before the terminal grade and obviously unlikely to send their kids to EH).
The question about why an at risk set aside wouldn't work for low-income families now zones for Miner I think can be answered if you really put yourself in that position. Which is more appealing to you if you are a black, low-income parent living IB for Miner and want the best for your children and your family:
1) You can apply for a lottery spot at a nearby elementary with great test scores and an involved community of families, but the schools has only 12% at risk students and just 20% black students. If you receive a lottery spot, you have no idea what other families like yours might also receive a spot there, where they might live, whether you will have anything in common with them, or even whether that spot will get filled. So you have to decide whether or not to send your child to a school where they will be an outlier with no guarantee of many kids like them at the school.
or
2) You and all the families who live in your housing complex is suddenly zoned out of Miner and into Maury. Yes, Maury currently has a very low at risk percentage and is only 20% black, BUT you get to enroll your kids in Maury alongside all the other families in your housing complex. You can talk to your neighbors and find out what they plan to do, you can make arrangements to share the burden of commuting to the new school, you will have friendly faces at drop off and pick up, and when your kids come home, they will be able to play with school classmates without having to commute to another part of the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, did you really just suggest that families in public housing trying to get their kids a good education would opt for a failing school instead of a proximately located one because there aren't enough uneducated kids for them to be around? JFC.
Tell you are a white person trying too hard to be an "ally" without telling me.
Right back at you. Given the charter options it seems clear that many at-risk families choose IB schools like Miner. This discussion hasn’t actually considered their preferences at all. I know one at-risk kid whose parents deliberately moved them to an almost 100% black high at-risk elementary from an affluent “diverse” elementary specifically because they believed the school had low expectations for the at-risk, black kids.
KIPP would like a word. Thanks for the chuckle though. "I know an at risk person that did this" is the equivalent of having a black or jewish friend.
I mean, there are a ton of at risk families in Miner's boundary who choose to send their kids to Miner even though they could fairly easily lottery into TR Young, JOW, Payne, Stokes or Lee EE, Center City PCS on Capitol Hill or in Trinidad, and have as good a chance as anyone to get into SWS, LT, CHMS, etc. But they are at Miner. Why do you think that is?
Anonymous wrote:Here is a truth that I think some folks need to wrap their heads around:
If you send your kids to public schools in a district with 46% at risk kids, you are not entitled to a school with 12% at risk kids even if you buy IB for one. They can move the kids around.
No, this does not mean I think DC should try to achieve perfect demographic equity across all schools -- that's obviously not possible geographically and would be bad policy.
However, the idea that Maury families *deserve* to keep their at risk percentage as low as it is because they bought homes there, is false. Boundaries change all the time in school districts. These boundary studies are actually regularly scheduled and the whole point is to evaluate imbalances in the district, whether it's population imbalances leading to over- and under-subscribed schools (which, by the way, also exists between Maury and Miner, though technically Maury is not yet overcrowded), or imbalances in at-risk kids, racial segregation, etc. There's no perfect solutions, but all school districts regularly evaluate school boundaries and shift them to achieve both practical and value-based goals.
This is not an endorsement of the cluster, which I think is an impractical solution. But people on this thread keep demanding that others *prove* that it's necessary to move at risk kids to Maury, like you need to prove it will improve Maury or be better for the at risk kids. You don't. The district can just say "we've got this school with a ton of at-risk kids and this one nearby with hardly any, we're gonna balance that out a bit." Happens all the time. This is public school.
Maury response: "Oh yeah well what grade is YOUR kid in?"
Lol, exactly.
The funny thing to me about this is that there's a perception that this conversation is unique and that these argument against any changes to Maury are original and specific to this proposal.
Nope. I mentioned upthread the fact that Howard County regularly shifts school boundaries and rebalances zones (more aggressively than many districts even) and that people complain but also it's just accepted that it's how it is. I didn't share to directly compare DCPS and HoCo schools (obviously very different), but to explain that this conversation is COMMON. These arguments people are making about how if Maury has too many at risk kids, it will ruin the educations of the higher SES kids there without benefiting the at-risk kids? This is the #1 most common argument made to oppose boundary shifts that will move more poor kids into schools with mostly MC and UMC kids. Like some of these comments are verbatim what I've heard at meetings to discuss boundary shifts in other districts.
Please send an example from HoCo that involved such drastic changes including merging two disparate schools into two wholly new schools. HoCo’s demographics are far different from DCPS and they can make tweaks that are much less forced and drastic.
The article is like a point-by-point guide to this thread. AND their plan involved actual busing because they were shifting kids around between high school triangles, not just fussing with two elementaries that feed to the same MS and HS.
It also only involved changing the school from 5% to 20% at-risk.
Not quite accurate. It involved re-balancing schools where one had a <5% at risk rate and the other had a 40%+ at risk rate. Shifting kids between them with the goal to reach a middle ground. It actually has a lot in common with both the problem the cluster plan is proposed to address and the similar goals.
But HoCo was looking at busing over 7000 kids to schools further away than their IB high school to achieve it. You really want to tell me that this was less "drastic" and disruptive than combining two elementaries with the same MS/HS feed? No.
Maury is NOT special here. This is a very common story.
yes, I’m telling you its more drastic. it did not involve actually taking apart two schools, and the change in at-risk population was less drastic. it also included transportation and didn’t involve split drop-offs of two young kids.
Yes because a split drop of for two schools four blocks apart is so much more disruptive than busing kids all the way across town in order to integrate HSs.
This is the whiniest freaking conversation. First we've got people who I am totally confident have $1k+ worth of strollers in their homes and likely extoll the virtues of their walkable neighborhood to anyone who will listen complaining that they couldn't possibly transport a 3 yr old 4 blocks. Then we've got people arguing that if there are too many poor children at Maury, there UMC children will never succeed. Then this switches to "actually, Maury is horrible at educating at risk kids, that's the only reason we can't send them here!" We've got the guy in the corner yelling at people to stop calling him a racist when no one has called him a racist. We have the "prove it" person, the "how old are YOUR kids" lady, the "you need me and my taxes" guy. And on and on. Y'all are nothing but a giant cliché. Grow. Up.
Dear person obsessed with strollers:
You can’t stick a 7 year old in a stroller, and they walk slow.
Dear you -- I have a 6 year old who I walk 6.5 blocks to school every day and she has no trouble keeping up with me pushing her sister in a stroller. Also, I used to do the dreaded "split drop off" every day for 3 years to two schools that were more than .5 miles apart, on my own, and then hoof it the reverse direction 1.5 miles. It was fine.
Are you seriously now arguing that you couldn't possibly be expected to walk a 7 year old 4 blocks?
Glad you had the schedule to do that. Doesn’t work for most people.
I am confident you will find a way to get your children to school.
Problem is, they won’t. Lots of people would lottery or move to avoid this new logistical challenge. Peabody/Watkins is evidence of this. Are there people for whom this logistical issue is still better than their other options? Sure. Does that mean that current Maury and Miner families will stay, and DCPS will end up with more integrated school? No guarantee.
I know you think that threatening to move or lottery out (which as people have explained multiple times on here, is not as easy as you seem to imagine it is -- many charters are garbage, spots at high performing schools can be very hard to come by) is a logical checkmate, but it actually proves the point of the people you are arguing against.
Some of you are determined to send your kid to majority white, high-SES schools while also being congratulated for being anti-racist and supporting integration because they are in a public school with *some* poor black kids. No wonder you are so deeply offended at that the proposition that you can't actually have that both ways.
Not a thing. The only people who talk about being anit-racist are black folks, SJW and the woke crowd. Parents just trying to get their kids educated don't worry about it. Most of us think it is a joke and that the policies the "anti-racist" crowd advocates do more harm than good to the populations you pretend to care about.
Pro-tip: Accusing me of not being anti-racist is not the burn you think it is.
Anonymous wrote:Here are the at-risk proficiency numbers for Miner and Maury.
Miner (71% at risk)
ELA 15.9
Math 21
Maury (19% at risk)
ELA 55.3
Math 27.8
So, merging the two schools would probably improve ELA scores somewhat for Miner and lower them for Maury. The math scores are bad at both schools for at-risk, so there would be less change there
Where did these numbers come from? The at restaurant so percentages do not match what I've seen for either school. Are they old?
Yes, these numbers have to be a few years old for Maury. Maury is 12% at risk, not 19%. But also, I think those proficiency scores are too high (perhaps including 3s). If you look at the just-released OSSE report cards, the % for ELA and Math proficiency for "Economically Disadvantaged" students (which is a slightly different, but actually slightly broader group typically when it comes to elementary schools) is:
Same overall picture. The merge would likely help some for ELA and not very much for Math. But overall, a much more grim picture of how much ED kids are being failed (though definitely not just by these two schools, the picture is similar at most other schools).
No.
1) You are using the wrong data.
Here are the PARCC results that DCPS released just a few months ago:
2) Also, obviously the at-risk numbers that PP provided were for PARCC test takers since they were in connection with actual PARCC results. So, again, you are looking at the wrong data set.
+1. Love it when people chime in to suggest that people are using the wrong data when they in fact are using the wrong data.
Feel dumb now? His number included 3s, which is *not* proficient, exactly as I mused. Roll your eyes harder, please.
This and why OSSE includes 3 so the abysmal numbers look better. Take out the 3 and you get the real picture.
You can also sort by 4+ at the Empower Ed link. Here are the numbers for 4+:
Miner
ELA <5%
Math <5%
Maury
ELA 23.7
Math 8.3
Pretty abysmal!
With Miner, I think they show that for math they had 7% of at risk 3rd graders score a 4 or 5 on PARCC, and zero 4th or 5th graders. For ELA, they did not have a single student in any grade score a 4 or 5. But I might be misreading the chart -- the tool is really clunky and a bit hard to navigate.
So what is the point of mixing SES if both schools have poor outcomes with at-risk students? What is DME's objective here? Shouldn't it be figuring out how to teach at-risk students, which neither Maury nor Miner seems to know how to do?
There is an argument that it is unfair to Miner to have such a high at risk percentage, as it makes it harder to educate non-at-risk students and also creates a downward spiral.
One way to look at this is not that they are trying to spread out the high-SES kids, but that they are trying to spread out the at-risk students, who are harder to educate, so that a school can't just be exempt from dealing with the challenges associated with educating this group. This has long been an argument many people make against public charters, which tend to exclude more at risk kids due to barriers to entry (you have to apply, which requires a certain level of family competency, some charters require family meetings before enrollment which screens out a lot of at risk kids, etc.). This means that in DC, where about half of all students attend charters, the percentage of at-risk students in DCPS schools is artificially high, since charters take on fewer than half of all at risk kids.
Also, if you spread out at-risk students, then more schools get the opportunity to try to find ways to help them, and ignore schools work on it, then you are more likely to find solutions that actually work.
Bolded is just not true. Ironically the only charters that require familial contracts and place significant demands on parents to agree to terms are the KIPP schools, which undoubtedly take way more than their fair share of at risk kids (and get much better outcomes).
Stop. Making. Things. Up.
Not a charter, but CHMS requires families to meet with the school to discuss the Montessori approach before school starts, and if you refuse or don't show up, they can give your kids spot to someone else. Though CHMS has twice the at-risk population of Maury and is majority black.
So in support of your made up allegation that charters are exclusionary because they require pre-meetings and parental commitments, your reply to being called out is...to cite a DCPS school that does this? Well played, sir/madam!
Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.
The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.
So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.
My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).
Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?
I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.
Say more about what you mean by this -- I think this plan can be accomplished if you tighten the Maury boundary by expanding Miner's boundary to capture some of the Maury border houses (assuming that you don't capture Maury's current at-risk kids), but not sure if what you are suggesting is finding Maury's highest SES housing and adding that to Miner even if non-contiguous. When it comes down to it, MC kids you reallocate from Maury to Miner are unlikely to attend if they can lottery anywhere else (just the same as MC kids currently in the Miner boundary). But would need to change the border to make room for low-income housing kids at Maury.
It would certainly do something to change the numbers, but strikes me as having a similar effect as the high-risk set aside. Which I think is fine—I think the only responsible way to do something like this is to do it gradually, to avoid overwhelming Maury and making two schools that are considered undesirable instead of one. Your thesis seems to be that the only acceptable solution is one that creates even numbers of at-risk kids at Maury and Miner instantly -- which I think is neither realistic/possible nor at all desirable.
PP here and I want to clarify that this is not my thesis at all. Rather, people on this thread have stated that they are not opposed to increasing Maury's at risk percentage from 12%, but opposed using the cluster as the means. I very much understand the concerns about the proposed cluster and share many of them, but I'm interested in how else we might increase Maury's at risk percentage.
Some have suggested at risk set asides for Maury, but I have a lot of experience looking at how the EA preferences have worked at other schools and the truth is -- they haven't really. And most of those are charter schools where everyone is littering in, so you'd expect the EA preference to be more effective. What you see over and over is that EA spots go unfilled, and this actually causes problems for the schools because it becomes difficult to asses how many EA and regular lottery slots to offer in subsequent years, and also raises questions as to whether those unfilled EA slots maybe given over to people on the non-EA waitlist, and if so at what point. At risk set asides in the lottery sound like an easy fix, but like a lot of things that sound great and easy, they have not shown to be particularly effective.
Also, my goal is not to make the at risk numbers between Maury and Miner equal. I don't really care what the specific numbers are. I just think it's valid in a district with 46% at risk kids to say that Maury needs to take on more at risk students, and I'm wondering how we might achieve that given Maury's current boundary has few at risk families and the school has very high IB buy in. So I'm curious what people would think of a gerrymandered boundary between Maury and Miner, as that looks like the most likely way to increase Maury's at-risk percentage.
I agree that you likely would not see a lot of the Maury families re-zoned to Miner going to Miner. I view that as a separate question. It's obvious that Miner needs to fix some things if they ever hope to attract more non-at-risk families, whether IB or OOB. I'm focused on Maury at the moment.
I'm PP, and I really appreciate you clarifying (and apologize for putting words in your mouth!). I see what you are saying. I think essentially tacking on some of the public housing to Maury and tightening the Maury boundary along Miner's borders (assuming again that it wouldn't re-zone Maury's current at-risk kids) would make sense. The big challenge I see would be that it would be pretty clear, if not to the kids then at least to the parents, that the kids coming into Maury from non-contiguous areas are coming from low-income housing. I like to think that wouldn't affect how anyone treats them or their own perception of their experience at Maury (alienation etc.), but potentially there could be impacts there. The other big challenge is if the commute or some other logistical issue puts a larger burden on the families re-zoned into Maury that makes their lives more difficult, or potentially leads to increased truancy for the kids. I'd be fine with a shuttle or something, but I guess there we are edging into busing?
Comparing the merits of the at-risk set aside to the proposed cluster, my question would be that if an at-risk set aside at Maury would go unfilled with so many at-risk students in the next boundary over, doesn't that indicate that a cluster wouldn't work for those families either? They would have to go to Maury in that case, but they won't volunteer to go right now? If it's a matter of families of at-risk students not necessarily being aware of at-risk set asides, I would think that information could be targeted toward the Miner boundary pretty easily.
PP again and thanks for the good faith conversation. I definitely agree with your assessment and I do see this as some of the obstacles as well. Perhaps there would be a way to draw the boundary that mitigates some of the potential worst effects (specifically addressing the issue of transportation which I agree could be a major concern).
I do think there should be a way to ensure that any low-income kids re-zoned for Maury are welcomed by the community. I tend to think some of the voices on this thread that are most opposed to more at-risk kids at Maury are outliers at the school (and also the people most likely to leave before the terminal grade and obviously unlikely to send their kids to EH).
The question about why an at risk set aside wouldn't work for low-income families now zones for Miner I think can be answered if you really put yourself in that position. Which is more appealing to you if you are a black, low-income parent living IB for Miner and want the best for your children and your family:
1) You can apply for a lottery spot at a nearby elementary with great test scores and an involved community of families, but the schools has only 12% at risk students and just 20% black students. If you receive a lottery spot, you have no idea what other families like yours might also receive a spot there, where they might live, whether you will have anything in common with them, or even whether that spot will get filled. So you have to decide whether or not to send your child to a school where they will be an outlier with no guarantee of many kids like them at the school.
or
2) You and all the families who live in your housing complex is suddenly zoned out of Miner and into Maury. Yes, Maury currently has a very low at risk percentage and is only 20% black, BUT you get to enroll your kids in Maury alongside all the other families in your housing complex. You can talk to your neighbors and find out what they plan to do, you can make arrangements to share the burden of commuting to the new school, you will have friendly faces at drop off and pick up, and when your kids come home, they will be able to play with school classmates without having to commute to another part of the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, did you really just suggest that families in public housing trying to get their kids a good education would opt for a failing school instead of a proximately located one because there aren't enough uneducated kids for them to be around? JFC.
Tell you are a white person trying too hard to be an "ally" without telling me.
Right back at you. Given the charter options it seems clear that many at-risk families choose IB schools like Miner. This discussion hasn’t actually considered their preferences at all. I know one at-risk kid whose parents deliberately moved them to an almost 100% black high at-risk elementary from an affluent “diverse” elementary specifically because they believed the school had low expectations for the at-risk, black kids.
KIPP would like a word. Thanks for the chuckle though. "I know an at risk person that did this" is the equivalent of having a black or jewish friend.
I mean, there are a ton of at risk families in Miner's boundary who choose to send their kids to Miner even though they could fairly easily lottery into TR Young, JOW, Payne, Stokes or Lee EE, Center City PCS on Capitol Hill or in Trinidad, and have as good a chance as anyone to get into SWS, LT, CHMS, etc. But they are at Miner. Why do you think that is?
Because educated parents with grad degrees are more likely to prioritize education than those with HS degrees or less? Because we know based on the truancy levels in DC there are a LOT of kids whose parents just dont give a damn about education.
It never fails that SJW like you trying to call others out for racist beliefs end up proving your own biases. You are suggesting that all poor black folks want the same thing. You are suggesting that because lots of at risk families don't care about education, those who do won't pursue it because they are also black and poor?
Your observation doesn't prove the point you think it does.
Anonymous wrote:Here are the at-risk proficiency numbers for Miner and Maury.
Miner (71% at risk)
ELA 15.9
Math 21
Maury (19% at risk)
ELA 55.3
Math 27.8
So, merging the two schools would probably improve ELA scores somewhat for Miner and lower them for Maury. The math scores are bad at both schools for at-risk, so there would be less change there
Where did these numbers come from? The at restaurant so percentages do not match what I've seen for either school. Are they old?
Yes, these numbers have to be a few years old for Maury. Maury is 12% at risk, not 19%. But also, I think those proficiency scores are too high (perhaps including 3s). If you look at the just-released OSSE report cards, the % for ELA and Math proficiency for "Economically Disadvantaged" students (which is a slightly different, but actually slightly broader group typically when it comes to elementary schools) is:
Same overall picture. The merge would likely help some for ELA and not very much for Math. But overall, a much more grim picture of how much ED kids are being failed (though definitely not just by these two schools, the picture is similar at most other schools).
No.
1) You are using the wrong data.
Here are the PARCC results that DCPS released just a few months ago:
2) Also, obviously the at-risk numbers that PP provided were for PARCC test takers since they were in connection with actual PARCC results. So, again, you are looking at the wrong data set.
+1. Love it when people chime in to suggest that people are using the wrong data when they in fact are using the wrong data.
Feel dumb now? His number included 3s, which is *not* proficient, exactly as I mused. Roll your eyes harder, please.
This and why OSSE includes 3 so the abysmal numbers look better. Take out the 3 and you get the real picture.
You can also sort by 4+ at the Empower Ed link. Here are the numbers for 4+:
Miner
ELA <5%
Math <5%
Maury
ELA 23.7
Math 8.3
Pretty abysmal!
With Miner, I think they show that for math they had 7% of at risk 3rd graders score a 4 or 5 on PARCC, and zero 4th or 5th graders. For ELA, they did not have a single student in any grade score a 4 or 5. But I might be misreading the chart -- the tool is really clunky and a bit hard to navigate.
So what is the point of mixing SES if both schools have poor outcomes with at-risk students? What is DME's objective here? Shouldn't it be figuring out how to teach at-risk students, which neither Maury nor Miner seems to know how to do?
There is an argument that it is unfair to Miner to have such a high at risk percentage, as it makes it harder to educate non-at-risk students and also creates a downward spiral.
One way to look at this is not that they are trying to spread out the high-SES kids, but that they are trying to spread out the at-risk students, who are harder to educate, so that a school can't just be exempt from dealing with the challenges associated with educating this group. This has long been an argument many people make against public charters, which tend to exclude more at risk kids due to barriers to entry (you have to apply, which requires a certain level of family competency, some charters require family meetings before enrollment which screens out a lot of at risk kids, etc.). This means that in DC, where about half of all students attend charters, the percentage of at-risk students in DCPS schools is artificially high, since charters take on fewer than half of all at risk kids.
Also, if you spread out at-risk students, then more schools get the opportunity to try to find ways to help them, and ignore schools work on it, then you are more likely to find solutions that actually work.
Bolded is just not true. Ironically the only charters that require familial contracts and place significant demands on parents to agree to terms are the KIPP schools, which undoubtedly take way more than their fair share of at risk kids (and get much better outcomes).
Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.
The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.
So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.
My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).
Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?
I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.
Say more about what you mean by this -- I think this plan can be accomplished if you tighten the Maury boundary by expanding Miner's boundary to capture some of the Maury border houses (assuming that you don't capture Maury's current at-risk kids), but not sure if what you are suggesting is finding Maury's highest SES housing and adding that to Miner even if non-contiguous. When it comes down to it, MC kids you reallocate from Maury to Miner are unlikely to attend if they can lottery anywhere else (just the same as MC kids currently in the Miner boundary). But would need to change the border to make room for low-income housing kids at Maury.
It would certainly do something to change the numbers, but strikes me as having a similar effect as the high-risk set aside. Which I think is fine—I think the only responsible way to do something like this is to do it gradually, to avoid overwhelming Maury and making two schools that are considered undesirable instead of one. Your thesis seems to be that the only acceptable solution is one that creates even numbers of at-risk kids at Maury and Miner instantly -- which I think is neither realistic/possible nor at all desirable.
PP here and I want to clarify that this is not my thesis at all. Rather, people on this thread have stated that they are not opposed to increasing Maury's at risk percentage from 12%, but opposed using the cluster as the means. I very much understand the concerns about the proposed cluster and share many of them, but I'm interested in how else we might increase Maury's at risk percentage.
Some have suggested at risk set asides for Maury, but I have a lot of experience looking at how the EA preferences have worked at other schools and the truth is -- they haven't really. And most of those are charter schools where everyone is littering in, so you'd expect the EA preference to be more effective. What you see over and over is that EA spots go unfilled, and this actually causes problems for the schools because it becomes difficult to asses how many EA and regular lottery slots to offer in subsequent years, and also raises questions as to whether those unfilled EA slots maybe given over to people on the non-EA waitlist, and if so at what point. At risk set asides in the lottery sound like an easy fix, but like a lot of things that sound great and easy, they have not shown to be particularly effective.
Also, my goal is not to make the at risk numbers between Maury and Miner equal. I don't really care what the specific numbers are. I just think it's valid in a district with 46% at risk kids to say that Maury needs to take on more at risk students, and I'm wondering how we might achieve that given Maury's current boundary has few at risk families and the school has very high IB buy in. So I'm curious what people would think of a gerrymandered boundary between Maury and Miner, as that looks like the most likely way to increase Maury's at-risk percentage.
I agree that you likely would not see a lot of the Maury families re-zoned to Miner going to Miner. I view that as a separate question. It's obvious that Miner needs to fix some things if they ever hope to attract more non-at-risk families, whether IB or OOB. I'm focused on Maury at the moment.
I'm PP, and I really appreciate you clarifying (and apologize for putting words in your mouth!). I see what you are saying. I think essentially tacking on some of the public housing to Maury and tightening the Maury boundary along Miner's borders (assuming again that it wouldn't re-zone Maury's current at-risk kids) would make sense. The big challenge I see would be that it would be pretty clear, if not to the kids then at least to the parents, that the kids coming into Maury from non-contiguous areas are coming from low-income housing. I like to think that wouldn't affect how anyone treats them or their own perception of their experience at Maury (alienation etc.), but potentially there could be impacts there. The other big challenge is if the commute or some other logistical issue puts a larger burden on the families re-zoned into Maury that makes their lives more difficult, or potentially leads to increased truancy for the kids. I'd be fine with a shuttle or something, but I guess there we are edging into busing?
Comparing the merits of the at-risk set aside to the proposed cluster, my question would be that if an at-risk set aside at Maury would go unfilled with so many at-risk students in the next boundary over, doesn't that indicate that a cluster wouldn't work for those families either? They would have to go to Maury in that case, but they won't volunteer to go right now? If it's a matter of families of at-risk students not necessarily being aware of at-risk set asides, I would think that information could be targeted toward the Miner boundary pretty easily.
PP again and thanks for the good faith conversation. I definitely agree with your assessment and I do see this as some of the obstacles as well. Perhaps there would be a way to draw the boundary that mitigates some of the potential worst effects (specifically addressing the issue of transportation which I agree could be a major concern).
I do think there should be a way to ensure that any low-income kids re-zoned for Maury are welcomed by the community. I tend to think some of the voices on this thread that are most opposed to more at-risk kids at Maury are outliers at the school (and also the people most likely to leave before the terminal grade and obviously unlikely to send their kids to EH).
The question about why an at risk set aside wouldn't work for low-income families now zones for Miner I think can be answered if you really put yourself in that position. Which is more appealing to you if you are a black, low-income parent living IB for Miner and want the best for your children and your family:
1) You can apply for a lottery spot at a nearby elementary with great test scores and an involved community of families, but the schools has only 12% at risk students and just 20% black students. If you receive a lottery spot, you have no idea what other families like yours might also receive a spot there, where they might live, whether you will have anything in common with them, or even whether that spot will get filled. So you have to decide whether or not to send your child to a school where they will be an outlier with no guarantee of many kids like them at the school.
or
2) You and all the families who live in your housing complex is suddenly zoned out of Miner and into Maury. Yes, Maury currently has a very low at risk percentage and is only 20% black, BUT you get to enroll your kids in Maury alongside all the other families in your housing complex. You can talk to your neighbors and find out what they plan to do, you can make arrangements to share the burden of commuting to the new school, you will have friendly faces at drop off and pick up, and when your kids come home, they will be able to play with school classmates without having to commute to another part of the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, did you really just suggest that families in public housing trying to get their kids a good education would opt for a failing school instead of a proximately located one because there aren't enough uneducated kids for them to be around? JFC.
Tell you are a white person trying too hard to be an "ally" without telling me.
Right back at you. Given the charter options it seems clear that many at-risk families choose IB schools like Miner. This discussion hasn’t actually considered their preferences at all. I know one at-risk kid whose parents deliberately moved them to an almost 100% black high at-risk elementary from an affluent “diverse” elementary specifically because they believed the school had low expectations for the at-risk, black kids.
KIPP would like a word. Thanks for the chuckle though. "I know an at risk person that did this" is the equivalent of having a black or jewish friend.
I mean who do you think you are that you speak for low income parents? Revealed preference in the lack of EA applicants & the popularity of charters like KIPP tell the actual story.
Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.
The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.
So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.
My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).
Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?
I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.
Say more about what you mean by this -- I think this plan can be accomplished if you tighten the Maury boundary by expanding Miner's boundary to capture some of the Maury border houses (assuming that you don't capture Maury's current at-risk kids), but not sure if what you are suggesting is finding Maury's highest SES housing and adding that to Miner even if non-contiguous. When it comes down to it, MC kids you reallocate from Maury to Miner are unlikely to attend if they can lottery anywhere else (just the same as MC kids currently in the Miner boundary). But would need to change the border to make room for low-income housing kids at Maury.
It would certainly do something to change the numbers, but strikes me as having a similar effect as the high-risk set aside. Which I think is fine—I think the only responsible way to do something like this is to do it gradually, to avoid overwhelming Maury and making two schools that are considered undesirable instead of one. Your thesis seems to be that the only acceptable solution is one that creates even numbers of at-risk kids at Maury and Miner instantly -- which I think is neither realistic/possible nor at all desirable.
PP here and I want to clarify that this is not my thesis at all. Rather, people on this thread have stated that they are not opposed to increasing Maury's at risk percentage from 12%, but opposed using the cluster as the means. I very much understand the concerns about the proposed cluster and share many of them, but I'm interested in how else we might increase Maury's at risk percentage.
Some have suggested at risk set asides for Maury, but I have a lot of experience looking at how the EA preferences have worked at other schools and the truth is -- they haven't really. And most of those are charter schools where everyone is littering in, so you'd expect the EA preference to be more effective. What you see over and over is that EA spots go unfilled, and this actually causes problems for the schools because it becomes difficult to asses how many EA and regular lottery slots to offer in subsequent years, and also raises questions as to whether those unfilled EA slots maybe given over to people on the non-EA waitlist, and if so at what point. At risk set asides in the lottery sound like an easy fix, but like a lot of things that sound great and easy, they have not shown to be particularly effective.
Also, my goal is not to make the at risk numbers between Maury and Miner equal. I don't really care what the specific numbers are. I just think it's valid in a district with 46% at risk kids to say that Maury needs to take on more at risk students, and I'm wondering how we might achieve that given Maury's current boundary has few at risk families and the school has very high IB buy in. So I'm curious what people would think of a gerrymandered boundary between Maury and Miner, as that looks like the most likely way to increase Maury's at-risk percentage.
I agree that you likely would not see a lot of the Maury families re-zoned to Miner going to Miner. I view that as a separate question. It's obvious that Miner needs to fix some things if they ever hope to attract more non-at-risk families, whether IB or OOB. I'm focused on Maury at the moment.
I'm PP, and I really appreciate you clarifying (and apologize for putting words in your mouth!). I see what you are saying. I think essentially tacking on some of the public housing to Maury and tightening the Maury boundary along Miner's borders (assuming again that it wouldn't re-zone Maury's current at-risk kids) would make sense. The big challenge I see would be that it would be pretty clear, if not to the kids then at least to the parents, that the kids coming into Maury from non-contiguous areas are coming from low-income housing. I like to think that wouldn't affect how anyone treats them or their own perception of their experience at Maury (alienation etc.), but potentially there could be impacts there. The other big challenge is if the commute or some other logistical issue puts a larger burden on the families re-zoned into Maury that makes their lives more difficult, or potentially leads to increased truancy for the kids. I'd be fine with a shuttle or something, but I guess there we are edging into busing?
Comparing the merits of the at-risk set aside to the proposed cluster, my question would be that if an at-risk set aside at Maury would go unfilled with so many at-risk students in the next boundary over, doesn't that indicate that a cluster wouldn't work for those families either? They would have to go to Maury in that case, but they won't volunteer to go right now? If it's a matter of families of at-risk students not necessarily being aware of at-risk set asides, I would think that information could be targeted toward the Miner boundary pretty easily.
PP again and thanks for the good faith conversation. I definitely agree with your assessment and I do see this as some of the obstacles as well. Perhaps there would be a way to draw the boundary that mitigates some of the potential worst effects (specifically addressing the issue of transportation which I agree could be a major concern).
I do think there should be a way to ensure that any low-income kids re-zoned for Maury are welcomed by the community. I tend to think some of the voices on this thread that are most opposed to more at-risk kids at Maury are outliers at the school (and also the people most likely to leave before the terminal grade and obviously unlikely to send their kids to EH).
The question about why an at risk set aside wouldn't work for low-income families now zones for Miner I think can be answered if you really put yourself in that position. Which is more appealing to you if you are a black, low-income parent living IB for Miner and want the best for your children and your family:
1) You can apply for a lottery spot at a nearby elementary with great test scores and an involved community of families, but the schools has only 12% at risk students and just 20% black students. If you receive a lottery spot, you have no idea what other families like yours might also receive a spot there, where they might live, whether you will have anything in common with them, or even whether that spot will get filled. So you have to decide whether or not to send your child to a school where they will be an outlier with no guarantee of many kids like them at the school.
or
2) You and all the families who live in your housing complex is suddenly zoned out of Miner and into Maury. Yes, Maury currently has a very low at risk percentage and is only 20% black, BUT you get to enroll your kids in Maury alongside all the other families in your housing complex. You can talk to your neighbors and find out what they plan to do, you can make arrangements to share the burden of commuting to the new school, you will have friendly faces at drop off and pick up, and when your kids come home, they will be able to play with school classmates without having to commute to another part of the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, did you really just suggest that families in public housing trying to get their kids a good education would opt for a failing school instead of a proximately located one because there aren't enough uneducated kids for them to be around? JFC.
Tell you are a white person trying too hard to be an "ally" without telling me.
Right back at you. Given the charter options it seems clear that many at-risk families choose IB schools like Miner. This discussion hasn’t actually considered their preferences at all. I know one at-risk kid whose parents deliberately moved them to an almost 100% black high at-risk elementary from an affluent “diverse” elementary specifically because they believed the school had low expectations for the at-risk, black kids.
KIPP would like a word. Thanks for the chuckle though. "I know an at risk person that did this" is the equivalent of having a black or jewish friend.
I mean, there are a ton of at risk families in Miner's boundary who choose to send their kids to Miner even though they could fairly easily lottery into TR Young, JOW, Payne, Stokes or Lee EE, Center City PCS on Capitol Hill or in Trinidad, and have as good a chance as anyone to get into SWS, LT, CHMS, etc. But they are at Miner. Why do you think that is?
Because educated parents with grad degrees are more likely to prioritize education than those with HS degrees or less? Because we know based on the truancy levels in DC there are a LOT of kids whose parents just dont give a damn about education.
It never fails that SJW like you trying to call others out for racist beliefs end up proving your own biases. You are suggesting that all poor black folks want the same thing. You are suggesting that because lots of at risk families don't care about education, those who do won't pursue it because they are also black and poor?
Your observation doesn't prove the point you think it does.
This is not meant as an attack so please don't take it that way. I think we all should be careful about this type of characterization. It's unfair to generalize that parents without advance degrees don't care deeply about their children's education, or that truancy is a reflection of parents not caring about education. One thing I learned at Miner as I got to know a cross-section of Rosedale residents is the vast majority are doing their best, while many are facing really challenging situations. Economic challenges, single-family homes, multiple jobs, generational trauma, the residual impact of the drug war, etc. People in that neighborhood are really struggling but they care about their children and their children's education just as much as you do. Something to keep in mind as this conversation continues to devolve.
Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.
The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.
So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.
My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).
Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?
I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.
Say more about what you mean by this -- I think this plan can be accomplished if you tighten the Maury boundary by expanding Miner's boundary to capture some of the Maury border houses (assuming that you don't capture Maury's current at-risk kids), but not sure if what you are suggesting is finding Maury's highest SES housing and adding that to Miner even if non-contiguous. When it comes down to it, MC kids you reallocate from Maury to Miner are unlikely to attend if they can lottery anywhere else (just the same as MC kids currently in the Miner boundary). But would need to change the border to make room for low-income housing kids at Maury.
It would certainly do something to change the numbers, but strikes me as having a similar effect as the high-risk set aside. Which I think is fine—I think the only responsible way to do something like this is to do it gradually, to avoid overwhelming Maury and making two schools that are considered undesirable instead of one. Your thesis seems to be that the only acceptable solution is one that creates even numbers of at-risk kids at Maury and Miner instantly -- which I think is neither realistic/possible nor at all desirable.
PP here and I want to clarify that this is not my thesis at all. Rather, people on this thread have stated that they are not opposed to increasing Maury's at risk percentage from 12%, but opposed using the cluster as the means. I very much understand the concerns about the proposed cluster and share many of them, but I'm interested in how else we might increase Maury's at risk percentage.
Some have suggested at risk set asides for Maury, but I have a lot of experience looking at how the EA preferences have worked at other schools and the truth is -- they haven't really. And most of those are charter schools where everyone is littering in, so you'd expect the EA preference to be more effective. What you see over and over is that EA spots go unfilled, and this actually causes problems for the schools because it becomes difficult to asses how many EA and regular lottery slots to offer in subsequent years, and also raises questions as to whether those unfilled EA slots maybe given over to people on the non-EA waitlist, and if so at what point. At risk set asides in the lottery sound like an easy fix, but like a lot of things that sound great and easy, they have not shown to be particularly effective.
Also, my goal is not to make the at risk numbers between Maury and Miner equal. I don't really care what the specific numbers are. I just think it's valid in a district with 46% at risk kids to say that Maury needs to take on more at risk students, and I'm wondering how we might achieve that given Maury's current boundary has few at risk families and the school has very high IB buy in. So I'm curious what people would think of a gerrymandered boundary between Maury and Miner, as that looks like the most likely way to increase Maury's at-risk percentage.
I agree that you likely would not see a lot of the Maury families re-zoned to Miner going to Miner. I view that as a separate question. It's obvious that Miner needs to fix some things if they ever hope to attract more non-at-risk families, whether IB or OOB. I'm focused on Maury at the moment.
I'm PP, and I really appreciate you clarifying (and apologize for putting words in your mouth!). I see what you are saying. I think essentially tacking on some of the public housing to Maury and tightening the Maury boundary along Miner's borders (assuming again that it wouldn't re-zone Maury's current at-risk kids) would make sense. The big challenge I see would be that it would be pretty clear, if not to the kids then at least to the parents, that the kids coming into Maury from non-contiguous areas are coming from low-income housing. I like to think that wouldn't affect how anyone treats them or their own perception of their experience at Maury (alienation etc.), but potentially there could be impacts there. The other big challenge is if the commute or some other logistical issue puts a larger burden on the families re-zoned into Maury that makes their lives more difficult, or potentially leads to increased truancy for the kids. I'd be fine with a shuttle or something, but I guess there we are edging into busing?
Comparing the merits of the at-risk set aside to the proposed cluster, my question would be that if an at-risk set aside at Maury would go unfilled with so many at-risk students in the next boundary over, doesn't that indicate that a cluster wouldn't work for those families either? They would have to go to Maury in that case, but they won't volunteer to go right now? If it's a matter of families of at-risk students not necessarily being aware of at-risk set asides, I would think that information could be targeted toward the Miner boundary pretty easily.
PP again and thanks for the good faith conversation. I definitely agree with your assessment and I do see this as some of the obstacles as well. Perhaps there would be a way to draw the boundary that mitigates some of the potential worst effects (specifically addressing the issue of transportation which I agree could be a major concern).
I do think there should be a way to ensure that any low-income kids re-zoned for Maury are welcomed by the community. I tend to think some of the voices on this thread that are most opposed to more at-risk kids at Maury are outliers at the school (and also the people most likely to leave before the terminal grade and obviously unlikely to send their kids to EH).
The question about why an at risk set aside wouldn't work for low-income families now zones for Miner I think can be answered if you really put yourself in that position. Which is more appealing to you if you are a black, low-income parent living IB for Miner and want the best for your children and your family:
1) You can apply for a lottery spot at a nearby elementary with great test scores and an involved community of families, but the schools has only 12% at risk students and just 20% black students. If you receive a lottery spot, you have no idea what other families like yours might also receive a spot there, where they might live, whether you will have anything in common with them, or even whether that spot will get filled. So you have to decide whether or not to send your child to a school where they will be an outlier with no guarantee of many kids like them at the school.
or
2) You and all the families who live in your housing complex is suddenly zoned out of Miner and into Maury. Yes, Maury currently has a very low at risk percentage and is only 20% black, BUT you get to enroll your kids in Maury alongside all the other families in your housing complex. You can talk to your neighbors and find out what they plan to do, you can make arrangements to share the burden of commuting to the new school, you will have friendly faces at drop off and pick up, and when your kids come home, they will be able to play with school classmates without having to commute to another part of the neighborhood.
I'm sorry, did you really just suggest that families in public housing trying to get their kids a good education would opt for a failing school instead of a proximately located one because there aren't enough uneducated kids for them to be around? JFC.
Tell you are a white person trying too hard to be an "ally" without telling me.
Right back at you. Given the charter options it seems clear that many at-risk families choose IB schools like Miner. This discussion hasn’t actually considered their preferences at all. I know one at-risk kid whose parents deliberately moved them to an almost 100% black high at-risk elementary from an affluent “diverse” elementary specifically because they believed the school had low expectations for the at-risk, black kids.
KIPP would like a word. Thanks for the chuckle though. "I know an at risk person that did this" is the equivalent of having a black or jewish friend.
I mean, there are a ton of at risk families in Miner's boundary who choose to send their kids to Miner even though they could fairly easily lottery into TR Young, JOW, Payne, Stokes or Lee EE, Center City PCS on Capitol Hill or in Trinidad, and have as good a chance as anyone to get into SWS, LT, CHMS, etc. But they are at Miner. Why do you think that is?
Because educated parents with grad degrees are more likely to prioritize education than those with HS degrees or less? Because we know based on the truancy levels in DC there are a LOT of kids whose parents just dont give a damn about education.
It never fails that SJW like you trying to call others out for racist beliefs end up proving your own biases. You are suggesting that all poor black folks want the same thing. You are suggesting that because lots of at risk families don't care about education, those who do won't pursue it because they are also black and poor?
Your observation doesn't prove the point you think it does.
This is not meant as an attack so please don't take it that way. I think we all should be careful about this type of characterization. It's unfair to generalize that parents without advance degrees don't care deeply about their children's education, or that truancy is a reflection of parents not caring about education. One thing I learned at Miner as I got to know a cross-section of Rosedale residents is the vast majority are doing their best, while many are facing really challenging situations. Economic challenges, single-family homes, multiple jobs, generational trauma, the residual impact of the drug war, etc. People in that neighborhood are really struggling but they care about their children and their children's education just as much as you do. Something to keep in mind as this conversation continues to devolve.
I'll start with pointing out that I was replying to someone who argued that the fact that a lot of low SES kids were at Miner was proof of their offensive proposition that motivated poors would choose lousy schools to be with poors instead of charters or other higher performing schools. My reply explained that they were completely misunderstanding what the trendline was telling them.
No one is "generalizing". You are misusing the word characterization. Data is what data is. The fact that educated parents are more likely to care about education does NOT mean all. What we're talking about here are large groups of people, well enough to extrapolate.
I would respectfully suggest that the point here is not that the crime or offense is offending people. The crime is that we know the best path to break generational poverty is a good education. People struggling and wanting better lives for their kids don't spend time worrying about word policing or taking offense to imaginary slights. They have better things to do.
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