what have Hill parents demanded of middle schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get what you're saying, though you're cloaking something politically inappropriate in the language of insanity.

What you mean is, create a school that seems impossibly irrelevant to a typical lower middle class black family looking for high quality version of a meat-and-potatoes elementary/middle education, which is your mainstream DC charter consumer, with the winking knowledge that this irrelevance will allow it to be an educational refuge for high income families.

It's been stated on this board many different ways before. We know.

Problem with this logic is that the majority of charter schools in the district are the meat-and-potatoes high quality elementary/middle education programs that you suggest black, middle class families are looking for. The percentage of AA students in charters is much higher than in DCPS. Would you also say that those charters are trying to wink wink not appeal to white families? How about Roots PCS or Thurgood Marshall are they purposefully trying to create a school culture that is meant to EXCLUDE others?

Perhaps these schools cultures and specializations should be looked at more as school cultures and specializations than as a secret wink wink oh so evil way to carve out educational "refuge" unless that refuge happens to be from inadequate DCPS schools

Sure, but your observation that there are charters that are composed specifically to serve poor kids doesn't change the fact that the top-rated charters that *aren't* composed specifically to serve poor kids succeed or fail to the extent that they manage to reduce the number of poor applicants. (I'd like to see a cite for the assertion that the percentage of AA students in charters is "much higher" than DCPS, btw).

There are schools whose charter is to explicitly serve low-income kids. We're not talking about those charters. We're talking about charters that provide a challenging environment for mid- to upper-SES kids. Take Yu Ying for example: a) it takes an hour and 20 minutes to get there via public transportation from Anacostia; and b) Mandarin immersion provides that level of cultural alienation.

Finally, if you don't think that a school like KIPP doesn't signal to middle-class white families that they're not particularly desired, I don't know what to tell you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I forgot to list a third option: continue to open charters whose school culture alienates poor parents. If you want start a charter that is *guaranteed* to have the highest test scores in the city, open a "Pro-Gay Arabic Immersion PCS". Your FARM eligible student population should be around 1%.

WTF

Sure, I'll elaborate. The single most important factor in the success of a public charter school is the self-selection process in parents. The lottery is of course open to all, but in order to be picked in the lottery, you need to enroll in the lottery. So the first thing you do is locate your school somewhere that's difficult for poor people to get to. Then you erect cultural barriers to poor people applying.

The optimal "cultural barrier" would be to create a school that combines rationalist (i.e. atheist) teachings, maybe an early ages gay-friendly sex ed curriculum, and then some alienating immersion language component--say arabic immersion. I guarantee that the super-majority of applicants would come from high-SES households.

It's a proven model: http://www.dcpcsb.org/data/images/129-yuying_ap11-12.pdf

I appreciate satire as much as the next pseudo intellectual but it's not exactly fair to ding charters for their locations. They have to work with the building stock available. Most charters don't start off with an endowment of several million dollars needed to acquire a suitable parcel of zoned property located near a metro stop and then construct a school from scratch.

One would think it would be easier to acquire a zoned property in Barry Farm near the Anacostia Metro than at Catholic U. Lots of underutilized buildings EOTR. Maybe there's something else going on here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I forgot to list a third option: continue to open charters whose school culture alienates poor parents. If you want start a charter that is *guaranteed* to have the highest test scores in the city, open a "Pro-Gay Arabic Immersion PCS". Your FARM eligible student population should be around 1%.

WTF

Sure, I'll elaborate. The single most important factor in the success of a public charter school is the self-selection process in parents. The lottery is of course open to all, but in order to be picked in the lottery, you need to enroll in the lottery. So the first thing you do is locate your school somewhere that's difficult for poor people to get to. Then you erect cultural barriers to poor people applying.

The optimal "cultural barrier" would be to create a school that combines rationalist (i.e. atheist) teachings, maybe an early ages gay-friendly sex ed curriculum, and then some alienating immersion language component--say arabic immersion. I guarantee that the super-majority of applicants would come from high-SES households.

It's a proven model: http://www.dcpcsb.org/data/images/129-yuying_ap11-12.pdf

I appreciate satire as much as the next pseudo intellectual but it's not exactly fair to ding charters for their locations. They have to work with the building stock available. Most charters don't start off with an endowment of several million dollars needed to acquire a suitable parcel of zoned property located near a metro stop and then construct a school from scratch.

One would think it would be easier to acquire a zoned property in Barry Farm near the Anacostia Metro than at Catholic U. Lots of underutilized buildings EOTR. Maybe there's something else going on here.

Sure--lots of charters started in Ward 5, like Yu Ying, because there was space, and then they didn't want to move too far when they expanded to their permanent locations. I'm sure there are plenty of charters that started and ended up in Ward 8.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I forgot to list a third option: continue to open charters whose school culture alienates poor parents. If you want start a charter that is *guaranteed* to have the highest test scores in the city, open a "Pro-Gay Arabic Immersion PCS". Your FARM eligible student population should be around 1%.

WTF

Sure, I'll elaborate. The single most important factor in the success of a public charter school is the self-selection process in parents. The lottery is of course open to all, but in order to be picked in the lottery, you need to enroll in the lottery. So the first thing you do is locate your school somewhere that's difficult for poor people to get to. Then you erect cultural barriers to poor people applying.

The optimal "cultural barrier" would be to create a school that combines rationalist (i.e. atheist) teachings, maybe an early ages gay-friendly sex ed curriculum, and then some alienating immersion language component--say arabic immersion. I guarantee that the super-majority of applicants would come from high-SES households.

It's a proven model: http://www.dcpcsb.org/data/images/129-yuying_ap11-12.pdf

I appreciate satire as much as the next pseudo intellectual but it's not exactly fair to ding charters for their locations. They have to work with the building stock available. Most charters don't start off with an endowment of several million dollars needed to acquire a suitable parcel of zoned property located near a metro stop and then construct a school from scratch.

One would think it would be easier to acquire a zoned property in Barry Farm near the Anacostia Metro than at Catholic U. Lots of underutilized buildings EOTR. Maybe there's something else going on here.

One can think whatever they want. That's the point of a conspiracy theory, it doesn't necessarily have any basis in fact. Maybe - just maybe- Brookland is more centrally located than Anacostia and thus more likely to draw a more diverse student body. Maybe there was not a suitable facility available in Barry Farms. Keep tilting at windmills.

[Anonymous]

Hello, is this 911? I'd like to report a thread jacking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I get what you're saying, though you're cloaking something politically inappropriate in the language of insanity.

What you mean is, create a school that seems impossibly irrelevant to a typical lower middle class black family looking for high quality version of a meat-and-potatoes elementary/middle education, which is your mainstream DC charter consumer, with the winking knowledge that this irrelevance will allow it to be an educational refuge for high income families.

It's been stated on this board many different ways before. We know.

Problem with this logic is that the majority of charter schools in the district are the meat-and-potatoes high quality elementary/middle education programs that you suggest black, middle class families are looking for. The percentage of AA students in charters is much higher than in DCPS. Would you also say that those charters are trying to wink wink not appeal to white families? How about Roots PCS or Thurgood Marshall are they purposefully trying to create a school culture that is meant to EXCLUDE others?

Perhaps these schools cultures and specializations should be looked at more as school cultures and specializations than as a secret wink wink oh so evil way to carve out educational "refuge" unless that refuge happens to be from inadequate DCPS schools

Sure, but your observation that there are charters that are composed specifically to serve poor kids doesn't change the fact that the top-rated charters that *aren't* composed specifically to serve poor kids succeed or fail to the extent that they manage to reduce the number of poor applicants. (I'd like to see a cite for the assertion that the percentage of AA students in charters is "much higher" than DCPS, btw).

There are schools whose charter is to explicitly serve low-income kids. We're not talking about those charters. We're talking about charters that provide a challenging environment for mid- to upper-SES kids. Take Yu Ying for example: a) it takes an hour and 20 minutes to get there via public transportation from Anacostia; and b) Mandarin immersion provides that level of cultural alienation.

Finally, if you don't think that a school like KIPP doesn't signal to middle-class white families that they're not particularly desired, I don't know what to tell you.

From August 2013

"The overall picture in DC is that charter schools are disproportionately African-American. In a city that is just barely majority black, the percentage of black students in charter schools is 79%. In DCPS schools, the percentage is 69%."


http://greatergreatereducation.org/post/19691/dcs-most-diverse-charter-schools/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From August 2013

"The overall picture in DC is that charter schools are disproportionately African-American. In a city that is just barely majority black, the percentage of black students in charter schools is 79%. In DCPS schools, the percentage is 69%."


http://greatergreatereducation.org/post/19691/dcs-most-diverse-charter-schools/

That has more to do with the lack of charters west of Rock Creek Park than anything else.

[Anonymous]

So much for the conspiracy theories. Forty percent of charters are located in Wards 7 and 8.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From August 2013

"The overall picture in DC is that charter schools are disproportionately African-American. In a city that is just barely majority black, the percentage of black students in charter schools is 79%. In DCPS schools, the percentage is 69%."


http://greatergreatereducation.org/post/19691/dcs-most-diverse-charter-schools/

That has more to do with the lack of charters west of Rock Creek Park than anything else.

Umm...it has to do with the fact that the white population of DC is mostly happy with their DCPS schools.

[Anonymous]

I think many high-SES families would give serious consideration to certain types of charters even if they were relatively happy with the DCPS experience. BASIS is just one example.

[Anonymous]

Pp: are you saying that you wish certain types of charters would locate themselves in Ward 3 to provide close by alternatives to the neighborhood schools?

That takes the cake.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pp: are you saying that you wish certain types of charters would locate themselves in Ward 3 to provide close by alternatives to the neighborhood schools?

That takes the cake.

I'm not the pp, I'm an All New Poster! who lives near Friendship Hts.

Hell, yes, I say it's a smashing idea that appealing charters locate in ward 3. Instead of making pastry analogies, how about you spell out concretely why affluent white people should not live near schools with alternative curricula/pedagogy? I mean it -- don't say something like "if you have to ask ...:". Please provide actual reasoning.

We passed on Murch but I'd be intrigued by a creative minds-type approach within a bike ride of my address. Wouldn't cross town twice a day and suck up 2 hours of my life to choose that school in, say, woodridge or wherever Shaed is. But if it was near AU? Oh yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From August 2013

"The overall picture in DC is that charter schools are disproportionately African-American. In a city that is just barely majority black, the percentage of black students in charter schools is 79%. In DCPS schools, the percentage is 69%."


http://greatergreatereducation.org/post/19691/dcs-most-diverse-charter-schools/

That has more to do with the lack of charters west of Rock Creek Park than anything else.

Umm...it has to do with the fact that the white population of DC is mostly happy with their DCPS schools.

That's just dumb. The many people living in the furthest NW corner of the city are. Don't confuse that with "white people".

[Anonymous]

Why shouldn't there be charters in Ward 3 or anywhere else for that matter? Congress didn't pass a law designed with the goal of educationg only low income students through the charter system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is allowing a low-income or low-performing student to attend SH serve as an escape route? Seriously. In sll liklihood they will continue to live with a single parent in poverty, require multiple family supports, and ultimately drop out before graduating from HS. Very few will ever attend college. The odds are stacked.

The air is pretty thin up where you live, not enough oxygen. Or else you're just a condescending ass. Apparently it's completely escaped your attention that many poor parents care about their children's educations too - which is why they send them to OOB schools in the first place. You seem to be automatically assuming that all students who aren't performing at or above grade level are lower SES whereas all higher SES students are doing so. And while it's true that the higher SES students are born with advantages that set them up for success from the very outset, the public education system is nonetheless dedicated to giving all of them a chance. If you want an exclusive education, then pay for private school. Oh, what's that? You're not wealthy enough to afford it? Good. The private schools are just as determined to avoid you and your offspring as you are to avoid the poor. The difference is, they're putting their money where their mouths are and paying for private. You're just trying to get it for free. Try moving to the suburbs, you really don't belong in the city. Bumpkin.