Today's Post OpEd from DCPS consultants

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree. Would like to see where the 50% figure comes from.

Also. Here is the rub. The authors seem happy for many schools in DC to remain almost entirely full of poor and minority kids. They are not fighting those schools. They are fighting against schools that have become more than 50% middle class.

Truth is, the minority parents who historically have rejected their neighborhood schools and placed their kids Into OOB schools are the more functional and ambitious families who would actually improve their neighborhood schools if they didn't have the OOB. But that would be a tougher argument to make than limiting white middle class access to their inboundary school

The authors themselves said they have "given up" on making any change on Ward 5 and 8. They are not interested in improving schools and diversity across the city.

[Anonymous]

Agree with the poster who pointed out that Petrilli moved to Bethesda to avoid diverse schools. So many educational "consultants" won't put their own kids in the type of schools they are advocating for which makes their opinions hollow on some level.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So what I gathered from this article is that DCPS has decided...

You do realize that none of these people work for DCPS? Petrilli wrote a book about diverse schools, so that's very much where he is coming from.

http://www.amazon.com/Diverse-Schools-Dilemma-Parents-Socioeconomically-ebook/dp/B009F32Z2E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390756111&sr=8-1&keywords=michael+petrilli

This is an opinion article by interested parties who have a good deal of knowledge and experience about these issues. They are trying to influence the process, yes. But they are, as far as I can tell, not in any way an official part of any of the organizations that will be deciding this. Trust me, DCPS, DME, OSSE, etc will be very careful about not putting any final decisions out until after the primary, and probably after the general election in November. There is no way they are going to make any contentious decisions right before the election.

The charters typically have far more diversity in them than most DCPS schools, so why drag any discussion of charters into the mix when discussing lack of diversity in DCPS?

[Anonymous]

Check @michaelpetrilli also

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree with the poster who pointed out that Petrilli moved to Bethesda to avoid diverse schools. So many educational "consultants" won't put their own kids in the type of schools they are advocating for which makes their opinions hollow on some level.

His twitter feed said this:

@MichaelPetrilli: @EYBSimmons @WeinDC @RickKahlenberg That's true, and there's probably nothing that can be done now to diversify schools in Wards 3, 7, & 8.

[Anonymous]

Hopefully they will separately address boundaries in the wards not affected by the controlled choice zones, to alleviate overcrowding at some schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So what I gathered from this article is that DCPS has decided...

You do realize that none of these people work for DCPS? Petrilli wrote a book about diverse schools, so that's very much where he is coming from.

http://www.amazon.com/Diverse-Schools-Dilemma-Parents-Socioeconomically-ebook/dp/B009F32Z2E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1390756111&sr=8-1&keywords=michael+petrilli

This is an opinion article by interested parties who have a good deal of knowledge and experience about these issues. They are trying to influence the process, yes. But they are, as far as I can tell, not in any way an official part of any of the organizations that will be deciding this. Trust me, DCPS, DME, OSSE, etc will be very careful about not putting any final decisions out until after the primary, and probably after the general election in November. There is no way they are going to make any contentious decisions right before the election.

The charters typically have far more diversity in them than most DCPS schools, so why drag any discussion of charters into the mix when discussing lack of diversity in DCPS?

There are so few white kids in the DC Charter schools ( far less than the percentage in DCPS ) that the NAeP tests can't even report their scores as a subgroup. Not sure about the percentage of middle class kids vs. poor though. Anybody? Not sure what the point is here. Maybe KIPP is allowed to have 70% poor kids but Yu Ying is not allowed to have 70% non-poor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are times when I think our politicians want a city where young rich people spend a few years paying taxes and then flee when they have kids so we have to spend any money improving schools for them. New young people take there place and we rinse and repeat.

San Francisco. And on a lesser scale, Seattle. It works, it's most certainly a viable model.

(but you'll also need plenty of returning empty ne$ter$ who love theater plus many more child-free-forever (not necessarily "young" though) singles and couples. Many of these <<----- individuals are gay males, not not all. Seattle's full of "child-free" artistes in their 40s-60s who aren't gay and whose going out to eat budget rivals private school tuition)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree with the poster who pointed out that Petrilli moved to Bethesda to avoid diverse schools. So many educational "consultants" won't put their own kids in the type of schools they are advocating for which makes their opinions hollow on some level.

Hollow is an understatement. It's not hollow, it's wildly hypocritical! "This isn't good enough for my kids, but I"m going to advocate it being the rule for your kids"??? No one who is on record as having not valued diversity gets to change the rules in the name of improving the same diversity for others.

[Anonymous]

While it is true that some charters are mostly AA and have little diversity, that is not at all true of the best ones.

For example Latin, Yu Ying, Basis, Capital City, Creative Minds, Mundo Verde, and many others are far more diverse than typical DCPS schools are, with significant percentages white, asian, et cetera.

There are also a ton of DCPS schools which are 99% AA.

[Anonymous]

What's interesting to me is how this would work in reality on Capitol Hill, which has long been the place for folk east of the river to use OOB -- our schools are not just lopsided because if gentrification, but also because the OOB population is all but 100% AA. Didn't see how the "zone" would approach this. And if the way to achieve their magical diversity is to guarantee FARM slots in higher SES schools, why is Ward 3 exempt? Seems like people WoTP are really suffering from a lack of diversity in their schools!

These idiots want to run all middle class families into Ward 3 and the suburbs. They should be tarred and feathered, in a nice twist on their 21st century myopism.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think 50% mandatory low-SES/FARMs is too high for SES families... many high-SES families will bail DC schools.

I think a goal of 30% low-SES in each grade may keep high-SES families.

It does seem like the consultants have not spoken with any high-SES DC parents to see if their theories would fly.

The are operating in a vaccum. So silly.

I agree with this. 50% is way too high. 30/35 sounds right.

[Anonymous]

It's occurred to me that these attempts to artificially economically integrate a very small territory ( a few schools in a few wards ) will actual increase diversity and integration on a large scale ( the entire city ) when middle class families once again leave the city on a grand scale to achieve some certainty in their school quality.

Why do these policy makers want to impose some artificial threshold of poor children at Brent when the inboundary neighborhood has very few poor children---same as ward 3 and Wood Acres Bethesda. Seems housing policy is a better way to work on economic integration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's occurred to me that these attempts to artificially economically integrate a very small territory ( a few schools in a few wards ) will actual increase diversity and integration on a large scale ( the entire city ) when middle class families once again leave the city on a grand scale to achieve some certainty in their school quality.

Why do these policy makers want to impose some artificial threshold of poor children at Brent when the inboundary neighborhood has very few poor children---same as ward 3 and Wood Acres Bethesda. Seems housing policy is a better way to work on economic integration.

*decrease

[Anonymous]

Middle class families will leave. Period. As one of the author's neighbors, he might want check with his demographic before speaking out on our behalf. What an idiot...