Elementary School hopping and How much Choice is too much?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I also hate it when someone sells their house in my neighborhood and moves to a more ritzy one. Or when the same kind of people apply for a new job, and are hired, in order to get away from our horrible, no-account boss. There oughtta be a law against it, imo.

Your metaphor works only if your neighbor sells their house every year for 2-5 years or have long work histories of 1 year jobs.

I don't mind people trading up to go to a better school. A dear friend of mine is leaving our school next year because her child was offered a spot at their dream school. She feels very conflicted about it because her child has had a great year, but she would also be crazy not to take the spot. The churn that people are talking about is people who send their kids to different schools for several years running.

So what we need is a nanny state to prevent parents from making bad decisions. Maybe DCPS should hire judges to evaluate parents choices, along with their SES and educational background as relevant factors, and veto them if the Judge thinks the parents intent will result in harming the child. Sounds like democracy to me.

[Anonymous]

We did "school hop" last year so I will admit I am a bit sensitive to the accusations. We were lucky to get into one of the most sought-after elementary schools in DC. Where only a handful of spots were open to non-siblings last year. We weren't 100% sure about leaving our neighborhood school, and if we could have played it by ear for a few years we would have, but the way the lottery system works, you know the odds of being able to change schools at the point in time you decide you need to is so low, that you do it when you can, because you know you may never have that option again. Yes parents think in the long term, especially about education. And that, I think, is generally a good thing. Like for example we are not going to private elementary school, so we can afford college. Seems like a logical and responsible decision to make.

That said, I want to take issue with the term "daycare factories." I know this may come as a shock to some on DCUM, but preschool-aged children in daycares do not spend their time in exersaucers eating pureed food. Most daycare centers have robust "preschool" programs for children that age. Personally, my child has had a simply awful PK3 experience at this very popular elementary school. His daycare experience was about 100x better. The program's expectations were more age-appropriate, his teachers were kinder, he got four times (yes, four times) as much outdoor time per day, and he was excited about learning, rather than intimidated by all the demands of PK3. But we didn't pull him out because, again, lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I also hate it when someone sells their house in my neighborhood and moves to a more ritzy one. Or when the same kind of people apply for a new job, and are hired, in order to get away from our horrible, no-account boss. There oughtta be a law against it, imo.

Your metaphor works only if your neighbor sells their house every year for 2-5 years or have long work histories of 1 year jobs.

I don't mind people trading up to go to a better school. A dear friend of mine is leaving our school next year because her child was offered a spot at their dream school. She feels very conflicted about it because her child has had a great year, but she would also be crazy not to take the spot. The churn that people are talking about is people who send their kids to different schools for several years running.

So what we need is a nanny state to prevent parents from making bad decisions. Maybe DCPS should hire judges to evaluate parents choices, along with their SES and educational background as relevant factors, and veto them if the Judge thinks the parents intent will result in harming the child. Sounds like democracy to me.

This is stupid. You can lament bad decisions parents make (about a lot of things) without any thought of creating some government structure to vet those decisions. You sounds like you are gunning for a fight with some straw man you've invented in your head.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I also hate it when someone sells their house in my neighborhood and moves to a more ritzy one. Or when the same kind of people apply for a new job, and are hired, in order to get away from our horrible, no-account boss. There oughtta be a law against it, imo.

Your metaphor works only if your neighbor sells their house every year for 2-5 years or have long work histories of 1 year jobs.

I don't mind people trading up to go to a better school. A dear friend of mine is leaving our school next year because her child was offered a spot at their dream school. She feels very conflicted about it because her child has had a great year, but she would also be crazy not to take the spot. The churn that people are talking about is people who send their kids to different schools for several years running.

So what we need is a nanny state to prevent parents from making bad decisions. Maybe DCPS should hire judges to evaluate parents choices, along with their SES and educational background as relevant factors, and veto them if the Judge thinks the parents intent will result in harming the child. Sounds like democracy to me.

This is stupid. You can lament bad decisions parents make (about a lot of things) without any thought of creating some government structure to vet those decisions. You sounds like you are gunning for a fight with some straw man you've invented in your head.

It is no more stupid than the premise, which is in itself a straw man.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I also hate it when someone sells their house in my neighborhood and moves to a more ritzy one. Or when the same kind of people apply for a new job, and are hired, in order to get away from our horrible, no-account boss. There oughtta be a law against it, imo.

Your metaphor works only if your neighbor sells their house every year for 2-5 years or have long work histories of 1 year jobs.

I don't mind people trading up to go to a better school. A dear friend of mine is leaving our school next year because her child was offered a spot at their dream school. She feels very conflicted about it because her child has had a great year, but she would also be crazy not to take the spot. The churn that people are talking about is people who send their kids to different schools for several years running.

So what we need is a nanny state to prevent parents from making bad decisions. Maybe DCPS should hire judges to evaluate parents choices, along with their SES and educational background as relevant factors, and veto them if the Judge thinks the parents intent will result in harming the child. Sounds like democracy to me.

Bureaucracy is not the answer. Better information for parents about school quality and the effects of school hopping are!

[Anonymous]

I don't have much to add, other than to say thank you for summarizing what is increasingly my sadness, as I hear from parent after parent at our solid but not highly-sought-after neighborhood PK3 of their intention to, next year, lottery out to a school with a more assured high school trajectory. Awesome parents, awesome kids, but the parents' involvement has been tempered by their awareness that they will not commit to the school long-term.

For our part, we have attended meetings on Ward 4 high school reform, and have committed ourselves to be part of the improvement process so that our child(ren) can be part of an engaged, zoned community through high school. But sometimes it feels like, "for what?" Because, strangely and unfortunately, I wonder if we'd have a better likelihood of continuity of kids and parents from one grade to the next, if we would revise our family's core value of "shopping local" (neighborhood school, neighborhood coffee shop, etc), and go somewhere more "desirable," within the bounds of other factors like a non-insane commute. In which case, I'd just want to get this over sooner than later, to "buy" us more years of building relationships among our child(ren)s' cohorts.

Important food for thought. Thank you for raising this point.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why are you surprised PP? Are you faulting patents for considering the long-term? Those families would likely move out of DC if they didn't go to Deal.

Not the PP, but you don't make sense. Latin and DCI are easily more preferable to Deal. In a few minds, even Hardy is.

Deal is a small town of middle schoolers, and some of us have read "Lord of the Flies."

[Anonymous]

Yeah, we are zoned for deal and I am worried we will have no alternative. I think it's probably a great school if you have an easily conforming child, but some.of us don't. And from my own middle school experience... The combination of affluence, conformity and puberty can be downright poisonous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a necessary side effect of choice in the charter system. If families can't vote with their feet for ANY reason (not just what OP thinks is valid), you don't set up the market competition which is supposed to improve and weed out schools.

Honestly I agree that this change is disruptive, but i find the whole charter system screwy and likely discriminatory b/c navigating the lottery and logistics requires fairly savvy parents.

This. Don't set things up to blame pageants, when they are simply doing what the structure of the school system is encouraging then to do. The real problem is that it is apparently acceptable for there to be sub par schools.

[Anonymous]

Except that many of the "sub par" schools aren't. The perception of them being sub par is what drives so much if the churn.

[Anonymous]

It's costless to the moving family so they move and don't think of the broader school community. Two families in my child's PK3 class took spaces knowing they would be moving by December. Those slots could have gone to kids who were committed to the school (or at the very least committed to finishing out the school year). Selfish behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: It's costless to the moving family so they move and don't think of the broader school community. Two families in my child's PK3 class took spaces knowing they would be moving by December. Those slots could have gone to kids who were committed to the school (or at the very least committed to finishing out the school year). Selfish behavior.

But those seats can just as easily be backfilled with 'committed' people. Or in the meantime there is a lower teacher-student ratio.

We live in a transient society and a particularly transient city within that society. People change jobs, cities and everything else much more frequently than a generation or two ago. On this I think people need to accept what they cannot change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Except that many of the "sub par" schools aren't. The perception of them being sub par is what drives so much if the churn.

The problem with your argument is that you don't understand the facts. The vast majority of DCPS schools have been shockingly sub-par for decades. Now, they are merely sub-par, and that's because of the direct competition from charters.

Charter schools are what makes DCPS try harder. Even if you don't attend one, you should still thank them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are you surprised PP? Are you faulting patents for considering the long-term? Those families would likely move out of DC if they didn't go to Deal.

Not the PP, but you don't make sense. Latin and DCI are easily more preferable to Deal. In a few minds, even Hardy is.

Deal is a small town of middle schoolers, and some of us have read "Lord of the Flies."

I have never heard of anyone preferring DCI or Latin to Deal. If true, I imagine it's a very small amount of people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't have much to add, other than to say thank you for summarizing what is increasingly my sadness, as I hear from parent after parent at our solid but not highly-sought-after neighborhood PK3 of their intention to, next year, lottery out to a school with a more assured high school trajectory. Awesome parents, awesome kids, but the parents' involvement has been tempered by their awareness that they will not commit to the school long-term.

For our part, we have attended meetings on Ward 4 high school reform, and have committed ourselves to be part of the improvement process so that our child(ren) can be part of an engaged, zoned community through high school. But sometimes it feels like, "for what?" Because, strangely and unfortunately, I wonder if we'd have a better likelihood of continuity of kids and parents from one grade to the next, if we would revise our family's core value of "shopping local" (neighborhood school, neighborhood coffee shop, etc), and go somewhere more "desirable," within the bounds of other factors like a non-insane commute. In which case, I'd just want to get this over sooner than later, to "buy" us more years of building relationships among our child(ren)s' cohorts.

Important food for thought. Thank you for raising this point.

You're putting too much emotion and not enough sense into this, and I find it annoying. Your choice of schools is not a referendum on your character or an expression of your "core value of shopping local" (wtf?). It is about finding the best school and neighborhood for your family. Nobody has any obligation to "commit" to a school zone. I find it laughably hypocritical that you have to turn yourself into so many knots to admit that your true core value is the best school you can find, not "shopping local."