DC's Progessives and Liberals Choose Real Estate Over Kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just don't think this is a very good article. I thought it was going to be about real ways to make our public schools more equitable. Instead it's a silly pro-charter article. In my (almost totally gentrified) neighborhood, the local school is still all poor and all black with kids from father east enrolled. All the well off (mostly white) people go to the three charters nearby (or those farther away). They certainly aren't going for the diversity. Rather, they are trying to avoid it. I don't live in the same DC as this writer. Rich people welcome the charters because they offer more opportunities for exclusion. Very silly argument is all I have to say.

The equity reports comparing DCPS and DC PCS say otherwise - there is actually more diversity in charters than there is in DCPS.

"Diversity" doesn't mean the same thing when talking about public education as it does in ordinary English. "Diverse" means poor and minority. Charters might have kids from a wider variety of backgrounds, but DCPS is more "diverse."

Everyone knows that when anyone within this forum cites their school choice is based on "diversity" that it means "choosing a school with more white kids". The lies these <strike>liberals</strike> racists tell themselves to justify would be laughable if they weren't so terrifying. The amount of racism in this city is absolutely horrifying. Nothing has driven this point home more strongly for me than conversations I've had related to enrolling my child in school this year. It's unbelievable. The schools do not make we want to leave DC at all, but the blatantly racist people who purport themselves as liberals definitely do.

Great. You want to antagonize liberals who generally support civil rights and social safety nets that benefit many minorities and also whites. It is not racist to not want to be an only at a school. It is simply evolutionary. I wager black parents would prefer their kids not be onlys too.It is also not racist to want a school that offers a rigorous education and a safe environment for your kids. It is just good parenting.

What exactly is your point???

It doesn't really sound like you're much of an ally, actually. It sounds like you are more interested in your own comfort zone than in hearing the PP's frustration.

A better way to express your "general support" would be to ask the PP why she feels that way, what her experiences have been, etc. rather than dismissing her experiences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just don't think this is a very good article. I thought it was going to be about real ways to make our public schools more equitable. Instead it's a silly pro-charter article. In my (almost totally gentrified) neighborhood, the local school is still all poor and all black with kids from father east enrolled. All the well off (mostly white) people go to the three charters nearby (or those farther away). They certainly aren't going for the diversity. Rather, they are trying to avoid it. I don't live in the same DC as this writer. Rich people welcome the charters because they offer more opportunities for exclusion. Very silly argument is all I have to say.

The equity reports comparing DCPS and DC PCS say otherwise - there is actually more diversity in charters than there is in DCPS.

"Diversity" doesn't mean the same thing when talking about public education as it does in ordinary English. "Diverse" means poor and minority. Charters might have kids from a wider variety of backgrounds, but DCPS is more "diverse."

Everyone knows that when anyone within this forum cites their school choice is based on "diversity" that it means "choosing a school with more white kids". The lies these <strike>liberals</strike> racists tell themselves to justify would be laughable if they weren't so terrifying. The amount of racism in this city is absolutely horrifying. Nothing has driven this point home more strongly for me than conversations I've had related to enrolling my child in school this year. It's unbelievable. The schools do not make we want to leave DC at all, but the blatantly racist people who purport themselves as liberals definitely do.

Great. You want to antagonize liberals who generally support civil rights and social safety nets that benefit many minorities and also whites. It is not racist to not want to be an only at a school. It is simply evolutionary. I wager black parents would prefer their kids not be onlys too.It is also not racist to want a school that offers a rigorous education and a safe environment for your kids. It is just good parenting.

What exactly is your point???

It doesn't really sound like you're much of an ally, actually. It sounds like you are more interested in your own comfort zone than in hearing the PP's frustration.

A better way to express your "general support" would be to ask the PP why she feels that way, what her experiences have been, etc. rather than dismissing her experiences.

Does DCPS get its PR firm to handle these boards or is some of this stuff from the Washington Teachers Union?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"I think your argument that charters offer more exclusion is bogus since our charter is very diverse despite offering a very rigorous curricula."

See, this is liberal delusion at its best. The charters that white people in D.C. use may have more dark skinned kids, but they still lack economic diversity. Parents living on the edge and working several minimum wage jobs just aren't going to have computer and broadband access to research and apply for many of the better charters, and then drive their kids across town to get them there.

It doesn't sound like you're actually in DC or have any familiarity with the schools here.

Every charter discussed on this board has more economic diversity than any of the DCPS schools. The charters that aren't discussed here are the ones with majority lower income students, like KIPP, DC Prep or Ceasar Chavez.

I agree that there's hypocrisy when it comes to liberal values and education, but if "liberal delusion" is your only argument it's falling flat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"I think your argument that charters offer more exclusion is bogus since our charter is very diverse despite offering a very rigorous curricula."

See, this is liberal delusion at its best. The charters that white people in D.C. use may have more dark skinned kids, but they still lack economic diversity. Parents living on the edge and working several minimum wage jobs just aren't going to have computer and broadband access to research and apply for many of the better charters, and then drive their kids across town to get them there.

It doesn't sound like you're actually in DC or have any familiarity with the schools here.

Every charter discussed on this board has more economic diversity than any of the DCPS schools. The charters that aren't discussed here are the ones with majority lower income students, like KIPP, DC Prep or Ceasar Chavez.

I agree that there's hypocrisy when it comes to liberal values and education, but if "liberal delusion" is your only argument it's falling flat.

Hard to believe that the subject hasn't been turned back to "all the cars I see dropping off kids at charters have Marlyand tags." That's a line DC's liberals and progressives love to hear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"I think your argument that charters offer more exclusion is bogus since our charter is very diverse despite offering a very rigorous curricula."

See, this is liberal delusion at its best. The charters that white people in D.C. use may have more dark skinned kids, but they still lack economic diversity. Parents living on the edge and working several minimum wage jobs just aren't going to have computer and broadband access to research and apply for many of the better charters, and then drive their kids across town to get them there.

Typical conservative delusions.

You should look into the website that shows which neighborhoods OOB students are coming from. Shepherd has kids traveling all the way from Annacostia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"I think your argument that charters offer more exclusion is bogus since our charter is very diverse despite offering a very rigorous curricula."

See, this is liberal delusion at its best. The charters that white people in D.C. use may have more dark skinned kids, but they still lack economic diversity. Parents living on the edge and working several minimum wage jobs just aren't going to have computer and broadband access to research and apply for many of the better charters, and then drive their kids across town to get them there.

It doesn't sound like you're actually in DC or have any familiarity with the schools here.

Every charter discussed on this board has more economic diversity than any of the DCPS schools. The charters that aren't discussed here are the ones with majority lower income students, like KIPP, DC Prep or Ceasar Chavez.

I agree that there's hypocrisy when it comes to liberal values and education, but if "liberal delusion" is your only argument it's falling flat.

Again, you're defining diversity as where the rich kids go, with a smattering of poor kids. Not that place where the poor kids are stuck by circumstance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"I think your argument that charters offer more exclusion is bogus since our charter is very diverse despite offering a very rigorous curricula."

See, this is liberal delusion at its best. The charters that white people in D.C. use may have more dark skinned kids, but they still lack economic diversity. Parents living on the edge and working several minimum wage jobs just aren't going to have computer and broadband access to research and apply for many of the better charters, and then drive their kids across town to get them there.

It doesn't sound like you're actually in DC or have any familiarity with the schools here.

Every charter discussed on this board has more economic diversity than any of the DCPS schools. The charters that aren't discussed here are the ones with majority lower income students, like KIPP, DC Prep or Ceasar Chavez.

I agree that there's hypocrisy when it comes to liberal values and education, but if "liberal delusion" is your only argument it's falling flat.

Again, you're defining diversity as where the rich kids go, with a smattering of poor kids. Not that place where the poor kids are stuck by circumstance.

Leave it to DCUM for someone on permanent "Speakers' Corner" (but anonymous, natch) to define "diversity" as a very narrowly defined type of "uniformity." And if you don't agree there's a moral imperative to seek out this kind of "diversity" in public education for your kids, then you're a bigot. Yeeeeesh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"I think your argument that charters offer more exclusion is bogus since our charter is very diverse despite offering a very rigorous curricula."

See, this is liberal delusion at its best. The charters that white people in D.C. use may have more dark skinned kids, but they still lack economic diversity. Parents living on the edge and working several minimum wage jobs just aren't going to have computer and broadband access to research and apply for many of the better charters, and then drive their kids across town to get them there.

It doesn't sound like you're actually in DC or have any familiarity with the schools here.

Every charter discussed on this board has more economic diversity than any of the DCPS schools. The charters that aren't discussed here are the ones with majority lower income students, like KIPP, DC Prep or Ceasar Chavez.

I agree that there's hypocrisy when it comes to liberal values and education, but if "liberal delusion" is your only argument it's falling flat.

Again, you're defining diversity as where the rich kids go, with a smattering of poor kids. Not that place where the poor kids are stuck by circumstance.

Again, you're displaying the dearth of your knowledge of DC public and public charter schools. Charter schools are required to do active marketing and recruiting. They are required to hold blind lotteries for admission. One of the most sought after charters in the city, Yu Ying, is 41% black, 10% Asian, 27% white, 6% hispanic and 16% multiracial. ( http://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/230/ ) Do you really think the only reason parents wait overnight outside Yu Ying's gates to enter their lottery is because all the families who go there are wealthy?

You sound like someone living in a bubble of age or geography. You're either 15 years old or you've never (or only recently) set foot in DC. The most specious thing about your argument is the way it mirrors the thinking of people who prefer schools segregated by class and zip code.

I ask in all seriousness, was that your intent?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"I think your argument that charters offer more exclusion is bogus since our charter is very diverse despite offering a very rigorous curricula."

See, this is liberal delusion at its best. The charters that white people in D.C. use may have more dark skinned kids, but they still lack economic diversity. Parents living on the edge and working several minimum wage jobs just aren't going to have computer and broadband access to research and apply for many of the better charters, and then drive their kids across town to get them there.

It doesn't sound like you're actually in DC or have any familiarity with the schools here.

Every charter discussed on this board has more economic diversity than any of the DCPS schools. The charters that aren't discussed here are the ones with majority lower income students, like KIPP, DC Prep or Ceasar Chavez.

I agree that there's hypocrisy when it comes to liberal values and education, but if "liberal delusion" is your only argument it's falling flat.

Again, you're defining diversity as where the rich kids go, with a smattering of poor kids. Not that place where the poor kids are stuck by circumstance.

I'm not really sure what your point is. DCPS has a lot of low income students. Close to 30% of DC kids live in poverty. The 30% is not distributed evenly across the city. It's concentrated in some areas and away from other areas. Those kids are not going to private school unless their parents are really motivated to track down vouchers and scholarships. They may go to charters, but like as not, they are going to DCPS with a lot of other low income kids.

Diversity would be, by any reasonable person, defined as a mixture of students from various economic backgrounds, various races, a mixture of boys and girls, different religions, different national origins, different family structures, etc. In DC, neighborhood diversity exists at some charters and because DC remains a relatively segregated city, by definition if you have children from Wards 1, 2, 3, 4 and 8 (as my child did, in PK3 at a charter), you have neighborhood diversity accompanied by a fair amount of economic diversity as well. Diversity here is often code for "has white students" or "has wealthy students" because large percentages of students attending DCPS are neither white nor wealthy. This is a district where we measure racial diversity by how many white kids, not like my home district where we measured diversity by how many black kids. It's the racial make up of the city, not the PP being an asshole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just don't think this is a very good article. I thought it was going to be about real ways to make our public schools more equitable. Instead it's a silly pro-charter article. In my (almost totally gentrified) neighborhood, the local school is still all poor and all black with kids from father east enrolled. All the well off (mostly white) people go to the three charters nearby (or those farther away). They certainly aren't going for the diversity. Rather, they are trying to avoid it. I don't live in the same DC as this writer. Rich people welcome the charters because they offer more opportunities for exclusion. Very silly argument is all I have to say.

The equity reports comparing DCPS and DC PCS say otherwise - there is actually more diversity in charters than there is in DCPS.

"Diversity" doesn't mean the same thing when talking about public education as it does in ordinary English. "Diverse" means poor and minority. Charters might have kids from a wider variety of backgrounds, but DCPS is more "diverse."

Everyone knows that when anyone within this forum cites their school choice is based on "diversity" that it means "choosing a school with more white kids". The lies these <strike>liberals</strike> racists tell themselves to justify would be laughable if they weren't so terrifying. The amount of racism in this city is absolutely horrifying. Nothing has driven this point home more strongly for me than conversations I've had related to enrolling my child in school this year. It's unbelievable. The schools do not make we want to leave DC at all, but the blatantly racist people who purport themselves as liberals definitely do.

Great. You want to antagonize liberals who generally support civil rights and social safety nets that benefit many minorities and also whites. It is not racist to not want to be an only at a school. It is simply evolutionary. I wager black parents would prefer their kids not be onlys too.It is also not racist to want a school that offers a rigorous education and a safe environment for your kids. It is just good parenting.

What exactly is your point???

This reads like: how dare you question me? I have your best interests at heart.

NP. Bingo. It's passionate obfuscation. "In general, I vote to help out poor people. Therefore, I've earned the right to keep them far away from my kids."

[Anonymous]

"Again, you're displaying the dearth of your knowledge of DC public and public charter schools. Charter schools are required to do active marketing and recruiting. They are required to hold blind lotteries for admission. One of the most sought after charters in the city, Yu Ying, is 41% black, 10% Asian, 27% white, 6% hispanic and 16% multiracial. ( http://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/230/ ) Do you really think the only reason parents wait overnight outside Yu Ying's gates to enter their lottery is because all the families who go there are wealthy?

You sound like someone living in a bubble of age or geography. You're either 15 years old or you've never (or only recently) set foot in DC. The most specious thing about your argument is the way it mirrors the thinking of people who prefer schools segregated by class and zip code.

I ask in all seriousness, was that your intent?"


I don't know who you're talking to - I wrote the comment about liberal delusion and have not written anything else in this thread. FWIW, I've lived in DC for decades, have kids in DCPS, and vote Dem. That doesn't change the fact that the very stats you cite prove my point - 41% black is far less (close to half) of the percentage of black kids in school in DC. If you know anything about poverty, you would know that the kids who are homeless or living below the poverty level don't have parents who have access to the internet to apply for a lottery, let alone the time and wherewithal to do it. They are not reached by Yu Ying's (or other "top" charters) outreach efforts, in part because they probably are functionally illiterate. The "diversity" that you and upper middle class liberals seek by standing in line for a charter lottery is not true social-economic diversity, as the very process of getting into a charter is one that excludes the poorest kids in this city.

[Anonymous]

PP-you are simply wrong. It seems you want to go back to no charters and simply neighborhood schools with no choices unless you are rich enough to go to private school or homeschool. How dumb is that??

At least now poor kids do have choices. And all DC libraries have free internet access as well as librarians happy to help folks.

[Anonymous]

How many national union people are on these boards? It seems like national talking points only slightly tailored to DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Again, you're displaying the dearth of your knowledge of DC public and public charter schools. Charter schools are required to do active marketing and recruiting. They are required to hold blind lotteries for admission. One of the most sought after charters in the city, Yu Ying, is 41% black, 10% Asian, 27% white, 6% hispanic and 16% multiracial. ( http://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/230/ ) Do you really think the only reason parents wait overnight outside Yu Ying's gates to enter their lottery is because all the families who go there are wealthy?

You sound like someone living in a bubble of age or geography. You're either 15 years old or you've never (or only recently) set foot in DC. The most specious thing about your argument is the way it mirrors the thinking of people who prefer schools segregated by class and zip code.

I ask in all seriousness, was that your intent?"


I don't know who you're talking to - I wrote the comment about liberal delusion and have not written anything else in this thread. FWIW, I've lived in DC for decades, have kids in DCPS, and vote Dem. That doesn't change the fact that the very stats you cite prove my point - 41% black is far less (close to half) of the percentage of black kids in school in DC. If you know anything about poverty, you would know that the kids who are homeless or living below the poverty level don't have parents who have access to the internet to apply for a lottery, let alone the time and wherewithal to do it. They are not reached by Yu Ying's (or other "top" charters) outreach efforts, in part because they probably are functionally illiterate. The "diversity" that you and upper middle class liberals seek by standing in line for a charter lottery is not true social-economic diversity, as the very process of getting into a charter is one that excludes the poorest kids in this city.

All right, fine, so you've decided to define "social-economic diversity" in public education as functionally illiterate students. Everyone else seeks a different kind of diversity as a good thing to have in a school. Go ahead and choose to send your kids to a school full of illiterate kids, if that's what you want to do. Everyone else with a choice will send their kids elsewhere, hopefully for them to a school with a quilt full of different kids of people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
This debate has been done so many times on here it is not funny. It is about the families of the kids in a school. How do you ensure a big enough percentage of kids in a school come to school every day ready to learn from a family that has high expectations? One way to do that is by neighborhood another way to do that is by creating a school like a charter where families self select through competing for scarce seats and another is the OOB process where it takes a significant family commitment to get your child across town every day.

I have no opposition to mixed housing created by building affordable housing in neighborhoods with currently successful schools. But the research shows that a school needs to have a certain percentage of prepared kids for all children (high and low SES) to thrive.

I will not apologize for prioritizing my children's educational. Nobody should have to. We have some chicken/egg problems to solve but they certainly won't be solved by pretending you can force parents to sacrifice their children's education for the greater good.

+1

People always talk about closing the gap by creating schools where the poorest attend with the richest (or the kids from the most educated families). But I don't see discussed the question of, "At what point do the low performing kids start to bring down the education of the high performing kids?" What ratio should we be shooting for? Because if you did things equally across DC (city-wide, location-blind lottery), it seems to me the top schools would go down in quality, the rich people exodus would begin, and the system would enter freefall. This was the elephant in the room for me in connection with the recent This American Life show, at least in Part 1 in the discussion of Fergusson, MO. So, I ask sincerely, what does the research show is the ideal percentage of low income students added into a high performing school where those kids benefit but not to the detriment of the high performing kids? And what's the tipping point where the high performing kids bail and the school becomes worse? That question needs to be answered to the satisfaction of the liberal parents you hope to sway here.