Why is Oyster Legal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain how it is legal for Oyster, with all its special programs and benefits, to be a neighborhood school that only lets OOB kids in by lottery? Especially with Oyster being located in a largely white neighborhood? How is this not just one big violation of Brown v. Board of education and or discrimination laws. From where I sit, a specialized school like Oyster should be equally available to all students within a district, not just to those living in an exclusive neighborhood.

The process of admitting from two OOB lists - one for native Spanish speakers and one for native English -- seems like it is guaranteed to largely keep African-American students out. Most of OOB slots are going to go to Hispanic kids while the English speakers slots are all going to be filled with in-bounds white kids.

Shouldn't Oyster be open to all on an equal basis (maybe still with two lotteries, one for native Spanish and one for Native English).

Has no one tried to make this argument to the school district? What is their response?

While I understand what you mean, my feeling when I read your post was, "good luck with that...." The basis for school allocation all across the country has been the neighborhood school district. It's not just Oyster that is a good school available to kids who live in an "exclusive neighborhood"; you could make the same argument citywide about the crappy schools v. the good schools. Why is it that a good school like Janney shouldn't be available equally to all children in the city? This is the argument that leads to open enrollment across a district w/ busing. While I see the pros of busing (having lived thru it as a child), it's clear that there are great cons as well, and without wanting to really open a whole debate about busing, it seems like a model that is falling away.

For better or worse, most school districts have moved to a pull model of integration instead of the old push model, i.e. busing. In the pull model, special programs are used to prevent white flight and lure kids who are of a class which is not a majority in a school. In fact, one could argue that Oyster is creating a more diversity, because what would probably a mostly white school otherwise, now has a higher non-white population and a higher FARMS rate, than if it didn't have the immersion program. It's the same in other districts -- it's no surprise that the admission-by-application magnets at Blair, Eastern Middle School and Takoma Park are all in less affluent, more diverse parts of MoCo. I believe that DC never developed this pull model of integration because it was so overwhelmingly African-American, and because many parents fled to the nearby suburbs rather than deal with integrating schools.

What I find puzzling is why Rhee doesn't move more quickly to set up special programs in the Af/Am parts of the city which would pull more white students. Where these do exist, they don't seem to attract students. For example, Banneker is always a well-rated school on the Newsweek lists, yet it's still largely Af-Am.

Immersion programs need native speakers to succeed. So, it's hard to disentangle language from race sometimes. There won't be as many white or African-American native spanish speakers. There won't be as many Latino native French speakers, but maybe more white or African-American. But, language is not race per se, and the logic of Brown and other discrimination cases depends on the notion of "protected class," and a speaker of a certain language is not a classically protected class (unless maybe you use language to get at the idea of ethnicity). I'm sure there are plenty of lawyers on here to jump into explain more.

Also, these days school districts are not reflective of race per se either. While it's true that wealthier areas are often more white, it's no longer true that explicit property covenants are used to prevent owners from selling to minorities. We have neighborhoods and anyone of any color who can buy or rent in the neighborhood can go to school there. This is the case with Oyster, in fact. I know many parents who have rented in the Oyster district so their kids can go to school there. In fact, one African-American mom I know did just that. The in-boundary slots are not filled with "white kids," they are filled with in-boundary kids, who may be white or may not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

What I find puzzling is why Rhee doesn't move more quickly to set up special programs in the Af/Am parts of the city which would pull more white students. Where these do exist, they don't seem to attract students. For example, Banneker is always a well-rated school on the Newsweek lists, yet it's still largely Af-Am.

I think Rhee has set up lots of special programs in AA parts of the city -- there's Reggio at Scott Montgomery, and bilingual and immersion programs at a number of schools, plus new STEM schools etc . . . The difference between these programs and the ones at Takoma/Blair etc . . . is that the programs serve a mixture of kids who apply OOB and kids who live in the neighborhood and attend as a matter of right.

For whatever reasons, white parents generally are quite unwilling to put their children into programs where they will be the only, or one of a few white children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What I find puzzling is why Rhee doesn't move more quickly to set up special programs in the Af/Am parts of the city which would pull more white students. Where these do exist, they don't seem to attract students. For example, Banneker is always a well-rated school on the Newsweek lists, yet it's still largely Af-Am.

I think Rhee has set up lots of special programs in AA parts of the city -- there's Reggio at Scott Montgomery, and bilingual and immersion programs at a number of schools, plus new STEM schools etc . . . The difference between these programs and the ones at Takoma/Blair etc . . . is that the programs serve a mixture of kids who apply OOB and kids who live in the neighborhood and attend as a matter of right.

For whatever reasons, white parents generally are quite unwilling to put their children into programs where they will be the only, or one of a few white children.

Going out on a limb here, but maybe it's because they have AA friends and acquaintances whom they respect, and who have successfully convinced them it's a bad idea?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

What I find puzzling is why Rhee doesn't move more quickly to set up special programs in the Af/Am parts of the city which would pull more white students. Where these do exist, they don't seem to attract students. For example, Banneker is always a well-rated school on the Newsweek lists, yet it's still largely Af-Am.

I think Rhee has set up lots of special programs in AA parts of the city -- there's Reggio at Scott Montgomery, and bilingual and immersion programs at a number of schools, plus new STEM schools etc . . . The difference between these programs and the ones at Takoma/Blair etc . . . is that the programs serve a mixture of kids who apply OOB and kids who live in the neighborhood and attend as a matter of right.

For whatever reasons, white parents generally are quite unwilling to put their children into programs where they will be the only, or one of a few white children.

Going out on a limb here, but maybe it's because they have AA friends and acquaintances whom they respect, and who have successfully convinced them it's a bad idea?

Sorry, I did not mean to put "for whatever reason" as a questioning of people's motives/choices, but rather because I think there are a million possible reasons why, and I don't really think it's worth getting into debating why people do or don't make these choices in the context of this thread ....

If my tone in the flat medium of the forum came off as judge-y, apologies.

FWIW, I think it works the other way also, as I hear many AA parents question whether putting their child in an all white environment is the right choice.

And, FWIW, I think that there is so much more to the discussion of special programs in the city than the racial dynamics. There are thousands of talented, bright DC kids of all ethnicities who could benefit from stronger academics and special focus schools that are not remedial or vocational in nature. That alone is reason to create them.

[Anonymous]

And there are plenty who can benefit from quality remediation. But Rhee will just keep the emphasis on teaching to the middle/ to the test. Yay Rhee .

[Anonymous]

I am laughing at the characterization of latino Oyster kids as the kids of maids and gardeners
From looking at my daughters' latino friends, many have parents who are wealthy and educated>
When DH was a child living in Woodley Park, the bilingual model was in effect, and his parents pulled him out to send him to a 'better school'...
I work with some latino teens who can barely speak spanish, much less write it, because their parents were told by teachers to 'stop using spanish' at home, if they wanted the child to learn english fluently.
You'd think that this way of thinking was dead, but just last year, a latino friend told me her DS's private school kindergarten teacher asked her to stop speaking spanish around the DS...
What do spanish-speaking kids get from a bilingual school? literacy!

[Anonymous]

yup.

[Anonymous]

a speaker of a certain language is not a classically protected class (unless maybe you use language to get at the idea of ethnicity).

Under Lau vs. Nichols, which rules that instruction identical to that given native English speakers does not constitute equal access to instruction for non-English speakers, being a non-English speaker is construed as being part of a protected class in that it stems from national origin. DC is required by law to provide programs that teach both language and content to English learners, and the research shows that dual language programs are one of the most effective ways to teach this population of students. I can't think of any law in this area that says that it's illegal to allow children to apply to an out-of-boundary school to access high quality programs for ELLs (which is where the skew lies here--Oyster has a greater number of Spanish-dominant OOB kids than English-dominant ones).

I think you could make a far better case by arguing that across DC, schools in majority-white neighborhoods tend to be "better" (under whatever metric of "better" you're using) than schools in other neighborhoods, and THAT'S where the discrimination lies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: a speaker of a certain language is not a classically protected class (unless maybe you use language to get at the idea of ethnicity).

Under Lau vs. Nichols, which rules that instruction identical to that given native English speakers does not constitute equal access to instruction for non-English speakers, being a non-English speaker is construed as being part of a protected class in that it stems from national origin. DC is required by law to provide programs that teach both language and content to English learners, and the research shows that dual language programs are one of the most effective ways to teach this population of students. I can't think of any law in this area that says that it's illegal to allow children to apply to an out-of-boundary school to access high quality programs for ELLs (which is where the skew lies here--Oyster has a greater number of Spanish-dominant OOB kids than English-dominant ones).

I think you could make a far better case by arguing that across DC, schools in majority-white neighborhoods tend to be "better" (under whatever metric of "better" you're using) than schools in other neighborhoods, and THAT'S where the discrimination lies.

However, if your solution involves bussing the white kids to other neighborhoods to bring up their test scores - that's already been tried. And it led to good schools in Arlington, MoCo, and Fairfax as families moved away. So... I'm not sure what you're driving at.

[Anonymous]

There's no other way to improve minority schools than busing in white kids? There are LOTS of other things that can be done. There's no busing in the Harlem Children's Zone, for example.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's no other way to improve minority schools than busing in white kids? There are LOTS of other things that can be done. There's no busing in the Harlem Children's Zone, for example.

There's also one single guy in charge of the Harlem Children's Zone. It's his way or the highway - a complete autocracy. You think you don't like Michelle Rhee??? Part of how he's able to have done what he did is there's no challenge to his authority and all the people whose lives he's fixing are poor and under-educated and powerless to disagree with him. Yes, he's gotten good results, but he's like a dictator. How well do you think YOU would respond to that level of authority?