Basic urban planning, child development and evidence-based practice ignored in "policy options"

[Anonymous]

Questions I have yet to see addressed by any of the policy options:

1. What are the implications for traffic and urban planning to be shifting entire populations of students across the city--some who would not have "chosen" to do so under the previous system? If your "choice set" of middle schools, for example, means you end up with a school 4 city miles from your home with no clear public transportation route, what is your option for getting your child to and from school? I'm not just talking about Ward 3 parents getting from upper, upper northwest to Georgetown to go to Hardy instead of Deal. I'm talking about parents with inflexible, shift work jobs, too. And this question becomes exponentially magnified with a citywide lottery without any geographic preference. Are we really talking about kids travelling--against their families' preference or will--across multiple wards because they have no other "choice" and lost their lottery pick?

2. As a corollary, when public health and health professionals are urging later school start times for adolescents and early adolescents to support healthy development, what are the effects of making kids get up 45 minutes or more earlier so they can accommodate new travel times? What are the social effects for peer relationships when kids who go to elementary schools together are split off into different middle schools and high schools, again not of their families' choosing?

3. Where is the evidence that "choice sets" or force redistribution of students in other major urban school districts has not negatively affected quality at high performing schools due to flight of parents from the system who no longer wish to gamble that their kids can access schools they once had rights to attend? This is an issue for ALL kids--not just the rich ones, but also the disadvantaged ones who are ostensibly supposed to gain from getting access to higher performing schools. What happens if they show up and the quality declines because the added resources that were once propping up these schools have now left for the suburbs or private schools?

I know this is only the beginning of questions that need to be asked (and I plan to ask them myself). But in all the threads here I haven't seen a lot this basic line of questioning, and I hope to see more of it take off. It only improves the conversation to have more folks ask the tough stuff to make sure whatever plan gets put in place is all the way thought through.

[Anonymous]

Very good questions for all to consider!

[Anonymous]

Also, what is the plan to fund expansion and upgrading of facilities to accommodate the 20% OOB set asides and the guaranteed PK4? Not to mention the mass development of specialty programs to be an option in each set?

[Anonymous]

I think the choice sets are impossible logistically. They should see that.

[Anonymous]

And the gorilla in the room: will DCPS be able to execute even 50% of what these options demand of them?

[Anonymous]

Point 1 is huge. As someone who does travel 3 miles to her school, it's a huge task every day. In a city like this we are not set up for this kind of travel, buses do not go from Ward to Ward, metro is super expensive and not close to many of the schools, so this forces parents to drive.

Right now, there are only a few parents making this horrific commute (yes, 3 miles can be about an hour each way or more daily). Imagine in 25% of the parents started taking on even 1/2 of that trip.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very good questions for all to consider!

A lot of one car families with small children only one in school buy a house walking distance from a school. I am disabled and cannot drive, so this certainty was essential to us - otherwise we would have had to move to MoCo for school buses.

I also think it is crucial if possible to have a solid cohort of good kids in MS you are going to high school with. I switched for high school because I needed to get away from a particular group going in a bad direction, but I can see that the group of friends my 7th grader has now are good kids and I want them around her during high school so that they all protect each other from temptations.

A lot of this is not about test scores and FARMS and paranoia of low income kids it is just certainty for the family and the kid. How would you have felt if a lottery for MS separated you from your best friend. And not knowing who was going where for HS until a lottery in 8th grade? Doing this crap for college is bad enough. Certainty and consistency are important to kids and parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Point 1 is huge. As someone who does travel 3 miles to her school, it's a huge task every day. In a city like this we are not set up for this kind of travel, buses do not go from Ward to Ward, metro is super expensive and not close to many of the schools, so this forces parents to drive.

Right now, there are only a few parents making this horrific commute (yes, 3 miles can be about an hour each way or more daily). Imagine in 25% of the parents started taking on even 1/2 of that trip.

Good point!

[Anonymous]

OP here. My point is, before they go implementing these "policies", will there be any kind of environmental impact study? Any kind of economic impact assessment? The scope of what is being proposed is well beyond an education think tank and Deputy Mayor for Education, and I say that as someone who has spent the majority of my professional life in and adjacent to education policy.

The basic fact is that these proposals have far reaching effects for EVERYONE in this city, whether or not they have children, and to imagine otherwise is woefully naive. For the senior in Chevy Chase who is counting on the next egg she's built in her home equity to get her through retirement, a hit in property values is no small thing. For the employer who suddenly finds that his workers at running late every day because they're trying to get their kids to school through city traffic, this is a big deal. For the single mom whose kid loses the lottery and ends up getting into a high school on the other end of town, this is not about not liking her options, it's about the genuine hardship that "choice" that's been imposed on her now means. The basic fact is that people in this city want good schools NEAR THEIR HOMES. They want the leaders of our school to help figure out how to make that happen. Not to ship various kids around to various places to try to force improvement to happen with an unproven prospect of success. To say nothing of significant collateral effects for a lot of folks who could not care less about the school system and have no kids in it at all.

[Anonymous]

OP, part of me wants to think...of COURSE they would do an environmental impact before such broad sweeping change like this. The change to basic lifestyle of the city would be so broad as to possibly shut down streets around schools for hours.

Honestly? We spent the day looking at houses in VA...not that we want to move, but we live downtown and the traffic for us (another place the city failed with lack of impact study) with this controlled choice can only get worse.

Lucky, our school is moving so we are now going to be on a direct bus route, but I hope there is more research before implementation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And the gorilla in the room: will DCPS be able to execute even 50% of what these options demand of them?

Agreed.

[Anonymous]

I don't see how getting rid of proximity preference, especially at middle school, could possibly work. Lots of people are going to have concerns about sending their 11 year olds across the city.

Some choice (e.g. an immersion middle school fed by a small number of elementary immersion programs within a single ward) could work. Presumably WMATA would alter bus routes if there were lots of kids coming from a specific immersion school's neighborhood to the middle school it serves.

[Anonymous]

The logistics would be a mess.

Also--as some people have already pointed out, and I think it is a huge deal--what does it do to a community when kids who live on the same block all go to different schools?

[Anonymous]

Adding to Point 1, I'm not sure that the new policies would create more traffic problems. If only 25% of MS students attend their inbound middle school, 75% of public middle school children in the district are already traveling hither and yon across the city. There's an argument to be made that controlled choice could actually IMPROVE traffic conditions over all, if it reduces the number of children traveling from Ward 7 to Ward 3 every day. Whether those children's educational experience would be improving is perhaps the more important question, however.

As OP noted though, it would be important to have some sense of the possible transportation impacts while considering these options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Point 1 is huge. As someone who does travel 3 miles to her school, it's a huge task every day. In a city like this we are not set up for this kind of travel, buses do not go from Ward to Ward, metro is super expensive and not close to many of the schools, so this forces parents to drive.

Right now, there are only a few parents making this horrific commute (yes, 3 miles can be about an hour each way or more daily). Imagine in 25% of the parents started taking on even 1/2 of that trip.

DCPS position - based on the data - is that this is already happening. Large proportion of kids at OOB /city wide schools. So any change would be at the margins.