Considering moving to DC
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Anonymous
Not my post, but I'll explain as I feel similarly. Likely in the minority here as I am a Black mom to a Black boy, middle class. My son started out a diverse charter school. Pretty good scores, highly rated on charter rating scales at the time. Pulled him from this school because class sizes got larger and he wasn't getting the support/instruction he needed. (Very kind, respectful kid at school though). Used to lottery to get him into an elementary school on CH. This school was not diverse, but students and teachers were welcoming. However, teachers pushed and pushed for him to be tested for SPED. Which he ended up not qualifying for in spite of their insistence. This school had AMAZING test scores though. Guess my kid messed this up. 
Now, my son is an 8th grader at a school that is not highly sought after here. Overall school scores were not amazing last year, but his were good and the highest he's ever had. He's in the accelerated math cohort and thriving and now headed to high school. What I believe what he truly needed was teachers who are ACTUALLY TEACHING. He had some of those at the second ES, but in general most kids there were already above grade level I guess. He still has work to do, I still support him at home. However, if I picked school based on test scores alone, he might still not be getting the support he needs when he is at school every day. |
Anonymous
There are kids who live in abject poverty, with violence, are malnourished and live on the streets who grow up to be world renowned mathematicians, doctors and the like. By your way of thinking those factors are immaterial to success because a kid escaped. You would be wrong. It is great that your kid has a positive outcome. But there is no world in which the quality of education for a classroom filled with kids below grade level is better or the same as a classroom filled with kids who are at or above grade level. People like you who say "test scores don't matter" really mean to say "test scores don't mean everything or guarantee success". The latter is right, but those two things are not the same. Kids at grade level or not is not about the color of your black son. The fact that you interject that little fact is at once nonsense and offensive. DC's tests are not culturally biased. If 5% of a school is at grade level it is because 5% know the minimum to achieve that score, and the scoring sheets don't know what color you are. If your argument is that caring about high test scores and objective measures of academic success is racist then you aren't hurting people who are succeeding. You are perpetuating a culture of lowered expectations and hurting your kids and others like them. |
Anonymous
Sounds like your son struggled when you moved him to a school with much higher test schools which likely had much higher achieving kids. The playing field was much higher. They worked at a higher level which your son was not successful in doing. It sounds like he was very behind and it caused concern that maybe he had a learning disability and why they suggested he get tested. He did not have a LD. But the much lower test scores he had compared to other kids prove that he had a big knowledge gap and why he struggled at the school on CH. The class teaching at a higher level is not going to slow down for him. The school is not going to get you 1:1 tutoring to support him to catch up. You have to get intense tutoring after school to catch him up. This is what families do everywhere and the norm when kids are way behind. Then you moved him to school with lower test scores and he did better with lower performing kids and likely lower expectations and level with performance. BTW, I bet your sons scores now which you say is good if compared to a school like Deal with higher performing kids is likely in bottom 4th. It’s all relative and what level do you expect your kid to perform. Advance course in one school may actually not be advance at all but grade level. Standardized tests doesn’t care about that and is not subjective. It just tests what your kid are expected to know. It has nothing to do with race. It is race blind. Signed minority parent who grew up poor in FARMS |
Anonymous
Same. I have turned into the exact parent I thought I wasn't - the kind who lives in DC and sends kids to private school until the time is right to move to the suburbs. The "good" public schools in DC would be considered mediocre at best everywhere else. My son was in a "good" charter at the top of his class. When we moved to a private, he was behind. He caught up, but it showed me just how low the bar is for DC public schools. It's unfair to everyone involved. I don't see how graduates of DCPS who aren't rich and supplementing are going to be prepared for college. OP, don't move to DC. |
Anonymous
It kills me to say this, but I agree. We have had excellent lottery luck so we've been insulated, but had we not pulled a lottery rabbit out of our hat in PS3 and again in 5th we'd have been looking to move. I am a committed liberal but even I have had enough of the BS that holds back (and degrades) DC's public education. There's a loud contingent that seems to think that any effort to hold kids to account, demand acceptable behavior and provide academic rigor is somehow discriminatory or racist. Tracking kids at any grade=racist. True honors classes at any grade=racist. Failing kids who earn failing grades=racist. Holding kids back or requiring intervention to matriculate to the next grade=racist. On its face it is all offensive; it necessarily assumes that POC can't do the hard work or behave. It is maddening. The irony of it all is that, in my experience, the parents who figure out these deficiencies first are almost always POC. They know their kids need to be better to get just an even chance so they don't suffer the liberal guilt or other BS that causes white parents to nod along when loud voices tell them that demanding classrooms without disruptions is white privilege. They also cringe when people protect their kids from standards and rigor and proudly equate back skin with low SES. Every single parent of color who is a doctor, lawyer, PhD or has senior level job in world of business opted out of the DC system long before I realized what was happening. |
Anonymous
This. DCPS is a master at playing the race card to make excuses of their abject failure to provide a good, quality rigorous education to all kids. Their low expectation culture hurts all kids. What is even sadder is all the middle class parents in these poorly performing schools who fall for this BS of low expectation and performance and whose kids otherwise had such potential that are not being met. |
Anonymous
| i appreciate both of the 7:59 posts. the second poster does not deserve to be attacked just for sharing her personal experience that a presumably eotp dcps middle school with relatively low test scores has been a great educational experience for her particular child. |
Anonymous
| DCUM is so much fun! Whew. I am the poster who posted about her child earlier. Considering that my child took PARCC the same test the students at Deal take, I know how his scores match up. Also, my child is now in Algebra and will be judged the same. His RI test and current reading level, again same test the kids at Deal take. So I know how he matches up with my White friends kids at those schools. Notice that I said NOTHING about his actual grades. I never said that test scores are not important at all. I just said that great test scores don’t make good schools fully. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
+1000 People telling someone their own experience isn't valid... |
Anonymous
That may not have been your intent, but it was precisely what you did when you agreed with the post that said exactly that. In fact the summary of the poster with whom you agreed that you replied to was "and most parents with options don’t want their kids to be or to go to school with mostly kids who are multiple grade levels behind." I am the poster who said there's a huge difference between saying test scores don't mean everything and test scores don't mean anything. Seems like you actually agree with that position. I stand by my position that a school with 5% (or some very small #) of kids at grade level cannot provide the same quality of education as those with the vast majority at grade level. I also stand by my position that low test scores have nothing to do with race. |
Anonymous
If OP wanted a concrete example of why many of us caution against moving into DC with school age kids, I present to you "Exhibit A". This is some typical DC super woke BS manifested in a sentence fragment. No one commented on whether anyone else's experience was "valid". Some of us took issue with what assertion that the poster's personal experience in any way mitigated the underlying point that schools with 5% at grade level cannot possibly provide the sale level of education as those of the inverse, and further that somehow test scores at 5% at grade level don't actually speak to the education levels at those schools because of some racist conspiracy. |
Anonymous
Me thinks you don' know what the word "attack" means. I wanna live your life if this is what qualifies in your experience. |
Anonymous
Your position is like the test score version of “I don’t see color.” Research has proven that SES correlates very strongly with test scores. In the DMV area, the low SES demographic is primarily black. Therefore, schools with lower test scores are majority black students |
Anonymous
| theres a lot of selection bias. the majority of posters on this board do not have children at a title 1 dcps. every single title 1 dcps is majority black with average to not so great test scores. every time someone posts about a positive personal experience at one of these schools, they either get majorly criticized or told that their children must still all be in early elementary school. test schools are one important indicator but they dont tell you everything about a school. |