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DC Public and Public Charter Schools
Hope for DCPS?
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Anonymous
It's not just schools. People want to raise their kids in a house with a yard and a safe kid friendly neighborhood. You need to be very rich to get that in DC |
Anonymous
| I don't know why this is black/white issue. I left DCPS after elementary because I began to notice that my values were different from the values of the majority UMC families at the school. Upper elementary is typically when one begins to notice this. |
Anonymous
Even with consistently good schools, there are inherent differences in birthrates across race and income level that would always lead to some degree of skew in child vs adult demographics. |
Anonymous
What values? |
Anonymous
To be fair, the test scores are not good, particularly at EH. I don’t think anyone would characterize those schools as “challenging.” |
Anonymous
I don’t want to be too specific but a lot around which teacher their kid should have, which kids should be in the class, etc. |
Anonymous
I appreciate your perspective. I try to balance them too, but came out with a different answer. I do not view our neighborhood schools as having the bare minimum of rigor necessary to service students, and I do not feel like (at least at ours) there is any momentum to change things. People seem mostly content to shrug their shoulders and say, that's DCPS. It would be one thing if I felt our family was part of a rising tide that would lift all boats, but our conclusion was that there was no sign that anything was getting any better, and meanwhile my kids were being held back. |
Anonymous
Might as well ask, unless the principal has clearly stated requests will be ignored. It's another symptom of the unevenness of both the teachers and the students. |
Anonymous
NP. I think the actual school in question and individual family tolerance make a big difference in where people land on this issue. Because people are understandably reluctant to share specifics here, it's hard to get any real insight from individual perspectives on this topic. |
Anonymous
I am the PP and actually I was thinking about this recently -- what qualities a white parent in DCPS needs to have in order to be able to do this well. Things like resiliency and confidence in your choices. I admire the thought process you are talking about here and I'm glad there are parents like you willing to do this. But you mentioned trauma that kids in the system experience. Well I am a white adult who experienced a lot of those same traumas as a kid. That's part of why my values are what they are and why I committed to sending my kids to public schools and why I believe strongly in the power of public schools to help lift all boats. But that also means I have limitations that I've discovered have been tested by my experience as a white parent in a majority black Title 1 DCPS. Like I'm sensitive to rejection (because I grew up in an abusive family where I was not loved and welcomed) and I also have persistent anxiety over things like food and money (because I grew up in a family where those things were not a give and where I was often blamed for there not being enough). I am generally a resilient person because I've had to be but the attitude you are describing here... I don't know if I can do it. I find myself fantasizing about giving my kids things I never had which includes very importantly a feeling of belonging and inclusiveness that I don't always think white kids in these schools get. I also think that being a white person from an "at risk" background is something that many people working in and with DCPS don't even realize exists. I know many if not most of the teachers, students, and other parents I encounter assume things about me and my background that may likely be true of many white parents in DC but definitely are not true for me. And as a result they may interpret things I do for my kids as entitled or demanding when they are actually the result of not understanding certain systems or being fearful of authority figures or having to work through anxiety about my kids safety. Because my skin color gives me outsider status it is easy for people to misunderstand me and my kids. So this is what I mean when I say that sometimes what I want for my kid runs up against what I think is best for the community. I think it may not be realistic for me to do what you are asking me to do because I have already spent so much of my life sacrificing my own comfort and well being for the good of others and it has taken a long time for me to understand that my needs (and my kids needs) matter as much as anyone else's. So I find myself bristling when told that I need to "balance" our needs against that of a broader community who may mostly see me as a stereotype that does not accurately reflect who we actually are. |
Anonymous
I didn’t take a first grade lottery spot for a WOTP school for my DD last year for this reason. Obviously I knew things were trending towards the school not being right for DD because I did the lottery in the first place. But I turned it down because I was so committed to the idea that our Title I neighborhood school was good enough, and believed that if all UMC families in my neighborhood stopped sending kids it would somehow hurt the school. Flash forward to end of first grade and DD is in therapy for anxiety, had a TERRIBLE teacher and a hard year and the school really made us feel that we were asking too much. They outright said there were other kids who needed school psych services more yet DD was crying in her sleep and refusing to go to school. I still believe it’s a decent school, most of the other UMC and white families are solid boosters. But I couldn’t send my kid back another year without major changes, it was honestly harming her. So now we lucked out on getting another WOTP lottery offer and hoping that a better resources DCPS WOTP will at least make some difference. |
Anonymous
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You have to accept the reality that most black families want to attend schools with other black families. Most white families want to attend schools with other white families. This is why there is so much animosity at the diverse DCPS schools. A diverse school setting notoriously creates multiple challenges for black children.
-A Black Parent |
Anonymous
Houses in my neighborhood are selling for $650K. It doesn't get much lower in the close in suburbs. And we have yards. As do many (possibly most?) single family homes / duplexes / row houses in DC. |
Anonymous
| When people say “safe neighborhood” the ey mean a neighborhood that doesn’t have any black people in it. |
Anonymous
This is what racists mean. But there actually are people who mean a neighborhood with low crime and in particular where kids can play and go to one another's homes and to the local park and playground without being in danger. For instance Shepherd Park is a majority black neighborhood that most people I know would consider safe in this way. But Dupont Circle is a majority white neighborhood that while generally viewed as safe is not the sort of place where I'd let my elementary school kid wander around on her own. In DC sometimes majority black and "unsafe" get conflated in part because generally high poverty rates are associated with higher crime and DC's history of segregation means that most of the poverty in the city is concentrated in the black community. But there are a number of middle class black neighborhoods in DC that are safer than some of the wealthy white neighborhoods and these neighborhoods often have better schools as well. Nuance actually matters a lot in the this conversation. |