Integration and DC Schools -- A high priority? Yay or nay?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm watching the DC Council Hearing on the education related agencies (UDC, DME-Deputy Mayor for Education, State Board of Education, DC PCSB, etc). The testimony from the EmpowerEd group is that the DME must be focused on school integration as a priority and push the necessary school boundary changes that lead to integration goals even if there is pushback.

What are your thoughts? I have lots of priorities for education like more gifted programs, improved middle school options, better curriculum, support to keep teachers in the profession, etc but changing school boundaries for the purposes of integration isn't high on the list.

What does “more” integration even mean in DC. It’s one of the most integrated districts in the country

They didn't define what it meant. The specific testimony was "And when we do boundary studies with the knowledge that school
segregation is still a profound problem and integration is a powerful tool for improvement- we need courage from the DME to actually make courageous decisions (even if there is pushback) to work towards real school integration."

Real integration has never been tried, apparently

DP: Defining the terms matters a lot, especially in DC where the public school system is minority white. Without a definition, you have no idea what the goal of your policy actually is. What is "real integration"? That is the starting point of any meaningful discussion.

I have seen advocacy reports that define the goal of integration as policy choices aimed making sure minority students are not attending schools where 80% of the school population is minority (non-white) That's the minimum; more diverse is better. But white students in DCPS account for only 18% of the DCPS population. See https://dcps.dc.gov/page/dcps-glance-enrollment

Once you have a definition of "integration," the follow up questions are about how to achievine it. Even with bussing, are there enough white students in the public system to make that definition of integration happen in every school? And even if the numbers worked, how practical is it to take the small number of white students in DCPS and spread them across the city just to achieve an artifical integration number that ultimaltey creates fewer schools with diversity. That's not good policy and likely would have the opposite of its intended afftect. DC knows this; the VA and MD suburbs are too close and accessible.

My understanding of DCPS's policy and efforts on integration over the last few decades, because of those numbers, is to retain white families in sufficient numbers so that more schools naturally get to the 20% non-minority number. The retenion policy is one part, the other part is giving as much flexibilty and choice to families as practical so that people voluntarily move around within the system instead of leaving the system (lottery, charter, and application schools), hoping for more students to end up at integrated (minimum <80% minority) schools. A third part is addressing housing policy so the population itself moves around (but stays in DC -- this is key).

If you look at DCPS over the past several decades, you can see the effectiveness of these policies, as both the number of white families retained has increased (from 3.5% in 1982, to 12% in 2015, to 18% in 2025), as has the number of DCPS schools that meet this <80% minority definition. Many charter schools and most private schools in DC also meet this definition of integrated.

Note that by 2011, DC's overall population was no longer majority black. However, in 2024, the stat for children under 18 living in DC was still only 22% white, so DCPS's 18% white statistic is pretty darn good considering.
https://datacenter.aecf.org/data/tables/8874-race-ethnicity-of-child-population-by-ward#detailed/3/any/false/1096,2545,1095,2048,574,1729,37,871,870,573/3498,2161,2159,2157,2663,3499,3307,2160|838/17761,17762

So the first question in their policy debate needs to be, what does a more integrated DCPS look like? What is the goal in numbers, and where is DC now against that goal? Does that <80% definition work for DC? Does it work at all in 2026 given population changes? Maybe the definitoin should be about more than white/non-white in today's world? Maybe the goal should be fluid based on overall population? But without a definition, you can't measure success or set, let alone sell, the policies.

PP, I agree with you. I think advocacy groups resist defining terms with concrete goals because if you achieve them, they have trouble coming up with reasons to exist. Classic problem with nonprofits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many Charters are super integrated. Even the fancy ones -- BASIS, DCI and Latin fit the actual definition of integrated (no one race more than 70 percent of the population).

Other charters are not integrated but at serving their low-income populations better than the DCPS schools (like DC Prep getting everyone into college).

DCPS schools in gentrifying neighborhoods are sometimes integrated and there is an opportunity here to be a model. Like I feel Garrison actually serves all demographics well.

Other DCPS schools are not integrated because the housing is segregated. Do people really want to run busses between Ward 3 and EOTR or something? This sounds like a mess.

BASIS might meet the letter of the law definition of integration, but I don't think a school with 6% of students at risk in a city with a public student population that's 45% at risk is actually what anybody is talking about when they say integration.

Pffft.

At least it's possible for very poor children to attend BASIS.

Jackson-Reid, Janney, Murch, Deal, etc. all impose de facto wealth tests on their students. If your parents can't afford a house in Ward 3, sorry you have to go somewhere else!

The only schools with a lower at risk percentage than BASIS are Lafayette, Key, Janney, Stokes Brookland, and Mann.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, this feels like a place where we should be lifting up Black and Latino voices, not white voices (which is the majority of DCUM). My answer is some mix of I don't know and it depends.

I am white - I do want my kids to go to a diverse school. For me, that means a school that has a good percentage of Black and Latino students, and at least enough white students that my kid doesn't stick out like a sore thumb - I think sending a kid to a school, in America, where there are only a single digit number of kids of their race in the whole school, no matter what race that kid is, is asking a lot of someone really young. Everyone has different priorities, but for me, Garrison and John Lewis are the kinds of schools I want my kid to attend (and we're attempting to lottery to both of them this year).

As to whether DC Prep should try to diversify, or whether schools EOTR should try to diversify, that's a question for the Black community, not a question for me.

It does seem to me like the place where integration is a reasonable goal is places where inbound participation is very low for particular races. There are plenty of white families inbounds for Cleveland, for HD Cooke, for Tubman - why aren't they attending? That's a worthwhile question to ponder. And if there are schools, for example, WOTP that are 70% white and aren't seeing inbound participation from families of color, that's worth digging in to as well. So I do tend to agree with a previous poster that inbound buy in is valuable, and broadly considered to be valuable (even by people like me who are opting out of our IB) and often in DC increases school integration.

Why are you opting out of your IB?

I'm not going to answer detailed questions about this because it would make me pretty identifiable, but I'll say in general terms: Lack of academic peers for my advanced kids, and some social challenges.

But I will say that my experience in having my kids at a DCPS, evaluating schools, learning about the DC school landscape, and navigating this with my own family has shown me that NONE of these issues, in DC at least, are simple, and there are no easy answers. And the only people claiming there are easy answers ("well if DC just did X, everything would be better") generally live in the suburbs (like the Bethesda guy quote upthread). These issues are incredibly complex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many Charters are super integrated. Even the fancy ones -- BASIS, DCI and Latin fit the actual definition of integrated (no one race more than 70 percent of the population).

Other charters are not integrated but at serving their low-income populations better than the DCPS schools (like DC Prep getting everyone into college).

DCPS schools in gentrifying neighborhoods are sometimes integrated and there is an opportunity here to be a model. Like I feel Garrison actually serves all demographics well.

Other DCPS schools are not integrated because the housing is segregated. Do people really want to run busses between Ward 3 and EOTR or something? This sounds like a mess.

BASIS might meet the letter of the law definition of integration, but I don't think a school with 6% of students at risk in a city with a public student population that's 45% at risk is actually what anybody is talking about when they say integration.

Pffft.

At least it's possible for very poor children to attend BASIS.

Jackson-Reid, Janney, Murch, Deal, etc. all impose de facto wealth tests on their students. If your parents can't afford a house in Ward 3, sorry you have to go somewhere else!

The only schools with a lower at risk percentage than BASIS are Lafayette, Key, Janney, Stokes Brookland, and Mann.

Really, Stokes? And yet their math test scores are so bad!

[Anonymous]

I think it is wild that any group would spend an ounce of effort on boundary changes that are going to have a marginal impact on anything and create a lot of furor and bad feelings. if I was a more negative person I would speculate that the whole point is just to win a battle and get a perceived concession from white families, and nothing at all to do with actually helping black kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many Charters are super integrated. Even the fancy ones -- BASIS, DCI and Latin fit the actual definition of integrated (no one race more than 70 percent of the population).

Other charters are not integrated but at serving their low-income populations better than the DCPS schools (like DC Prep getting everyone into college).

DCPS schools in gentrifying neighborhoods are sometimes integrated and there is an opportunity here to be a model. Like I feel Garrison actually serves all demographics well.

Other DCPS schools are not integrated because the housing is segregated. Do people really want to run busses between Ward 3 and EOTR or something? This sounds like a mess.

BASIS might meet the letter of the law definition of integration, but I don't think a school with 6% of students at risk in a city with a public student population that's 45% at risk is actually what anybody is talking about when they say integration.

Pffft.

At least it's possible for very poor children to attend BASIS.

Jackson-Reid, Janney, Murch, Deal, etc. all impose de facto wealth tests on their students. If your parents can't afford a house in Ward 3, sorry you have to go somewhere else!

The only schools with a lower at risk percentage than BASIS are Lafayette, Key, Janney, Stokes Brookland, and Mann.

Are those numbers correct, esp for BASIS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If it's really such a high priority then maybe DME shouldn't have botched the Maury-Miner presentation. Failing to notify the Miner PTO was the cherry on top-- they only found out because the supposedly awful Maury parents told them.

100 percent. I think they floated that plan to give lip service to caring about integration. If they actually cared, they would have done more to create the conditions for it to be successful - like made a real attempt at community and teacher buy-in. It may not have worked, but they didn't even seem to try.

That’s because the whole point was to create a drama where they could call other parents racist then nope out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many Charters are super integrated. Even the fancy ones -- BASIS, DCI and Latin fit the actual definition of integrated (no one race more than 70 percent of the population).

Other charters are not integrated but at serving their low-income populations better than the DCPS schools (like DC Prep getting everyone into college).

DCPS schools in gentrifying neighborhoods are sometimes integrated and there is an opportunity here to be a model. Like I feel Garrison actually serves all demographics well.

Other DCPS schools are not integrated because the housing is segregated. Do people really want to run busses between Ward 3 and EOTR or something? This sounds like a mess.

BASIS might meet the letter of the law definition of integration, but I don't think a school with 6% of students at risk in a city with a public student population that's 45% at risk is actually what anybody is talking about when they say integration.

That's because these integrationist don't actually want integration -- they want white kids to go to majority-minority schools. That's what they explicitly say on the "Integrated Schools" website, for example.

Then the coopt the word integration, which has an actual meaning, because they know it's a value our society is aiming for.

Then when you point out schools that actually are racially integrated, they said "I don't think that's what anybody is talking about when they say integration."

Say what you really mean. Words matter.

Neighborhood schools should better match the racial and socioeconomic demographics of the students who live in the neighborhood. Citywide schools should better match the racial and socioeconomic demographics of the students in the city.

I think it's weird that I said "at risk" and you countered with "white".

NP. Performative SJW has entered the chat! You didn't find the aha moment you think you did. Data is what data is. In DC white make up only about 1% of the at risk students. It isn't racist or offensive to equate at risk with non-white, it is statistically sound.

Or is math also racist now too?

Okay, let's talk math.

You're confusing a sufficient condition (if white then not at risk) with a necessary and sufficient condition (if white then not at risk and if not at risk then white). The first is true in DC, the second is not. There are lots of MC and UMC black families in public school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, this feels like a place where we should be lifting up Black and Latino voices, not white voices (which is the majority of DCUM). My answer is some mix of I don't know and it depends.

I am white - I do want my kids to go to a diverse school. For me, that means a school that has a good percentage of Black and Latino students, and at least enough white students that my kid doesn't stick out like a sore thumb - I think sending a kid to a school, in America, where there are only a single digit number of kids of their race in the whole school, no matter what race that kid is, is asking a lot of someone really young. Everyone has different priorities, but for me, Garrison and John Lewis are the kinds of schools I want my kid to attend (and we're attempting to lottery to both of them this year).

As to whether DC Prep should try to diversify, or whether schools EOTR should try to diversify, that's a question for the Black community, not a question for me.

It does seem to me like the place where integration is a reasonable goal is places where inbound participation is very low for particular races. There are plenty of white families inbounds for Cleveland, for HD Cooke, for Tubman - why aren't they attending? That's a worthwhile question to ponder. And if there are schools, for example, WOTP that are 70% white and aren't seeing inbound participation from families of color, that's worth digging in to as well. So I do tend to agree with a previous poster that inbound buy in is valuable, and broadly considered to be valuable (even by people like me who are opting out of our IB) and often in DC increases school integration.

Why are you opting out of your IB?

I'm not going to answer detailed questions about this because it would make me pretty identifiable, but I'll say in general terms: Lack of academic peers for my advanced kids, and some social challenges.

But I will say that my experience in having my kids at a DCPS, evaluating schools, learning about the DC school landscape, and navigating this with my own family has shown me that NONE of these issues, in DC at least, are simple, and there are no easy answers. And the only people claiming there are easy answers ("well if DC just did X, everything would be better") generally live in the suburbs (like the Bethesda guy quote upthread). These issues are incredibly complex.

We left our inbound school for similar reasons - and I’m sure the Empower group would just to prefer to call us racists vs actually addressing the challenges at these schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many Charters are super integrated. Even the fancy ones -- BASIS, DCI and Latin fit the actual definition of integrated (no one race more than 70 percent of the population).

Other charters are not integrated but at serving their low-income populations better than the DCPS schools (like DC Prep getting everyone into college).

DCPS schools in gentrifying neighborhoods are sometimes integrated and there is an opportunity here to be a model. Like I feel Garrison actually serves all demographics well.

Other DCPS schools are not integrated because the housing is segregated. Do people really want to run busses between Ward 3 and EOTR or something? This sounds like a mess.

BASIS might meet the letter of the law definition of integration, but I don't think a school with 6% of students at risk in a city with a public student population that's 45% at risk is actually what anybody is talking about when they say integration.

Pffft.

At least it's possible for very poor children to attend BASIS.

Jackson-Reid, Janney, Murch, Deal, etc. all impose de facto wealth tests on their students. If your parents can't afford a house in Ward 3, sorry you have to go somewhere else!

The only schools with a lower at risk percentage than BASIS are Lafayette, Key, Janney, Stokes Brookland, and Mann.

Are those numbers correct, esp for BASIS?

Publicly available here: https://edscape.dc.gov/page/schools-special-populations-risk

Lafayette 3%
Key 3%
Janney 4%
Stokes Brookland 6%
Mann 6%
BASIS 6%

Closest middle or high school is SWW at 10% and Deal at 11%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, this feels like a place where we should be lifting up Black and Latino voices, not white voices (which is the majority of DCUM). My answer is some mix of I don't know and it depends.

I am white - I do want my kids to go to a diverse school. For me, that means a school that has a good percentage of Black and Latino students, and at least enough white students that my kid doesn't stick out like a sore thumb - I think sending a kid to a school, in America, where there are only a single digit number of kids of their race in the whole school, no matter what race that kid is, is asking a lot of someone really young. Everyone has different priorities, but for me, Garrison and John Lewis are the kinds of schools I want my kid to attend (and we're attempting to lottery to both of them this year).

As to whether DC Prep should try to diversify, or whether schools EOTR should try to diversify, that's a question for the Black community, not a question for me.

It does seem to me like the place where integration is a reasonable goal is places where inbound participation is very low for particular races. There are plenty of white families inbounds for Cleveland, for HD Cooke, for Tubman - why aren't they attending? That's a worthwhile question to ponder. And if there are schools, for example, WOTP that are 70% white and aren't seeing inbound participation from families of color, that's worth digging in to as well. So I do tend to agree with a previous poster that inbound buy in is valuable, and broadly considered to be valuable (even by people like me who are opting out of our IB) and often in DC increases school integration.

Why are you opting out of your IB?

I'm not going to answer detailed questions about this because it would make me pretty identifiable, but I'll say in general terms: Lack of academic peers for my advanced kids, and some social challenges.

But I will say that my experience in having my kids at a DCPS, evaluating schools, learning about the DC school landscape, and navigating this with my own family has shown me that NONE of these issues, in DC at least, are simple, and there are no easy answers. And the only people claiming there are easy answers ("well if DC just did X, everything would be better") generally live in the suburbs (like the Bethesda guy quote upthread). These issues are incredibly complex.

I'm in a different area of the city, and I agree with this. When my oldest was a baby, I saw this pretty simply - well, if everyone just went to their IB, everything would be better! But my kid is in middle elementary, and we actually are at our IB, and in talking to families that left, or families I know in the neighborhood that never even started at their IB, the reasons people leave vary tremendously, and most (though not all) of them are very sympathetic. From issues with housing (if everyone is in a two bedroom starter home, lots of people are going to leave before middle school), language immersion (lots of strong feelings on either side), people's tolerance for uncertainty, issues at schools that don't have anything to do with race (aftercare quality/availability, screen time, commutes, etc), and interestingly, many UMC families of color's reluctance to take any risk with their child's education, which I really understand and respect - they're working with challenges that my (white) kids aren't ever going to have to deal with, like educators making negative assumptions about their kids, and they just want their kid at the best school they can get into. I respect that.

None of these issues are an easy fix, and some of them you may not even want to fix (like language immersion preferences).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many Charters are super integrated. Even the fancy ones -- BASIS, DCI and Latin fit the actual definition of integrated (no one race more than 70 percent of the population).

Other charters are not integrated but at serving their low-income populations better than the DCPS schools (like DC Prep getting everyone into college).

DCPS schools in gentrifying neighborhoods are sometimes integrated and there is an opportunity here to be a model. Like I feel Garrison actually serves all demographics well.

Other DCPS schools are not integrated because the housing is segregated. Do people really want to run busses between Ward 3 and EOTR or something? This sounds like a mess.

BASIS might meet the letter of the law definition of integration, but I don't think a school with 6% of students at risk in a city with a public student population that's 45% at risk is actually what anybody is talking about when they say integration.

Pffft.

At least it's possible for very poor children to attend BASIS.

Jackson-Reid, Janney, Murch, Deal, etc. all impose de facto wealth tests on their students. If your parents can't afford a house in Ward 3, sorry you have to go somewhere else!

The only schools with a lower at risk percentage than BASIS are Lafayette, Key, Janney, Stokes Brookland, and Mann.

Are those numbers correct, esp for BASIS?

Publicly available here: https://edscape.dc.gov/page/schools-special-populations-risk

Lafayette 3%
Key 3%
Janney 4%
Stokes Brookland 6%
Mann 6%
BASIS 6%

Closest middle or high school is SWW at 10% and Deal at 11%.

It’s just stunning to me how bad Stokes’s scores are for a school with that low an at risk number.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Integration is very important to me and I am engaged in it, but it is generally overtaken by other priorities on this board.

I'd say mostly, this board wants differentiation and to not have children of board participants in the same schools as students with behavior problems. Those goals do not go well with generalized integration.

There are also more general segregation/race and class relations issues, with a major one being a distribution of income and educational attainment that is at the edges with nobody in the middle (we have a bunch of high income advanced degree holders and HS-or-worse educated low income parents, nothing in between in DC).

If you actually think this, it's a reflection of your own limited social circle. It's wrong. DC has plenty of families that are middle income. Lots of people just have college degrees and no advanced degree, plus plenty of fields offer steady income but not high income. We can afford to own homes (condos or houses in part so the city outside the most gentrified neighborhoods, and also if you bought before rates went up) and care about education, but also money is tight because this is an expensive city and it gets more expensive all the time. On the other hand, living in the city often gives us the ability to live without a car or with just one car, living in small homes keep us from accumulating so much stuff, and there are real cost savings to being close in to work and lots of free entertainment. So a lot of us are loathe to move out of the city where we might get cheaper housing and food but more expensive and longer commutes and a host of other expenses just by virtue of living far away from things.

I regularly feel completely invisible in discussions about education in the city because so many people think as you do. That there are only two kinds of people in the city: (1) rich, mostly white people with advanced degrees, and (2) poor black and hispanic people with a HS education or less. I'm sure your in group #1 and it's actually an embarrassment to your education that you are so ignorant of the many many families of every race in this city that are dual income, have college degrees, are not rich, can still pay our bills, and obviously send our kids to public schools because where the hell else are we going to send them?

What's funny is that we send our kids to school with rich people and poor people, and people just lack the observational skills or common sense to understand that we are middle class. Some of the rich people at our school just assume we are also rich, because we wear professional clothes and have read books, and they seem confused when we don't have opinions on whether Colorado or Vermont is better for New Year's skiing. Other rich people at our school just group us in with the poor people. The poor people all think we are rich, which is fair, because compared to them we are. Literally no one cares if our family's needs are being met by the school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, this feels like a place where we should be lifting up Black and Latino voices, not white voices (which is the majority of DCUM). My answer is some mix of I don't know and it depends.

I am white - I do want my kids to go to a diverse school. For me, that means a school that has a good percentage of Black and Latino students, and at least enough white students that my kid doesn't stick out like a sore thumb - I think sending a kid to a school, in America, where there are only a single digit number of kids of their race in the whole school, no matter what race that kid is, is asking a lot of someone really young. Everyone has different priorities, but for me, Garrison and John Lewis are the kinds of schools I want my kid to attend (and we're attempting to lottery to both of them this year).

As to whether DC Prep should try to diversify, or whether schools EOTR should try to diversify, that's a question for the Black community, not a question for me.

It does seem to me like the place where integration is a reasonable goal is places where inbound participation is very low for particular races. There are plenty of white families inbounds for Cleveland, for HD Cooke, for Tubman - why aren't they attending? That's a worthwhile question to ponder. And if there are schools, for example, WOTP that are 70% white and aren't seeing inbound participation from families of color, that's worth digging in to as well. So I do tend to agree with a previous poster that inbound buy in is valuable, and broadly considered to be valuable (even by people like me who are opting out of our IB) and often in DC increases school integration.

Why are you opting out of your IB?

I'm not going to answer detailed questions about this because it would make me pretty identifiable, but I'll say in general terms: Lack of academic peers for my advanced kids, and some social challenges.

But I will say that my experience in having my kids at a DCPS, evaluating schools, learning about the DC school landscape, and navigating this with my own family has shown me that NONE of these issues, in DC at least, are simple, and there are no easy answers. And the only people claiming there are easy answers ("well if DC just did X, everything would be better") generally live in the suburbs (like the Bethesda guy quote upthread). These issues are incredibly complex.

I'm in a different area of the city, and I agree with this. When my oldest was a baby, I saw this pretty simply - well, if everyone just went to their IB, everything would be better! But my kid is in middle elementary, and we actually are at our IB, and in talking to families that left, or families I know in the neighborhood that never even started at their IB, the reasons people leave vary tremendously, and most (though not all) of them are very sympathetic. From issues with housing (if everyone is in a two bedroom starter home, lots of people are going to leave before middle school), language immersion (lots of strong feelings on either side), people's tolerance for uncertainty, issues at schools that don't have anything to do with race (aftercare quality/availability, screen time, commutes, etc), and interestingly, many UMC families of color's reluctance to take any risk with their child's education, which I really understand and respect - they're working with challenges that my (white) kids aren't ever going to have to deal with, like educators making negative assumptions about their kids, and they just want their kid at the best school they can get into. I respect that.

None of these issues are an easy fix, and some of them you may not even want to fix (like language immersion preferences).

And, if everyone went to their IB, there would be a massive logistical problem! You can't just double the student enrollment without unwinding all the mergers and consolidates and sell-offs and leases over the past 30+ years!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, this feels like a place where we should be lifting up Black and Latino voices, not white voices (which is the majority of DCUM). My answer is some mix of I don't know and it depends.

I am white - I do want my kids to go to a diverse school. For me, that means a school that has a good percentage of Black and Latino students, and at least enough white students that my kid doesn't stick out like a sore thumb - I think sending a kid to a school, in America, where there are only a single digit number of kids of their race in the whole school, no matter what race that kid is, is asking a lot of someone really young. Everyone has different priorities, but for me, Garrison and John Lewis are the kinds of schools I want my kid to attend (and we're attempting to lottery to both of them this year).

As to whether DC Prep should try to diversify, or whether schools EOTR should try to diversify, that's a question for the Black community, not a question for me.

It does seem to me like the place where integration is a reasonable goal is places where inbound participation is very low for particular races. There are plenty of white families inbounds for Cleveland, for HD Cooke, for Tubman - why aren't they attending? That's a worthwhile question to ponder. And if there are schools, for example, WOTP that are 70% white and aren't seeing inbound participation from families of color, that's worth digging in to as well. So I do tend to agree with a previous poster that inbound buy in is valuable, and broadly considered to be valuable (even by people like me who are opting out of our IB) and often in DC increases school integration.

Why are you opting out of your IB?

I'm not going to answer detailed questions about this because it would make me pretty identifiable, but I'll say in general terms: Lack of academic peers for my advanced kids, and some social challenges.

But I will say that my experience in having my kids at a DCPS, evaluating schools, learning about the DC school landscape, and navigating this with my own family has shown me that NONE of these issues, in DC at least, are simple, and there are no easy answers. And the only people claiming there are easy answers ("well if DC just did X, everything would be better") generally live in the suburbs (like the Bethesda guy quote upthread). These issues are incredibly complex.

I'm in a different area of the city, and I agree with this. When my oldest was a baby, I saw this pretty simply - well, if everyone just went to their IB, everything would be better! But my kid is in middle elementary, and we actually are at our IB, and in talking to families that left, or families I know in the neighborhood that never even started at their IB, the reasons people leave vary tremendously, and most (though not all) of them are very sympathetic. From issues with housing (if everyone is in a two bedroom starter home, lots of people are going to leave before middle school), language immersion (lots of strong feelings on either side), people's tolerance for uncertainty, issues at schools that don't have anything to do with race (aftercare quality/availability, screen time, commutes, etc), and interestingly, many UMC families of color's reluctance to take any risk with their child's education, which I really understand and respect - they're working with challenges that my (white) kids aren't ever going to have to deal with, like educators making negative assumptions about their kids, and they just want their kid at the best school they can get into. I respect that.

None of these issues are an easy fix, and some of them you may not even want to fix (like language immersion preferences).

As tough a place as DCPS can be for white kids (and it’s tough), it’s much much much tougher for UMC black and African kids.