San Francisco: a good model for DC?

[Anonymous]

"In 2008, the SFUSD Board found that the existing diversity-index lottery system had
not reduced racial isolation or sufficiently helped to improve educational outcomes
for minority and low-income students. " (p. 6).

"SFUSD staff concluded that a new student assignment system is one part of
creating educational environments in which all students can flourish.
School
quality is the paramount concern, and a student assignment system
alone cannot ensure school quality
, although it does have a role to play
in creating diverse learning environments and robust enrollments in all
SFUSD schools" (p. 7)

[Anonymous]

Even better quote:

"Through extensive research and data analysis as part of its 2009 policy revision process, San Francisco arrived at some key findings that bear recounting here:

•Neighborhood schools are limited in their ability to reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school.

•However, city-wide lotteries are also limited in their ability to reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school because of the applicant pools for individual schools are racially isolated, and all families do not have the same access to information and time to maximize the opportunities of a city-wide lottery system.

•To reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school through student assignment alone, the [SFUSD]
Board would need to assign students to schools they have not historically requested and to schools far from where they live."

Read those bullet-points again. If you want to make city-wide lotteries work for increasing diversity, you need to be prepared to change or override parents' requests AND send students all across the city. Talk about spelling out why this is a terrible policy...why don't we make all children wards of DCPS.

[Anonymous]

PP, what do you prpose?

[Anonymous]

Well, in all of my years of school system administration and through my prior career navigating the nexus of local politics and education provision, I propose that the only sane choice is to....

Yeah, I don't have a "solution" off the top of my head. Good thing, too, as I'm not even remotely tasked with divining a solution.

So, although I don't have a solution that you should listen to, you'd be well-served by acknowledging that doesn't mean I cannot point out problems with alternative possibilities. Those are distinct jobs. In theory, we can all be qualified for the latter while simultaneously unqualified for the former. My inability to offer a solution does nothing to undermine my commentary about possibilities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DME is looking at SF because diversity and equality is what. They are aiming for. So what city's model do you propose?

We don't need to duplicate any other city's model -- but I see what you're getting at in terms of thinking about alternatives. The "21st Century School Fund" policy document also discusses the fact that local jurisdictions are having some success with magnet schools. I would note that DC's magnet schools are also very, very good, to the limited extent that we have them. So, I think DC could be doing much more in the area of magnet schools, especially at the elementary and middle school levels. Plus, DC has a growing number of Charter Schools that provide school choice and access throughout the entire City, which is something other cities do not have to the degree that we have it.

I believe more magnet schools could do a better job than the SF model of providing "diversity and equality" as a goal -- what the new magnet schools would do is roll diversity as well as neighborhood and income, into their admissions criteria. "Diversity and Equality," of course, should not be the only or even the primary goals of any education system.

What magnet schools leave out is better education to under-performing kids. This is an intractable problem that changing boundaries would do very little to fix. As found by the SF model. But the DC Charter schools are having some success in helping under-performing kids, and should be encouraged to continue that good work.

I'll also note that there's no proof that DC is seriously considering the "21st Century School Fund's" reference to the SF model -- DME is simply linking to the document without any kind of approval. The City Council would never let it happen anyway, the idea is so bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DME is looking at SF because diversity and equality is what. They are aiming for. So what city's model do you propose?

We don't need to duplicate any other city's model -- but I see what you're getting at in terms of thinking about alternatives. The "21st Century School Fund" policy document also discusses the fact that local jurisdictions are having some success with magnet schools. I would note that DC's magnet schools are also very, very good, to the limited extent that we have them. So, I think DC could be doing much more in the area of magnet schools, especially at the elementary and middle school levels. Plus, DC has a growing number of Charter Schools that provide school choice and access throughout the entire City, which is something other cities do not have to the degree that we have it.

I believe more magnet schools could do a better job than the SF model of providing "diversity and equality" as a goal -- what the new magnet schools would do is roll diversity as well as neighborhood and income, into their admissions criteria. "Diversity and Equality," of course, should not be the only or even the primary goals of any education system.

What magnet schools leave out is better education to under-performing kids. This is an intractable problem that changing boundaries would do very little to fix. As found by the SF model. But the DC Charter schools are having some success in helping under-performing kids, and should be encouraged to continue that good work.

I'll also note that there's no proof that DC is seriously considering the "21st Century School Fund's" reference to the SF model -- DME is simply linking to the document without any kind of approval. The City Council would never let it happen anyway, the idea is so bad.

Correct. And, the document explicitly points out that, if anything, the trend among comparable cities, including SF, is towards a growing role of neighborhoods based schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DME is looking at SF because diversity and equality is what. They are aiming for. So what city's model do you propose?

We don't need to duplicate any other city's model -- but I see what you're getting at in terms of thinking about alternatives. The "21st Century School Fund" policy document also discusses the fact that local jurisdictions are having some success with magnet schools. I would note that DC's magnet schools are also very, very good, to the limited extent that we have them. So, I think DC could be doing much more in the area of magnet schools, especially at the elementary and middle school levels. Plus, DC has a growing number of Charter Schools that provide school choice and access throughout the entire City, which is something other cities do not have to the degree that we have it.

I believe more magnet schools could do a better job than the SF model of providing "diversity and equality" as a goal -- what the new magnet schools would do is roll diversity as well as neighborhood and income, into their admissions criteria. "Diversity and Equality," of course, should not be the only or even the primary goals of any education system.

What magnet schools leave out is better education to under-performing kids. This is an intractable problem that changing boundaries would do very little to fix. As found by the SF model. But the DC Charter schools are having some success in helping under-performing kids, and should be encouraged to continue that good work.

I'll also note that there's no proof that DC is seriously considering the "21st Century School Fund's" reference to the SF model -- DME is simply linking to the document without any kind of approval. The City Council would never let it happen anyway, the idea is so bad.

Correct. And, the document explicitly points out that, if anything, the trend among comparable cities, including SF, is towards a growing role of neighborhoods based schools.

Agree, neighborhood schools have many benefits of community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Even better quote:

"Through extensive research and data analysis as part of its 2009 policy revision process, San Francisco arrived at some key findings that bear recounting here:

•Neighborhood schools are limited in their ability to reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school.

•However, city-wide lotteries are also limited in their ability to reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school because of the applicant pools for individual schools are racially isolated, and all families do not have the same access to information and time to maximize the opportunities of a city-wide lottery system.

•To reverse the trend of racial isolation and the concentration of underserved students in the same school through student assignment alone, the [SFUSD]
Board would need to assign students to schools they have not historically requested and to schools far from where they live."

Read those bullet-points again. If you want to make city-wide lotteries work for increasing diversity, you need to be prepared to change or override parents' requests AND send students all across the city. Talk about spelling out why this is a terrible policy...why don't we make all children wards of DCPS.

The bolded part about city-wide lotteries not having a significant impact on racial isolation and concentrations of underserved kids has played out DIFFERENTLY in DC. Granted, DC is a smaller city, and the creation of city-wide schools was a conscious effort to address the isolation and crappy options of underserved students, so it isn't the same as turning neighborhood schools into city-wide schools. New schools were created that were never neighborhood schools in DC.

And DC charters have absolutely, definitely reduced racial isolation and also the level of concentration of underserved students, even though they're still concentrated for sure.

And I don't get it, while it's clearly true that all families don't have equal access to technology or time to research options (what I assume they mean by "fully maximize the opportunities of a city-wide lottery"), I'd be really really interested to know what strategies they used to TRY to get technology to families and families to technology. SF's underserved communities are really not that large, and assuming most of the kids they were trying to reach were already in school somewhere when this all started, what did they do to reach out to parents through their schools and in other ways in their communities?

[Anonymous]

DC has magnet high schools- they are still racially segregated. Some of that is the location, some is from the actual programs, but more than most of us want to admit is because we see too many minority kids and equate it with unruliness. Tell me you look at white kids and black kids behaving badly and I will tell you that you lie to yourself. I used to think I was totally open minded until I moved to a predominantly AA neighborhood because that is what I could afford. For a long time I was appalled until I realized how many subconscious issues were there. This is a fundamental impediment to schools being integrated.

[Anonymous]

Neighborhood schools, in and of themselves, are NOT THE ANSWER to DC's underserved students. Be very clear what SF was trying to achieve when they took this on: they were trying to reduce racial isolation, the concentration of underserved students, and improve the quality of schools overall, for all students. That was what they were trying to achieve.

In DC we already have neighborhood schools. We've had them for decades. They INCREASE the isolation of underserved families, there is abundant evidence of that and there is NO refuting that.

Neighborhood schools are not rocket science and are one of the key reasons all over the US that some neighborhoods are crazy expensive and hard to find affordable housing in: because they're in a good or wonderful school district. What happens if you can't afford to move or can't find affordable housing in those areas and it's next to impossible to get in OOB? You are stuck in your sucky neighborhood school.

DC can look at a million other cities' models for ideas and structures to try out, but at the end of the day the path DC chooses will have to depend on what DC is trying to achieve, and what DC is willing to pay/lose as they strive for that.

Every single person who suggests turning the current city-wide lottery schools into neighborhood schools is doint ZERO - get it? ZERO! - to actually improve ANY school in DC. All that does is re-define who has the best shot of getting in and who gets shut out, but the crappy schools that were crappy before? They are just as crappy and nothing about turning charters into neighborhood schools does a thing to improve any of those schools.

DCPS and OSSE and PCSB need to look at their priorities and thing both short term and long term about what it will take to improve the quality of the worst schools and the mediocre schools, how to attract and retain good/great teaching staff and administrators, how to re-think resource redistribution (instead of a certain school's additional renovations, how many school social workers or progressive discipline specialists could be hired at the most challenged schools for the same money?), and what lessons can be learned academically from the successful charters re: curricula?

But to take away from any of these other cities models that "neighborhood schools are what's called for"? DC's been there, done that, got the "epic fail!" t-shirt. Only those in neighborhoods that they know will benefit from changing charters over to neighborhood schools will champion that. I just hope they'll be honest about doing so and not cloak it as somehow benefitting the underserved students, because that is so far from the truth and a horrific tactic.

It'll be interesting to see the results of this year's common lottery: what families go where, how the common lottery changes (or doesn't change) the distribution of resourced families, under-resourced families, superstar students, students really struggling academically, various native language speakers, and geographically where families from each ward and neighborhood end up. I hope some sort of geomapping project is undertaken after this year re: where students live and where they go to school.

But let's not kid ourselves while we wait: nothing about "neighborhood schools" improves the quality of schools overall. It just isolates people and you're either thrilled about your isolation or it is a major disaster, based on what neighborhood your school-aged kids are isolated into. Whatever direction DC goes in, has to have more planning around what will actually improve the quality. I'm all for improving access to underserved students as well, so that is a legitimate reason to take action. But anything that isn't about increasing access for the most underserved students better be very clear about how it will improve school quality at the most challenged schools, or it's just middle and upper class families and politicians further wrangling away access to the best schools from the students who most need them to serve their own purposes, at the clear disadvantage of underserved families.

[Anonymous]

I really don't see "middle and upper class families wrangling away access to the best schools." The truth is: the "best schools" are the best because middle and upper class families send their kids there. Said another way: the strongest factor correlating with overall school performance is the average income level of the kids' parents.

Another a way to achieve excellent school performance (outside of high-income neighborhood schools) is to have a magnet school that selects for the brightest kids, regardless of income level -- but even in those schools, the majority of the kids will have a high income level.

Anyone who doesn't understand the reality of the income/achievement correlation won't come close to creating policies for improving education for lower income and/or underperforming kids.

Ideally, you should create schools that have a mix of high income and not-so-high income, in order to create an experience that raises the performance of the kids that need it -- but the higher the population of lower income kids, the lower the overall achievement level of the school will be. Finding the right balance is a difficult tightrope to walk.

But if the school system's policy is biased too far in favor of lower income and/or lower performing kids, then the best performing kids jump out of the system. And you then get mostly unimpressive schools as a result.

[Anonymous]

Yup. PP hits the nail on the head. Earlier posters biases ring through.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I really don't see "middle and upper class families wrangling away access to the best schools." The truth is: the "best schools" are the best because middle and upper class families send their kids there. Said another way: the strongest factor correlating with overall school performance is the average income level of the kids' parents.

Another a way to achieve excellent school performance (outside of high-income neighborhood schools) is to have a magnet school that selects for the brightest kids, regardless of income level -- but even in those schools, the majority of the kids will have a high income level.

Anyone who doesn't understand the reality of the income/achievement correlation won't come close to creating policies for improving education for lower income and/or underperforming kids.

Ideally, you should create schools that have a mix of high income and not-so-high income, in order to create an experience that raises the performance of the kids that need it -- but the higher the population of lower income kids, the lower the overall achievement level of the school will be. Finding the right balance is a difficult tightrope to walk.

But if the school system's policy is biased too far in favor of lower income and/or lower performing kids, then the best performing kids jump out of the system. And you then get mostly unimpressive schools as a result.

I'm the PP you're quoting and actually I agree with you. Completely. And isn't that what SF was trying to achieve? Either way, it is true that ideally you have a mix.

But my post is mostly talking about something DIFFERENT: I am addressing the posters before my post that keep coming to the conclusion that somehow neighborhood schools are the way to go. All I'm saying is, be clear on what you will achieve and will NOT achieve by taking that step. And yes, I absolutely stand by my assertion that making DC charters neighborhood schools is a move that ONLY benefits those who can afford to live near the best charters. No one is climbing over everyone else to get to most of the Anacostia charters, so making them neighborhood schools changes nothing. Making all charters neighborhood schools IS middle and upper class parents wrangling access away from the most underserved. How is it not, if there is minimal truly affordable housing near any of the top charters, including Mundo Verde's new location? I don't mean "affordable to a struggling lower middle class" family, I mean affordable to those who qualify for FARMS benefits.

That is the only point I"m saying this "wrangling comment" about. Otherwise, I agree that the focus needs to be on academically and resource-wise (staff, facilities, technology, etc) bringing UP the worst and mediocre schools, while hopefully not hurting the schools that are currently successful. The definition of "what hurts" depends on who you ask and what their priorities are, obviously. But I don't disagree with what you say at all.

[Anonymous]

I agree with about every subpoint made in 12:26's opus.

But I disagree with the assumed premise: that "we" should undertake efforts to amend, upend and blow up the current system with the primary goal of making schools better for poor kids in DC.

12:26 uses the words "underserved" and "poorly served" repeatedly --- as though we all agree that it's just the poor who are the ones being screwed **specifically by DCPS*** (and not society and their own birth families).

We, the taxpayers of DC, don't all agree that that's our most important goal.

It's one goal, sure, but for my family and many others like ours, OUR top goal is to make DCPS better for OUR underserved kids. The pressing educational needs of OUR underserved kids in almost no respect resemble the needs of say, ward 7 and 8's underserved kids.

In fact, they are directly competing needs. A solution that improves the educational outcome of one group may well diminish the prospects of the other group of kids.

DCPS does an abysmal job with our subset of children already. The notion that they should be screwed even further by taking away what little they have so that "the worst schools" get some of our magic ingredients is tiresome social engineering from 1968 Berkeley.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with about every subpoint made in 12:26's opus.

But I disagree with the assumed premise: that "we" should undertake efforts to amend, upend and blow up the current system with the primary goal of making schools better for poor kids in DC.

12:26 uses the words "underserved" and "poorly served" repeatedly --- as though we all agree that it's just the poor who are the ones being screwed **specifically by DCPS*** (and not society and their own birth families).

We, the taxpayers of DC, don't all agree that that's our most important goal.

It's one goal, sure, but for my family and many others like ours, OUR top goal is to make DCPS better for OUR underserved kids. The pressing educational needs of OUR underserved kids in almost no respect resemble the needs of say, ward 7 and 8's underserved kids.

In fact, they are directly competing needs. A solution that improves the educational outcome of one group may well diminish the prospects of the other group of kids.

DCPS does an abysmal job with our subset of children already. The notion that they should be screwed even further by taking away what little they have so that "the worst schools" get some of our magic ingredients is tiresome social engineering from 1968 Berkeley.

Glad you agree with a lot of my points, but I truly don't understand where you get ANY proposal to "blow up" anything from my post. I actually don't really suggest any ANSWERS, just pointing out that neighborhood schools are NOT the answer. Where do you see me assuming anything about all taxpayers' goals? I even say "What is most important depends on who you ask". So where AT ALL did you get the idea that I think the underserved (the truly underserved - because I don't know what you mean when you say "your family's most underserved" and it's about something other than Ward 7/8-type underserved) are the only ones getting screwed???

Crazy gigantic demand for tiny supply of quality public school seats creates a situation where OBVIOUSLY not everyone who wants a public school seat can get a great one. That goes without saying, and it would be beyond naive to think that parents who are living in Petworth, Mount Pleasant, Edgewood, Brookland don't feel screwed by the current system.

Once again, I only had 2 main points:

1. Neighborhood schools are not the answer, because they didn't solve the problem in DC before and won't now; and '

2. Advocate for what you feel you need to advocate for, but do NOT advocate for changing charters to neighborhood schools as a way to somehow HELP improve DC schools, especially for the most underserved.

Other than that, where are you pulling an actual proposed plan to blow anything up out of my post?? Or an assumption that everyone prioritizes the poorest, most underserved families over everything else? If that were true... DC would be a very different place. I'm very clear, that is NOT true!