Disadvantaged children can hurt achievement of others in their classrooms

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This post is interesting because it seems to have drawn anxious posts from parents in MoCo AND in DC. Both sets of parents seem to think the study applies to their situation. What say you, angry VA parents???

Not worried. Our ES is a 9/10. Low FARMS but very international.

[Anonymous]

MoCo county is facing a many of these issues as are some fairfax schools. It is pretty inevitable if you have a county wide system. Ct & Mass both have these tiny distrcts that allow them to exclude poor people but it as an expensive system because it has a lot of overhead.

[Anonymous]

Back to the origins referenced study, does anyone have the percentages that the scholar Fantuzzo is talking about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DC is considering a weighted lottery and quotas for low income and disadvantaged students to attend higher performing schools. This is being done in other urban school systems around the country. So conceivably, it would be easier for a kid from Anacostia to attend Brent or a Brightwood kid attend Janney.

I can't find evidence of this consideration anywhere.

[Anonymous]

The quotes I've seen and articles I've read lately about DC's boundary changes eludes to a long-term FUTURE desire to change/improve DC schools.

So, mixing high, med and low SES now is not intended to improve life for your kids or other's kids now. It is to set the stage for a better integrated school system down the road.

The hope is that high SES families will continue to stay in DC and enroll their kids in public schools (although I think the understand that the high SES school population will slow a bit). If this happens, then in 8-10 years the schools should be more diverse, integrated with overall higher test scores (with the high-SES families pulling them up).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:F u.

I was disadvantaged. I have a doctorate, earn 230K/yr, enjoy the respect of colleagues and have many friends.

and am usually happy except when the anti-poor posters post.

Then unless you never had to take stats, you should be aware that population studies don't apply on the individual level. It's nothing but admirable that you personally overcame adverse circumstances. It's also, as you well know, the exception and not the rule. The presence of a significant number of students with high risk factors (many of which apply to lower SES students) has been proven to negatively impact other students in the classroom. In other words, when the teacher has to waste time instructing Johnny on remedial reading and basic behavior, that comes at the opportunity cost of Mary and Andrew getting attention for their advanced learning.

NP, but I definitely want to send out a new "F U" to you PP for calling the time a teacher needs to spend with kids with academic and behavioral problems "a waste of time". Yes, it takes away from classroom time for other on-level or advanced kids, and that's a real issue that needs to be addressed. But screw you for saying the other kids are the only ones worthy of the specialized focus, I.e. not a waste of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree. Knee jerk accusations of discrimination and racism get us absolutely nowhere. Especially considering that the AA middle class families in DC make schools choices almost identically to the way white middle class families do. Racism is not an issue here.

+1

But in the vein of "let's face reality," race is very much an issue in this city and I'd say it's concentrated and even exacerbated in the school boundary debate. There have been a whole lot of knees jerking in every direction these days. Sure, we can keep it terms of income but race is embedded in every reference to FARMS, SES, behavior, capabilities and achievement. It may or may not be there with the OOB ruckus, because parents should be concerned about overcrowding; it's certainly an element when people weigh the value of a WOTP school by its OOB percentages.

No one here thought of poor white children as they read the header of this thread. For every "snowflake" insult thrown out, there are many more equally insulting generalizations about low income people.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree. Knee jerk accusations of discrimination and racism get us absolutely nowhere. Especially considering that the AA middle class families in DC make schools choices almost identically to the way white middle class families do. Racism is not an issue here.

+1

But in the vein of "let's face reality," race is very much an issue in this city and I'd say it's concentrated and even exacerbated in the school boundary debate. There have been a whole lot of knees jerking in every direction these days. Sure, we can keep it terms of income but race is embedded in every reference to FARMS, SES, behavior, capabilities and achievement. It may or may not be there with the OOB ruckus, because parents should be concerned about overcrowding; it's certainly an element when people weigh the value of a WOTP school by its OOB percentages.

No one here thought of poor white children as they read the header of this thread. For every "snowflake" insult thrown out, there are many more equally insulting generalizations about low income people.

There's an element of desperation to this effort to prove that poor kids are dragging everyone down. While I'm not one who's going to put my kid in a failing school to prove a point, I do feel pretty strongly that continued failure--even if it stays isolated on the other side of town or gets pushed out to the suburbs--is going to impact his future. My takeaway from this research about disadvantaged kids is that kids grow into adults who have more disadvantaged kids who . . . drag everyone down.

Give that some thought. This public discourse cannot be limited to "get them out of my child's school."

Who says that the discourse is limited to "get them out of my school"? In fact, I don't think that is even a fair characterization of what is being said. In all the research cited on these threads there is a tipping point where a school becomes a "high poverty" school and requires specialized inputs for the success if the students there. Research also shows that those specialized inputs are not necessarily what kids from more advantages backgrounds need.

For example, even if a high-poverty school started some great programming and convinced me that my child's academic needs would be met, I am completely turned off by the prospect being thrown around requiring longer school days and longer school years for high-poverty schools. I absolutely refuse to sign up for that.

The discourse is really around yes, pleas let's provide extra funding and supports for schools with high numbers of disadvantaged kids. Give it all you've got, try everything to make a difference. You have my tax money and my support. What people are reacting against is some sort of policy level decision to make sure that middle class families are evenly distributed around schools and not allowed to cluster in certain schools--as if THAT is the way to fix inequities. To me it seems like a final refuge of a city educational bureaucracy who is out of ideas.

Not me! Maybe it's because I went to the equivalent of HS in Europe, but I have no problem with a longer calendar school year. I associate it with seriousness, studiousness, and quality. The American desire for long, lazy summers seem very anti-intellectual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a difference between "low income" and "disadvantaged" and "high risk factor." The Article should be titled, "Children With Risk Factors Can Hurt Achievement of Others in Their Classrooms."

Somebody at the Wash Post screwed up by either failing to read and understand the article, or was very careless in giving it a title. The whole thing is misleading unless you realize it was given an incorrect title.

Thank you for being the only person on this thread with decent reading comprehension.

There is a huge difference for children who are poor but have a loving family and stable home life vs kids who are at risk due to neglect, abuse, homelesness, Etc.

[Anonymous]

Not me! Maybe it's because I went to the equivalent of HS in Europe, but I have no problem with a longer calendar school year. I associate it with seriousness, studiousness, and quality. The American desire for long, lazy summers seem very anti-intellectual.

+1!

I keep wondering when we're going to put agrarian needs to rest on the school calendar. I thought maybe charter schools would be the vanguard and still hoping so.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Not me! Maybe it's because I went to the equivalent of HS in Europe, but I have no problem with a longer calendar school year. I associate it with seriousness, studiousness, and quality. The American desire for long, lazy summers seem very anti-intellectual.

+1!

I keep wondering when we're going to put agrarian needs to rest on the school calendar. I thought maybe charter schools would be the vanguard and still hoping so.

+1 6 week summer vacation 1-2 weeks between each quarter would be plenty of vacation.

I am still waiting for Fairfax County to stop having Spring break be between Palm Sunday and Easter. Just put it between 3rd and 4th quarter and be done with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a difference between "low income" and "disadvantaged" and "high risk factor." The Article should be titled, "Children With Risk Factors Can Hurt Achievement of Others in Their Classrooms."

Somebody at the Wash Post screwed up by either failing to read and understand the article, or was very careless in giving it a title. The whole thing is misleading unless you realize it was given an incorrect title.

Thank you for being the only person on this thread with decent reading comprehension.

There is a huge difference for children who are poor but have a loving family and stable home life vs kids who are at risk due to neglect, abuse, homelesness, Etc.

So you propose segregating the unloved. Nice. We did that once. They were called orphanages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This post is interesting because it seems to have drawn anxious posts from parents in MoCo AND in DC. Both sets of parents seem to think the study applies to their situation. What say you, angry VA parents???

Why would I be angry? My snowflake DD attends a high FARMS, high minority population school. We just don't have the social dysfunction you find in the ghetto schools in DC. The immigrant kids populating our school all come from stable, if poor, families that want their kids to have a good education. I see it in the PTA meetings and I see it in the respect and discipline of the kids for their teachers and each other,

[Anonymous]

Do people think it is possible to not be "anti-poor" and to still understand the impact of high numbers of disadvantaged students in a school---on everyone in that school. So far many posters don't seem able to think to that level of subtlety.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This post is interesting because it seems to have drawn anxious posts from parents in MoCo AND in DC. Both sets of parents seem to think the study applies to their situation. What say you, angry VA parents???

Why would I be angry? My snowflake DD attends a high FARMS, high minority population school. We just don't have the social dysfunction you find in the ghetto schools in DC. The immigrant kids populating our school all come from stable, if poor, families that want their kids to have a good education. I see it in the PTA meetings and I see it in the respect and discipline of the kids for their teachers and each other,

Plus, this is a DCPS thread so fuck it!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This post is interesting because it seems to have drawn anxious posts from parents in MoCo AND in DC. Both sets of parents seem to think the study applies to their situation. What say you, angry VA parents???

Why would I be angry? My snowflake DD attends a high FARMS, high minority population school. We just don't have the social dysfunction you find in the ghetto schools in DC. The immigrant kids populating our school all come from stable, if poor, families that want their kids to have a good education. I see it in the PTA meetings and I see it in the respect and discipline of the kids for their teachers and each other,

Powell? Are you one of the handful of white PS3 families who bought in Brightwood and chose Powell for the next 24 months, at most? Felicitaciones!