Yup. PP is openly saying that they don't want white students around, because they would destroy that spirit of a place "where all of the high achievers and school leadership looked like them." Amazing |
Not even Wilson? |
No one has really mentioned this, but I think the culture and environment of the school plays a large part as to why many white families don't consider Banneker. It's very "old-school", high pressure, focus on academics above all else, etc. The extracurricular offerings aren't great. The administration is a total mess. The building itself is old and decrepit. These types of things are not super appealing to white families in DC.
The academics are wonderful at Banneker, and, for the right kid, it is a wonderful school. It's slated for renovation in a few years and that might start a demographic change. I think the renovation at Walls made it more appealing for white families. |
Np here, my sister and I went to Bullis. |
I'm the PP and what I am openly saying is that I was very pleased that my children have an abundance of role models at Cleveland (and Banneker), positives images of themselves reflected back at them, that this is an aspect of their educational experience that I paid attention to and highly value. Yup. It's wonderful that there are responsible, caring black men throughout the school who counter by their very presence the pervasive negative image of black men. They get to walk past the men hanging out on the corners and see black men in positive leadership positions on a daily basis, and interact with these men in a way that powerfully relates to them that caregiving is a positive aspect of manhood, not a weakness. Young girls get to see the respect and authority black women can attain through education, when most of what they're offered is of the Video Vixen variety. Great role models. Positive, empowering atmosphere, and a strong sense of community. None of this has anything to do with what you choose to do with your children and quite a bit of what I choose to do with mine. Let's see how much of this assets-based perspective makes it into the WP article. |
Yes, Banneker is not like KIPP at all. |
I'm the earlier PP that mentioned that many of the middle/upper SES AAs I know are at charters and privates. It seems that Shepherd and possibly Cleveland may be the only DCPS elementaries w/relatively high numbers of middle/high SES AAs. I know there's a sprinkling at JKLMs and other schools, but not large numbers. Any others? (I haven't been in DC very long.) |
16:29 again. Someone commented earlier that high SES AAs may even be more likely to opt out of DCPS than high SES white families. If true, any idea why that might be? |
Whoops, wrong thread--but I'm still curious! |
Agree with this pp. Additionally, when my white kid was applying to magnet schools and programs, I didn't want her to go to Wilson where the humanities program was majority white. I wanted her to go to Walls, Banneker, or Ellington where black students would be her peers and not tracked in slower classes. |
I'm the poster who went to Bullis, we lived in Takoma area of DC and after we finished Takoma Education Campus we both went on to Bullis. Some neighbors kids went to St. John's or Carroll. Coolidge was not an option even back in then for the majority of the higher SES AA families. |
Thank you so much for this. So often white DCUMers go on about the lack of white students at Banneker but they are totally clueless about the type of black students who attend Banneker and thus have a distorted picture of the school. My white kid didn't want to go to Banneker, because she didn't think she could handle the pressure. Those kids work very very hard. She probably was also influenced by the lack of white kids there but that didn't stop her from going to Ellington, her first choice. But if she had gone to Banneker, she would have been fine. |
Oh puh-lease, lots of black people do! |
Heck no! |
I agree I was oversimplifying, but the linchpin of the argument "if black Banneker students score above the average for blacks, then white Banneker students would score above the average for whites" is that the reason black Banneker students outperform the average for blacks is because of something unique to Banneker that would necessarily apply equally to whites (and would be unavailable at the other schools white students might attend). And there is no reason to make that assumption. Maybe black Banneker students outperform the average for blacks because they test in to the school. Or maybe they outperform the average for blacks because the fact that they applied shows that they have parents who are unusually invested in their education. Or maybe Banneker gives them the opportunity to attend a school with other highly-motivated and intelligent black students, and that helps bolster their success. There's no reason to assume that any of those factors would apply in the same manner and to the same degree to a white student. |