What would happen if families in dc all had their kids attend their In Boundary school?

[Anonymous]

I want to address the suggestion that near NE is somehow a utopia of gentrification where people attend racially and SES diverse IB schools and it's great.

That's a narrow perception likely based on being IB for a school you like that is currently in a good place with regards to both school performance (read: test scores) and diversity. If you lucked into attending Ludlow-Taylor or Maury IB at this precise moment, you might pat yourself on the back because your kid is going to a functional school with good teachers and administrators, but also real racial and SES diversity. Congrats -- that's kind of the holy grail if you support public schools and believe in education all kids, and it must feel great to send your kid to a school like that.

Now wait 10 years.

Homes IB for L-T and Maury have become out of reach for middle class families. Affordable housing is incredibly limited and as property costs rise, it's not going to get better. If you need a million dollars to by a 3-bedroom, 1800 sq ft row home IB for one of these schools, how long before the current diversity starts to trend in another direction? I give you: Brent Elementary. 60% white, fantastic test scores, a tiny at-risk population. This isn't a knock on Brent, which is a great school. But it is no longer a truly diverse and is no longer really accessible to middle class or poor families. L-T and Maury will be Brent soon enough.

You can't look at neighborhoods still in the midst of gentrification and say "See, they solved it!" Many, many families are being priced out of these neighborhoods already, and it is only a matter of time before the wealthy (and mostly white) kids outnumber everyone else at those schools. You might pat yourself on the back now because your kids diverse, high-performing school makes you feel like you one the guilty white person lottery. And in a way, you did. But you didn't solve systemic racism and inequity in DCPS or public school generally. It is the luck of timing. That's it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I want to address the suggestion that near NE is somehow a utopia of gentrification where people attend racially and SES diverse IB schools and it's great.

That's a narrow perception likely based on being IB for a school you like that is currently in a good place with regards to both school performance (read: test scores) and diversity. If you lucked into attending Ludlow-Taylor or Maury IB at this precise moment, you might pat yourself on the back because your kid is going to a functional school with good teachers and administrators, but also real racial and SES diversity. Congrats -- that's kind of the holy grail if you support public schools and believe in education all kids, and it must feel great to send your kid to a school like that.

Now wait 10 years.

Homes IB for L-T and Maury have become out of reach for middle class families. Affordable housing is incredibly limited and as property costs rise, it's not going to get better. If you need a million dollars to by a 3-bedroom, 1800 sq ft row home IB for one of these schools, how long before the current diversity starts to trend in another direction? I give you: Brent Elementary. 60% white, fantastic test scores, a tiny at-risk population. This isn't a knock on Brent, which is a great school. But it is no longer a truly diverse and is no longer really accessible to middle class or poor families. L-T and Maury will be Brent soon enough.

You can't look at neighborhoods still in the midst of gentrification and say "See, they solved it!" Many, many families are being priced out of these neighborhoods already, and it is only a matter of time before the wealthy (and mostly white) kids outnumber everyone else at those schools. You might pat yourself on the back now because your kids diverse, high-performing school makes you feel like you one the guilty white person lottery. And in a way, you did. But you didn't solve systemic racism and inequity in DCPS or public school generally. It is the luck of timing. That's it.

+1000. Permanent affordable housing helps this but there is not enough of it. An at-risk set-aside is the only way.

[Anonymous]

It's amazing that folks with privilege still don't get their privilege follows them. If everyone went to their neighborhood schools, the schools' success would be based on the same factor they are now - socioeconomic status of the kids in it.

I'm also talking about myself as a solidly middle class black mom. We would simply invest our time and money in the school and then all of sudden...this "poor performing" school would be wonderful.

[Anonymous]

YES people talk about poor-performing schools and highly successful schools, but generally wherever children of DCUM go they will succeed. So what does obsessing over test scores do that looking at demographics does not? There are few places where teaching is able to dissociate school outcomes from incomes and I don't see a lot of people here clamoring for the KIPPs.

[Anonymous]

The OP's proposal excuses the system and lays the onus purely on individuals. It's a great way to let DCPS off the hook.

[Anonymous]

Two things:
- real estate boom in the VA and MD suburbs
- real estate softening in EOTP

[Anonymous]

Without charter schools, one would be able to buy a rowhouse for $250K in Petworth, Brightwood Park, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Without charter schools, one would be able to buy a rowhouse for $250K in Petworth, Brightwood Park, etc.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Two things:
- real estate boom in the VA and MD suburbs
- real estate softening in EOTP

It doesn’t appear to be softening for H St, NE/noma/Capitol hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two things:
- real estate boom in the VA and MD suburbs
- real estate softening in EOTP

It doesn’t appear to be softening for H St, NE/noma/Capitol hill

Did you miss the "what would happen?" hypothetical that is the premise for this entire thread?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I'm sure you mean well, but try to understand the history here. OOB rights were created in part to add diversity and let kids out of all-low-income schools. Charters have no boundaries on purpose, to break the link between address and school assignment.

What you see in your neighborhood is not the whole picture of the city. What you propose does nothing for Ward 7 and Ward 8 except shut those kids out of better performing schools that they currently attend. Is that what you want? Think about it.

When you see schools in your area having what looks like a critical mass of higher-income kids, that doesn't mean what you think it means. 1) If everyone went IB and your fantasy of people tolerating that were true, DCPS would need to buy buildings and reboundary. Those high-income kids would be divided across more schools, and would no longer be an appealing proportion because a lot more low-income kids would come in from KIPP, Friendship, DC Prep, etc. 2) DCPS incompetence and corruption and general twisted sadistic approach runs so deep, it takes a truly massive amount of pressure to overcome it and sometimes even that is not enough. When you get a look at what's really going on in there, it's stunning. Eye-opening. I used to think recruitment and demographics was the solution, but never again. The longer high-income people attend DCPS the less they like it. Think about why that might be.

NP. I'm curious, can you explain the statement about DCPS's 'twisted and sadistic approach'? Do you have any examples of the corruption?

I can't tell you personal stories without outing myself, but you could read the whole City Paper article about the food services contract and the whistleblower for an example of corruption. Or the Trogisch thing is a great example of how they will make a power play and punish people for standing up to them even if it is harmful to the school. Make them mad and they will really freak out on you and do things you would not imagine. You can read Joe Weedon's article about what Eliot-Hine was like for his daughter despite the efforts of him and many other parents over many years. Or the article about the principal of Miner slapping a kid in front of adult witnesses-- she was a patronage hire so I hear DCPS didn't even want to fire her after that. Those are just some examples, I'm sure others have more.

How DCPS killed Principal Cahill. Throwing that in.

[Anonymous]

Changing the zoning for housing will help. Bancroft is fairly diverse these days and I don't see that changing a lot. Even amid all of the neighborhood's gentrification, there are lots of high-rise affordable housing units in the Bancroft school zone that outnumber the $million+ row houses.

[Anonymous]

White flight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Without charter schools, one would be able to buy a rowhouse for $250K in Petworth, Brightwood Park, etc.

But nobody would.

[Anonymous]

Can we stop pretending that all gentrification is done by white people and that it’s a black/ white issue? It’s far more a class issue than anyone gives voice to. Most folks with money also don’t send their kids to the low achieving schools in rural poor predominantly white areas. It’s not so much about race (though in we can acknowledge that institutional racism does impact class mobility), but to simply blame DCPS issues on “white parents” not wanting to send their kids to school with “Black kids”, is actually code for middle/ upper middle class college educated parents (of all races) don’t want to send their kids to school with children who come from and continue to live in generational poverty and deal with the issues that brings. And it seems like in this constant conversation on DCUM the presumption is that all brown kids are poor. Which is simply not true.