Inclusivity Behind Gated Doors: The Paradox of DC's Private Schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, it’s the central tension of GDS for me as an alumna, at least. GDS does a great job describing and cultivating its community but does a terrible job explaining why the GDS model (highly selective and expensive private school) is good for The Community. When it was founded, it had a great answer, which was that the public schools were not integrated.

I actually think there are some good and defensible arguments for the school as it is but they are unspoken. The silence around it is really out of character for the school, and too me it is shameful.

One could argue that most public schools still aren’t integrated thanks to racist practices like redlining. Do you follow any of the boundary studies in MCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t come across such a refined critique of woke schools.

It all boils down to limousine liberal. It's still the best descriptor of the kind of person who believes that a 60k private is about inclusivity or lives in a $2M house while caring deeply about affordable housing

My kid's $60k school is about putting her in the best circumstances to succeed, particularly after the train wreck the first couple years of high school were (dur to her own issues). Inclusivity never entered into the equation. I'll never apologize for that, or feel even one iota of remorse.

But, it's your second comparison that I'd like to explore - "lives in a $2M house while caring deeply about affordable housing[.]" Is it your belief that living in an expensive house means that one *cannot* care about affordable housing? That is one truly cares about affordable housing, there is an upper limit to the value of their home? If so, what is it? That only people who live in an inexpensive home can care about affordable housing?

It's this kind or "intellectual" (and I am using the word in its loosest possible sense) incoherence that we've come to expect from someone who uses the term "limousine liberal."

When workforce sized housing is getting torn down and backfilled with McMansions, yes it is hypocritical to live in one while pretending to care about affordable housing. It's no different than driving a suburban while caring about this environment. Your individual action is meaningless, but the totality of individuals choosing the same action does have an impact

I know you think that you had a gotcha moment, but. The three bedroom two bath 1952 ranch that gets torn down in Bethesda or Arlington and is replaced with a 2.7 million dollar home is completely unrelated to workforce housing. Why: the workforce couldn’t afford the ranch home either. Because it sold for $1.3 million and a firefighter and a third grade teacher could not afford that home. My much more realistic scenario is a war between a law firm associate, and a law firm partner.

If you have evidence that garden style apartments that rent for $1800 a month are being torn down en masse (aka, workforce housing) to make way for 5000 square-foot new builds, please provide it and then we can discuss.

That ranch sells for 1.3 because the land has enough value to support the McMansion. If you think the teacher and firefighter should be relegated to garden apartments, then maybe you understand the disdain for the elite that driving American politics

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: My public high school is 5.5% black, my kid’s private school is 14%. But we all know this was a $hit stirring post not a reality based one.

Which public school in DC has 5.5% Black students?

Janney.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: My public high school is 5.5% black, my kid’s private school is 14%. But we all know this was a $hit stirring post not a reality based one.

Which public school in DC has 5.5% Black students?

Janney.

Ultimately feeds into Jackson Reed which is majority minority

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many of us who use privates did our time in DCPS. I sent my own kids for 10, 9 and 10 years respectively---that's a total of 29 years of DCPS education.

I'm not a picky consumer but dealing with DCPS is year-in and year-out is exhausting. We had entire school years without a permanent teacher. We had teachers leave mid year and not be replaced. My kids were never taught to write more than a RACE body paragraph (IYKYK) and in 6th grade and up never read a single full book for any English class (ironically they read more in elementary school.)

We were super active parents in DCPS--- donors to the PTA, room parents, heck I even subbed at one point. But I wanted my kids to learn to write, write and think and so we applied out for high school (and for 8th grade for the middle kid).

This accurately reflects our experience as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, it’s the central tension of GDS for me as an alumna, at least. GDS does a great job describing and cultivating its community but does a terrible job explaining why the GDS model (highly selective and expensive private school) is good for The Community. When it was founded, it had a great answer, which was that the public schools were not integrated.

I actually think there are some good and defensible arguments for the school as it is but they are unspoken. The silence around it is really out of character for the school, and too me it is shameful.

One could argue that most public schools still aren’t integrated thanks to racist practices like redlining. Do you follow any of the boundary studies in MCPS?

I mean, yes. I’m not suggesting school segregation has been solved, but I don’t think it’s as compelling a case to create a private school as it was.

[Anonymous]

I currently have one child in private and a younger child in MCPS. Almost all of the resources and staffing in MCPS go to the lowest performing students. Public schools in the DMV have to be run like prisons and factories due to their size and limited resources. The public school kids are really mean to each other and staff. My kid in private school has never been told she’s going to hell based on her religious beliefs, for example. As someone mentioned earlier, staffing in public schools is another huge challenge. Last year my public kid had a steam or short term subs while the homeroom teacher was suspended multiple times. The teacher was relocated to a different school within MCPS for this year. A private school would have fired the teacher after the first incident.

Our private schools is much more diverse than our public school. Our public school is over 70% Hispanic, 10% white, less than 10% Black and less than 5% of every other demographic. Our private is 40% students of color.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: My public high school is 5.5% black, my kid’s private school is 14%. But we all know this was a $hit stirring post not a reality based one.

Which public school in DC has 5.5% Black students?

Janney.

Ultimately feeds into Jackson Reed which is majority minority

My friends with kids 1st and prek at Janney are already talking about "what to do" about MS and HS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do kids at these schools ever look at the cost of their education and the people they go to school with next to the inclusion and diversity rhetoric/workshops/required assemblies and ask how to reconcile the two? How can a school that costs so much and has so little actual diversity preach social justice?

Just be a rich exclusionary school that doesn’t try to pretend it’s not. At least that would be honest.

I don't think that would go over well with the colleges these schools want their graduates to attend. The colleges are playing the same game of pretend

The most disturbing part is that all these elite, exclusionary high schools and colleges, with their DEI catechisms, seem to be breeding a generation of boys who reject the values the schools claim to stand for.

[Anonymous]

Where is the paradox more prevalent ? In GDS, Maret, or Sidwell ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where is the paradox more prevalent ? In GDS, Maret, or Sidwell ?

It’s not a paradox. But it is a too often unspoken tension.

Sidwell has the advantage on this issue because you a religious affiliation is a reasonable reason to have a private school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Where is the paradox more prevalent ? In GDS, Maret, or Sidwell ?

It’s not a paradox. But it is a too often unspoken tension.

Sidwell has the advantage on this issue because you a religious affiliation is a reasonable reason to have a private school.

The religious aspect kind of deepens the hypocrisy, right? Kind of elevates it from the level of distasteful to stain-on-your-soul.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like OP and others (I think) the problem is not so much the exclusive nature of the schools as their simultaneous preaching of inclusion. It’s really weird. And particularly grating at religious schools, although the non-religious ones tend to have their own kinds of invented religion.

There are catholic schools that preach inclusion and then follow through with large scholarship programs, programs aimed at immigrants, and programs for SPED. Quaker and Episcopal, not so much

Yes, Catholic schools are clearly in a different category -- they come from a tradition that is much more about universal education, sort of quasi-publics for large Catholic communities. The others, ha.

[Anonymous]

No paradox that’s called woke !

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I haven’t come across such a refined critique of woke schools.

It all boils down to limousine liberal. It's still the best descriptor of the kind of person who believes that a 60k private is about inclusivity or lives in a $2M house while caring deeply about affordable housing

My kid's $60k school is about putting her in the best circumstances to succeed, particularly after the train wreck the first couple years of high school were (dur to her own issues). Inclusivity never entered into the equation. I'll never apologize for that, or feel even one iota of remorse.

But, it's your second comparison that I'd like to explore - "lives in a $2M house while caring deeply about affordable housing[.]" Is it your belief that living in an expensive house means that one *cannot* care about affordable housing? That is one truly cares about affordable housing, there is an upper limit to the value of their home? If so, what is it? That only people who live in an inexpensive home can care about affordable housing?

It's this kind or "intellectual" (and I am using the word in its loosest possible sense) incoherence that we've come to expect from someone who uses the term "limousine liberal."

When workforce sized housing is getting torn down and backfilled with McMansions, yes it is hypocritical to live in one while pretending to care about affordable housing. It's no different than driving a suburban while caring about this environment. Your individual action is meaningless, but the totality of individuals choosing the same action does have an impact

I know you think that you had a gotcha moment, but. The three bedroom two bath 1952 ranch that gets torn down in Bethesda or Arlington and is replaced with a 2.7 million dollar home is completely unrelated to workforce housing. Why: the workforce couldn’t afford the ranch home either. Because it sold for $1.3 million and a firefighter and a third grade teacher could not afford that home. My much more realistic scenario is a war between a law firm associate, and a law firm partner.

If you have evidence that garden style apartments that rent for $1800 a month are being torn down en masse (aka, workforce housing) to make way for 5000 square-foot new builds, please provide it and then we can discuss.

That ranch sells for 1.3 because the land has enough value to support the McMansion. If you think the teacher and firefighter should be relegated to garden apartments, then maybe you understand the disdain for the elite that driving American politics

Ah. You moved the goalposts. I thought you might. The resentment of middle income workers over their longer commutes to their white picket fence homes in Clarksburg and Gainsville is not the topic or even the subtopic