How is the meeting at Dunbar going?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This whole at risk set aside is a HORRIBLE plan! In D.C. the face of "at-risk" is, in peoples' minds, the young black child. With this plan, the young black child at a Janney or Lafayette or Hearst, will immediately be identified as one of the "at risk" set aside kids. Will this make black kid that is in bounds feel pressure to have his peers know that "I am not one of them"? Will this make the OOB at risk child feel somehow "less than"? Will people look on that child with disdain? This has huge unfortunate social repercussions especially when "at risk" is closely associated with race in the minds of people.

+1,000 Set asides are essentially the same as busing to integrate schools in the 70s. I was an AA kid in Boston at the time who lived IB for white schools and I can tell you from first-hand experience, there are people 30 years later who still think I'm from the projects and that I got into better schools than them because of it. I got over it, but there was definitely a negative impact on stability of my friends who were bused


DC has a horrible track record of helping at-risk children to begin with. Divvying them up over the city to schools with no experience in the complexity of their needs but good results with general population makes absolutely no sense. It didn't occur to me that set asides would be a serious part of the proposal.

Set asides are not the answer to any question. Check out David Catania's Fair Student Funding and School-Based Budgeting Amendment Act of 2013.
http://www.davidcatania.com/fairfunding

"The Act will build into the Uniform per Student Funding Formula—the mechanism used to fund public schools in the District—a dedicated funding stream for students who are at risk of academic failure, as identified by the following risk factors: homelessness, within the foster care system, eligible for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or above the expected age for their grade. According to data provided by the Office of State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), nearly 35,000 public school students met this definition of at-risk in the 2012-2013 school year. The Act requires that the vast majority of this funding—90 percent—goes straight to the schools to be spent by principals, with input from members of their Local School Advisory Teams."

This puts the burden on schools and the city to deliver support for students. Set asides subject students to the vagaries of yet another type of lottery. It's like the Hunger Games where only the poorest of the poor survive to then be paraded around for their non-poor peers so they can experience diversity.

If it takes the DME this long to come up with crappy social engineering that doesn't address the root of the problem, why waste any more time?

November can't come soon enough for me. Catania for Mayor!!! Please!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This proposal basically screws anyone not in Ward 3, Ross, Brent or Maury.

...who were already screwed because they lacked a decent neighborhood school option.

Please try to remember that only a few years have passed since even Brent and Maury were not considered decent options by most IB families living in the neighborhood. Schools don't magically transform, it's takes a lot of time and hard work. While its unfortunate that your neighborhood school isn't up to your standards, you should have known that when you moved to the neighborhood and decided to have children. All in all, you have choices. You can sit on your computer and bitch that life is unfair, you can move elsewhere, you can homeschool or go private, or you can mobilize your neighbors and commit to improving the school. By most accounts, nearly every DCPS has a strong ECE program that you can build upon. This is exactly what happened at Brent and Maury. In any event, things are not all that honky-dory for the long-term without viable middle school options. This is the reason high-SES families abandon Hill schools in droves after 4th Grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This whole at risk set aside is a HORRIBLE plan! In D.C. the face of "at-risk" is, in peoples' minds, the young black child. With this plan, the young black child at a Janney or Lafayette or Hearst, will immediately be identified as one of the "at risk" set aside kids. Will this make black kid that is in bounds feel pressure to have his peers know that "I am not one of them"? Will this make the OOB at risk child feel somehow "less than"? Will people look on that child with disdain? This has huge unfortunate social repercussions especially when "at risk" is closely associated with race in the minds of people.

+1,000 Set asides are essentially the same as busing to integrate schools in the 70s. I was an AA kid in Boston at the time who lived IB for white schools and I can tell you from first-hand experience, there are people 30 years later who still think I'm from the projects and that I got into better schools than them because of it. I got over it, but there was definitely a negative impact on stability of my friends who were bused


DC has a horrible track record of helping at-risk children to begin with. Divvying them up over the city to schools with no experience in the complexity of their needs but good results with general population makes absolutely no sense. It didn't occur to me that set asides would be a serious part of the proposal.

Set asides are not the answer to any question. Check out David Catania's Fair Student Funding and School-Based Budgeting Amendment Act of 2013.
http://www.davidcatania.com/fairfunding

"The Act will build into the Uniform per Student Funding Formula—the mechanism used to fund public schools in the District—a dedicated funding stream for students who are at risk of academic failure, as identified by the following risk factors: homelessness, within the foster care system, eligible for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or above the expected age for their grade. According to data provided by the Office of State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), nearly 35,000 public school students met this definition of at-risk in the 2012-2013 school year. The Act requires that the vast majority of this funding—90 percent—goes straight to the schools to be spent by principals, with input from members of their Local School Advisory Teams."

This puts the burden on schools and the city to deliver support for students. Set asides subject students to the vagaries of yet another type of lottery. It's like the Hunger Games where only the poorest of the poor survive to then be paraded around for their non-poor peers so they can experience diversity.

If it takes the DME this long to come up with crappy social engineering that doesn't address the root of the problem, why waste any more time?

November can't come soon enough for me. Catania for Mayor!!! Please!!!

I see the Catania bill as a poorly thought-out band-aid. What experience do most principals, much less parents sitting on the LSAT, have in terms of allocating resources to prive supports and services for the most vulnerable children in DC? Principals are supposed to be in the business of education, not basic social services.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This proposal basically screws anyone not in Ward 3, Ross, Brent or Maury.

It actually shifts some of the burden of educating our most at-risk children to the best schools with the most experienced teachers.

THE HORROR!!!!!

There are (were) lots of experienced teachers at Watkins, with a sizable high-SES cohort feeding from Peabody. How's that working out?

[Anonymous]

I think a number of schools with sizable OOB populations would be helped and the set aside proposal rationalized if "the cap" -- the 30 percent of at risk students were scaled to the OOB set aside. So with the 10 percent set-aside at elementary schools, you only give preference to at-risk kids if their population is below 10 percent. At middle school where the set-aside increases by 10 percent, you increase the cap to 20 percent. And at high school, you finally increase the cap to 30 percent.

This change doesn't perfectly solve some of the "bunching" problems with the set-asides as I see them but it should mitigate them and hopefully smooth them out over time. Otherwise at school with more than 30 percent OOB and with less than 30 percent at risk, you could have very large at-risk populations concentrations in certain grades. In other words, the school is under the cap, but then it takes in almost solely at risk children for a few years and hits the cap. Then it might take in not so many at-risk kids until the concentration of at-risk kids runs off.

Worse, very high concentrations of at-risk kids in certain grades might overwhelm the school's resources, and reduce their ability to adequately help them. The at-risk kids are traveling across town, but in their grade level to a school that looks a lot like the one they left. Relatedly, IB and non at-risk OOB families may pull out of the school when faced with high concentrations of at-risk children and send the school into a spiral.

Of course, the proposal has other issues at a very small number of schools including overcrowding. And it has the potential as others have noted of shutting out middle class families from the "better" schools and send them to charters or out of the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This proposal basically screws anyone not in Ward 3, Ross, Brent or Maury.

It actually shifts some of the burden of educating our most at-risk children to the best schools with the most experienced teachers.

THE HORROR!!!!!

There are (were) lots of experienced teachers at Watkins, with a sizable high-SES cohort feeding from Peabody. How's that working out?

The theory would be that a school like Murch or Janney could support 50 at-risk kids spread over six grades better than Watkins or any one school could deal with 100 or 150.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This proposal basically screws anyone not in Ward 3, Ross, Brent or Maury.

It actually shifts some of the burden of educating our most at-risk children to the best schools with the most experienced teachers.

THE HORROR!!!!!

There are (were) lots of experienced teachers at Watkins, with a sizable high-SES cohort feeding from Peabody. How's that working out?

The theory would be that a school like Murch or Janney could support 50 at-risk kids spread over six grades better than Watkins or any one school could deal with 100 or 150.

Even Payne doesn't have as many as 100 or 150 at risk kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a number of schools with sizable OOB populations would be helped and the set aside proposal rationalized if "the cap" -- the 30 percent of at risk students were scaled to the OOB set aside. So with the 10 percent set-aside at elementary schools, you only give preference to at-risk kids if their population is below 10 percent. At middle school where the set-aside increases by 10 percent, you increase the cap to 20 percent. And at high school, you finally increase the cap to 30 percent.

This change doesn't perfectly solve some of the "bunching" problems with the set-asides as I see them but it should mitigate them and hopefully smooth them out over time. Otherwise at school with more than 30 percent OOB and with less than 30 percent at risk, you could have very large at-risk populations concentrations in certain grades. In other words, the school is under the cap, but then it takes in almost solely at risk children for a few years and hits the cap. Then it might take in not so many at-risk kids until the concentration of at-risk kids runs off.

Worse, very high concentrations of at-risk kids in certain grades might overwhelm the school's resources, and reduce their ability to adequately help them. The at-risk kids are traveling across town, but in their grade level to a school that looks a lot like the one they left. Relatedly, IB and non at-risk OOB families may pull out of the school when faced with high concentrations of at-risk children and send the school into a spiral.

Of course, the proposal has other issues at a very small number of schools including overcrowding. And it has the potential as others have noted of shutting out middle class families from the "better" schools and send them to charters or out of the city.

You can rest easy PP, 10%, even 20% is not a high concentration.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This proposal basically screws anyone not in Ward 3, Ross, Brent or Maury.

I would add a few more (Shepherd and maybe Powell) but yep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This proposal basically screws anyone not in Ward 3, Ross, Brent or Maury.

I would add a few more (Shepherd and maybe Powell) but yep.

How were these people already not screwed previously? The lottery this year really laid bare how few good schools (DCPS or Charters) have spots available for the high-demand grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a number of schools with sizable OOB populations would be helped and the set aside proposal rationalized if "the cap" -- the 30 percent of at risk students were scaled to the OOB set aside. So with the 10 percent set-aside at elementary schools, you only give preference to at-risk kids if their population is below 10 percent. At middle school where the set-aside increases by 10 percent, you increase the cap to 20 percent. And at high school, you finally increase the cap to 30 percent.

This change doesn't perfectly solve some of the "bunching" problems with the set-asides as I see them but it should mitigate them and hopefully smooth them out over time. Otherwise at school with more than 30 percent OOB and with less than 30 percent at risk, you could have very large at-risk populations concentrations in certain grades. In other words, the school is under the cap, but then it takes in almost solely at risk children for a few years and hits the cap. Then it might take in not so many at-risk kids until the concentration of at-risk kids runs off.

Worse, very high concentrations of at-risk kids in certain grades might overwhelm the school's resources, and reduce their ability to adequately help them. The at-risk kids are traveling across town, but in their grade level to a school that looks a lot like the one they left. Relatedly, IB and non at-risk OOB families may pull out of the school when faced with high concentrations of at-risk children and send the school into a spiral.

Of course, the proposal has other issues at a very small number of schools including overcrowding. And it has the potential as others have noted of shutting out middle class families from the "better" schools and send them to charters or out of the city.

You can rest easy PP, 10%, even 20% is not a high concentration.

Agreed, but 50 percent or more in one grade is, and you could have that under this proposal in schools with high OOB populations. If you are under the 30 percent cap, at-risk children have preference. So then they may take up all of the slots in a grade, perhaps even for a few years before the cap it exceeded.

[Anonymous]

If they are not at risk, their OOB chances are even slimmer .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What does 48% FARMS and less than 30% at-risk tell us about student make-up at Francis Stevens?

Not much. The school has two different populations- those in grades k and under and the the upper ES and ms. The numbers are put together.

Why is this school staying an EC when dcps is proposing getting rid iof EC and proposing to open new MS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does 48% FARMS and less than 30% at-risk tell us about student make-up at Francis Stevens?

Not much. The school has two different populations- those in grades k and under and the the upper ES and ms. The numbers are put together.

Why is this school staying an EC when dcps is proposing getting rid iof EC and proposing to open new MS?

More broadly, why are there ANY ECs left?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
If you're concerned about the set asides, does it make you feel any better that they would phase the 10% set aside in at 6th and at 9th grade only (not sure about Elem). As currently envisioned this would not be corrected for every year, offering some measure of stability and continuity.

What does this mean? Can you elaborate?