Help me Edit: Response to Brookings Report

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This. I would not respond in the way you are planning to. It makes you look tone deaf at best, and an apologist for nasty behavior at worst. I don't think that is what or who you want to be, or be seen as. The racism and classism is present in all of this. Any denial of that won't work.

I will ask you the same question I asked above. If DCUM is a bunch of segregationists perpetuating a racist system, what is the solution? Do you want people to stop moving into neighborhoods that they perceive as having good schools? Are posters supposed to stop talking about their local schools? One poster wants us to stop supporting charters despite many of them being among the most diverse schools in the city -- all in the name of ending segregation. Just calling people racists is easy. What's the solution that you propose?

There doesn’t have to be an accurate prescription for the diagnosis to be true.

You will live to regret having reacted to this paper’s accurate description of what is happening here as though it is inaccurate because there isn’t an obvious prescription for fixing it, is my guess. The list of what kind of posters are here reads a lot like “some of my best friends are Black.”

But don't you see the problem with your response? You are essentially saying that there is a problem, you have no idea how to solve it, but you expect others to solve it. Those that you expect to solve it don't know how to solve it either. But, they have to make choices and they are making the best choices they can under the circumstances.

I think we’re talking past each other here.

Generally, I don’t think Brookings has to offer solutions to problems it identifies in order for its research to make accurate truth claims.

I also think they are right about what they identify here. Not universally, but more right than wrong.

I don’t expect “someone else” to solve this problem. When I recognize the dynamics they’re describing in my own life, I try to take steps to lessen them. With the climate here being what it is lately, I’m not down for describing those steps. That climate issue is worth some of your energy. It’s worse than it has been. That, more than Brookings, is going to cut into your traffic after the initial bump.

Regardless: Brookings doesn’t have to identify solutions to be identifying problems.

DP. I agree with you that Brookings does not have to present a solution. It is sufficient to present an analysis. Brookings does have an obligation to present solid research, however, without relying on flawed or shoddy methodology. You say you like this because it conforms with other things you agree with, but that shouldn't be a standard for thoughtful research. In other words, liking their conclusion should not excuse shoddy methodologies.

Shoddy research and methodology is the real problem here. I don't think anyone I have read is really defending the methodology, just some are defending the conclusion. If we are all largely agreed that there are significant methodological errors here, that seems to be a serious issue on its own. Social science researchers get criticized a lot for having lower academic standards than (say) medicine or engineering. I've defended social science studies before, but this work is hard to defend, even if I think there should be a conversation about the topic. It's just not rigorous, and that leads to a lot of problems.

[Anonymous]

I think you are reacting emotionally and defensively and if you take a few days to process this and calm down, you may see that the report has many good points.

Basically, many white gentrifiers don’t want their kids going to the public schools in the neighborhood they moved into and boards like this help them figure out how to send their kids to “better,” typically whiter and less economically diverse non neighborhood schools. That’s pretty obvious.

[Anonymous]

Hi Jeff, I will include some structural and copy-edits below, in bold. Hope you find them helpful.

jsteele wrote:Here is my first draft of my response to the Brookings report. I will eventually post this on DCUM's home page. Please help me improve it by suggesting modifications, additions, or substractions.

A recent report issued by the Brookings, "We all want what’s best for our kids", -- based on 10 years worth of posts in the DC Urban Moms and Dads forum -- starts out saying, "The conversations in the “DC Public and Public Charter Schools” forum shine a light on the mechanisms of segregation in the District’s public education system." The reports concludes similarly, "When privileged parents choose, they tend to choose segregation". My wife and I own and operate the DC Urban Moms and Dads website and are frequent participants in the DC Schools forum. Moreover, we have two sons who both attended a DC Public Charter School. One attended and one still attends DC Public Schools. As such, this report hits pretty close to home.
--Brookings, or better The Brookings Institution. I know some call it "the Brookings" but it's uncommon in print.
Suggest removing the quotes in this paragraph -- they frame the whole response in a bit of a misleading way, because you frontload them and prime readers.
But you think the words are incorrect, so suggest dropping them unless you want to take them apart below.

Suggested rephrase of first para:
The Brookings Institution recently released a report on DC Public Schools. This report uses data from 10 years worth of posts in the DC Urban Moms and Dads (DCUM) forum. My wife and I own and operate the DC Urban Moms and Dads website and are frequent participants in the DC Schools forum. Moreover, we have two sons who both attended a DC Public Charter School. One attended and one still attends DC Public Schools. Therefore, we know well both the DC public school system, and DCUM.

Suggested 2nd para, in bullet points or written out: (summarize your main points)
I have read the report in detail, and I find the conclusions to be either weak or obvious, or based on flawed analysis and incorrect. The principal problems with the report are:
(I list several, not all need be kept)
- The entire report is based on flawed analysis - "sentiment" analysis via word frequency measures, a technique long past its prime that cannot take context into account.
- In fact, the report's examples show such context-based errors.
- The key conclusions of the report are obvious and simplistic.
- The schools subject to most attention in the report, like Wilson HS, *are* integrated.
- The measures of school attention suffer from uncorrected bias due to school size. Deal and Wilson are two of the largest schools in the DCPS system.

- There is an implicit assumption that test scores are the end-all and be-all of school quality, instead of allowing for parents to gather information beyond test scores. This confusion calls a principal result into question.


First, and most importantly, the key conclusions of the report are obvious and simplistic: that school selection is influenced by real estate prices and neighborhood segregation. The data in the report is hardly required to make this conclusion. In fact, I hardly know anyone familiar with the DCPS system that does not agree with this. And the report hardly advances the discussion about solving these problems: there is no mention of the lottery efforts and failure in San Francisco Public Schools, no mention of the the changes being made to the NYC public school systems. And worse, there is no mention of the biggest way students segregate by socio-economic status, which is moving to the suburbs. DC schools cannot keep parents from moving to Bethesda for the schools, and the report does not acknowledge that higher-SES families still in DCPS are still in the DC public school system, and often trying to do their best to help improve DCPS schools, instead of leaving for often-much-more-segregated suburban schools.


To be clear, it is my opinion that the research for this report was lazy, the analysis is flawed, and the conclusions are wrong. The report in no way contributes to improving public schools in the District of Columbia or creating a better understanding of how parents participate in the school selection process. Instead, the report ignores common sense explanations for many of the findings, misrepresents or misleadingly presents data, and blames parents for participating in a system that is not of their making.

The most glaring failure of the report is its lack of recognition that practically all participants in the DC Schools forum who have children in DC public schools have chosen integrated schools. The report states that Alice Deal Middle School and Woodrow Wilson High School are the two most commonly discussed schools in the forum. Deal's demographics are 46% White, 28%, Black, and 16% Hispanic. Wilson's are 39% White, 29% Black, 22% Hispanic. There is no reasonable definition of "integrated" that does not describe these schools. If Ward 3 parents were uncomfortable with diversity, only a few scribbles in their checkbooks would be required for them to disembark to a home within the boundaries of Bethesda's Walt Whitman High with its 67% White, 4% Black student body. But rather than recognizing these integration success stories, the report casts posters as segregationists, completely ignoring the Black and Hispanic families also eager to attend those schools.

The report repeatedly attributes to racial demographics what can easily be explained by other more obvious factors. The DC Schools forum (and to an extent the entire website) has always been most popular with parents in northwest DC. Therefore, there should be no surprise that schools in northwest DC get discussed the most. The report seems to miss this rather obvious fact that the amount of attention paid to schools is highly reflective of the self-selected user base. Users discuss what they know. The large number of users in northwest DC means that posters in that quadrant can expect useful responses to questions about their neighborhood schools. Forum users in other parts of the city in which we have fewer users may find little to no response to their queries simply because few of our users know anything about those neighborhood schools. The lack of discussion is a result of unfamiliarity, not the schools' demographics. Those outside of areas in which DC Urban Moms is popular may prefer to discuss their schools on neighborhood mailing lists and Facebook groups, also decreasing mentions of the schools in the Forum for a reasons unrelated to demographics.

In another example, the report categorizes Woodrow Wilson as a "high-attention" school compared to Duke Ellington School of the Arts which is categorized as "low-attention". The report attributes the disparity of attention to demographics, ignoring that Wilson is the city's largest high school with 1,872 students while Ellington is a specialized arts school with 558 students. Of course Wilson would get more attention.

Moreover, the mere mention of a school's name is no real indication that the school is being promoted. A thread about "Lack Of Eye Candy At Janney" (referring to dads) is 34 pages long. I'm not sure that helped increase interest in the school. Moreover, some of the "high-attention" schools gained high-attention because of scandals. The threads more likely scared people away from the schools rather than attracting them.

A similar misrepresentation of data occurs when the report discusses schools in the Brookland neighborhood. The report provides a graph showing which schools in Brookland get mentioned the most in the forum, concluding that schools with significant White demographics get discussed more than schools with fewer White students. What is missing from this conclusion is the fact that the most discussed schools are all charter schools which draw from the entire District for students while the less-discussed schools are all in-boundary and rely on their neighborhoods for students. As such, the pool of Forum posters potentially interested in discussing the charter schools is much larger. This is simply not a valid comparison. To be accurate, the authors should have limited their study to only posters living within Brookland, but the data available to them did not allow this.

The basis of the report is word frequency analysis in which the presence or absence of a keyword is used to determine interest. This is a very primitive methodology replete with shortcomings. This practice removes all context from the discussion. For instance, the word "diversity" is listed as a popular keyword. Writing "no diversity" would also add to the count. But it is unclear what mentioning "diversity" means. If "diversity" is identified as a strength of a school, does that support segregation? The authors include "IB" as a synonym for "in-bound", apparently unaware that it is also used for "International Baccalaureate". Further, the authors identify "in-bound" as the most common substantive term they analyzed. Significantly, the District's heavily discussed rezoning process occurred right in the middle of their dataset. Every DCPS-related publication was discussing "in-bound".

The lack of context shows itself in another example. In a paragraph beginning "Many school assignments are deemed unacceptable outcomes to DC Urban Moms participants; it is common to consider opting out of the District's school system entirely..." The report quotes a post, "Agree. I would apply [to] Janney and pay for private if I didn't get in." On the face of it, this post seems to support the authors' contention. But, if one actually reads the thread in which this is posted, the original poster is inbounds for Janney, has a child in a private preschool, and is asking about pre-k 4. The recommendation that is quoted is not about leaving DCPS, but about not making school changes two years in a row (the OP's child is guaranteed a K spot at Janney). The thread almost entirely contradicts the premise it is being used to support. Far from threatening to leave DCPS, the poster is eager to get in to it. The authors spent four years on this study, but don't appear to have bothered reading the threads on which they were basing their conclusions.

The report is clear in its conclusion that the DC Schools forum conversations support school segregation. But the same conversations can be viewed differently. Privileged families who are unhappy with their inbound DCPS school have a number of choices. They can move, either within DC or to another jurisdiction. They can utilize the lottery and hope for acceptance to another DCPS or charter school, or they can choose a private school. By providing information, access to sometimes obscure data, advice on how to use the lottery and so on, the forum makes it easier and more likely for parents to choose a DC public school. The number of White students in DC's public schools is increasing. Not all of these are choosing predominately White schools, but rather are contributing to the integration of additional schools. This is the irony of the report: it criticizes families who choose to remain in DC public schools and the forum that helps them do it.

DC Urban Moms and Dads posters are not the segregationists described in the Brookings report. Suggest rephrase positively: "DCUM posters are often optimistic about an integrated school experience."They are simply parents attempting to find the best educational opportunities for their children. They are working within a system they did not invent and over which they have little control. The realities of race, class, and culture in DC public schools are nuanced and complex. They are deserving of serious study. A shoddy word frequency analysis completely devoid of context is not such a study. It does a diservice disservice to the Forum posters, to the authors who wrote it, and to Brookings who published it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you are reacting emotionally and defensively and if you take a few days to process this and calm down, you may see that the report has many good points.

Basically, many white gentrifiers don’t want their kids going to the public schools in the neighborhood they moved into and boards like this help them figure out how to send their kids to “better,” typically whiter and less economically diverse non neighborhood schools. That’s pretty obvious.

The report have good points (I don't know the DC schools well enough to comment, I am not in DC, although I think issues of "nice white parents" warrant a lot of discussion). However, it is irresponsible to use sloppy methodology to jump to those points. In other words, this is an opinion piece dressed up in a veneer of science, but that veneer is fairly obviously weak. If Brookings had written a pure opinion piece, I think the reaction would be different. But doing word count analysis without controlling for textual context? I wouldn't let a high schooler get away with that, let alone Brookings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you are reacting emotionally and defensively and if you take a few days to process this and calm down, you may see that the report has many good points.

Basically, many white gentrifiers don’t want their kids going to the public schools in the neighborhood they moved into and boards like this help them figure out how to send their kids to “better,” typically whiter and less economically diverse non neighborhood schools. That’s pretty obvious.

But that's not what happens in DC. By far the biggest factor around SES clustering in DC (as basically everywhere else in America) is the housing market. Kids go to Deal and Lafayette and Murch and Janney and Ross and Oyster not because of the lottery, but because their parents bought expensive houses in those areas. The lottery doesn't place that many kids in the Ward 3 elementaries. In-bounds preference does.

The fact that there are many schools in DC that are majority-minority and whose test scores are low is a big, big, big problem. But it's not because parents don't choose those schools in the lottery. Which is what the report is trying (poorly) to argue.

[Anonymous]

I finally read the entire paper and think it is beneath even needing a response. They can have the last word and their own paper exposes how shoddy their research was and how poor their critical thinking is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you are reacting emotionally and defensively and if you take a few days to process this and calm down, you may see that the report has many good points.

Basically, many white gentrifiers don’t want their kids going to the public schools in the neighborhood they moved into and boards like this help them figure out how to send their kids to “better,” typically whiter and less economically diverse non neighborhood schools. That’s pretty obvious.

But that's not what happens in DC. By far the biggest factor around SES clustering in DC (as basically everywhere else in America) is the housing market. Kids go to Deal and Lafayette and Murch and Janney and Ross and Oyster not because of the lottery, but because their parents bought expensive houses in those areas. The lottery doesn't place that many kids in the Ward 3 elementaries. In-bounds preference does.

The fact that there are many schools in DC that are majority-minority and whose test scores are low is a big, big, big problem. But it's not because parents don't choose those schools in the lottery. Which is what the report is trying (poorly) to argue.

The explanation above works as an Upper NW take on how the housing market drives segregation in schools. East of the Park, things are not as cut and dried. The lottery places a good many white kids in majority-minority DC public schools for Early Childhood programs families are not zoned for, because kids without older siblings in by-right schools often cannot crack the lottery for PreS3, and possibly PreK4, in the areas with the most expensive housing. What happens is that families who fail to get ECE spots in by-rights schools commonly land in other public schools within a few miles of home, both DCPS and charter, that are majority-minority. Some of these families stay on at these schools into the lower grades because they like them. But by the upper grades, these families have generally left majority-minority schools, mainly over concerns about lack of challenge up the chain (no Gifted programs in DC and no test-in MS programs, standard offerings in other big US cities). The authors of the report serve up the standard Upper NW-centric view of school segregation/parents' choices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you are reacting emotionally and defensively and if you take a few days to process this and calm down, you may see that the report has many good points.

Basically, many white gentrifiers don’t want their kids going to the public schools in the neighborhood they moved into and boards like this help them figure out how to send their kids to “better,” typically whiter and less economically diverse non neighborhood schools. That’s pretty obvious.

But that's not what happens in DC. By far the biggest factor around SES clustering in DC (as basically everywhere else in America) is the housing market. Kids go to Deal and Lafayette and Murch and Janney and Ross and Oyster not because of the lottery, but because their parents bought expensive houses in those areas. The lottery doesn't place that many kids in the Ward 3 elementaries. In-bounds preference does.

The fact that there are many schools in DC that are majority-minority and whose test scores are low is a big, big, big problem. But it's not because parents don't choose those schools in the lottery. Which is what the report is trying (poorly) to argue.

Yeah but parents bought in that area/Ward 3 BECAUSE of the schools and what are perceived as “good” schools. High demand for those schools; high housing prices. Anyway, the better research paper would have focused on housing segregation and/or what schools people deem “good.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you are reacting emotionally and defensively and if you take a few days to process this and calm down, you may see that the report has many good points.

Basically, many white gentrifiers don’t want their kids going to the public schools in the neighborhood they moved into and boards like this help them figure out how to send their kids to “better,” typically whiter and less economically diverse non neighborhood schools. That’s pretty obvious.

But that's not what happens in DC. By far the biggest factor around SES clustering in DC (as basically everywhere else in America) is the housing market. Kids go to Deal and Lafayette and Murch and Janney and Ross and Oyster not because of the lottery, but because their parents bought expensive houses in those areas. The lottery doesn't place that many kids in the Ward 3 elementaries. In-bounds preference does.

The fact that there are many schools in DC that are majority-minority and whose test scores are low is a big, big, big problem. But it's not because parents don't choose those schools in the lottery. Which is what the report is trying (poorly) to argue.

The explanation above works as an Upper NW take on how the housing market drives segregation in schools. East of the Park, things are not as cut and dried. The lottery places a good many white kids in majority-minority DC public schools for Early Childhood programs families are not zoned for, because kids without older siblings in by-right schools often cannot crack the lottery for PreS3, and possibly PreK4, in the areas with the most expensive housing. What happens is that families who fail to get ECE spots in by-rights schools commonly land in other public schools within a few miles of home, both DCPS and charter, that are majority-minority. Some of these families stay on at these schools into the lower grades because they like them. But by the upper grades, these families have generally left majority-minority schools, mainly over concerns about lack of challenge up the chain (no Gifted programs in DC and no test-in MS programs, standard offerings in other big US cities). The authors of the report serve up the standard Upper NW-centric view of school segregation/parents' choices.

Yes. But even with the EOTP families, Latin and BASIS are popular and those are majority-minority. Because, as you say, the concerns aren't mostly about majority-minority schools, they're about course offerings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you are reacting emotionally and defensively and if you take a few days to process this and calm down, you may see that the report has many good points.

Basically, many white gentrifiers don’t want their kids going to the public schools in the neighborhood they moved into and boards like this help them figure out how to send their kids to “better,” typically whiter and less economically diverse non neighborhood schools. That’s pretty obvious.

But that's not what happens in DC. By far the biggest factor around SES clustering in DC (as basically everywhere else in America) is the housing market. Kids go to Deal and Lafayette and Murch and Janney and Ross and Oyster not because of the lottery, but because their parents bought expensive houses in those areas. The lottery doesn't place that many kids in the Ward 3 elementaries. In-bounds preference does.

The fact that there are many schools in DC that are majority-minority and whose test scores are low is a big, big, big problem. But it's not because parents don't choose those schools in the lottery. Which is what the report is trying (poorly) to argue.

The explanation above works as an Upper NW take on how the housing market drives segregation in schools. East of the Park, things are not as cut and dried. The lottery places a good many white kids in majority-minority DC public schools for Early Childhood programs families are not zoned for, because kids without older siblings in by-right schools often cannot crack the lottery for PreS3, and possibly PreK4, in the areas with the most expensive housing. What happens is that families who fail to get ECE spots in by-rights schools commonly land in other public schools within a few miles of home, both DCPS and charter, that are majority-minority. Some of these families stay on at these schools into the lower grades because they like them. But by the upper grades, these families have generally left majority-minority schools, mainly over concerns about lack of challenge up the chain (no Gifted programs in DC and no test-in MS programs, standard offerings in other big US cities). The authors of the report serve up the standard Upper NW-centric view of school segregation/parents' choices.

This is a really good point.

The housing explanation, which is the (obvious) conclusion the report puts forward, is most clearly true from an Upper NW perspective.

But in many other wards, for example Wards 1 and 6, a ton of parents put their kids into majority-minority schools with bad test scores often due to free PK. Some of those parents end up leaving but some do stay.

It’s a point I wish someone had written a paper about: free PK has been a HUGE success and driver of school integration in DC, bringing all kinds of families together into the same by-rights schools. Can we think of a single better policy effort in any urban district that has improved integration in schools?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Hi Jeff, I will include some structural and copy-edits below, in bold. Hope you find them helpful.

Thank you very much for your suggestions. I have incorporated several of your ideas. I really appreciate your assistance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you are reacting emotionally and defensively and if you take a few days to process this and calm down, you may see that the report has many good points.

Basically, many white gentrifiers don’t want their kids going to the public schools in the neighborhood they moved into and boards like this help them figure out how to send their kids to “better,” typically whiter and less economically diverse non neighborhood schools. That’s pretty obvious.

But that's not what happens in DC. By far the biggest factor around SES clustering in DC (as basically everywhere else in America) is the housing market. Kids go to Deal and Lafayette and Murch and Janney and Ross and Oyster not because of the lottery, but because their parents bought expensive houses in those areas. The lottery doesn't place that many kids in the Ward 3 elementaries. In-bounds preference does.

The fact that there are many schools in DC that are majority-minority and whose test scores are low is a big, big, big problem. But it's not because parents don't choose those schools in the lottery. Which is what the report is trying (poorly) to argue.

The explanation above works as an Upper NW take on how the housing market drives segregation in schools. East of the Park, things are not as cut and dried. The lottery places a good many white kids in majority-minority DC public schools for Early Childhood programs families are not zoned for, because kids without older siblings in by-right schools often cannot crack the lottery for PreS3, and possibly PreK4, in the areas with the most expensive housing. What happens is that families who fail to get ECE spots in by-rights schools commonly land in other public schools within a few miles of home, both DCPS and charter, that are majority-minority. Some of these families stay on at these schools into the lower grades because they like them. But by the upper grades, these families have generally left majority-minority schools, mainly over concerns about lack of challenge up the chain (no Gifted programs in DC and no test-in MS programs, standard offerings in other big US cities). The authors of the report serve up the standard Upper NW-centric view of school segregation/parents' choices.

Yes. But even with the EOTP families, Latin and BASIS are popular and those are majority-minority. Because, as you say, the concerns aren't mostly about majority-minority schools, they're about course offerings.

Course offerings/demographics (many poorly prepared low SES classmates). Epic problem but no mention of this in the crap report.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think we’re talking past each other here.

Generally, I don’t think Brookings has to offer solutions to problems it identifies in order for its research to make accurate truth claims.

I also think they are right about what they identify here. Not universally, but more right than wrong.

I don’t expect “someone else” to solve this problem. When I recognize the dynamics they’re describing in my own life, I try to take steps to lessen them. With the climate here being what it is lately, I’m not down for describing those steps. That climate issue is worth some of your energy. It’s worse than it has been. That, more than Brookings, is going to cut into your traffic after the initial bump.

Regardless: Brookings doesn’t have to identify solutions to be identifying problems.

Talking past each other or not, we are definitely having trouble communicating. Because neither Brookings nor you propose alternative actions for DCUM posters, all you have to offer is criticism. You say that your criticism is correct. But my argument is that while our users are making choices that might not be perfect, they are still the best choices available to them. If there are better choices, what are they? You won't say and Brookings didn't say. I assume that whatever secrets you are keeping are unknown to our users, so even though better choices may secretly exist, they are unknown to our posters who are still making the best choices among the alternatives known to them.

It really seems like common sense that if you are going to criticize someone's actions, you should be able to tell them what they should do differently. Otherwise, it is not clear that you wouldn't do exactly the same thing they are doing if you were in their circumstances.

Please spend time in the "integrated schools" movement -- the podcast, and other sources around the internet, before publishing a response. the solutions are in there, and it will feel like a paradigm shift to you, because they are actively "anti-racist" decisions. There is momentum building for that kind of thinking this year.

That is where Vanessa is coming from, and understanding that foundation will help you understand the study.

[Anonymous]

i think what a lot of people are missing here is the mindset that you are either making an anti-racist decision, or you are making a racist decision.

Often, what white people consider to be the default or obvious choice is one that supports a racist, segregated country. It doesn't mean you are a member of the KKK, but it is still true. THAT is what the author is trying to get at, but bc it is a Brookings piece she can't be more obvious about driving home that conclusion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think you are reacting emotionally and defensively and if you take a few days to process this and calm down, you may see that the report has many good points.

Basically, many white gentrifiers don’t want their kids going to the public schools in the neighborhood they moved into and boards like this help them figure out how to send their kids to “better,” typically whiter and less economically diverse non neighborhood schools. That’s pretty obvious.

But that's not what happens in DC. By far the biggest factor around SES clustering in DC (as basically everywhere else in America) is the housing market. Kids go to Deal and Lafayette and Murch and Janney and Ross and Oyster not because of the lottery, but because their parents bought expensive houses in those areas. The lottery doesn't place that many kids in the Ward 3 elementaries. In-bounds preference does.

The fact that there are many schools in DC that are majority-minority and whose test scores are low is a big, big, big problem. But it's not because parents don't choose those schools in the lottery. Which is what the report is trying (poorly) to argue.

The explanation above works as an Upper NW take on how the housing market drives segregation in schools. East of the Park, things are not as cut and dried. The lottery places a good many white kids in majority-minority DC public schools for Early Childhood programs families are not zoned for, because kids without older siblings in by-right schools often cannot crack the lottery for PreS3, and possibly PreK4, in the areas with the most expensive housing. What happens is that families who fail to get ECE spots in by-rights schools commonly land in other public schools within a few miles of home, both DCPS and charter, that are majority-minority. Some of these families stay on at these schools into the lower grades because they like them. But by the upper grades, these families have generally left majority-minority schools, mainly over concerns about lack of challenge up the chain (no Gifted programs in DC and no test-in MS programs, standard offerings in other big US cities). The authors of the report serve up the standard Upper NW-centric view of school segregation/parents' choices.

This is a really good point.

The housing explanation, which is the (obvious) conclusion the report puts forward, is most clearly true from an Upper NW perspective.

But in many other wards, for example Wards 1 and 6, a ton of parents put their kids into majority-minority schools with bad test scores often due to free PK. Some of those parents end up leaving but some do stay.

It’s a point I wish someone had written a paper about: free PK has been a HUGE success and driver of school integration in DC, bringing all kinds of families together into the same by-rights schools. Can we think of a single better policy effort in any urban district that has improved integration in schools?

It is a really good point and is an example of successful carrots.