Study: "Discussions of D.C. public school options in an online forum" (yes, this one)

[Anonymous]

They used *word frequency* analysis?
What?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The second author, Jackson Gode, graduated in 2014 from The Seattle Academy, a “top-rated private” high school in Seattle.
Its tuition is $38,000 per year.

https://facebook.com/seattleacademy/posts/2363749686994407

Not sure about Mr. Gode’s parents, or his role in his schooling decisions, but (at least for now) I’m a parent sending my kids to DCPS and putting my money where my mouth is.

Vanessa Williamson went to Mira Loma High, which is somewhat like Wilson -- majority-minority (although Mira Loma is a lot more Asian and a lot less Black), genuinely economically integrated, with a lot of differentiation (in their case, a big IB program), and a lot of variation in student outcomes. It's ranked the highest in the school district, so you probably don't wind up there by accident.

[Anonymous]

Jeff should write a response to this article. Like am opinion piece in the wapo or something like that. Their methods are flawed in that they can’t pick up trolls, sarcasm, etc. You need someone like Jeff to write this article because he has a “feel” for the site and data and can tease these things out, unlike their silly word frequency analysis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^sorry, 2012-2015 timeframe.

Please don’t derail this thread. The topic is the article. Where the authors send their kids is relevant. What other books they wrote and why is out of scope here.

Absolutely not.
Science proceeds by reputation all the time.

Peer reviewers cannot catch every error in a paper. And this paper isn’t even peer reviewed, right?

Science relies on reputation. If the authors did good or bad work in the past, that is highly relevant for the quality of their later work.

I will try to go through the DCUM Brookings article in detail later.
Beyond the obvious critique that DCUM is anonymous and so we don’t know if posters are being honest or consistent, are there other flaws?

What Jeff described (the authors not telling him they were going to scrape the whole site and keep a copy, the authors -- based on Jeff's pasted email -- being pretty disingenuous in approaching him, the authors quoting exact posts after telling Jeff they wouldn't), I would say there are flaws in how they acquired their data and used it, leading to questions about data integrity and the authors' trustworthiness.

Given what we now know about how they acquired the data, I am far less likely to trust their analysis.

[Anonymous]

I'm sorry is Jeff an education policy specialist or a social scientist? I thought he just runs a website and makes money off ad links?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry is Jeff an education policy specialist or a social scientist? I thought he just runs a website and makes money off ad links?

I have a BA in Political Science so I guess that makes me a social scientist of sorts. I am not sure that scraping a website and doing a word frequency analysis is the highest form of the profession.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm sorry is Jeff an education policy specialist or a social scientist? I thought he just runs a website and makes money off ad links?

He isn't, but that's irrelevant. The authors seem to have misrepresented what they were doing to Jeff at a minimum (based on what Jeff has shared). If true, that's a problem and raises questions about the analysis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^sorry, 2012-2015 timeframe.

Please don’t derail this thread. The topic is the article. Where the authors send their kids is relevant. What other books they wrote and why is out of scope here.

Absolutely not.
Science proceeds by reputation all the time.

Peer reviewers cannot catch every error in a paper. And this paper isn’t even peer reviewed, right?

Science relies on reputation. If the authors did good or bad work in the past, that is highly relevant for the quality of their later work.

I will try to go through the DCUM Brookings article in detail later.
Beyond the obvious critique that DCUM is anonymous and so we don’t know if posters are being honest or consistent, are there other flaws?

2 flaws I see: (1) Making a lot of assumptions about who is posting and why they prioritize the things they prioritize, and (2) saying people are “choosing” segregation by choosing among the minority of actually integrated schools in the city. It would be more technically accurate to say, for example, that the many Black families choosing KIPP are “choosing segregation.” Basically, DC is not good subject material for the point they seem to want to make.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It won't sink in here. It never does. I don't see any opinions being changed here. The only way to counteract them is through engaged political action.

Fk that noise. I’m doing what’s best for junior. Keep your social engineering to yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Brookings has gotten SO sloppy. It was a well-respected think tank once upon a time. Not anymore.

Yes, but they’re woke now and so critical reasoning doesn’t matter anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It won't sink in here. It never does. I don't see any opinions being changed here. The only way to counteract them is through engaged political action.

Fk that noise. I’m doing what’s best for junior. Keep your social engineering to yourself.

I send my kids to a Title 1 elementary school because it's a good place for them. Make schools appealing to the parents you want to attract and they'll come. Not complicated, and not "engaged political action." There was a thread about ms/hs recently and so many parents would be happy to send their kids to existing dcps middle schools that aren't hardy or deal if they just committed to a curriculum that would be appropriate/challenging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It won't sink in here. It never does. I don't see any opinions being changed here. The only way to counteract them is through engaged political action.

Fk that noise. I’m doing what’s best for junior. Keep your social engineering to yourself.

I send my kids to a Title 1 elementary school because it's a good place for them. Make schools appealing to the parents you want to attract and they'll come. Not complicated, and not "engaged political action." There was a thread about ms/hs recently and so many parents would be happy to send their kids to existing dcps middle schools that aren't hardy or deal if they just committed to a curriculum that would be appropriate/challenging.

this. the Brookings paper literally said the only important factor in education policy is addressing disadvantages. with that kind of belief, why in the world do they think they are going to get any sort of buy-in from people to send their kids to struggling schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It won't sink in here. It never does. I don't see any opinions being changed here. The only way to counteract them is through engaged political action.

Fk that noise. I’m doing what’s best for junior. Keep your social engineering to yourself.

I send my kids to a Title 1 elementary school because it's a good place for them. Make schools appealing to the parents you want to attract and they'll come. Not complicated, and not "engaged political action." There was a thread about ms/hs recently and so many parents would be happy to send their kids to existing dcps middle schools that aren't hardy or deal if they just committed to a curriculum that would be appropriate/challenging.

this. the Brookings paper literally said the only important factor in education policy is addressing disadvantages. with that kind of belief, why in the world do they think they are going to get any sort of buy-in from people to send their kids to struggling schools?

sorry forgot to add: what’s particularly galling is that DC is actually soooo the right place to just make a little more effort for integration. we already have a strong foundation with charters and DCPS middle/HS integration. And DC parents in places like Ward 6 are almost certainly more willing than most to put diversity in the mix of factors. but it’s not going to happen if the premise is “what’s best for my child” is a racist way to think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I haven't read the full paper, but its conclusions don't seem very controversial as they're in line with other research, as the authors themselves have noted. Jeff may take issue with some of the methodology or research ethics, but it's been shown in other work that when white parents have a choice, they tend to choose schools with more white students. This of course won't apply to *every* white family; we're talking about general trends in the data. I've certainly seen this myself as a black parent IB for Shepherd, but anecdata aside, it's been found in other research even when adjusting for other factors.

For example, anyone recall this "revealed preferences" Mathematica study of the DC lottery a few years ago?


"The researchers tested a broad range of factors that could explain why parents choose a school: its proximity to a family’s home, test scores, after-school activities, uniform policies, class size, the crime and income levels of the surrounding neighborhood, and the racial and socio-economic makeup of the school’s student body. Only three of these factors significantly drove parental choice. Parents preferred high test scores, schools closer to home, and schools where their own child would be alongside more peers of his or her same race and class.

Across race and class, a middle-school parent was 12 percent more likely to choose a school where his child’s race made up 20 percent of the study body, compared with a school with similar test scores where his child’s race made up only 10 percent of the study body. White and higher-income applicants had the strongest preferences for their children to remain in-group, while black elementary school parents were essentially “indifferent” to a school’s racial makeup, the researchers found. The findings for Hispanic elementary and middle school parents were not statistically significant.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2016/07/when-white-parents-have-a-choice-they-choose-segregated-schools.html

Someone finally engaging with the substance of the article instead of trying to do mental gymnastics to avoid considering their role in the perpetuation of systemic racism. I look forward to the next article recapping this thread about the article about the threads. I’m sure the thread about that article will be similarly enlightening.

So, what’s more productive? Maybe read the article first before commenting and reading a whole critical thread about it. It’s 48 pages but there are a bunch of pictures, so it only took 20 minutes or so to get it. Maybe try learning more about your neighborhood school even if (especially if?) it’s not one captured in the highly esteemed, Ward 6, or 145 clusters? Try looking beyond the test scores and STAR ratings since both are correlated strongly with race and try to find out what makes schools special beyond the things you mostly hear about on this forum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:there are many instances when white people will choose segregation over a better school.

When certain suburbs and schools become too asian, white people move out:

https://psmag.com/news/ghosts-of-white-people-past-witnessing-white-flight-from-an-asian-ethnoburb

Many of the "highly regarded" charter schools east-of-the-park are objectively worse than the DCPS schools in the same neighborhoods, but are (or were) whiter. White parents move their kids there to be with other white kids.


I think it's reasonable to question why white parents don't encourage their kids to apply to Bannaker...

which charter schools? I can’t think of any that meet that description.

I’ll play. How about creative minds charter school. It had buzz a few years ago, but Burroughs in the same neighborhood outperformed it. The stars system that was put in place a couple years ago makes it easier to compare schools, but that wasn’t available until recently.

oh, interesting. yeah, I can see DCUM having a role in creating an echo chamber like that. Like Paybe has test scores just as good as TRY but Payne is still somewhat suspect on DCUM.

I actually think it's the artificial limit of being able to list 12 schools that creates weird self-perpetuating buzz around charters. I live on the Hill. When my oldest kid was in PK3, our first priority by far was getting her a PK3 spot somewhere. Our first choice would actually have been Maury followed by L-T, because of our location & our preference for neighborhood schools & more traditional curriculum. However, we obviously listed neither of those schools, because we weren't in bound for either and had 0 chance of getting in. Instead, our third choice (and also, obviously, an excellent school) became our first choice: SWS; because we had some chance, however small. I then listened to parents who weren't sure where to apply/didn't have time or inclination to do research, confidently announce that SWS was the best school on the Hill, because it was the most popular. That then becomes self-perpetuating. Look how many people applied! It's hard to get into! Let me lottery for it even though I'm IB for Maury, because why not? It must be desirable because so many people want it. Anyway, I know that's just a microcosm, but I think WAY more IB schools would be listed if people had unlimited lottery picks and that might actually lead to a slight shift towards DCPS IBs over time. Just my two cents.