Why are certain charters on the top of everyone's lists? What is the magic that makes them so loved?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^ No, you stop YOUR strawman arguments, because as has already been pointed out, the low SES families have no problem whatsoever getting signed up for every benefit under the sun, so there should be no issue getting signed up for the lottery either.

Also, the transportation argument is a red herring. Anybody sufficiently motivated can get to a charter. Latin has the 60, 62, 63, 64 Metrobuses along with several others within a couple of blocks. I used to walk 2 miles for middle and high school, so what the fuck is this notion of yours that if kids aren't chauffeured from door to door that it's "exclusion"?

Again, your arguments are BULLSHIT.

Why are you scared of the facts? I'm not accusing your or any charters of doing anything wrong.

Your presumption that "low-SES families have no problem whatsoever getting signed up for every benefit under the sun" is transparently false. Just to give you one example, enrollment rates for Medicaid are well below 100% of eligible familes. (see here: http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012/medicaidtakeup/ib.shtml#t1). Same goes for food stamp enrollment. (http://www.nber.org/papers/w19363). So wherever you wanted to go with this argument, you can lay it to rest.

And I get it that buses can get to Latin. But if you think that there is no difference between 1. a kid having to get themselves from Ward 8 to downtown and then having to take a 45 minute bus ride from downtown to Latin; and 2. a kid walking to and catching a bus that takes half an hour to get from Glover Park to Latin, then you are obtuse.

I get it that you walked two miles to school. I congratulate you for that - you obviously were motivated and came from motivated family. But not all kids do. And those are the kids that are not getting into or attending charter schools.

There is no reason for you to be so angry about this set of facts.

If someone is motivated, they will make whatever it takes happen. If someone is unmotivated, it would make no difference if someone else did all the work to get them signed up for a charter and chauffeured them door to door, because they quite likely wouldn't take full advantage of the opportunity. Your whole argument is essentially self-negating. People have to motivate themselves. I grew up dirt poor and on an outcast on the wrong side of society in more ways than one, but I made things happen to improve my life, I didn't sit around waiting for others to solve my problems for me, let alone wait around for things to be handed to me, only to then lack appreciation for the few things I did receive and the schools that I could attend. And so what if someone can't go to a charter anyhow? Are you harboring some illusion that somehow charters are giving out free ponies and rainbow ice cream? Are you conceding that DCPS is an unacceptable alternative? Yes, I'm angry - but no, it's not about your "facts" - it's about your bullshit. I have little sympathy or patience for you.

[Anonymous]

Congratulations to you.

My point is that when all the kids like you go to charters, the disadvantaged kids that are left behind in DCPS are left with an even worse alternative in DCPS. Charters leavie the schools with a worse cohort of kids. We then blame all their problems on DCPS and on the kids themselves.

So we should be honest about this impact and try to mitigate it - or just shut down DCPS and go to charters.

I don't know why that offends you so much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Congratulations to you.

My point is that when all the kids like you go to charters, the disadvantaged kids that are left behind in DCPS are left with an even worse alternative in DCPS. Charters leavie the schools with a worse cohort of kids. We then blame all their problems on DCPS and on the kids themselves.

So we should be honest about this impact and try to mitigate it - or just shut down DCPS and go to charters.

I don't know why that offends you so much.

Please, just stop with the "congratulations to you" because the way you keep putting it offends me in a condescending way, it reads as though you think you are congratulating a person of privilege, a trust fund baby who inherited millions without lifting a finger. You never walked a mile in my shoes, you have no idea of the disadvantages I had, what I went through and the sacrifices I made in life to get to where I am.

Of course the answer is to mitigate the problems, but your attacking and criticizing charters based on the choices and motivation of those who attend them certainly isn't the answer - and neither is characterizing DCPS as an unacceptable option to be shut down. DCPS schools need to continue to be robustly supported as neighborhood schools and general education. But - disadvantaged children and families also need the wraparound education to teach them the life skills and provide the coaching to help them toward becoming more self-sufficient in their future life prospects. But at the same time you also need to recognize the function and purpose of charter schools, which is *NOT* general-education neighborhood schools, it's targeted as a.) specialized education and b.) NOT as being a neighborhood school, such as language immersion, liberal arts or college prep, or to cover other more narrow focus areas. There is complementarity to having both charters and DCPS schools, and there are lessons to be learned from where we are at. But the problem is, most people don't seem to understand it on either side, whether the charter critics who think charters are competing with "general education" or the charter applicants who might apply at a charter because it's supposed to be "good" per the "HRC" discussions in places like DCUM but without really understanding that what's "good" for person A might not be good for person B, and that not every charter is the perfect fit for every student - nor is that even the aim of charters.

If the issue is that DCPS is left with a "worse cohort of kids" then the question that should be at the fore is, identifying what is worse and what to do about it. If it's core academics, like reading and math skills, then DCPS should focus on bolstering those, with math and reading labs, for example they could run after-school or summer programs focusing on those areas. If the issues are behavioral and disciplinary, then they should be focusing on wraparound services and supports to help deal with those. It's basically filling in the gaps which higher-SES families fill in at home. DCPS spends more per student than any district in the nation - it's not as though they don't have the resources. But as we saw in the "at risk funding" thread, how DCPS chooses to direct said resources is far more the problem.

The point is, with DCPS you can't just pretend everything's hunky dory with how they do things and just point all the blame externally, blaming charters, et cetera - you need to focus on and work with the students you have first and foremost, not the students you wish you had. And by doing that, the students you have will become the students you wish you had. If DCPS bolstered up in those areas, you might actually start to see a lot of families who had been avoiding DCPS starting to return, because in many cases they are avoiding DCPS because of rowdy classrooms where kids are talking, disrupting, aren't paying attention and aren't learning, where teachers have to progress at a painfully slow and limited pace, because the critical mass of kids don't have those core skills that would have been reinforced at home in the higher-SES households.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Congratulations to you.

My point is that when all the kids like you go to charters, the disadvantaged kids that are left behind in DCPS are left with an even worse alternative in DCPS. Charters leavie the schools with a worse cohort of kids. We then blame all their problems on DCPS and on the kids themselves.

So we should be honest about this impact and try to mitigate it - or just shut down DCPS and go to charters.

I don't know why that offends you so much.

Please, just stop with the "congratulations to you" because the way you keep putting it offends me in a condescending way, it reads as though you think you are congratulating a person of privilege, a trust fund baby who inherited millions without lifting a finger. You never walked a mile in my shoes, you have no idea of the disadvantages I had, what I went through and the sacrifices I made in life to get to where I am.

Of course the answer is to mitigate the problems, but your attacking and criticizing charters based on the choices and motivation of those who attend them certainly isn't the answer - and neither is characterizing DCPS as an unacceptable option to be shut down. DCPS schools need to continue to be robustly supported as neighborhood schools and general education. But - disadvantaged children and families also need the wraparound education to teach them the life skills and provide the coaching to help them toward becoming more self-sufficient in their future life prospects. But at the same time you also need to recognize the function and purpose of charter schools, which is *NOT* general-education neighborhood schools, it's targeted as a.) specialized education and b.) NOT as being a neighborhood school, such as language immersion, liberal arts or college prep, or to cover other more narrow focus areas. There is complementarity to having both charters and DCPS schools, and there are lessons to be learned from where we are at. But the problem is, most people don't seem to understand it on either side, whether the charter critics who think charters are competing with "general education" or the charter applicants who might apply at a charter because it's supposed to be "good" per the "HRC" discussions in places like DCUM but without really understanding that what's "good" for person A might not be good for person B, and that not every charter is the perfect fit for every student - nor is that even the aim of charters.

If the issue is that DCPS is left with a "worse cohort of kids" then the question that should be at the fore is, identifying what is worse and what to do about it. If it's core academics, like reading and math skills, then DCPS should focus on bolstering those, with math and reading labs, for example they could run after-school or summer programs focusing on those areas. If the issues are behavioral and disciplinary, then they should be focusing on wraparound services and supports to help deal with those. It's basically filling in the gaps which higher-SES families fill in at home. DCPS spends more per student than any district in the nation - it's not as though they don't have the resources. But as we saw in the "at risk funding" thread, how DCPS chooses to direct said resources is far more the problem.

The point is, with DCPS you can't just pretend everything's hunky dory with how they do things and just point all the blame externally, blaming charters, et cetera - you need to focus on and work with the students you have first and foremost, not the students you wish you had. And by doing that, the students you have will become the students you wish you had. If DCPS bolstered up in those areas, you might actually start to see a lot of families who had been avoiding DCPS starting to return, because in many cases they are avoiding DCPS because of rowdy classrooms where kids are talking, disrupting, aren't paying attention and aren't learning, where teachers have to progress at a painfully slow and limited pace, because the critical mass of kids don't have those core skills that would have been reinforced at home in the higher-SES households.

PP here. I legitimately meant it when I said congratulations. I don't know your story, but it sounds like you did not let hard times stop you. If it came off as condescending, I apologize.

My only point was that the fact that you overcame hard times does not mean that we should assume all can do so without lots of help. I will point out that noting the problems caused by charters is not the same as assuming everything is hunky dory with DCPS. It's not. I agree with you about almost everything you said about DCPS, and I suspect if we got in the same room together we'd find a lot more to agree about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Congratulations to you.

My point is that when all the kids like you go to charters, the disadvantaged kids that are left behind in DCPS are left with an even worse alternative in DCPS. Charters leavie the schools with a worse cohort of kids. We then blame all their problems on DCPS and on the kids themselves.

So we should be honest about this impact and try to mitigate it - or just shut down DCPS and go to charters.

I don't know why that offends you so much.

Please, just stop with the "congratulations to you" because the way you keep putting it offends me in a condescending way, it reads as though you think you are congratulating a person of privilege, a trust fund baby who inherited millions without lifting a finger. You never walked a mile in my shoes, you have no idea of the disadvantages I had, what I went through and the sacrifices I made in life to get to where I am.

Of course the answer is to mitigate the problems, but your attacking and criticizing charters based on the choices and motivation of those who attend them certainly isn't the answer - and neither is characterizing DCPS as an unacceptable option to be shut down. DCPS schools need to continue to be robustly supported as neighborhood schools and general education. But - disadvantaged children and families also need the wraparound education to teach them the life skills and provide the coaching to help them toward becoming more self-sufficient in their future life prospects. But at the same time you also need to recognize the function and purpose of charter schools, which is *NOT* general-education neighborhood schools, it's targeted as a.) specialized education and b.) NOT as being a neighborhood school, such as language immersion, liberal arts or college prep, or to cover other more narrow focus areas. There is complementarity to having both charters and DCPS schools, and there are lessons to be learned from where we are at. But the problem is, most people don't seem to understand it on either side, whether the charter critics who think charters are competing with "general education" or the charter applicants who might apply at a charter because it's supposed to be "good" per the "HRC" discussions in places like DCUM but without really understanding that what's "good" for person A might not be good for person B, and that not every charter is the perfect fit for every student - nor is that even the aim of charters.

If the issue is that DCPS is left with a "worse cohort of kids" then the question that should be at the fore is, identifying what is worse and what to do about it. If it's core academics, like reading and math skills, then DCPS should focus on bolstering those, with math and reading labs, for example they could run after-school or summer programs focusing on those areas. If the issues are behavioral and disciplinary, then they should be focusing on wraparound services and supports to help deal with those. It's basically filling in the gaps which higher-SES families fill in at home. DCPS spends more per student than any district in the nation - it's not as though they don't have the resources. But as we saw in the "at risk funding" thread, how DCPS chooses to direct said resources is far more the problem.

The point is, with DCPS you can't just pretend everything's hunky dory with how they do things and just point all the blame externally, blaming charters, et cetera - you need to focus on and work with the students you have first and foremost, not the students you wish you had. And by doing that, the students you have will become the students you wish you had. If DCPS bolstered up in those areas, you might actually start to see a lot of families who had been avoiding DCPS starting to return, because in many cases they are avoiding DCPS because of rowdy classrooms where kids are talking, disrupting, aren't paying attention and aren't learning, where teachers have to progress at a painfully slow and limited pace, because the critical mass of kids don't have those core skills that would have been reinforced at home in the higher-SES households.

PP here. I legitimately meant it when I said congratulations. I don't know your story, but it sounds like you did not let hard times stop you. If it came off as condescending, I apologize.

My only point was that the fact that you overcame hard times does not mean that we should assume all can do so without lots of help. I will point out that noting the problems caused by charters is not the same as assuming everything is hunky dory with DCPS. It's not. I agree with you about almost everything you said about DCPS, and I suspect if we got in the same room together we'd find a lot more to agree about.

The charters did not cause the problems. There were problems with DCPS schools long before charters came along - because before charters, families with school-aged children who could afford it would either move out of the city or send their kids to privates, so your blame of charters is misplaced in my opinion. Charters actually provide options for those families who can't afford to move out of the city or send their kids to privates. I see charters as a step in the right direction in terms of keeping and retaining families in the city, and I think there is a lot that DCPS can learn from it.

And ultimately, to your point, yes, there are a lot of ways in which we can and should help families, but I don't legitimately see the application process or transportation as being as serious or meaningful of a barrier as you make them out to be. The far bigger challenges and impediments are cultural, in that there are many families that are that dysfunctional that even if you filled out the application for them and personally chauffeured their kids door to door to the charter, it still wouldn't work out, for a whole variety of reasons, for example the kid doesn't see the purpose or value in school, there's no support for learning at home, no environment for doing homework, et cetera, which is why I suggested wraparound services, which DCPS would/should be a far more efficient vector for helping with. And again, as I already pointed out, DCPS has far more funding and resources per student to help toward this than any other district in the nation, yet so much of it is misdirected and mismanaged - I still firmly believe that DCPS should work to get its own house in order before presuming to cast blame on everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Congratulations to you.

My point is that when all the kids like you go to charters, the disadvantaged kids that are left behind in DCPS are left with an even worse alternative in DCPS. Charters leavie the schools with a worse cohort of kids. We then blame all their problems on DCPS and on the kids themselves.

So we should be honest about this impact and try to mitigate it - or just shut down DCPS and go to charters.

I don't know why that offends you so much.

Please, just stop with the "congratulations to you" because the way you keep putting it offends me in a condescending way, it reads as though you think you are congratulating a person of privilege, a trust fund baby who inherited millions without lifting a finger. You never walked a mile in my shoes, you have no idea of the disadvantages I had, what I went through and the sacrifices I made in life to get to where I am.

Of course the answer is to mitigate the problems, but your attacking and criticizing charters based on the choices and motivation of those who attend them certainly isn't the answer - and neither is characterizing DCPS as an unacceptable option to be shut down. DCPS schools need to continue to be robustly supported as neighborhood schools and general education. But - disadvantaged children and families also need the wraparound education to teach them the life skills and provide the coaching to help them toward becoming more self-sufficient in their future life prospects. But at the same time you also need to recognize the function and purpose of charter schools, which is *NOT* general-education neighborhood schools, it's targeted as a.) specialized education and b.) NOT as being a neighborhood school, such as language immersion, liberal arts or college prep, or to cover other more narrow focus areas. There is complementarity to having both charters and DCPS schools, and there are lessons to be learned from where we are at. But the problem is, most people don't seem to understand it on either side, whether the charter critics who think charters are competing with "general education" or the charter applicants who might apply at a charter because it's supposed to be "good" per the "HRC" discussions in places like DCUM but without really understanding that what's "good" for person A might not be good for person B, and that not every charter is the perfect fit for every student - nor is that even the aim of charters.

If the issue is that DCPS is left with a "worse cohort of kids" then the question that should be at the fore is, identifying what is worse and what to do about it. If it's core academics, like reading and math skills, then DCPS should focus on bolstering those, with math and reading labs, for example they could run after-school or summer programs focusing on those areas. If the issues are behavioral and disciplinary, then they should be focusing on wraparound services and supports to help deal with those. It's basically filling in the gaps which higher-SES families fill in at home. DCPS spends more per student than any district in the nation - it's not as though they don't have the resources. But as we saw in the "at risk funding" thread, how DCPS chooses to direct said resources is far more the problem.

The point is, with DCPS you can't just pretend everything's hunky dory with how they do things and just point all the blame externally, blaming charters, et cetera - you need to focus on and work with the students you have first and foremost, not the students you wish you had. And by doing that, the students you have will become the students you wish you had. If DCPS bolstered up in those areas, you might actually start to see a lot of families who had been avoiding DCPS starting to return, because in many cases they are avoiding DCPS because of rowdy classrooms where kids are talking, disrupting, aren't paying attention and aren't learning, where teachers have to progress at a painfully slow and limited pace, because the critical mass of kids don't have those core skills that would have been reinforced at home in the higher-SES households.

PP here. I legitimately meant it when I said congratulations. I don't know your story, but it sounds like you did not let hard times stop you. If it came off as condescending, I apologize.

My only point was that the fact that you overcame hard times does not mean that we should assume all can do so without lots of help. I will point out that noting the problems caused by charters is not the same as assuming everything is hunky dory with DCPS. It's not. I agree with you about almost everything you said about DCPS, and I suspect if we got in the same room together we'd find a lot more to agree about.

The charters did not cause the problems. There were problems with DCPS schools long before charters came along - because before charters, families with school-aged children who could afford it would either move out of the city or send their kids to privates, so your blame of charters is misplaced in my opinion. Charters actually provide options for those families who can't afford to move out of the city or send their kids to privates. I see charters as a step in the right direction in terms of keeping and retaining families in the city, and I think there is a lot that DCPS can learn from it.

And ultimately, to your point, yes, there are a lot of ways in which we can and should help families, but I don't legitimately see the application process or transportation as being as serious or meaningful of a barrier as you make them out to be. The far bigger challenges and impediments are cultural, in that there are many families that are that dysfunctional that even if you filled out the application for them and personally chauffeured their kids door to door to the charter, it still wouldn't work out, for a whole variety of reasons, for example the kid doesn't see the purpose or value in school, there's no support for learning at home, no environment for doing homework, et cetera, which is why I suggested wraparound services, which DCPS would/should be a far more efficient vector for helping with. And again, as I already pointed out, DCPS has far more funding and resources per student to help toward this than any other district in the nation, yet so much of it is misdirected and mismanaged - I still firmly believe that DCPS should work to get its own house in order before presuming to cast blame on everyone else.

Not to be pedantic, but I never said that DCPS schools were perfect long before charters. That's another strawman. When you keep throwing out strawmen, it makes it more difficult to focus on the actual problems - the fact of charters hurting DCPS now by pulling the most advantaged kids out and leaving the most disadvantaged behind.

[Anonymous]

^ You're the one throwing around the strawman that charters are hurting DCPS. Disadvantaged kids are a problem that DCPS already had before charters and will continue to have regardless of the existence of charters. Charters did not make that problem any worse. If anything, charters can allow DCPS to focus on that problem. Like I said, you need to teach the kids that you have, not the ones that you want to have.

Perhaps you think it's somehow the job of the more advantaged kids to somehow fix the problems of the less advantaged kids?

Do you think that somehow DCPS schools magically get better if only they have enough advantaged kids? That the "tide to lift every boat" will somehow come from merely having the right kids in the school, that nothing else needs to happen in order for that to occur? Or are you just looking to mask the problems that exist among the less advantaged, by diluting them among numbers of more advantaged students?

I really don't see that argument as having any sound grounding in reality. The problems are a lot deeper and need more robust solutions than that. Again, blaming charters is intellectually dishonest and merely looking to push charter students back into DCPS schools doesn't really propose any bonafide solutions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Congratulations to you.

My point is that when all the kids like you go to charters, the disadvantaged kids that are left behind in DCPS are left with an even worse alternative in DCPS. Charters leavie the schools with a worse cohort of kids. We then blame all their problems on DCPS and on the kids themselves.

So we should be honest about this impact and try to mitigate it - or just shut down DCPS and go to charters.

I don't know why that offends you so much.

It looks a lot like what really and deeply bothers you the most, is that the PP (whom you ¨Congratulated¨) is motivated enough to find better educational alternatives for her children... instead of sending them to school with yours.

OUCH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Congratulations to you.

My point is that when all the kids like you go to charters, the disadvantaged kids that are left behind in DCPS are left with an even worse alternative in DCPS. Charters leavie the schools with a worse cohort of kids. We then blame all their problems on DCPS and on the kids themselves.

So we should be honest about this impact and try to mitigate it - or just shut down DCPS and go to charters.

I don't know why that offends you so much.

Please, just stop with the "congratulations to you" because the way you keep putting it offends me in a condescending way, it reads as though you think you are congratulating a person of privilege, a trust fund baby who inherited millions without lifting a finger. You never walked a mile in my shoes, you have no idea of the disadvantages I had, what I went through and the sacrifices I made in life to get to where I am.

Of course the answer is to mitigate the problems, but your attacking and criticizing charters based on the choices and motivation of those who attend them certainly isn't the answer - and neither is characterizing DCPS as an unacceptable option to be shut down. DCPS schools need to continue to be robustly supported as neighborhood schools and general education. But - disadvantaged children and families also need the wraparound education to teach them the life skills and provide the coaching to help them toward becoming more self-sufficient in their future life prospects. But at the same time you also need to recognize the function and purpose of charter schools, which is *NOT* general-education neighborhood schools, it's targeted as a.) specialized education and b.) NOT as being a neighborhood school, such as language immersion, liberal arts or college prep, or to cover other more narrow focus areas. There is complementarity to having both charters and DCPS schools, and there are lessons to be learned from where we are at. But the problem is, most people don't seem to understand it on either side, whether the charter critics who think charters are competing with "general education" or the charter applicants who might apply at a charter because it's supposed to be "good" per the "HRC" discussions in places like DCUM but without really understanding that what's "good" for person A might not be good for person B, and that not every charter is the perfect fit for every student - nor is that even the aim of charters.

If the issue is that DCPS is left with a "worse cohort of kids" then the question that should be at the fore is, identifying what is worse and what to do about it. If it's core academics, like reading and math skills, then DCPS should focus on bolstering those, with math and reading labs, for example they could run after-school or summer programs focusing on those areas. If the issues are behavioral and disciplinary, then they should be focusing on wraparound services and supports to help deal with those. It's basically filling in the gaps which higher-SES families fill in at home. DCPS spends more per student than any district in the nation - it's not as though they don't have the resources. But as we saw in the "at risk funding" thread, how DCPS chooses to direct said resources is far more the problem.

The point is, with DCPS you can't just pretend everything's hunky dory with how they do things and just point all the blame externally, blaming charters, et cetera - you need to focus on and work with the students you have first and foremost, not the students you wish you had. And by doing that, the students you have will become the students you wish you had. If DCPS bolstered up in those areas, you might actually start to see a lot of families who had been avoiding DCPS starting to return, because in many cases they are avoiding DCPS because of rowdy classrooms where kids are talking, disrupting, aren't paying attention and aren't learning, where teachers have to progress at a painfully slow and limited pace, because the critical mass of kids don't have those core skills that would have been reinforced at home in the higher-SES households.

That is complete B.S. The charter population in DC is much poorer on average than the DCPS population. It also scores better on standardized tests. There is nothing new about this here. DC charter school students outperform their DCPS counterparts - especially when accounting for socio-economic status. It is ancient.

Why are we even having this conversation?

[Anonymous]

^^show your data to convince those new to this conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^show your data to convince those new to this conversation.

Here's the data: http://www.dcpcsb.org/dc-charter-schools-continue-outperform-state-average

Seriously, before you start coming up with elaborate conspiracy theories, you should look at the facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Congratulations to you.

My point is that when all the kids like you go to charters, the disadvantaged kids that are left behind in DCPS are left with an even worse alternative in DCPS. Charters leavie the schools with a worse cohort of kids. We then blame all their problems on DCPS and on the kids themselves.

So we should be honest about this impact and try to mitigate it - or just shut down DCPS and go to charters.

I don't know why that offends you so much.

It looks a lot like what really and deeply bothers you the most, is that the PP (whom you ¨Congratulated¨) is motivated enough to find better educational alternatives for her children... instead of sending them to school with yours.

OUCH.

My kids go to charter schools too - but that doesn't blind me to the complex set of problems caused by the awkward coexistence of regular DCPS and charters schools.

Ouch indeed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Do you think that somehow DCPS schools magically get better if only they have enough advantaged kids? That the "tide to lift every boat" will somehow come from merely having the right kids in the school, that nothing else needs to happen in order for that to occur? Or are you just looking to mask the problems that exist among the less advantaged, by diluting them among numbers of more advantaged students?

YES!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Do you think that somehow DCPS schools magically get better if only they have enough advantaged kids? That the "tide to lift every boat" will somehow come from merely having the right kids in the school, that nothing else needs to happen in order for that to occur? Or are you just looking to mask the problems that exist among the less advantaged, by diluting them among numbers of more advantaged students?

There is a more nuanced view here. It's not magic, but the research is pretty clear that going to school with more affluent kids is better for low-income kids. It's not magic - it's that those schools are better funded, more orderly, have overall higher standards, and have more resources to focus on fewer kids that need extra attention. So yeah, schools get better when they have enough advantaged kids. Of course, that's not enough. DCPS schools need to do a lot more. But it is definitely a factor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Congratulations to you.

My point is that when all the kids like you go to charters, the disadvantaged kids that are left behind in DCPS are left with an even worse alternative in DCPS. Charters leavie the schools with a worse cohort of kids. We then blame all their problems on DCPS and on the kids themselves.

So we should be honest about this impact and try to mitigate it - or just shut down DCPS and go to charters.

I don't know why that offends you so much.

It looks a lot like what really and deeply bothers you the most, is that the PP (whom you ¨Congratulated¨) is motivated enough to find better educational alternatives for her children... instead of sending them to school with yours.

OUCH.

My kids go to charter schools too - but that doesn't blind me to the complex set of problems caused by the awkward coexistence of regular DCPS and charters schools.

Ouch indeed.

The only awkwardness is the self-imposed awkwardness that DCPS has put upon itself by not having vision to understand the whole phenomenon of what's happening with charters, by not recognizing the drivers, by not being responsive, et cetera. DCPS could easily have captured a lot of the charter momentum by looking at bolstering specialized offerings, through magnets, through dealing with behavior problems and other things that have many families running for the door when they go on school tours...

I don't think that many charter families are all that uncomfortable with their choices. Sure, they likely harbor wishes and desires for DCPS to improve, but they also recognize that DCPS brought it on itself.