If quality of education is your only priority, are there any reasons to live in DC...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I choose to live in DC because I define "education" to be both what you receive in school as well as what you receive outside of school. Both DH and I work in downtown DC, so having a short commute means we can spend more time with the kids doing something other than sitting in a car commuting. If we both worked in the burbs, then we would move there.

The quality of the NW elementary schools and Deal are terrific now, and Wilson will be the same in a few years, because the parents at these schools are super-engaged.

No, those schools will be terrific because the parents are high-SES. Their kids will do well in those schools, and they would do well in private or the suburban publics as well.

The measure of a school system should be how they do with kids who weren't born on 2nd or 3rd base.

I agree with you, to a point. It's a huge showing of privilege to say "my high SES kid will do fine anywhere because he is high SES!" I don't think that is necessarily true. I have a friend whose kids graduated from Wilson and he said, quote, "they were terribly prepared for college." They got into good colleges, true, but they apparently just were not on par with the other kids in terms of writing & research skills. High SES kids do well enough wherever they go not because the school magically becomes good for them, but because they carry their privilege with them. Ultimately it seems like people don't want to accept or see that when you share public resources with poor people, those resources sometimes reflect the systemic disadvantages of poor people. It's not true that they magically become great due to the presence of high SES people. I see this as a gentrification revealing the fault lines -- when you gentrify you're in "their" system, not yours, sometimes. And then when people talk about the "super engaged parents" who are going to change everything, they're really talking about creating a parallel (ie segregated) system for themselves, which takes a while. I'd like to see actual integration in DC, which would not rest on the assumption that "super engaged parents" are going to fix everything by creating a parallel system.

Where are the poor people in NW DC? Those schools are all high SES just like the suburbs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I choose to live in DC because I define "education" to be both what you receive in school as well as what you receive outside of school. Both DH and I work in downtown DC, so having a short commute means we can spend more time with the kids doing something other than sitting in a car commuting. If we both worked in the burbs, then we would move there.

The quality of the NW elementary schools and Deal are terrific now, and Wilson will be the same in a few years, because the parents at these schools are super-engaged.

No, those schools will be terrific because the parents are high-SES. Their kids will do well in those schools, and they would do well in private or the suburban publics as well.

The measure of a school system should be how they do with kids who weren't born on 2nd or 3rd base.

I agree with you, to a point. It's a huge showing of privilege to say "my high SES kid will do fine anywhere because he is high SES!" I don't think that is necessarily true. I have a friend whose kids graduated from Wilson and he said, quote, "they were terribly prepared for college." They got into good colleges, true, but they apparently just were not on par with the other kids in terms of writing & research skills. High SES kids do well enough wherever they go not because the school magically becomes good for them, but because they carry their privilege with them. Ultimately it seems like people don't want to accept or see that when you share public resources with poor people, those resources sometimes reflect the systemic disadvantages of poor people. It's not true that they magically become great due to the presence of high SES people. I see this as a gentrification revealing the fault lines -- when you gentrify you're in "their" system, not yours, sometimes. And then when people talk about the "super engaged parents" who are going to change everything, they're really talking about creating a parallel (ie segregated) system for themselves, which takes a while. I'd like to see actual integration in DC, which would not rest on the assumption that "super engaged parents" are going to fix everything by creating a parallel system.

MoCo also has poors. Should people stop moving there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I choose to live in DC because I define "education" to be both what you receive in school as well as what you receive outside of school. Both DH and I work in downtown DC, so having a short commute means we can spend more time with the kids doing something other than sitting in a car commuting. If we both worked in the burbs, then we would move there.

The quality of the NW elementary schools and Deal are terrific now, and Wilson will be the same in a few years, because the parents at these schools are super-engaged.

No, those schools will be terrific because the parents are high-SES. Their kids will do well in those schools, and they would do well in private or the suburban publics as well.

The measure of a school system should be how they do with kids who weren't born on 2nd or 3rd base.

I agree with you, to a point. It's a huge showing of privilege to say "my high SES kid will do fine anywhere because he is high SES!" I don't think that is necessarily true. I have a friend whose kids graduated from Wilson and he said, quote, "they were terribly prepared for college." They got into good colleges, true, but they apparently just were not on par with the other kids in terms of writing & research skills. High SES kids do well enough wherever they go not because the school magically becomes good for them, but because they carry their privilege with them. Ultimately it seems like people don't want to accept or see that when you share public resources with poor people, those resources sometimes reflect the systemic disadvantages of poor people. It's not true that they magically become great due to the presence of high SES people. I see this as a gentrification revealing the fault lines -- when you gentrify you're in "their" system, not yours, sometimes. And then when people talk about the "super engaged parents" who are going to change everything, they're really talking about creating a parallel (ie segregated) system for themselves, which takes a while. I'd like to see actual integration in DC, which would not rest on the assumption that "super engaged parents" are going to fix everything by creating a parallel system.

MoCo also has poors. Should people stop moving there?

Well, first of all, I'm not saying anything about where people should and shouldn't move. I don't think these issues are solved at the level of individual choices, so you should move wherever best suits your family.

Second of all, what I'm remarking on has to do with the extreme ends of income inequality that you see fairly uniquely in DC proper, I think.

[Anonymous]

But as parents shouldn't you know your kids are unprepared for college?

Starting in middle school read their papers, review their projects and read all teacher comments. Have them take SAT subject tests and AP exams (not just the classes).

If you see gaps, supplement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I choose to live in DC because I define "education" to be both what you receive in school as well as what you receive outside of school. Both DH and I work in downtown DC, so having a short commute means we can spend more time with the kids doing something other than sitting in a car commuting. If we both worked in the burbs, then we would move there.

The quality of the NW elementary schools and Deal are terrific now, and Wilson will be the same in a few years, because the parents at these schools are super-engaged.

No, those schools will be terrific because the parents are high-SES. Their kids will do well in those schools, and they would do well in private or the suburban publics as well.

The measure of a school system should be how they do with kids who weren't born on 2nd or 3rd base.

I agree with you, to a point. It's a huge showing of privilege to say "my high SES kid will do fine anywhere because he is high SES!" I don't think that is necessarily true. I have a friend whose kids graduated from Wilson and he said, quote, "they were terribly prepared for college." They got into good colleges, true, but they apparently just were not on par with the other kids in terms of writing & research skills. High SES kids do well enough wherever they go not because the school magically becomes good for them, but because they carry their privilege with them. Ultimately it seems like people don't want to accept or see that when you share public resources with poor people, those resources sometimes reflect the systemic disadvantages of poor people. It's not true that they magically become great due to the presence of high SES people. I see this as a gentrification revealing the fault lines -- when you gentrify you're in "their" system, not yours, sometimes. And then when people talk about the "super engaged parents" who are going to change everything, they're really talking about creating a parallel (ie segregated) system for themselves, which takes a while. I'd like to see actual integration in DC, which would not rest on the assumption that "super engaged parents" are going to fix everything by creating a parallel system.

MoCo also has poors. Should people stop moving there?

Well, first of all, I'm not saying anything about where people should and shouldn't move. I don't think these issues are solved at the level of individual choices, so you should move wherever best suits your family.

Second of all, what I'm remarking on has to do with the extreme ends of income inequality that you see fairly uniquely in DC proper, I think.

But most DCUM parents aren't sending their kids to schools on the extreme end of poverty in DC, so how is this relevant?

[Anonymous]

The PP talking about unprepared kids is talking about kids coming out of Wilson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I choose to live in DC because I define "education" to be both what you receive in school as well as what you receive outside of school. Both DH and I work in downtown DC, so having a short commute means we can spend more time with the kids doing something other than sitting in a car commuting. If we both worked in the burbs, then we would move there.

The quality of the NW elementary schools and Deal are terrific now, and Wilson will be the same in a few years, because the parents at these schools are super-engaged.

No, those schools will be terrific because the parents are high-SES. Their kids will do well in those schools, and they would do well in private or the suburban publics as well.

The measure of a school system should be how they do with kids who weren't born on 2nd or 3rd base.

I agree with you, to a point. It's a huge showing of privilege to say "my high SES kid will do fine anywhere because he is high SES!" I don't think that is necessarily true. I have a friend whose kids graduated from Wilson and he said, quote, "they were terribly prepared for college." They got into good colleges, true, but they apparently just were not on par with the other kids in terms of writing & research skills. High SES kids do well enough wherever they go not because the school magically becomes good for them, but because they carry their privilege with them. Ultimately it seems like people don't want to accept or see that when you share public resources with poor people, those resources sometimes reflect the systemic disadvantages of poor people. It's not true that they magically become great due to the presence of high SES people. I see this as a gentrification revealing the fault lines -- when you gentrify you're in "their" system, not yours, sometimes. And then when people talk about the "super engaged parents" who are going to change everything, they're really talking about creating a parallel (ie segregated) system for themselves, which takes a while. I'd like to see actual integration in DC, which would not rest on the assumption that "super engaged parents" are going to fix everything by creating a parallel system.

MoCo also has poors. Should people stop moving there?

When people talk about MoCo they are talking about Western MoCo most of the poors are in the east

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If quality of education is your only priority, your kids are bright and hard working and you can swing 35K per child per year for high school, you do very well in DC, the city with a number of the country's top-performing private schools. The rest of us live under a dark cloud of mediocrity, charter lottery stress, dead end middle school feeds, increasing crowding in the Deal feeders and at Wilson and Deal. I always get bummed out when I check Metro area lists of National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists in the early spring. Wilson produces one, two or three, and so does Walls, and that's it from public schools, year in and year out. Meanwhile, many a suburban high school produces 10, 15, 20, even dozens at TJ and the Blair Montgomery magnets.

Are you really so terrified of raising a mediocre child? Do you really check Metro area lists of National Merit Scholarship Semnifinalists every year? If your child is National Merit material, isn't it better do be one of two or three than twenty? Is your metric of success really this narrow and small?

And if you're right? Why the hell is the DMV such a mess? Is that by design? Because I'm not sure it took a national merit scholarship semifinalist to give us the beltway, or the Metro's lack of financing, or our country's collapsing infrastructure. Or Donald Trump.

Not terrified of much, other than perhaps the current crime spike on Cap Hill (neighbor robbed at knife point two weeks ago in front of his house). But I'm not impressed with many DC public schools.

I find the National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists lists useful as an acid test of relative high school quality in the Metro area, helping me discern trends. School leaders, parents and admins can always tout a high school's quality, but if said school can't produced a single NMSS year after year, you might want to ask yourself how good the school really is. E.g. Banneker doesn't produce NMSS students, and Washington Latin hasn't yet. Many well known private schools fall down on a NMSS per capita measure, too, producing little more than the national average of 1% of test takers. Meanwhile, Washington Lee in Arlington adds a couple semifinalists every year without getting much larger. When I first started checking, a decade ago, Washington Lee would produce two or three semifinalists a year. Now they produce a dozen. Meanwhile, Wilson and Walls continue to generate 1, 2 or 3 semifinalists each, never more.

That is surprising and probably speaks in part to the lack of a gifted program in DC.

What? No. NMSS are a fixed percentage of a geographic population. It definitionally signifies nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I choose to live in DC because I define "education" to be both what you receive in school as well as what you receive outside of school. Both DH and I work in downtown DC, so having a short commute means we can spend more time with the kids doing something other than sitting in a car commuting. If we both worked in the burbs, then we would move there.

The quality of the NW elementary schools and Deal are terrific now, and Wilson will be the same in a few years, because the parents at these schools are super-engaged.

No, those schools will be terrific because the parents are high-SES. Their kids will do well in those schools, and they would do well in private or the suburban publics as well.

The measure of a school system should be how they do with kids who weren't born on 2nd or 3rd base.

I agree with you, to a point. It's a huge showing of privilege to say "my high SES kid will do fine anywhere because he is high SES!" I don't think that is necessarily true. I have a friend whose kids graduated from Wilson and he said, quote, "they were terribly prepared for college." They got into good colleges, true, but they apparently just were not on par with the other kids in terms of writing & research skills. High SES kids do well enough wherever they go not because the school magically becomes good for them, but because they carry their privilege with them. Ultimately it seems like people don't want to accept or see that when you share public resources with poor people, those resources sometimes reflect the systemic disadvantages of poor people. It's not true that they magically become great due to the presence of high SES people. I see this as a gentrification revealing the fault lines -- when you gentrify you're in "their" system, not yours, sometimes. And then when people talk about the "super engaged parents" who are going to change everything, they're really talking about creating a parallel (ie segregated) system for themselves, which takes a while. I'd like to see actual integration in DC, which would not rest on the assumption that "super engaged parents" are going to fix everything by creating a parallel system.

MoCo also has poors. Should people stop moving there?

Well, first of all, I'm not saying anything about where people should and shouldn't move. I don't think these issues are solved at the level of individual choices, so you should move wherever best suits your family.

Second of all, what I'm remarking on has to do with the extreme ends of income inequality that you see fairly uniquely in DC proper, I think.

But most DCUM parents aren't sending their kids to schools on the extreme end of poverty in DC, so how is this relevant?

That's not true -- see ALL the threads about "flipping" schools -- and debates on Hines, Jefferson, etc. -- plus Wilson being 40% FARMS. A lot of this does reside in parents' imaginations, though, when they talk about things like putting Chinese immersion at Miner.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But as parents shouldn't you know your kids are unprepared for college?

Starting in middle school read their papers, review their projects and read all teacher comments. Have them take SAT subject tests and AP exams (not just the classes).

If you see gaps, supplement.

I don't think this parent was talking about SATs and APs because the kids did well enough to get into good colleges. It was in comparison with other kids. AP scores and SAT scores are largely a matter of test-taking skill (and prep) and IQ/memory, not at all reflective of the quality of instruction. And the point that started this all off was the notion of "quality of education" -- which for many of us would be defined as NOT having to anxiously patrol our kids' "gaps" and having to "supplement," but being confident that they will emerge literate and numerate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I choose to live in DC because I define "education" to be both what you receive in school as well as what you receive outside of school. Both DH and I work in downtown DC, so having a short commute means we can spend more time with the kids doing something other than sitting in a car commuting. If we both worked in the burbs, then we would move there.

The quality of the NW elementary schools and Deal are terrific now, and Wilson will be the same in a few years, because the parents at these schools are super-engaged.

No, those schools will be terrific because the parents are high-SES. Their kids will do well in those schools, and they would do well in private or the suburban publics as well.

The measure of a school system should be how they do with kids who weren't born on 2nd or 3rd base.

I agree with you, to a point. It's a huge showing of privilege to say "my high SES kid will do fine anywhere because he is high SES!" I don't think that is necessarily true. I have a friend whose kids graduated from Wilson and he said, quote, "they were terribly prepared for college." They got into good colleges, true, but they apparently just were not on par with the other kids in terms of writing & research skills. High SES kids do well enough wherever they go not because the school magically becomes good for them, but because they carry their privilege with them. Ultimately it seems like people don't want to accept or see that when you share public resources with poor people, those resources sometimes reflect the systemic disadvantages of poor people. It's not true that they magically become great due to the presence of high SES people. I see this as a gentrification revealing the fault lines -- when you gentrify you're in "their" system, not yours, sometimes. And then when people talk about the "super engaged parents" who are going to change everything, they're really talking about creating a parallel (ie segregated) system for themselves, which takes a while. I'd like to see actual integration in DC, which would not rest on the assumption that "super engaged parents" are going to fix everything by creating a parallel system.

MoCo also has poors. Should people stop moving there?

When people talk about MoCo they are talking about Western MoCo most of the poors are in the east

And you can find plenty of people in the western part of the county who are frustrated because the Title 1 schools in the eastern part of the county are getting more resources and smaller class sizes in an attempt to close the gaping achievement gap.

Sound familiar?

[Anonymous]

Yup say North vs South Arlington

or North and West Fairfax (minus Herndon) vs South and East Fairfax

[Anonymous]

Quality of education is my top (not my only) priority, and we live in the city. The charter school that my child attends is a perfect fit for our family. It is not a perfect school, nor should it be viewed as a complete educational solution. But it is just right for us. And I don't view school as the sole factor in a good education. In fact, it is one of the least important, in my opinion. School is just a very small part.

By living in the city, we are able to capitalize in many other aspects of education. First, I have more time with my child, and she learns a lot through being with me. Second, she is exposed to a diversity of people, from extraordinarily educated young people who view her as a their outlet for teaching to homeless people who she sees on a daily basis and through whom she learns about the complexities of life. Third, we have fast access to museums, which we still visit with regularity. Fourth, by staying in a small, central location, we are able to travel a great deal, exposing her to geography, science, language, culture and so much more. For us, living in DC is a very important part of achieving our educational goals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Quality of education is my top (not my only) priority, and we live in the city. The charter school that my child attends is a perfect fit for our family. It is not a perfect school, nor should it be viewed as a complete educational solution. But it is just right for us. And I don't view school as the sole factor in a good education. In fact, it is one of the least important, in my opinion. School is just a very small part.

By living in the city, we are able to capitalize in many other aspects of education. First, I have more time with my child, and she learns a lot through being with me. Second, she is exposed to a diversity of people, from extraordinarily educated young people who view her as a their outlet for teaching to homeless people who she sees on a daily basis and through whom she learns about the complexities of life. Third, we have fast access to museums, which we still visit with regularity. Fourth, by staying in a small, central location, we are able to travel a great deal, exposing her to geography, science, language, culture and so much more. For us, living in DC is a very important part of achieving our educational goals.

Your kid is how old, 6?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But as parents shouldn't you know your kids are unprepared for college?

Starting in middle school read their papers, review their projects and read all teacher comments. Have them take SAT subject tests and AP exams (not just the classes).

If you see gaps, supplement.

I don't think this parent was talking about SATs and APs because the kids did well enough to get into good colleges. It was in comparison with other kids. AP scores and SAT scores are largely a matter of test-taking skill (and prep) and IQ/memory, not at all reflective of the quality of instruction. And the point that started this all off was the notion of "quality of education" -- which for many of us would be defined as NOT having to anxiously patrol our kids' "gaps" and having to "supplement," but being confident that they will emerge literate and numerate.

But what PP was suggesting to do isn't what I consider "anxious patrol" -- my parents did that stuff with me and I went to an excellent school.