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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Rather than trying any new approaches to education,  the strategy is clearly to change the percentage of low income students, which will lift the school out of failed status.  It would never work by bussing just 25 kids over.  Parents would pitch fits and there would not be enough new kids to lift the scores.

But when you bring in a couple hundred more students it is much easier to justify and easier to steamroll parents. Not a bad idea seeing how the City deliberately drew the districts to shunt all the lowest income students to JH in the first place so the City would have just one failed school.[/quote]

The City's student population is mostly poor (59% FARMs/poverty rate in ACPS as a whole.) Jefferson-Houston does not have all of the poor kids in Alexandria. Alexandria is about 70% white and $85K median household income. But only 13% of households have school age children, and if you subtract private school kids, you are basically left with poor minority kids. I think you look around and see lots of wealthy whites and assume the schools should look the same, but that's not how it works out.

Here is the FARMs (poverty) rate in ACPS elementary schools (Jefferson-Houston is not the highest):

William Ramsay 85%
Cora Kelly 82%
Patrick Henry 81%
[b]Jefferson-Houston 81%[/b]
John Adams 66%
Polk 64%
Samuel Tucker 62%
Mount Vernon 58%
Maury  35%
George Mason 32%
Charles Barrett 31%
Douglas MacArthur 30%
Lyles-Crouch  24%

[/quote]

These stats are skewed in many ways.  One example is the number of students with disabilities.  Jefferson-Houston has 56 SWDs out of 292. That is a ridiculously high percentage.   Compare that to Ramsay with 52 SWDs out of 833.  Clearly, there is more going on with how the City zones its schools than just family income. [/quote]

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