Reply to "Overall interests of the school system" placements

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Reply to ""Overall interests of the school system" placements"

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[quote=Anonymous]Jay Mathews needs to be put out to pasture with his Challenge Index and AP for All even if they don't pass mantra. OK, we get it. And Jaime Escalante was the messiah of public education before a little thing called the internet.

Tier 1 charter school lottery fixing or cherry picking speculated, but not proven, by one of Jay's old school friends cannot explain why only about a third of kids attend their IB school.

It's not the chancellor, it's the principals. Or it was the principals before computerized lottery.

To OP's point, the DCPS chancellor has a lot of discretion, but in reality it's the principals who usually decide. Chancellor only needs to step in if the receiving principal is not exactly thrilled. For example, formal Lafayette Principal Main was less than subtle about central office "interference." Michelle Rhee and her now-ex husband were apparently committed to following the boundary rules (at the time) for Oyster. Fenty campaigned on his twins going to public school, which for them at the time was West EC in boundary. Rumor has it he did not confer with his now ex-wife who adamantly opposed West and only grudgingly agreed to Lafayette. Grapevine also says Rhee was not at all happy to have to fix Fenty's problem by going against a veteran principal and undermining one of her self-selected new principals.

Some DCPS schools were infamous for flouting not only boundary but city residency rules before the online lottery.

Nowadays, it's not in a chancellor's or a principal's career interest to make exceptions that don't involve special needs or security. Charters have even less incentive to fiddle around. Priority for expansion is given to existing charters, meaning the ones that can't claim founder preference. The increased penalties for residency fraud have also apparently slowed some, not all, of the overt fraud of not paying out of state tuition.

With a tweaked (WTF?) boundary and feeder plan with who knows what kind of grandfathering, exceptions will likely continue for DCPS with principals exercising discretion for the "overall interests" that maintain their enrollment numbers. Charters, meanwhile, face the opposite pressure. If they want to expand into an unused DCPS building, they have to compete with other established schools. Residency fraud would kill their chances for better buildings.

What's a connected family to do? Apply to private schools and the lottery. Your contact list or diversity status could be worth more to a private school than your bank account. Unlike charters and OOB public schools, there's no pesky residency fraud hotline. But don't forget, a private may have nicer facilities or smaller classes, but that doesn't mean it's a better learning environment for [u]your[/u] child. If a school isn't willing to invest in your child, that's their loss.

There's always the lottery.[/quote]

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