Reply to Why is the overcrowding issue so complex?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
You are underestimating the rest of the city - there are many middle class and UMC families living EOTP (many families of color) living in the string of neighborhoods just east of Rock Creek Park many of whom have been living in those neighborhoods for decades and those numbers have been dramatically boosted by gentrification.   But close to none of those folks are attending DCPS facilities EOTP and are finding their way into Deal/Wilson, charters or in some cases privates.

It is worth adding that the two schools everyone are clamoring for up until about 5 years ago in fact had a cohort of low income students but that is no longer the case as the paths to Deal/Wilson have narrowed.

We are not talking moving kids from Crestwood to Anacostia - we are talking about moving them to schools closer to their own neighborhoods.

The math actually isn't that hard and is getting easier by the year.[/quote]

The school-age population is much poorer than the city as a whole. On the DCPS school profiles page you can see the percentage of kids who are "economically disadvantaged" at each school. Economically disadvantaged is pretty poor, you're talking household income in the twenties for a family of three to the mid-fifties for a family of five. Overall almost 80% of DCPS students are economically disadvantaged. On a school level, once they get beyond a certain threshold they assume that 100% of the kids are disadvantaged. There are only four high schools where the percentage of economically disadvantaged kids isn't 100%: Wilson, and three application schools: Ellington, Walls and Banneker.  There's no way you could take those kids and spread them out more to change the makeup of the rest of the schools. [/quote]

So we shouldn't spread out the wealthy kids we should instead reward them by cramming most of them into Wilson?

Underlying your assumptions though is that the other 80% of kids are a lost cause.  Maybe some are but no doubt some aren't and I presume some at least would benefit by going to school with a mix of kids.

A false subtext of these discussions is that there is some rich SES mix at Deal & Wilson that needs to be protected when that in fact is really no longer the case.

Also when looking at these numbers it would be helpful to look at the total mix of kids in DC - how many kids are in charters and going private whose attendance at a DCPS school could lower than 80% number and make it feasible to create one or two more desirable MS/HS clusters in DC?[/quote]

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