Reply to Latin v. BASIS

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Latin v. BASIS"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Nobody hates Latin for their rigorous curriculum and decent test scores.  The concern is that they subtly, rather than overtly, favor a certain group of people and harm the quality of public education for others.

The default of charters like Latin is that inherently favor a group of parents - the ones that are willing to go the extra mile and have the knowledge to do so to get into Latin.  Admissions are inherently biased against parents that are under-educated, have language barriers, or are simply not able to expand their vision to include other schools beyond their neighborhood school.   (And for all we know, Latin may subtly pick their parent pool in other ways -- do they do more information sessions in ward 3 than in other wards?)

Regardless of the reason why, the fact remains:  you have a citywide public school that does not look like the city.

From the parent perspective, what is wrong with this?  Nothing.  If you are motivated, educated, etc, you deserve what you can get.  But what about the kid perspective?  Is it fair that Kid A gets a leg up to go to Latin while Kid B gets stuck in some crappy middle school just because his parents don't speak English?  Of course not.  That's why there is concern about what charters like this do to to the concept of "public education."

The net result is that these charters harm neighborhood schools - a group of parents that would be otherwise in the neighborhood schools (and yes, I know, some of these parents would not be in the public schools anyway because they would go private or move), and be active and engaged are instead at Latin (and soon enough BASIS).

It may not be anybody's fault.  Nobody's a bad person for choosing Latin or BASIS.  Nobody has to resent these schools or the parents who send their kids there.  But we also shouldn't pretend that their absence does not have an adverse impact on the quality of neighborhood schools.
[/quote]

This is a very unconvincing argument by someone who I am sure has their kids in a private school or a good neighborhood school.

Unless you want to force everyone to use their neighborhood school with absolutely no other option, you are just dreaming that people in dc will use their neighborhood school by choice no matter what " because it is the best thing for the whole city"

And, forcing people to use their neighborhood school as you seem to want to do is worst for those who can only afford the most poverty stricken areas.  Those are the people who most need the lifeline of school choice.  So do you then want to legislate for vouchers for the poor to move to a functioning school but the most motivated, savvy, privilged people must stay where they are because their children are needed to improve the school?  How is that right?  To use children s futures, their one chance to become educated as leverage to improve an entire system?

So maybe you would like to bus kids around in order to economically integrate schools?  But the middle class will never stand for being the minority at a poor school and the city will empty out again.

You are fighting the wrong end of this.  You are advocating for families to have limited choices for good schools so that they become the change at their neighborhood school.  You should be advocating for competency and funding and smart planning in order to improve schools so that they will attract the parents you want to stay in the neighborhood.

Why can't DCPS run its own Latin?  Make the demands on the kids and the families and hire the best teachers to do it?  That is because of political, cultural and systemic problems that are far from being solved.  In the meantime, the best thing for our.city is to provide parents options.  KIPP doesn't represent the city, neither does LATIN, or Roots but they are having success where before their was only abysmal failure.  I will take it. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics