Reply to Latin v. BASIS

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[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.

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If the only basis for your claim that Latin "subtly, rather than overtly, favors a certain group of people" is that it favors parents who are "willing to go the extra mile and have the knowledge to do so", then you are basically making a claim that lower-income families either (a) don't care about their kids enough to go that "extra mile" and/or (b) lack the basic skills to fill out the lottery form. We've filled out the lottery stuff and it doesn't require a PhD. Nor do you need to be able to work a bureaucracy on the order of getting a disability application approved or the IRS to approve your depreciation write-off. So your argument seems pretty unfair to lower-income DC families.

Now if you had argued that the challenging workload at Latin means that kids coming from the worse DC publics may be ill-prepared to succeed, then you might have an interesting point. However, I'd still have to disagree. It seems the school "goes the extra mile" to help all types of kids get up to speed. The first year, for many kids, is all about catching up to the on-grade kids, and the school makes copious extra tutoring and summer school available.

I'm with the posters who say that families who care about their kids are going to stay in a school with a bunch of parents who, according to you, are unwilling to "go the extra mile" or "expand their vision." To the extent such parents exist - and I think you're doing a great injustice to lower-income DC parents - parents will go private or leave DC rather than stay in such a school.  Latin simply gives them a reason to stay in DC.

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