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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]See, for example, Hobson v Hansen, where the court held that tracking was one of several tools used to enforce de facto segregation of DCPS schools.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson_v._Hansen[/quote]

That case was 45 years ago, decided on the heels of the Voting Rights Act, when schools were still de facto segregated. The fact that you know the wiki citation does not mean you have read it or understand how it is or is not relevant to the current educational environment. Take a minute and read the actual case, please.

Oh, and before some 28 year old wanna be SJW chimes in to say "Thinks are no better or different today than they were in 1967", please go find a black person who lived in American in the 50s and 60s and ask them about what they experienced before you embarrass yourself.   [/quote]

I’m the PP you are responding to. I attended segregated schools as a child.

I’m not sure what you imagine Hobson v. Hansen [b]has anything to do with the Voting Rights act[/b], given that the case is about whether the mechanisms adopted by an unelected school board to “cynically” (according to the opinion) re-segregate the schools in the wake of Bolling v. Sharpe were illegal.

However, the point that I was making was that the DCUM parents who take to this board every day to demand “equal treatment” - by which they mean the power to reshape DCPS policy to suit the needs of 17% of DCPS students through a variety of mechanisms including eliminating OOB seats, eliminating feeder patterns that allow Black kids to attend NW schools, and re-introducing tracking — are likely unaware of Hobson. Of course, the specific mechanism would be different than Hansen’s “four track curriculum”, and would thus likely be legal, but my point was that lots of people who ARE aware of the history are skeptical of these parents’ motives.  Particularly when, like me, they attended schools that were still officially segregated years after Brown v. Board and which — when they were forced to integrate —- immediately adopted gifted programs and/or tracking in which all the white kids magically turned out to be gifted and all the Black kids weren’t.

[/quote]

I referenced the VRA because context matters. You are citing to a case and a set of facts that occurred in America at the same time that the battle for the VRA was occurring. My guess is you understood that but were deploying a cheap rhetorical device?

To suggest that white parents on DCUM who advocate for advanced classes and more academic rigor are somehow unqualified or wrong to so if they aren't aware of a 1967 court case with facts and contextual reality so far removed from 2022 is silly. It strikes me as a disingenuous effort to mute or intimidate people who suffer liberal guilt. Your description of the indefensible facts and actions in Hobson so clearly designed to continue the legacy of segregation are accurate; which makes me wonder how you can so easily mischaracterize the 2022 effort to get academic rigor introduced in MS.

You don't appear to have a solution other than to maintain the status quo. You sit in the corner and make references to cases gone by and worry in the abstract about racism and segregation but you don't have a solution, other than to suggest that any solution proposed by a white person who doesn't first attend an HBCU lecture on 1950 and 1960s segregation ought not have an opinion.

My question to you stands: Are you saying that advanced classes in MS should not be permitted because they somehow perpetuate segregation and racism? I await your reply.  [/quote]

I was honestly confused by the reference to the VRA because the school board in DC was appointed, not elected at the time.  I agree that context matters, and that's important context because it's part of the history of a lack of democracy in DC, which I think has negatively impacted lower-income, predominantly Black residents much more than (since the 1970s at least) more transient and wealthier white population.

I have no issue with offering honors classes in middle school, but that's not the same thing as tracking.  When I hear "tracking" -- particularly when it's espoused by the same parents who want to end OOB rights, shrink boundaries, and do lots of other things whose net effect would be increasing school segregation --- I understand that to mean a system like what I experienced after desegregation in which advanced classes are a carefully guarded resource that the "wrong" kids are energetically excluded from; kids are tracked by opaque, parent-influenced criteria in elementary school; and there's no option short of a lawsuit to change tracks at any point after about 4th grade.  That's the lens through which I tend to look at this issue.

It's much better, of course, to look at data, but the reality is that the research is mixed on the impact of academic tracking on minority students.  In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a lot was written about how tracking was implemented in a lot of places as a direct proxy for race and SES.  Researchers gave kids in different school districts standard tests and found far less correlation between academic ability and track placement than between SES or minority status and placement.  In other words, lots of smart, poor, black and brown kids in lots of schools were tracked to regular or remedial classes, while lots of less smart white, high SES kids were tracked to honors classes. A lot of more recent, high-quality research has found the opposite --- that tracking benefits minority kids.

Like most social policy things, the devil is in the implementation.  My point is not to advocate for a particular approach or policy.  My point is just to say that lots of high SES white parents on DCUM vocally demand tracking, eliminating feeder rights, eliminating OOB rights, re-instituting suspensions and expulsion without trying to fix the issues that led to those things being deemphasized, and other policies that will lead to segregation.  These same parents seem totally unaware of the history of desegregation, re-segregation, and the struggle for democracy in DC, and they get very angry when folks suggest that they not start their engagement with the schools by demanding that the school system be utterly overhauled and that the past be forgotten in order to cater to 17% of the school population.   I'm just suggesting that those angry parents maybe take a beat, listen, and learn about the concerns of the other 83% of parents, a lot of whom know this history because they have lived it their whole lives and continue to live it today.

You, for example, could stand to tone down your rhetoric a lot and listen before making assumptions. First, you assume people who disagree with you are 28 and don't know anything beyond Wikipedia.  Then you talk about "sitting in the corner", "worrying in the abstract",  and "liberal guilt."  Of course, you have no knowledge about what I have experienced (including attending segregated schools and experiencing desegregation and resistance to it firsthand, and in DC a lot of pretty shocking comments and behavior from "liberal", high SES, white parents directed toward my kid and his friends), but you're sure you know best.  In that way, your behavior and attitudes are part of the problem, and in a practical sense, they prevent you from getting what you want, because the 83% of DCPS parents who know more about this history and vote will discount your opinions when you talk down to them. 
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