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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t live on the Hill but close enough that my prediction or maybe just hope is that Eastern will be look almost like JR in ten years except you could actually lottery in.

I also envision Walls having more students of color, Banneker having more white students and McKinley getting almost as hard to get into as those schools.

Roosevelt, Dunbar and Cardozo will still be chronically low-performing.

What can I say…I’m a mostly optimist who doesn’t want to move to the burbs. [/quote]

I like your optimism.

If Eastern would really throw its shoulder behind the EPIC program and expand it then sure it could become more popular. I have my doubts though. [b]DCPS still does not prioritize the needs of college bound and academically sound students. I don’t really see that changing.[/b] [/quote]

Some of these really terrible schools would get more neighborhood buy-in if they had aggressive tracking.  But the woke warriors who run our schools hate anything that results in white kids mostly being in one class and black kids mostly being in another. [/quote]

You get the schools you voted for. [/quote]

This assumes that voters in DC were presented with options that might have given them better schools. I've lived in DC for 20 years and can only think of a couple council candidates (and ZERO mayoral candidates) who might have fought for something like more tracking in DCPS schools. And the council has minimal control over schools anyway so it kind of doesn't matter. Bowers, who I don't like, beat Robert White in the last mayoral election. White was more "woke" than Bowser and even suggested closing schools to deal with a Covid surge in 2022 (I didn't vote for White).

DC voters generally have awful options, in part because DC is a dead end for most politicians. Plus the political culture of the city means that most of our options are chosen for us by a handful of special interests whose backing you need to make a successful run at citywide office. Those special interests are almost entirely very "woke" and the ones that aren't don't care about schools (they are economic coalitions focused on development and business).

The only way to effect change in DC schools is to get involved with your schools, advocate loudly via the PTA and other parent organizations, and just generally be a thorn in the side of administration or Central Office until you get what you want. Very few families in DC have the time and resources to do this, and it's hard to organize parents because the lottery/charter system disrupts traditional means for uniting families and the cyclical nature of education makes it hard to get momentum (everyone's kids are constantly aging out).

That's why you primarily see momentum at the school level, and only at schools with good IB buy in and an involved parent community (preferably with some financial resources), with specific schools slowly shifting to reflect the demands of families who are consistently in the school for many years. This limits progress to a small number of schools in the district and is why things like IB percentage, owner v. renter percentage within the boundary, and SES of attending families are major factors in whether a school offers challenges to high achievers, tracking for math, academic enrichment beyond remedial tutoring, etc.

It's not about voting, as DC voters have minimal options there for structural reasons.[/quote]

Disagree. This city votes for and is run by Democrats who all share the same assumptions about schools, which are:

1. The primary purpose of schools is not to educate all students, but to fight inequality
2. Any system, whether it's tracking or gifted schools, that results in white kids tending to go to one place and black kids tending to go to another place, is inherently racist and must be avoided at all costs
3. No real plan to reduce racial disparities in academic achievement except to reduce standards so that no one can fail
4. A belief that social promotion is necessary because the social consequences of flunking kids, regardless of how little they learn, is devastating
5. The teachers union is your ally and its opinion is important

Those are all political decisions.

It's also why Michelle Rhee was so incredibly controversial. Because she did not share those assumptions. [/quote]

Dems run plenty of high performing districts. Some of the best public schools in the country are run by Democrats. Meanwhile my sister lives in a deep read county in a deep red state with low test scores and low graduation rates, and the local school board is primarily focused on banning books. The district also went to a four day school week to save money, a huge FU to parents and kids.

The issue here is not "Democrats." DCPS is actually a lot better than it used to be, all because of changes enacted by Democrats. [/quote]

DC spends more money on schools than almost anywhere else. What have we gotten for it? Our kids do worse on standardized tests than kids in the Deep South. Alabama has better scores than we do. [/quote]

DC does not, in fact, spend more money than any other school district.  We are not even in the top 20.
https://www.playgroundequipment.com/school-districts-that-spend-the-most-and-least-per-student/[/quote]

DC spends 25k per student according to OSSE, and that itself is fudging the numbers down (I read it was more like 33k), so that website is wrong specifically and I’m sure wrong more generally. [/quote]

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