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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This thread kind of makes me jealous of the vast majority of American parents who just enroll their kids in their suburban boundary school because that’s what’s available to them. Though I realize it’s a double edge sword, if those schools don’t work for their kid, most parents do not have another option. Moving or private school aren’t realistic to most of our country, where in the DC UMC it seems almost like a given if things aren’t working out. [/quote]

it is extremely coming throughout the rest of the country for parents to choose where they live specifically for the school their home is zoned for. Yes, they just send their kid to the local school, but they didn’t randomly end up where they did.

[b]DC seems to be full of more oblivious parents who wake up one day and realize the house they bought with the great walk to all the bars and coffee shops is zoned for a terrible school.[/b] [/quote]

I see this opinion on here often and I don't get it. In some cases good schools are "a great walk to all the bars and coffee shops." In other instances, people bought homes before they had kids or even knew if they wanted to have kids, so didn't prioritize schools (and didn't great metrics for evaluating them even if they did). Sometimes people buy homes believing the IB school to be good, only to attend for ECE and discover it's not at all right for their kid. Some people rent, and/or can't afford to live in-bound for better schools. Some people bought knowing the schools were bad but believed they would be able to move before it was an issue, only to run into issues (a job loss, Covid, home not appreciating well while homes in more desired school boundaries shooting up in price, etc.).

I know you think you are really owning all the families in DC who have poor IB schools that happen to be near a coffee shop or bar they enjoy going too, but you just wind up coming off incredibly ignorant. You seem to think there are large numbers of people who can buy wherever they want but choose homes in "hip" neighborhoods with bad schools just because they are stupid and oblivious. It's not happening. In fact, one of the things that happens is that a bunch of people buy homes in "hip" neighborhoods and then the schools get a lot better -- see the aforementioned Ludlow Taylor, and Maury, among others.

I'm sorry your upper NW neighborhood or suburb has so few good businesses to walk to, but at least your schools are good.[/quote]

Actually I think the comment is spot on and I don't get it either. That said, I think it applies only to a slice of UMC DC that lives EOTP.  [b]These are the same people who say "outcomes track demographics.  As long as your kid is from an UMC family they will be fine.  Statistics show that.  Don't worry about the schools."  But what they don't realize is that in 95% of the country UMC people who want to use the public schools intentionally locate near good ones.  There are very very few UMC families in the US that are going to failing schools, because they can afford not to.  So what the "statistics" say about demographics really represents more than just straight demographics.  [/b]

To the other poster's point about their young kid being in the "top XX%" nationwide....  I'm going to go out an a limb and assume this percentile is from i-ready scores, where the nationwide percentile is provided.  But a cautionary point there, that I just realized myself.  My current 6th grader has consistently scored in the 97-99 percentile on i-ready, including this year.  But their middle-of-year 6th grade i-ready scores said that they were scoring as an end-of-year 6th grader.  That seemed odd to me-- how could a kid in the 99 percentile be performing only slightly above grade level?  I asked the teacher at conferences who said it was confusing to him too, but his best guess is that i-ready isn't used broadly across the US, and is mostly used by urban schools, so the "nationwide" sample set doesn't really represent the country.  I started looking at scores differently after that.

[/quote]

This is such a fantastic insight. I always feel like that about Ed policy studies that get to the right "liberal" result (and I am a liberal...)

Demographic SES of school doesn't matter
Where you go to college doesn't matter
Etc etc

So many lurking variables behind them.[/quote]

Is this a joke? The studies that say that are explicitly controlling for school and school system. It’s not a confounding factor; it’s the *very thing they are studying.*[/quote]

Have you looked at their endpoint?  It was college bound.  That’s a damn near low bar.

What you really need to do for a good study is compare 2 similar kids - 1 who went to a poorly performing public school and one who went to a top performing public school.  Compare their outcomes in high school, SAT scores, how well they do their freshman year, etc…

I don’t need a study to tell me the answer if you want your kid to reach their full potential. [/quote]

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