Reply to New opposition petition to the Maury-Miner boundary proposal from DME

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Demographics are (almost always) destiny sadly. Diluting the overall proportion of at-risk kids might in fact make thing easier for current teachers/staff at Miner, and I don’t think that’s an improper metric to consider.

But the impact on the academic outcomes of at-risk kids will likely be nil to negligible, as their problems stem from out-of-school factors that the school - no matter how structured - can’t be expected overcome.

On the other hand, UMC folks might find that things continue pretty much the same for their kids. Sure, maybe less convenient for some and maybe less narrowly “neighborhoody”, but I’m not sure those are factors DCPS should consider at the outset.

At any rate, howl loud enough and it’s probably dead in the water. Congratulations.

[/quote]

This is pretty spot on. I think the fear that many Maury parents seem to have is  misplaced.

There are also whole conversations that I think we're sidestepping because they are uncomfortable. People like to fixate on test scores because they are "hard data" and so the conversation gets focused on whether the cluster would improve test scores for at risk kids, or drag down test scores for high-SES kids. I think this PP is likely correct that it would have minimal impact on either, and you'd wind up with a cluster school where the average test scores are lower than Maury and higher than Miner, but where individual outcomes are unchanged.

But there's also the question of culture, and that's what people don't really like to discuss. The truth is that there are nice things about having your kid at a relatively homogeneous school where most of the other families are similar to yours. It makes friendships easier, both between kids and between parents. It makes it easier for the school to set goals and reinforce culture, because people are more likely to be in agreement on what matters. I know I'm about to get people yowling at me about how diverse Maury is, but I'm not talking about racial diversity. I'm talking about life experience diversity. You can have a racially diverse school that is very homogenous, if the families at that school are all above a certain income and have similar educational and family backgrounds. And Maury is that.

The cluster school will be more genuinely diverse, at least if the populations of the separate schools remained in place. It would be a mix of UMC professional families on the Hill and in Hill East, middle class black families from Wards 7 and 8, low income families from housing projects in the current Miner zone as well as some from across the river. It is harder to make all those people happy and they won't all agree on what school is for or how it should be run. That's either a travesty or an opportunity, depending on your politics and your personal preferences (and just your energy levels, tbh -- it is more socially taxing to have kids at a truly diverse school because your personal interactions require more effort).[/quote]

If we accept all of these things, the cluster makes even less sense, because there are less disruptive mechanisms to increase socio-economic diversity.  At-risk set asides, boundary re-drawing, and choice sets could all increase socio-economic diversity with far less disruption to the school communities.[/quote]

Why would you need those if you had a school with a boundary that is itself very socioeconomically diverse? A combined Miner-Maury cluster would include million dollar homes, more moderately priced homes, multi-family housing at a wide variety of price points, plus Section 8 and public housing. You don't need choice sets and at risk set asides if your in boundary population is already socioeconomically diverse.

You are talking about ways to make Maury more diverse than it currently is, because Maury presently sits on a little island of high cost, single family housing, something that is rare for school boundaries in this part of town. So if you want to make a school with Maury's boundary demographics more diverse, you have to look at redrawing the boundary lines, adding at-risk set asides in the lottery (though I really question how effective that would be at a school with high IB buy in that is already at capacity) or choice sets.

If you just combine the school boundaries, you don't need any of that. Instant diversity. We can argue over whether that's good or bad, or whether the implementation makes sense, or whether the resulting school cluster will be so large as to be unwieldy or bad for kids. But I think it's hard to argue that the cluster would result in LESS diversity than moving some boundary lines and adding at-risk set asides and choice sets. I think it's fairly obvious that the people suggesting those as an alternative like them specifically because they will not create as much socioeconomic diversity as a cluster would.[/quote]

Hey, we could put more multifamily housing in the Maury zone but thay would mean repealing the Kingman Park historical designation, which the so-called progressives fought for. [/quote]

No one is arguing in favor of putting more multifamily housing in the Maury zone. No one is upset that people live in single family houses. This conversation is just about how to allocate public school students within the city's public schools. Try to stay on topic.[/quote]

Np, but do you really not understand the connection between the two? Why do you think Maury isn't economically diverse? Precisely because it doesn't have diverse housing stock. (I say economically diverse, because Maury actually is relatively racially diverse.)[/quote]

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