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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The PP said schools families WANT their kids to attend- there are plenty of families who send their kids to certain schools that they absolutely dislike and are stuck and feel that they have no choice.  I think the statement that there is a small handful of middle schools and high schools that all the families in the city would want their kids to attend is absolutely correct.  [/quote]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that you don't talk to many families outside of your bubble.  Remember, DCUM is pretty extreme bubble.[/quote]

+1. This spring, I had a lot of conversations with 8th graders at a school that almost certainly none of the people on DCUM would send their kids to, and the things that they were worried about for middle and high school were things that wouldn't even occur to most of the people on this board. For example, they did not care AT ALL if there were no white kids at the school.[/quote]

That wouldn't surprise me one bit but [b]I'm curious about your framing in those discussions.  I'd be very interested to know how students at struggling schools view systemic inequity like lack of top performing teachers, or insufficient funding to address high at-risk populations, etc.[/b]

These students would be 100% correct be skeptical of white students' presence as any sort of benefit or  panacea, but I suspect they'd be far more interested in school resources being equitably expended for everyone regardless of address.[/quote]

The context of the conversations was working at one of the schools on the list in a mental health capacity and talking to the students and their parents about high school choices and their satisfaction level with the school itself.

The students have been expressing all year concern about other students not focusing on their work, behaving in ways that prevent learning from happening, etc. They have concerns about specific teachers, but honestly, a 7th grader doesn't care if his 6th grade teacher doesn't come back after he finishes 6th grade. He also doesn't necessarily know what his teacher's professional history is like, whether the teacher is a "top performer" or anything else like that. They don't know anything about at-risk funding, and frankly, it's not always obvious within the school specifically what those funds are being used for.

Things the students cared about as communicated to me: presence of gangs in area high schools (e.g., boys very worried about MS-13 at Roosevelt), specific academic focus (e.g.,[b] can I take French instead of Spanish? Can I take a media production class instead of music[/b]?), how difficult it was to get to the school from their current address, whether or not the school has a uniform. Obviously kids were also interested in going to schools where their friends go/were planning to go, so that was also part of what they were interested in and (in a couple cases) an example of something their parents wanted to avoid.[/quote]

So they're not at all interested in why Deal provides these options but not their school?

They don't know what they're missing in terms of teacher quality and maybe more experienced/qualified teachers could better handle disruptive peers.  They don't know anything about at-risk funding because the schools are forced to absorb the funding into admin budget rather than providing the specific intended supports.[/quote]

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