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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm optimistic. DCI attracted lots of UMC families from their feeder schools. Macarthur attracted the Jackson-Reed-bound kids. UMC families are obviously not what makes a school great, but it certainly is easier to run a school when you've got a solid cadre of families whose lives and incomes aren't in too much flux, and who are already addressing some of their kids' learning issues. [/quote]

MC and UMC kids might not make a school great but they’re the only thing keeping a school from being a pit.[/quote]

There are some very successful schools that are primarily low income (like DC Prep, the other charters that exceed expectations and send many of their graduates to college). But it seems like DCPS can rarely pull off a good school unless there is buy in from "professional class" parents. When they do, it's because of a visionary principal, not because of the school district.[/quote]

Schools like DC Prep succeed because of buy in too -- they offer a very strict, traditional educational experience that is appealing to a lot of middle class black families in the district. The school community tends to be pretty homogenous which makes it easier to maintain a very specific culture. It doesn't work well for all students, including all low income students, but it works well for the families who self select into the school.

A neighborhood DCPS can't do that, not because they lack a "visionary principal" but because that approach would inevitably not work for half the students at the school and it would be a mess. Neighborhood schools have to be able to meet the needs of a broad range of students from varying cultural and economic backgrounds, with different levels of parental involvement and buy in, has to accommodate a range of special needs, etc. DC Prep doesn't have to do any of that. In this way it's not dissimilar from a school like LAMB, which offers an educational approach that people who attend the school love but would never fly in a regular DCPS because a significant portion of the buy right population would inevitably hate it, or it just would totally fail to meet their needs.[/quote]

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