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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sounds like OP is against school choice for others, but ok with it the minute it would benefit her kid. [/quote]

lol so true. It’s an extremely aggravating dynamic I have seen over and over. And it’s really dispiriting when the person had a lot of persuasive power. [/quote]

The parents who seem the healthiest and most functional around here are the ones who are honest with themselves that, no matter how progressive they feel they are generally, they have limits about what they will not accept for their children’s education. Some people get there eventually even having started out as anti school choice people, but other people remain insufferable. Let’s hope OP (if not a troll) is on step one of the journey to become more honest with themselves about this stuff. [/quote]

I think some parents stuck in bad schools think if all the other white people in their neighborhood just sent their kids to that school, then it would suddenly be a good school, so they get mad when they see other people not going along with their plan. [/quote]

This does seem to happen this way though. They aren’t totally wrong. It’s just that nobody wants to go first. [/quote]

Because it doesn't work if someone "goes first." You have to go as a group. If you can create a group willing to do it together, that can work. That's basically how Maury became a sought after school with a lot of IB buy in and good test scores -- a group of parents IB for the school decided, prior to a major renovation, to just commit to the school. But they did it together so their kids instantly had at least a small peer group.

Another thing that helps is not being super picky about the families in this group being IB -- look for like-minded families in surrounding boundaries who might be willing to join you in building the school up, especially if their IB isn't offering that kind of community and buy in. This can help build that group a lot so it's not just 3 or 4 families. You need like 10-20 (or more) families with kids in a fairly tight band of grades in order to create that momentum.

What doesn't work is just independently sending your kid to your IB, *expecting* your neighbors to do the same (and judging them harshly if they don't, which tends to only drive them away), while also looking down on families from nearby boundaries who might be willing to give your IB a try, and then being surprised/frustrated when the school doesn't magically start attracting more families, or when people leave the school in early or middle elementary because it's not meeting their kids' needs.

What you have to remember is that no one who really cares about education is willing to sacrifice their kids to help someone else's kids have a good school many years down the line. The only people willing to do this tend to be social justice types who think they are doing charity. But that's different (and doesn't work).[/quote]

Or DCPS could just decide to have high standards, and flunk kids who don't do the work. The secret sauce at schools like Latin and BASIS is that they will flunk your kids all day long if they don't get the job done. [/quote]

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