Reply to I am confused between Stuart Hobson Middle School vs. Deal Middle School

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why not just copy NYC and offer free test prep in every ward, starting in 6th or 7th grade?  Students eligible for free or reduced meals could have a few extra points added to their scores if they turned up for the prep.  Done. There are no shortcuts on the math prep.  The kids either learn the math to cope with the curriculum or the curriculum invariably gets watered down to cater to kids who didn't get the requisite prep.[/quote]

So I think the reason this wouldn't solve the problem in DC is that even with this, you'd still wind up with far fewer kids in Wards 7/8 passing the test than elsewhere.

A long time ago when I first moved to DC, I had a roommate who was from Brooklyn and she told me that she viewed DC as a bizarrely segregated city compared to NYC. She was like "all the white people live in this one part of town and then the rest of the city is overwhelmingly black -- it is very weird." This was around 2001. I remember kind of dismissing it, thinking "well it feels relatively diverse where I live and work. Which, relatively it was, because we lived in U Street (which was just maybe starting to gentrify then) and I worked downtown.

But over the years living here, and also spending a lot more time in NYC, I have come to think she was totally right. DC is very segregated in a way NYC is not, even outside Manhattan. And it's segregated along BOTH race and class lines. And unlike NYC, it doesn't have a massive interconnected subway system that allows people from any part of the city to relatively easily travel to other parts of the city across these race/class lines. Things like Georgetown having no metro stop and the fundamental challenges in DC of traveling directly East-West (whether by road or metro) are very relevant to the question of whether we could adopt a NYC-type magnet system. Wards 7 and 8 are segregated AND cut off from the city in fundamental ways. And that makes it a lot harder to create a school system that easily moves students where the resources are.

Instead DC has tried to move the resources where the students are. That's theory behind the charter/lottery system, and the reason why most charters are EotP and why such a large number of charters are focused specifically on the needs of the city's black population that is in poverty (there is a reason there are so many Kipp campuses and why they are often popular -- they are designed to meet the needs of this population in a way that is approved by this group). And it just doesn't work that well. DCPS schools EotR just don't seem to get better. The charters might help at the elementary level but we don't have enough charters at the MS/HS level to serve as a replacement for the failing MS and HS on the east side of town (especially in Wards 7/8). And since we also don't have a good way to move students around the city, the charter system largely just benefits families who can live near charters or who can easily travel to them. Heck, you can make a compelling argument that the proliferation of charters in Wards 5 and 6 (or in Ward 6, the all-city schools like SWS or CHMS) have simply accelerated gentrification in those areas by attracting more wealthy families, who also tend to be whiter, and nothing ever really changes for the city's poorest residents in terms of education.

If you really want to get kids in Wards 7/8 access to strong education opportunities, I don't think simply offering test prep centers are going to do it. We need need to think holistically about the entire school system and look at all the ways that the city's poorest kids are impeded in accessing education -- there's an invisible wall in this city and we need to tear the wall down, not install more windows.[/quote]

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