Reply to Today's Post OpEd from DCPS consultants

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[quote=Anonymous]I haven't read all the comments here, but I'll chime in.  I totally understand why people wouldn't want their kids to be the guinea pig of some sort of educational policy shift and would have concerns.  However, one thing I have noticed is that many, many cities move towards this approach, and sometimes it works.  It isn't always perfect, and sometimes it can be a complete mess that doesn't serve anyone well (not that the neighborhood school model serves everyone well, anyway, though).  In Chicago, for example, the selective admissions high schools (Payton, Young, Northside Prep, Lane Tech, etc. which are very very strong strong schools) weight entrance criteria based on socioeconomic status, with different standardized test score cutoffs for different groups.  The idea is that those to whom much has been given in the way of enrichment, test prep, good K-8 schools have the means to get better scores.  Does it piss parents off who are high SES because their kids have to be essentially perfect to attend one of those schools whereas someone from the ghetto has to make a much lower cutoff?  Sure.  But proportionally, it seems to represent talented kids from different backgrounds and essentially levels the playing field.  A lot of wealthy parents who don't want to play this game and don't have the money for private school in case it doesn't work out ditch the city and move to the suburbs.  However, for very talented kids, the top selective admissions schools offer wonderful, enriching curriculums and this weighting of socioeconomic status doesn't seem to affect the rigor of the school, college admissions, and other measures of success.  It doesn't fix the problems in the rest of the school system, and it really doesn't serve average to slightly above average kids of high SES, though.

In Austin, I know of a school that is a rigorous, public all girls prep school that just opened a few years ago that has to be 75% FARMS.  Their greatschools score remains 10/10.  They have a lottery for qualified candidates (I believe they need to test proficient on state exams), and they do have a bit of a weeding out to self-select for those who don't take school seriously (with some concerns about this "weeding out" process regarding discipline).  But they have a good track record with academics and college admissions.

Finally, I know Berkeley moved to a cluster system not long ago, and it seems to serve high SES parents well, for the most part.  It seems like more parents are comfortable sending their kids to at least elementary school in Berkeley than in the past.

This program may be a mess, and might not fix anything. But it's not doomed to failure, it depends more on how it is implemented, the changing demographics of the city, and a number of other factors.  The number of charters also offers a lot of alternatives to neighborhood schools.[/quote]

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