Reply to Mayor Bowser to Make Education Policy and Personnel Announcement

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[quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]
Jeff, I appreciate your thoughtful comments.  I don't really agree with your underlying point though.  In essence, you seem to be saying that just about everyone from the Crestwood/16thSH area would have refused to attend MacFarland/Roosevelt out sheer rage after having lost access to Deal/Wilson.  In effect, you're saying they're like the frustrated voters from 2004 who threaten to run away to Canada rather than live under the oppressive yoke of the the Bush dictatorship.  I think that's unrealistic exaggeration, for the same reason I thought it was an exaggeration 2004.  People get mad and threaten to leave, and some do actually leave, but most will stay and muddle through because they lack options or inertia is just to strong.  It's those that stay who would form the strong core of MacFarland/Roosevelt.

You suggest that if families can choose either Deal/Wilson or MacFarland/Roosevelt, they will somehow start to embrace MacFarland/Roosevelt.  I think that's unrealistic.  If given the choice, I cannot imagine anyone leaving the safe choice of Deal to take a chance on MacFarland.  I fear that almost everyone with actual choice will choose Deal.  The families who choose MacFarland are more likely to be those with particularly complex circumstances where school proximity is paramount.  I predict the highest SES families, and the families most motivated by education (two similar, but not identical, groups), will arrange to choose Deal.  As a result, MacFarland/Roosevelt will look less attractive and will spiral downward.  I am perhaps a cynic, but I consider my pessimistic view more realistic here.

IMHO, few political leaders will make the right choice when it's a hard one that's personally damaging to them.  Vincent Gray was in the rare position to make a hard - but right - choice without much damage, and I applaud him for doing it.  Here, I fear Mayor Bowser took the easy path that helps her political position, but hurts DCPS as a whole.[/quote]

Regarding your first paragraph, I am not ascribing motivations as to why my neighbors wouldn't go to MacFarland or Roosevelt. It may be sheer rage or it may be something else. All I know is that they were actively making plans to avoid those schools (the most common reasons expressed were not rage but the fact that one school doesn't exist and the other has a bad reputation). The comparison to moving to Canada is a false analogy on many levels. First, those claiming they would go to Canada were always a very small minority of those on the losing side. In my experience,  the number of Crestwood residents who would avoid MacFarland and Wilson was over 90% of those with potientialy-impacted children. It is exponentially easier to enter charter school and OOB lotteries than it is to move to Canada. It is less easier than that, but still easier, to write a check for private school then to move to Canada. Finally, it is also easier to move West of the Park or to the the close in suburbs then to move to Canada.

MacFarland will never be popular among Crestwood residents unless it can sell itself. No amount of drawing boundaries on paper will force my neighbors to go there. With Deal as an alternative, the sales job is harder. But, MacFarland can distinguish itself with a smaller environment, language immersion, geographic convenience, and a close and supportive community. The issue up for debate is the impact on MacFarland of having Deal as a competitor versus the alienation from DCPS resulting from not having Deal as an option. My analysis is that the Deal option helps MacFarland because it helps attract neighborhood families to Powell and West and encourages younger families to stop focusing on their exist strategies and keeps them engaged long enough to take a look at MacFarland. Whether the neighborhood engages with Roosevelt depends almost entirely on what happens with MacFarland.

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