Reply to Study: "Discussions of D.C. public school options in an online forum" (yes, this one)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele]Another huge flaw. On page 23 there is a section specifically looking at Brookland. It says this:

[quote]The conversations about Brookland schools on DC Urban Moms illustrate one mechanism by which this self-segregation occurs. Nearly three thousand forum conversations, almost one-fifth of the total, mention at least one Brookland elementary school, and total attention to these schools has grown over time. But DC Urban Moms participants focus heavily on a few schools in the neighborhood. On average, elementary schools in Brookland that are less than 50 percent Black are mentioned more than four times as often per year as schools that are more than 50 percent Black. Figure 8 plots this correlation.[/quote]

On the face of it, this supports the argument that DCUMers are a bunch of Klan members. But, then look at which schools are being discussed. The frequently-mentioned schools are all charters. Charters are open to students regardless of where they live in the District. So, any of our posters might be interested in those schools. The less-talked-about schools are public and therefore have residency restrictions. Fewer of our posters have a reason to discuss those schools.

This data simply cannot be taken seriously.
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Except that in Brookland, most of the in-bounds schools have enough open spaces to accept many if not most external applicants, so, while I totally and completely agree that this study is terrible, this particular point doesn't quite hold up.[/quote]

More polite way of saying this point is wrong.[/quote]

My point is not wrong. The assertion I quoted above about which Brookland school are mentioned more frequently appears to be the justification for this statement in the "Discussion" section of the report:

[quote]Even within a gentrify-ing neighborhood, and even when other local schools have similar test scores, the schools with more white students receive much more attention.[/quote]

This again ignores the fact that the schools that received more attention are charter schools that don't have residency requirements. It is quite possible that a poster who is inbounds for a top DCPS school would be interested in one of the charters, but unlikely that the same poster would be interested in a Brookland DCPS. There is simply a larger pool of users who would be potentially interested in discussing the charter schools than there is for the DCPS schools. The only way such a comparison could be legitimate is if only mentions of the schools by Brookland residents were analyzed and that is not possible with the data available to the researchers.
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Why would someone inbounds for a "top" DCPS school be interested in one of the charters? It's pretty funny how you're spinning a fantasy "larger pool" instead of admitting you're wrong.[/quote]

Are you familiar with charters at all? Do you even have kids in these schools? People choose charters for a variety of reasons. Language immersion is a common one. Potentially, someone could choose Lee because they want a Montessori school. Do you really deny that there is a larger pool of people who might discuss charters than there is for a poorly-performing inbounds school? Just look at how many students attending charters live in other neighborhoods.
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So now the Brookland inbounds schools are "poorly-performing"  - Burroughs is a 4-star school, higher than the greatly-discussed Stokes PCS. By "poorly-performing" do you mean mostly Black? Or do you have some other metric to dismiss Burroughs as poorly-performing?

If it's only about charter vs inbound, then how come the majority-Black charters (like the 4-star DC Prep) in Brookland aren't discussed here?[/quote]

+1[/quote]

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