Reply to Integration and DC Schools -- A high priority? Yay or nay?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Honestly, this feels like a place where we should be lifting up Black and Latino voices, not white voices (which is the majority of DCUM). My answer is some mix of I don't know and it depends.

I am white - I do want my kids to go to a diverse school. For me, that means a school that has a good percentage of Black and Latino students, and at least enough white students that my kid doesn't stick out like a sore thumb - I think sending a kid to a school, in America, where there are only a single digit number of kids of their race in the whole school, no matter what race that kid is, is asking a lot of someone really young. Everyone has different priorities, but for me, Garrison and John Lewis are the kinds of schools I want my kid to attend (and we're attempting to lottery to both of them this year).

As to whether DC Prep should try to diversify, or whether schools EOTR should try to diversify, that's a question for the Black community, not a question for me.

It does seem to me like the place where integration is a reasonable goal is places where inbound participation is very low for particular races. There are plenty of white families inbounds for Cleveland, for HD Cooke, for Tubman - why aren't they attending? That's a worthwhile question to ponder. And if there are schools, for example, WOTP that are 70% white and aren't seeing inbound participation from families of color, that's worth digging in to as well. So I do tend to agree with a previous poster that inbound buy in is valuable, and broadly considered to be valuable (even by people like me who are opting out of our IB) and often in DC increases school integration. [/quote]

Why are you opting out of your IB?[/quote]

I'm not going to answer detailed questions about this because it would make me pretty identifiable, but I'll say in general terms: [b]Lack of academic peers for my advanced kids, and some social challenges. [/b]

But I will say that my experience in having my kids at a DCPS, evaluating schools, learning about the DC school landscape, and navigating this with my own family has shown me that NONE of these issues, in DC at least, are simple, and there are no easy answers. And the only people claiming there are easy answers ("well if DC just did X, everything would be better") generally live in the suburbs (like the Bethesda guy quote upthread). These issues are incredibly complex. [/quote]

In other words, you don't want your kids going to school with the blacks. [/quote]

I’m not the person who wrote the original comment, but as a Black parent, I find this kind of response reductive and unfair.

It’s entirely possible for a family to be talking about academic peers and social fit without it being code for “not wanting to be around Black kids.” In fact, in my own case, we moved our son into a predominantly African-American Catholic school that is also high-performing.

One reason? At his previous school, he had essentially no Black male peers in his same socioeconomic band — not one. That matters more than people want to admit. Belonging isn’t just about race. It’s about shared expectations, family context, academic norms, and social environment.

Many white families in DC can reasonably expect that most of the same-race peers around their kids will also be in a similar SES band. That’s not always true for Black families. When it isn’t, the social dynamics can be isolating in ways that are hard to explain unless you’ve seen it up close.

Reducing complex conversations about peer groups and school culture to “you just don’t want your kids around Black people” shuts down nuance and ignores how class and race intersect in real ways.

[/quote]

Thank you for this. My (non-white kid) also moved from a Title 1 school to a high performing school and now has friends of different races, but they all are middle class or UMC and ALL have parents who value education.

When I see someone write something like "you don't want your kids in school with the blacks" I know this is a white mom at a Title 1 school who thinks she is performing an act of social justice by sending her kid there, and doesn't see her own racism.[/quote]

Not bad points. But as a white mom with a kid in a T1 MS, I can also conclude that for white parents who disparage and won’t even consider the school,[b] I do think there is racism at play.[/b] As for black MC/UMC kids, I think the issue is in some ways the same as for the white academically on track kids - the school is rightfully geared towards serving the 90% of kids that make up its main population and so advanced academics is not the #1 concern. That said I personally find the teachers and admins at our school to be very, very good and my kid has learned a ton. I wonder if a black MC would fall through the cracks a bit because everyone would assume they were “high risk” instead of EG pushing them into the advanced math class. At a school where grade level or beyond performance was expected then the median standard would be higher for all kids including black kids. [/quote]

A mind reader, everyone. [/quote]

Lots of convuluted thinking going on. "When UMC black families choose a good school, it's because they want a good education for their child. When UMC white families choose a good school, its because of racism."[/quote]

The two families are not equivalent in their motivations and beliefs, obviously. [/quote]

Sometimes the two families actually are identical in their motivations and beliefs, actually. Their circumstances might be somewhat different, but both families value education and are concerned that a school with low test scores and low achievement will not provide that.

In DC, I especially find it interesting when people accuse white families of racism for opting out of IB or T1 schools, because in the vast majority of cases, they are opting for a school where white kids are still in the minority. I have known families who opted for other T1 schools over their IB, with similar racial demographics, because they wanted the school with better administration and higher test scores. Is that family racist? What about a family who lotteries into a charter or nearby DCPS because more students in the neighborhood attend those schools and they want neighborhood friends (and their IB is mostly OOB kids coming from farther away)? Is that a racist concern?[/quote]

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