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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]U street got started WAYYYY before the charters heated up. The the Verizon center, and DC's Great Streets initiative. The fact that the real estate market never crashed here. Whatever, I fail to see that it makes a difference in this discussion.

The source of the problem, really, is that DCPS failed to respond to the charter schools/gentrification chicken-egg problem. Look at all of Ward 5, which doesn't even HAVE a middle school and not even one decent neighborhood school for all of Brookland. They even shut down the Montessori program at Langdon, which had an outside chance of attracting families. As a result, Ward 5 parents who don't feel like starting their own schools are losing their minds trying to play the lotteries.

[b]And, by the way, we have tried to get together and formulate a plan to engage at one of the schools and work towards a solution. It is a massive task that requires a serious commitment from a critical mass of families PLUS the principal and admin, which is very, very hard to pull off.[/b]See the SWS thread to see how the same problem at Ludlow Taylor is playing out.[/quote]

Agreeing to disagree about your larger version of the chicken and the egg issue on "Which came first: better school options or gentrification?", this bolded part is exactly the piece I'm trying to understand about your "version" of history.  It is indeed very challenging to get that critical mass of parents involved to turn schools around.  At the same time, DCPS was turning out class after class of students who in fact were not educated and were doomed from an educational standpoint from a very early point in school.  The point came when a critical mass of parents, teachers, and school reformers said "Enough is enough, we've tried to work with/through DCPS and gotten blocked by WTU and some school administrations directly.  We've tried what we can, now we're going to start new schools."

At THAT point, there are 2 things that don't make sense in your version of the evolution/de-evolution of charters and neighborhood schools in DC: at that point what are you saying should have been done instead that would not have further doomed ALL students in DCPS who were not at the few decently-to-well performing schools, and would have somehow overcome that challenge to getting the crtitical mass of parents involved at the neighborhood level beyond those that did try to get involved and found they couldn't make enough of a difference?  As challenging as transportation and now the lottery system itself is for charters, it was established further up-thread that the majority of students in DCPCS are low-income and a critical mass of them are getting a better education than they would have got if charters had never started in DC.  So in your version of history, at the point where the critical mass of frustrated parents, teachers and school reform folks said "Working within DCPS isn't working so we need to do our own thing to give these students options", what was better than starting charters that would not have further left more generations of students with NO choices instead of many many better choices, and that would have somehow had a different parent-involvement outcome at the neighborhood level?

If you can't answer that, you have absolutely no argument.  [/quote]

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