Reply to My daughter is the only white girl in her grade: ask me anything

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Reply to "My daughter is the only white girl in her grade: ask me anything"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP- what do you think of the notion that you may be playing roulette with your child's future by sending her to a school that may be perceived as substandard, when you have the means to do better?  I personally do not believe this, but I hear this argument quite often on DCUM and IRL when it comes to going with local schools with high FARMs or minority rates.[/quote]

OP here. I already addressed this above, but I will point out that "having the means" is really in the eye of the beholder. We rent, so yes, we could move. However, moving is disruptive and expensive. Most of the "good" schools in DC don't have a ton of rentals in general, and we're not in a position to (or interested in) buying a house right now. Even if we were, the neighborhoods those "good schools" are in are prohibitively expensive for us. Transportation costs would increase greatly, as would aftercare costs (since the "good schools" don't have nearly free aftercare like we do).  Just because we COULD move doesn't mean that it would be a good thing for our family. Neither my husband nor I want to move to the suburbs, and we like where we live.

As for "playing roulette" I think that it's important that the specifics of the school my child attends are one factor in her education experience, but not the only one. Parental education level, as well as socioeconomic status, are all strong predictors for student success throughout life. My husband and I went to college, and I have an advanced degree, so likely, DD will be successful in school and attend college herself. Living in poverty, particularly during early elementary school, is correlated with poor achievement throughout a child's schooling, and the effects of housing instability and food insecurity have documented effects on children's ability to learn. My child will be fine - I have yet to see a study that indicates that an UMC child attending school with lower SES children will suffer adverse effects simply by attending school with them. I understand the concern that teachers will need to spend more time helping children with lower levels of achievement and that opportunities for advanced-level work may be limited accordingly, but again, I'm not going to preemptively pull her from this school and send her to a school with more wealthy children on the possibility that she will have problems later. [/quote]

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