Reply to Help me Edit: Response to Brookings Report

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Reply to "Help me Edit: Response to Brookings Report"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]I thought it was good, up until the last bit, defending parents -- it comes across as defensive.  Residential and educational segregation is real, and what we think of as a "good" school is often tied up in race.  Even "objective" measures like test scores reflect racial disparities.

Parents always say they just want good schools for their children, but that doesn't mean that they aren't participating in and perpetuating a racially biased system.  It would be helpful if white parents (which includes me) were willing to be a little more introspective and real with ourselves about the choices we are making and why we are making them.  You can acknowledge that parents, like everyone else, can be actively racist, or have racist blind spots, or benefit from a racist system, while still pointing out the serious problems with the Brookings' study methodology.  [/quote]

The premise of the report is that we are a bunch of segregationists. They say this throughout the report. I hardly think I can ignore the allegation. [b]Residential and educational segregation is real, but it was not created by the posters in our forum. [/b]The solution goes well beyond them. That said, I will rethink that section but I doubt I will remove it altogether.
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Even if they did not create the system they may perpetuate it in various ways, even if unintentional.  I mean, if implicit bias is a real thing, why can’t unintentional perpetuation of systemic racism be one also?  This is nothing that hasn’t already been found in other work (see Dream Hoarders for popular discussion of some of this).[/quote]

DP: For one thing, DC schools are actually becoming less segregated. In 2000, there were just over 1000 white students in DCPS, total. The only way for DC to increase the number of integrated schools is keep white students from moving to the suburbs or going to private school. Slowly, it has been succeeding, and that success is rolling east and south. By 16-17, according to OSSE white students were 20% of the school aged population and 10% and DC public schools. Now they are up to 16% of DCPS, more schools have white students than before; 59% of schools become more diverse between 2014 and 2017. But there still are not enough to integrate all the schools. So really, the report seeks to demonize the very people who are integrating DC's schools. I would even suggest that this site has done more to encourage and keep white parents in DC schools than DC has. Information, word of mouth, access to sometimes obscure data, learning how to use the lottery, etc. all of this makes is easier and more likely for parents to stay in DC. I bet if you polled white DCPS/PCS parents and asked if this site influenced their decision to try DCPS or stay in DC, a whole lot would say yes. [/quote]

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