Reply to How wealthy are families at Jackson Reed

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Truly wealthy? Not that many TBH. If you live in Upper NW and have the money, you are more than likely to send your kid to private than JR. Are there exceptions? Of course. But the majority of Upper NW wealth goes to private (even if they went to public for elementary and middle). [/quote]

As always, definitions matter. 95th percentile household income in DC is something like 425k. Many families at JR are at and above that range. So if you define wealth as top 5% in DC, there’s lots of wealth at JR.

Which is not the same as saying that it’s not an extremely socioeconomically diverse school—it is! But I’m not sure there’s evidence to support the assertion that people who can afford private but choose JR are “exceptions.”[/quote]

Somewhere north of 75% of the JR IB families send their kids to schools outside DCPS and I think it's safe to assume that most go private. That feels like pretty good evidence of families choosing to look elsewhere to me. As for 'many families' earning 425K - what do you base that on? As a former Wilson/JR parent, I'd find that very hard to believe. Sure, there are some. [b]But I'd suggest there are many, many more families earning well under 100k.[/b][/quote]

I certainly do not dispute the bolded point.

And I’m interested in the “north of 75% figure”—what’s the source for this? I find it hard to believe—especially considering the portion of families in our high-income neighborhood with kids at JR or Walls.

Finally, the “many families” earning $425K+ reflects our experience as a current JR family, and many other JR families we know, some of whom since our kids were in pre-K. Lots of two-income professional families: law firm partners, tech folks, consulting firm execs, fed SES, etc. I don’t contend that this group is a majority of JR families, but it’s well-represented.[/quote]

Granted, this is back of an envelope stuff, but JR IB  (until v recently) = all of ward 3, most of wards 2 & 4 - IB population has to be (conservatively) well over 100k. JR IB kids = 1200ish from an expected high school age population of at least 5-6K for that size.  Perhaps there's an older demographic and fewer kids in NW, I dunno. But I doubt I'm too far off the mark. Of course,  some will go to OOB selective DCPS and charter schools, but we know as a matter of record that 60% of white kids in DC are educated privately (not that I'm keen to reduce this to race) so again, I feel comfortable saying that most families of means in our neighborhood choose to educate their kids elsewhere. I will also add that I was not a math major...

I am, as I suspect you are, hugely supportive of public education. I think it's a societal 'good' and wish more could be done to persuade families to educate their kids locally.  And yes, I too know a number of high earning families who have chosen to educate kids in the local public system, but I wonder if we tend to over estimate the size and influence of groups of which we are a part. After all, there are likely over a thousand families with kids at JR.

Just food for thought. Long live the public schools![/quote]

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