Reply to Lottery season reminder: your kids don't need to hear about DCUM stuff

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Lottery season reminder: your kids don't need to hear about DCUM stuff"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]the pp was not saying participating in the lottery was elitist or classist.  they were saying that the way some people fully write off schools that are not super popular and competitive to get a spot at in the lottery and/or schools with lower student test scores as bad schools to be avoided at all
cost can be driven by anxiety and bias…[/quote]

I don't know about that. My kid went to a title 1 school for elementary, and there was this kind of judgement on upper income parents not to lottery out. But when lower income families lotteried into a better school, no one said anything (because of course they should be trying to find the best educational path for their child).

[/quote]

The difference is when upper income families leave, they take their resources, and often the time they have to volunteer and be advocates for the school, with them, and there is a real cumulative effect as many families do that, especially as title 1 schools can quickly teeter between having solid or insufficient parent engagement. The other difference is that [b]the upper income family’s child (presuming the school has reasonable leadership and good teachers) is likely to do well at that school or nearly anywhere,[/b] while the lower income child may be benefited from being at a school that is more resourced than their in-bounds option.[/quote]

This is the part that actually might not be true. How do you know that the outcome for an upper income kid may actually be stifled by a less challenging school?[/quote]

This.  It’s pretty obvious that kid coming out of a poorly performing school with majority below grade level is not going to do as well or reach their full potential as coming out of a higher performing school with majority above grade level.

This is especially true in DCPS where teaching, especially middle school and up, is to the lowest common denominator since there is no tracking of all subjects.

Parents at these schools are definitely supplementing a lot to make up for deficits.  They just don’t let it be known as public info to all.[/quote]

My kids attended a Title 1 elementary, and I don't know of any of the upper income kids that did formal supplementing like Mathnasium (not saying it didn't happen, but I don't think it was prevalent). The majority of kids at the school were not at grade level, but there was still a solid cohort getting 4s and 5s on their CAPE. Do I think my kids could have learned more at a different school? Yes. Absolutely. Was I sometimes frustrated by it? Sure. But do I think they were stifled in a way that hurt their long term trajectory? No. For me, I don't think that there needs to be a race to get through content. They've taken accelerated math in MS, they're curious, they read a lot of novels (which is also pushed by the MS), and they like school most of the time. They've also learned a lot by not being in a socioeconomically homogenous environment--some of it good, and some of it is tough, but they seem well grounded despite growing up with relative privilege. They'll have time in HS to take a lot more advanced content, and I think their foundation is solid for them to do that. Obviously, that is not a universal experience for every family, and I'm not speaking from a place of having a student with a learning disability or a social anxiety disorder for example, but this idea that every family will be stuck supplementing endlessly has not been our experience, nor has it been the experience of most of the families we know in similar situations to ours. [/quote]

Anecdotal

Tell us which middle school your kid is at and their objective standardized test scores and percentages.  Elementary is low stakes.  Middle and higher, stakes much higher. Also it is additive that each year kid is not leaning as much adds up quickly.

Also it’s not either/or.  There are good performing schools with a mixture of diverse kids and income.  In fact, you could argue the popular immersion charters are much more diverse in both than title 1 schools which many is very homogenous.[/quote]

The differences among schools get a lot more stark as the child ages. Elementary school is not only low stakes, but there's a lot of good ones in the city. There's not many good middle schools and hardly any good high schools. And the difference between schools like BASIS and Latin and JR and the typical DCPS high school is hard to overstate. It's not fair, but we get the schools we vote for. Our elected leaders think the primary purpose of schools is to fight inequality. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics