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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I just wouldn't. And I say that as someone with a kid in DCPS who is doing fine.

But if I had to do it again, I'd have pushed my spouse MUCH harder to move out of DC before our our kid was old enough that it would be hard to do. It's not even that I think schools are so much better elsewhere, it's more that I think DC's public school system is highly dysfunctional and stressful to navigate, and I think I personally would prefer to parent in a district where you just live in the best pyramid you can and then make do. That has it's drawbacks too, but I think I'm better suited to them.[/quote]

Do you mean another district in the DMV or leave the area entirely?

What dysfunctions stand out? [/quote]

The demographics of DC combined with the government culture and the lottery create very dysfunctional public school systems. Everyone works at cross purposes. Schools, parents, administrators, teachers, and the district. Plus charters. The lottery is great on a micro level (can help families get access to better schools) but toxic on a macro level (creates a sense of instability in the system and schools, creates a lot of churn, disincentivizes people to have a "make it work" attitude even with more minor challenges).

I think some people have no issues with this and navigate it well. I find it stressful and unsettling. My kid is in middle elementary and we are now figuring out middle school. I thought nothing could ever be as stressful and annoying as PK lotteries. I was incorrect. Stakes are much higher for MS and there are simply not enough spots at decent schools to go around. There's this weird intensity among parents, especially where I am (Capital Hill) but this is countered by an almost apathetic or aggressively neutral attitude among schools, likely just as a self-protective measure because some of the parents are so intense. I simply cannot have another conversation about math tracking. I'm tired of all of it.

I think I'd find a lot of this in the burbs as well which is why I'd rather leave the area altogether, but I think I personally am better suited to deal with the way suburban districts handle these issues better than I deal with DC public schools.[/quote]

I think the fundamental issue is that voters in DC are liberal Democrats and they reflexively vote for very liberal candidates, without realizing that very liberal Democratic politicians are extremely opposed to raising academic standards and tracking and gifted and talented programs. They think all of that is racist and they will never, ever support it. They think the purpose of schools is to fight inequality. If you voted for different people, you'd get a different result and schools would look different than they do today. [/quote]

This isn't correct because, just as a for instance, Muriel Bowser is not a far left mayor (definitely to the right of the more leftist council on many issues). And since we don't have a school board, Bowser effectively runs DC schools.

Also Adrian Fenty was a liberal mayor but his education policies were controversial specifically because they don't align with far-left ideology -- his reforms created a lot more school choice in DC and have often really angered the teacher's union.

The real reason for the problems described above is actually described above -- you have a bunch of different factions within the school system itself, and they have really different agendas, and they can't agree on anything. The people who push for equity in DC schools are NOT generally then politicians -- DC has a large, vocal, and very active constituency that who will oppose any educational reform that isn't aimed at equity. That's why a lot of the things that happen in DCPS to help upper income families are done quietly and unofficially, like MS tracking. If you make it official or make it DCPS policy, you will instantly get a bunch of people screaming at you that it's inequitable. And that's coming from parents and families, not some super liberal politician forcing it on people. This is how many people in DC genuinely feel.

Then you also have the teacher's union, which also has its own agenda. Sometimes it aligns with what parents want, sometimes it doesn't. See, e.g., Covid. DC's liberal politics does influence how the teacher's union is handled, because a lot of people in DC don't feel comfortable opposing the teacher's union as they are generally pro union. But that leads to weird crap like during Covid when the union was officially opposed to schools reopening in 2021 and many parents paid lip service to supporting this position so as not to be seen as "MAGA" but then privately would rant about how ridiculous it was that their kid wasn't in a classroom. None of that has anything to do with liberal politicians. It's about real politics and constituencies and individual preferences and how they collide.

And all of this floats above the reality of public education in DC, which is that we are educating a diverse population with a lot of very disparate needs, and it's hard to do it all at once. There are lots of poor kids in the system who absolutely do need extra services, remedial education opportunities, tutoring, social services, etc., and school *must* provide that stuff. It's bare minimum. But for middle class and above families, this often comes at the cost of a lot of opportunities and services that would be considered standard in a suburban district without as many poor kids. That's just the reality.

I genuinely wish we could solve all this by just voting a little different. I don't think we can. A lot of this dysfunction is baked into the system. You either learn to navigate it or you find a way out. If you're rich, maybe that's private school. For everyone else, the lottery and charters offer a bandaid but leaving the city is the only way to truly escape it.[/quote]

DC is run by the city council, not the mayor. Bowser is an extraordinarily weak mayor. The city council overrides her vetoes all the time (including one yesterday on a non-school issue). The city council is as far left as any city council in the country. [/quote]

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