Reply to Disadvantaged children can hurt achievement of others in their classrooms

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree. Knee jerk accusations of discrimination and racism get us absolutely nowhere.  Especially considering that the AA middle class families in DC make schools choices almost identically to the way white middle class families do. Racism is not an issue here.[/quote]

+1[/quote]

But in the vein of "let's face reality," race is very much an issue in this city and I'd say it's concentrated and even exacerbated in the school boundary debate. There have been a whole lot of knees jerking in every direction these days.  Sure, we can keep it terms of income but race is embedded in every reference to FARMS, SES, behavior, capabilities and achievement.  It may or may not be there with the OOB ruckus, because parents should be concerned about overcrowding; it's certainly an element when people weigh the value of a WOTP school by its OOB percentages.

No one here thought of poor white children as they read the header of this thread. For every "snowflake" insult thrown out, there are many more equally insulting generalizations about low income people.  
[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I agree. Knee jerk accusations of discrimination and racism get us absolutely nowhere.  Especially considering that the AA middle class families in DC make schools choices almost identically to the way white middle class families do. Racism is not an issue here.[/quote]

+1[/quote]

There's an element of desperation to this effort to prove that poor kids are dragging everyone down.  While I'm not one who's going to put my kid in a failing school to prove a point, I do feel pretty strongly that continued failure--even if it stays isolated on the other side of town or gets pushed out to the suburbs--is going to impact his future.  My takeaway from this research about disadvantaged kids is that kids grow into adults who have more disadvantaged kids who . . . drag everyone down.

Give that some thought.  This public discourse cannot be limited to "get them out of my child's school."[/quote]

Who says that the discourse is limited to "get them out of my school"?  In fact, I don't think that is even a fair characterization of what is being said.  In all the research cited on these threads there is a tipping point where a school becomes a "high poverty" school and requires specialized inputs for the success if the students there.  Research also shows that those specialized inputs are not necessarily what kids from more advantages backgrounds need.

For example, even if a high-poverty school started some great programming and convinced me that my child's academic needs would be met, I am completely turned off by the prospect being thrown around requiring longer school days and longer school years for high-poverty schools.  I absolutely refuse to sign up for that.

The discourse is really around yes, pleas let's provide extra funding and supports for schools with high numbers of disadvantaged kids.  Give it all you've got, try everything to make a difference. You have my tax money and my support.  What people are reacting against is some sort of policy level decision to make sure that middle class families are evenly distributed around schools and not allowed to cluster in certain schools--as if THAT is the way to fix inequities.  To me it seems like a final refuge of a city educational bureaucracy who is out of ideas.[/quote]

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