Reply to A Note from a Public School Mom of Three & a Candidate's Wife

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "A Note from a Public School Mom of Three & a Candidate's Wife"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=jsteele][quote=Anonymous]
Jeff I respect your opinion a lot.  Please tell me (even though it's a little off topic, but hey, this is DCUM!) what would be a way to implement neighborhood preference in "a very specific manner" where it would "actually be a good thing"?  As you know, the bad things are: 1) it does nothing to improve any of the underperforming schools; 2) cuts off access to those residents of low income neighborhoods to speciality schools not in their neighborhoods (language immersion, montessori, etc); and 3) the point already made above about language immersion schools and limiting that much more the chances for native speakers if the school is not in a native speaking community.  What is the good you see possible and how do you see implementing to serve a good that is bigger than these bads?[/quote]

If all the following conditions applied:

1) The focus of the charter was relatively general. Not a language immersion program, for instance;
2) The school was located in an underprivileged neighborhood;
3) The school was well-settled in that location;
4) There were no good DCPS choices in that neighborhood;
6) The policy was specific to this school and other schools meeting similar criteria;

Then, neighborhood preference might make sense. The intent would not to be replace a DCPS, but to fill a need that DCPS is not addressing. Also, I'm writing this when I was supposed to be out the door 5 minutes ago. So, I retain my right to revise and extend and/or totally deny that I wrote his message  :D 
[/quote]

That seems to be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist: charters in low income neighborhoods that are so popular, families living close to the school can't get in because families from all over the district are taking up the slots.  That simply does not happen.  Can you or anyone else name one single DC charter in a low income neighborhood where there is a waiting list and everyone who wants to go doesn't get in?  I know a lot about charters - I can't think of any.  What you say would only make sense where there is a charter in a low income community where there is real competition to get in.  There isn't one.  Implementing this for that purpose basically opens a huge dangerous can of worms that would do more to hurt low income families than help them, because once it's on the books at all as a possibility, middle and upper income families in non-low income neighborhoods will be screaming for this to be applied to their local schools.  Which, again cuts off access to the most underserved families in the neighborhoods with the worst schools.[/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