Reply to Diversity of schools - can this work both ways? Am I being unreasonable?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]+1. Asian families tend to be pragmatic about public schools, not chasing some ideal sounding ethnic breakdown.[/quote]
Because they understand that the role of a school is to give their kids the best education available, rather than to advance some sort of progressive utopia.

Just another reason why Asians do well academically. For them, it's a purely transactional experience. [/quote]

Hmm, but I don’t value the Asian model of learning. Diversity is important. A good school for all is an excellent goal. Injecting UMC who score well on exams improves lower income kids’ education and goals while improving UMC kids too. I reject that test scores and my kid’s outcomes are my entire focus. We live in a democracy and we need to improve public education for ALL kids. UMC families need to stop defeating schools and hoarding opportunities.[/quote]

Yea no.  My goal is for my kid, especially since DC is not meeting my kids academic potential by focusing on just the bottom.

It’s not families that are responsible for improving education for all kids, it’s the school district. And to that DC is failing miserably.  DC can’t even meet my kid’s needs so why should I be concerned about other kids?[/quote]

The purest distillation of DCUM. “I refuse to care about anyone else’s kids. Why doesn’t everyone else care about my kids!”[/quote]

Exactly! Me, me, me, my kid. Entitlement and self-absorption is the norm. It’s gross. I want everyone’s needs to be met. PP kid is likely average and PP can’t handle it so she blames DCPS for not challenging her kid. [/quote]

[/quote]

I totally agree with the above PP. DCUM Conventional Wisdom is "the only reasonable choice is grab as much as you can" for yourself/your kids/your family, and fight anything that doesn't benefit me (sorry, my kid) before (or grudgingly, concurrently with) everybody else's.

There is a growing minority view that community benefit first, e.g., from joining low-income/nonwhite schools or avoiding self-segregation into racial enclave charters, is acceptable or even good for everyone, but this view is usually shouted down, typically with a "whatevs, I'm gonna get mine" or "since I'm not white, my culture says I need to get mine first" or something similarly head-scratching.

For my end, I want my kids in the low-income, "underperforming" schools and have them there now, where my kids are succeeding just fine, socially and academically. No, we are not a naive bleeding heart PK family though I'm not going to out myself to My Very Good Friends of DCUM. My goal is to be part of the community and support excellence as they grow rather than shout about it from outside or dismiss these schools as "non-options."[/quote]

I was you. The problem is that this approach requires collective action. We ultimately left in 3rd grade. My kid was doing great academically but NOT socially, and it was getting harder each year as more of the students at or above grade level left. I was not going to make my kid suffer for my ideals. If your kids are happy at their school, great, but my kid wasn't. Should I have continued to force her to when there were other options available?

You can roll your eyes all you want, but the truth is that people of all races mostly move out of these underperforming schools because their kids are struggling in some way. I know for us, we really wanted the neighborhood school and the community and we didn't want to be driving to a charter or another DCPS far from our home. But it's what we now do because losing the neighborhood/community aspect of our school wound up being worth gaining a school with academics that appropriately challenge our kid and without the disruptions and distractions of high truancy rates.

Also, our last year at our IB, the push to raise test scores was so intense that the school was honestly too academic and "excellence" focused. The kids were hardly getting any breaks from academics at all, with a measly little 10 minute recess after lunch. The material they were expected to get through worked against learning, it was just cramming as much as possible into their little heads in the hopes that PARCC scores would come up. Nevermind if they retained it or enjoyed the process in any way. Going to a school that doesn't have that pressure to raise scores is wonderful because kids can just learn at a natural pace and in an age-appropriate way. They still don't spend enough time outside, but they do more art and music and focus more on social skills and building community. This was near impossible at our IB due to academic remediation expectations.

But you do you.[/quote]

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