Reply to Achievement gap continues to grow between high- and low-income schools

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Reply to "Achievement gap continues to grow between high- and low-income schools"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Have you been in a dcc elementary neighborhood recently. There are many middle class families moving in esp close in. Homes are selling and rents are through the roof. Any family paying between 2-3 k for a two bedroom apartment is middle class[/quote]

I have.  We left.  The families were middle class.  They weren't the ones attending our neighborhood elementary.  [b]Silver spring has much looser zoning regulations than places like Bethesda, which means you can have middle class neighborhoods adjacent to large areas of low income housing.[/b] So yes, lots of middle class families who could afford parochial.[/quote]

However, I don't think that the solution to this problem is segregating poor people even more than they are already segregated, in Montgomery County.[/quote]

I absolutely agree.  Not saying the zoning is wrong.  I'm saying it explains why you can have the optic of a middle class area, but the local schools don't tell the same story.  And when schools become overwhelmed by kids with extra needs and Farms rates and Esol rates get really high (I'm talking  > 80% in some of these schools), many middle class families are going to move on to alternatives if there aren't incentives to encourage them to attend their assigned school.  Which brings us back to the earlier point, which was that MCPS is unlikely to dump money into programs that would serve that purpose.  I don't blame middle class families from seeking out true diversity rather than swallowing MCPS's story that a school with great her than 80% FARMs reflects SES diversity (that's not diverse -it's very high poverty).  They could at least try to be better sales people.  I wish we could have attended our local school, but I was not interested in sending my children to a school where all studies tell us they would be better off in a school with more balanced demographics.  I have the resources to choose a school not overwhelmed by poverty and language challenges, and that's what I've done.  That's what a lot of red zone families with resources are doing.  It's sad, but it makes sense.[/quote]

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