Reply to New Jackson-Reed HS (Wilson HS) School Principal

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Reply to "New Jackson-Reed HS (Wilson HS) School Principal - Sah Brown from Eastern High School"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]what did the wealthy parents at Jackson-Reed do that "made it better?"[/quote]

Didn't pull out their well prepared kid?  Demanded appropriate classes?[/quote]

This is "made it better?"[/quote]

I mean... yes. How do you think the majority of schools in DC improved? There's a cycle of buy in leading to more buy in leading to better offerings and more parental funding leading to more buy in leading to higher expectations leading to, etc, etc. Like yes, I genuinely believe that gentrification in DC has improved schools.[/quote]

Sure, if your unit of measure is the building and not the humans inside the building.  [b]The  kids who previously attended those schools are now priced out of the neighborhood, [/b]and they are being poor and having achievement issues somewhere else.  But DCUM doesn’t seem to care about that. [/quote]

Can you say more about what this means? Unless they were in rentals before they weren't priced out of somewhere they did not live. If what you are suggesting is that they lived OOB and because the IB population started sending their kids there, that's not "being priced out" and in fact that's what the IB preference policy design was design to achieve - neighborhood schools.

So I'm asking seriously, what does the bolded section above mean?[/quote]

I’m the PP and I really don’t understand this question.  PP posted explicit literal praise of gentrification.  Do you not know that that word means?   It’s the process of a neighborhood that was previously poor and usually minority becoming middle class and then sometimes upper middle class or wealthy.  Real estate prices go up, taxes go up as comps increase and rents go way up.  I live in Adams Morgan.  Twenty five years ago, this was a largely Latine neighborhood.  Now, a condo is $1.1 mil and rents have risen accordingly.  The extremely desirable in boundary immersion school that used to be able to fill 50% of its Spanish dominant slots with meighborhood kids can’t anymore because those families have been priced out.  That’s gentrification.  What is not clear?[/quote]

Couple of things.

First, Adams Morgan was gentrified 20 years ago or so. The fact that you think it is recent tells me you don't actually know anything about the "real" inhabitants about whom you speak.

Second, your position on this ignores one of the realities of gentrification in DC; namely that long term black resident homeowners sold their properties (in some cases to white people) and created generational wealth as a result. There are studies that show a material portion of the wealth in PG County (wealthiest majority black county in the US) was created from real estate sales in DC before they relocated. Your binary and overly simplistic narrative ignores or diminishes the wealth created by black homeowners when they sold.

Third, your reference to long term homeowners being priced out based on increased property taxes leads me to wonder whether you actually live in DC. Surely you don't own property in DC. I conclude this because if you understood DC property taxes you'd know that owner occupant property taxes are capped at a max increase per year. This means that a homeowner who owned, say 30 years ago, would have had property taxes so so low that a max increase would not have resulted in them catching up even today. There is also a homeowners credit and low income credit designed to assist. I am aware of no known data or studies in DC that show meaningful property sales as a consequence of increased property taxes.

Finally, and most importantly, your answer didn't actually respond to the question posed. There is no data of which I am aware showing displacement of renters in Northeast or Southeast DC neighborhoods where gentrification is now creating virtually all IB ES.

What has happened in a lot of NE and SE schools (ES particularly) is that IB families started buying in and sending their kids. This surely displaced 2nd or 3rd generations of students that were ALWAYS OOB but attending LT, Maury, etc. That IB influx surely prevented those OOB kids from attending, but that was how IB preference and creating neighborhood schools was designed to work. If DC had wanted to create priority for kids whose moms or grandmothers attended an ES they could have done so. They didn't.

TL: DR Screaming "GENTRIFICATION" and then providing a definition doesn't remotely explain how it is impacting school enrollments. I'd also note that the schools that are disproportionately white (as compared to DC as a whole) are charters that are pure lottery, so gentrification isn't having a direct impact. And before you argue that somehow DC has been black for 100s of years - don't. The demographics of DC as a black city were created in the 60's and started to abate in the 90s. If you have lived here for as long as you pretend to you'd know that.

[/quote]

So, you agree that low income students were displaced. Your argument is that’s OK because they were OOB and DC favors local residents?

To me, that’s the question. People here tout gentrification — and resulting displacement — as good because it “improves the schools.”  [b]It seems really odd to tout changing out the student population by getting rid of the poor kids as an improvement.[/b]  [/quote]

No, it isn't remotely odd. In the DC context, it's logical because DCPS just doesn't handle poor kids well overall.  System leaders fight gifted programs and academic tracking tooth and nail, which promotes racial segregation schools.  Resources are funneled into one fancy school renovation after another rather than to inputs geared at giving UMC families the confidence to enroll in schools with many poor kids, e.g, small class sizes and designated pull-out groups for advanced learners. Discipline is poor in many DCPS schools with high enrollment of poor kids and admin and teacher turnover high.  Poor management of schools incentivizes high SES parents to vote with their feet to well-run charters after ES EotP, and to privates WotP.  Much too easy to vilify UMC parents who see displacement of poor kids as appealing in the wake of epic system failures. [/quote]

You seem absolutely incapable of imagining that schools can function quite well without high SES kids.  You literally seems to think that having a certain percentage of high SES kids is essential to an effective school.

I’d much rather see schools focus on helping the kids IN THE SCHOOLS NOW.  If the High SES kids want to attend, they are welcome, but there is no reason whatsoever to court them.  Instead, focus on schools safety, supporting kids who are struggling, challenging advanced learners, and building community.   Tracking MIGHT help with that,  it the data is pretty mixed (newer data is more positive). Also, tracking has absolutely been used over and over and over as a tool for segregation.   So no, I don’t at all recommend a two pronged strategy of trying to push out the poor kids and trying to segregate them into classes for “dumb kids” which is how many people of color (including current academics who seem to have been tracked based on their skin color) describe it. [/quote]

Uh … Eastern is not “functioning quite well.” It’s standardized test scores / IB scores are abysmal. Let’s not pretend that this principal turned Eastern into some bastion of OOB academic learning. He did not. [/quote]

Maybe this will out me as a foreigner, but why do people in the US constantly expect schools to do the work of community centers and social workers. Shouldn’t schools just focus on academics?  Many European countries have schools solely working on academics and after school programs doing more of this community building stuff.  Schools in the US are expected to do too much. [/quote]

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