Reply to Middle Schools for Cap Hill

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Middle Schools for Cap Hill"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't agree. The ed picture just isn't as black and white as you paint it.

City demographics continue to shift, and gentrification remains a powerful force for change. Mayor Bowser won't be in office forever.

The ed landscape you describe may have been accurate a decade back, but I'm not convinced that that DCPS and the city council members no longer give a whit about keeping high SES families in traditional public schools after elementary school. If high SES retention in DCPS middle and high schools was irrelevant politically, DCPS wouldn't be planning to open a 2nd high school in Ward 3 within the next few years, mainly to relieve crowding at Wilson.

Once the new HS opens, some CH families will join Hardy families there, via the OOB lottery.[/quote]

No DCPS doesn’t care.  They have taken honors classes away at Wilson with honors for all and more families from Deal are opting out of Wilson.  They have done away with any testing for Walls and United the academic entrance and the admission process is opaque with the city saying they want more kids from other low SES wards other than 3.

The new HS will relieve some crowding at Wilson but don’t expect too much.  My money is the primary motive is to draw OOB at risk kids to better schools and I bet anything there is going to be a set aside at risk preference.[/quote]. Honors for All st Wilson has been rolled back somewhat this school year. Just not true that many in-boundary families have been abandoning Deal and Wilson. If it were, in-boundary numbers wouldn’t have risen during the pandemic. Private schools cost a bomb and, with college, housing and fuel costs rising, even moderately wealthy families are feeling the squeeze. I’m willing to believe that DCPS doesn’t prioritize high SES\white retention, particularly EotP, but not that they could care less about it.[/quote]

They do care -- just not in the way DCUM expects. This was all studied years ago, the last time boundaries/feeders were examined. If they allowed one Deal-type middle school to emerge, that would have retained all the white folks. But what those white people wanted was one middle school that contained all the gentrifying schools -- so that the disparity between the gentrified middle school and the other middle schools would have been enormous.

What DCPS wanted was to spread the gentrifiers among all the middle school, so their rising tide would lift all the boats. They figured that not all of them would leave (because not everyone can afford to/afford private), and not everyone would run to a charter, because BASIS, Latin, and 2 Rivers all have their own drawbacks. They are playing the very long game, and I can see it succeeding...maybe 20 years from now.[/quote]

This experiment has failed. [/quote]

+1. Also, it's a weird notion that gentrifiers are supposed to educate everyone else's kids. [b]Shouldn't that really be up to DCPS? [/b]One 8-year old doesn't owe another kid anything.[/quote]

You must not have been in DC very long. Who do you think covers most of the extra stuff people expect in schools? The PTA. Who gives all the money to the PTA?? Gentrifiers. [/quote]

+1. The PTA pays for science education at Maury. If left up to DCPS, science would be barely taught.[/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