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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
More tiresome Takoma Park hype -- and self congratulation -- about how their kids "are thriving in this diverse environment."

Truth is, what little racial interaction there is -- and there's not all that much -- for the most part is all done and dusted by middle school.

Take a walk around Takoma Park Middle School or Blair High School on a typical day, and peer into the classrooms. You'll find one classroom of kids who are predominantly (as in almost 100 percent save one or two) kids of color, and another next door that's nearly all white. And yes, I'm a member of the community, and know whereof I speak.

Just walk along the streets in downtown Takoma, Old Town Takoma -- for that matter, anywhere except the outer fringes of Takoma, and you'll see block after block where no people of color reside. The pattern is duplicated in the schools, where kids of color and kids who are white are educated separately for the most part.

Whether it's sports teams, recreation league activities, housing patterns within Takoma Park, social interaction within the school or after school, it's hard to imagine a more segregated set-up. 
Yet, parents in Takoma Park continue to talk as if they're part of some sort of Rainbow Nation. The fact is their kids are educated in classrooms that are very nearly as homogeneous as those in Potomac or Bethesda.

Not that I begrudge them that. I suspect that had there been true diversity -- with people of color living as their next door neighbors and not in Langley Park or the apartment complexes of Maple Avenue -- many would never have been tempted to buy homes in Takoma Park.

My guess is that its the same with the schools: Create true integration of the classroom and see how long it takes for white flight to commence. 
I tire of the readiness of folks in Takoma Park to try to have it both ways, giving lip service to the virtues of diversity, even while most -- with the exception of people they hire to watch their kids and clean their homes -- seem to have precious little interaction with people who don't look just like them.

So folks who have chosen to send their kids to private schools or to public ones in McLean -- don't let the TP folks guilt-trip you. They've made very much the same choices about whom their kids will be educated alongside. They've just disguised it in such a way as to be able to hang on to their "diversity" bragging rights.[/quote]

[quote]I don't want to agree with this. I've lived in diverse places where it wasn't true.

But it is in Takoma Park. I didn't realize that until we started living here, sending kids to TPMS.

The kids segregate. And I get that. I grew up in a neighborhood that was much the same. But I started out raising my children in a different place, that wasn't like this, a place where recent immigrants and kids with family summer houses in Maine mixed easily.

I blame the smugness factor. I once thought Takoma Park was too much like Park Slope, but seeing the rest of DC made that seem appealing. [/quote]

We lived in Silver Spring and had the EXACT same experience. The lack of real integration combined with self congratulatory were diverse comments was startling. While people sound smug, I don't think its smugness but a combination of being unaware and insecurity about being in lower performing school system in an area that is just over the top crazy about education. [/quote]

There is some of that but it is still about as integrated as the suburbs come. Even if it is street by street, it is better than not at all like Potomac. I will admit that the rush towards “enrichment” has its origin in “peer group”. Me thinks they protest too much[/quote]

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