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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][i]If you want a charter, don’t lie to yourself about choosing it’s program when you are really choosing its demographics.[/i]

They are not separable. It's incredibly difficult to teach, and simultaneously teaching students who vary widely in their current academic achievement is darn near impossible. If there's a school with lots of poor kids who are way above grade level academically, I'd be happy to send my kids there. But we chose a charter school with high achievement and few poor kids, and I understand that the school's ability to have the program they do is made possible by the student demographics. Those demographics are much richer and whiter than DC as a whole, but still much more racially and economically diverse than many area suburbs.[/quote]

Yeah -- the demographics have a material impact on the school atmosphere, environment, and outcomes. So it makes perfect sense for a family, of any race/SES, to consider demographics when selecting a school.  For example, I'm black and would avoid sending my children to a school that is demograpically-dominated (+75%+) by poor black children and no middle-class blacks. And yes, that includes KIPP.  That kind of situation just doesn't work out well for UMC black kids (especially boys) for a whole host of reasons that should be obvious, but probably aren't to some.  Now, that sort of factoring may have different implications when practiced by white (or non-black) folks, but I'm not going to scrutinize the choices of other people when I'm essentially compelled to make the same or similar choices, [i]even if [/i]I'm making those choices for different reasons, or out of different concerns.

Of course, that's the crux of systematic racism, isn't it? Doing what I believe to be best/necessary for my [i]black[/i] children operates to further entrench racial inequality, at least to some degree. [/quote]

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