Reply to Advice on Two River PCS

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We’ve come to the (somewhat sobering) realization that the best environment for our kids is one with a very narrow range of academic abilities, minimal exposure to trauma, and [b]few—if any—single-parent households[/b]. For us, that also means avoiding situations where teachers and classmates are frequently managing unresolved behavioral or social-emotional challenges, including some of the more difficult or disruptive neurodivergences.

I fully respect that the public system must educate and support every child, and I believe in that mission. But we also had to be honest about what works best for our own children’s learning and well-being. For us, that meant finding a school where those kinds of distractions are almost nonexistent, so the focus stays on rigorous academics and a calm, orderly classroom environment.[/quote]

YIKES[/quote]

I am unclear why the [b]PP's preference for two-parent households is any more "yikes"[/b] than their preference for kids who are neurotypical, have not been exposed to trauma, and who have are mostly at or above grade level academically.

And I'm not judging. I totally get where this person is coming from and there are days when I feel this way too. The thing for me is that I grew up with a lot of trauma and definitely had unresolved social emotional issues as a kid, and maybe neurodivergence as well. So I'm never going to to choose my kids school to avoid people like that, because that's me -- I will never not have a place in my heart for those kids even as I'm raising my kid to not have to BE one of those kids. But I also understand why other parents seek to avoid kids like this, even as it breaks my heart because it makes me think about how often I was rejected by other family's growing up and didn't really even understand why. I didn't know that I was problematic because it was all I knew. I didn't get that until I was adult and then retrospectively understood why sometimes I never got invited back to a classmates house, or why I was excluded from certain communities.

But the idea that wanting to avoid kids from single-parent households is over the line, but wanting to avoid kids with other kinds of problems is understandable ignores the fact that no kid chooses any of that. It just happens to you. You're a child. [/quote]

Because it's racist and classist. They don't mean ANY single parents, they mean poor black ones. [/quote]

I’m Black. And yes — by any reasonable definition, saying you’d prefer not to be around concentrations of at-risk populations, especially where their needs dominate a school’s approach and create entrenched “path dependencies,” is in many ways racist and classist. I’m not going to deny that. It’s problematic.

But as a parent — and a Black parent — that label is almost beside the point when you’re making decisions for your own children. Many of us who are Black are more vulnerable in situations where there’s a high concentration of at-risk Black children in the building. In those settings, a school’s expectations, policies, and focus can be hard to disentangle from the race of the child. Put your Black kids in that environment and you can get all sorts of toxic, complicated dynamics: Where do they “fit”? How are they treated? And let’s be honest — in some schools, a high-performing Black child is so rare it’s treated like a unicorn, and not always in a good way.

If you’re white, upper-middle-class, and present that way, you get some insulation. Expectations shift in your favor, even in a school geared toward serving a lower-SES, more burdened population. If you’re not, you don’t get that buffer. That’s why many Black families with means are often more concerned about these environments than their white counterparts.

And as a practical matter, there’s a strong tradition in the D.C. area — particularly in parochial schools, especially Catholic ones — of doing an excellent job serving high-performing Black children, even those from more modest economic means. In those schools, such kids aren’t unicorns or special cases; they’re just students who get a good education in an environment that isn’t consumed by other dynamics. I’d much rather have my child in a school where educating high-performing — or even simply on-grade-level — Black students is routine and has been for decades, than in one where the system struggles to imagine what that even looks like.

And for what it’s worth, I think the “single-parent household” metric is a crude one. There are plenty of single mothers — single parents — who care deeply about their children’s education and have navigated their way into the kinds of parochial schools I’ve just described. Yes, in those institutions you’ll still find a greater preponderance of dual-parent households, and that no doubt contributes to the environment and outcomes they’re able to sustain. But that stability matters — it simply does.

So yes — call it racist and classist in the broad sense, but for many of us it’s a reaction to the mix of race, class, and outcomes we’ve seen firsthand. No parent is going to knowingly leave their kid in a school where their education is being materially undermined just to avoid the charge of being “racist” or “classist.” That helps no one.

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