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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My situation is not just an anecdote. If you look at the lives of many of your own relatives back from the 20s to the 60s in America, you will see the same pattern of an upward trajectory. Trust me, both of my grandmothers, while awesome, were not particularly extraordinary... I don't even think they worked very hard--but it was possible, common even.

That social movement has been lost, in favor of hand-wringing and economic segregation. 
[/quote]

Your situation is, by definition, an anecdote. It is not the result of a study. It's your family's life experience, which is not, on its own, generalizable to the experiences of others, even others who share your family's characteristics.

That doesn't mean that it didn't happen, or that your family's experience was unique to them. My grandmother grew up on a dairy farm during the depression with parents who hadn't completed high school and she died with 2 PhDs and a $4M estate. My husband's grandmother grew up during the same time, on the other side of the country, and while she worked very hard, when she died, her estate barely covered her funeral.

The reality is that social mobility as it is popularly understood in the US, via stories like my grandmother and your grandmother and you, is largely a myth. Your family mixed, but many do not. How many white people do you know who live in Wards 7 or 8? How many white people do you know with kids above first grade who are attending non-charter public schools in DC outside of Ward 3 and a smattering of schools in Wards 1, 2, 4 and 6? This city is not mixed. It's not mixed racially, and while some neighborhoods are mixed economically, that is not reflected in the public school population outside the charter sector.

Motivated parents seek charters in order to avoid parents (and students) they perceive to be unmotivated. Not all of them are wealthy, of course, but there is probably a higher population of non-wealthy parents at charters than wealthy parents in DCPS.[/quote]

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