Reply to WaPo magazine article on the lottery

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wish there would be a citation for this stat.

... "That majority white Ward 3 has no charter schools — with their mandate to take applications from throughout the city — compounds the problem. [b]So does the fact that white students make up only 15 percent of the city’s public school enrollment, while studies estimate that about half the city’s white students attend private schools.[/b] So one path to desegregating the city’s schools is persuading more white students to stay in the public sector. “There are choices white families are making that are reinforcing the status quo racially,” says Smith, the former deputy mayor for education...."[/quote] Write to the author for their source on this...they should be able to provide...[/quote]

I don't think it's true.

On page 86 of the DME Master Facilities Plan (at https://dme.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dme/publication/attachments/DC%20MFP%202018.pdf )  they show the total school-age population of the city. On page 89 they show enrollment by sector. They don’t show private, but you can back it out by taking total kids and subtracting DCPS and PCS. (I realize this isn’t completely accurate but it is consistent across years.)

For 2017-18, I get:

DCPS	48,144
PCS	43,340
Total Public	91,484
Total Population	96,040
Private (imputed)	4,556

This page (https://dcps.dc.gov/page/dcps-glance-enrollment) has DCPS demographic stats.

For 2017-18 DCPS was 15% white. I haven't been able to quickly find a similar stat for charters.

But, even if charters had zero white kids, and 100% of the kids in privates where white -- neither of which is true -- there would be 11,778 white kids in DC and 4,556 of them would be private school kids, or 38.6%. The real number is probably substantially lower.

I may have to write a letter to the editor. 
 
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