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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Let's be clear: The size of the achievement gap is not important. The important metric is the low rate of mastery among struggling students. Any talk of shifting the demographics to close the achievement gap entirely misses the point (and belies an attitude that mindlessly buys into the rhetoric of NCLB).[/quote]
The talk about demographics is about alleviating concentrations of poverty.  If you look at scores for Ward 3 Northwest schools, or even more significantly schools like Ross and Brent, you see that AA and econ-disadvantaged groups do far better than their peers at schools with higher poverty rates.

Unless you set up a KIPP like program and provide significantly more resources, the quickest way to improve schools is to attract (not force) non econ-disadvantaged families to enroll in a given school.  One way to jump start that process it through magnets or another program that provides a measure of security for progressive parents to give it a chance.

It appears DCPS may be doing this with its McKinley MS magnet (although there is almost zero info from DCPS on this new program).

While creating a selective program would be resisted for the reasons cited on this thread and others, if city leaders simply allow gentrification (or whatever the technical term is) to change things, there is potential for even more acrimony as neighborhood groups organize and hold hands together when they jump in and try to fix schools.
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Exactly.  The only successes we've seen so far have come from taking a slice of the concentrated poverty of Ward 8 (and other poor neighborhoods) and integrating it with wealthier populations in DC.  Problem is that there aren't enough wealthier populations in DC.  So if anything is going to change, some significant portion of DC's poor population is going to have to end up out in MD and VA.  That's slowly happening, but accelerating by the day.  There's a social cost to that, but it's the only way out.[/quote]
I have seen studies that indicate DC's population can grow to a million plus.  If that is the case, and it is managed the right way, DC can still keep a good number of less affluent families, and add a bunch of more affluent ones.  Displacement doesn't have to account for the entire demographic shift.[/quote]

Exactly.  Only part of it.  DC will likely always contribute a disproportionate amount to the region's anti-poverty efforts.  First, because it's an urban center.  Second, because it's fairly liberal, and liberals tend to support a strong social safety net.

As far as "displacement" goes, we're only recently starting to get an understand of the dynamic--and it's quite different from the popular view of yuppies pricing poor families out of their long-term homes.  What we know about  gentrification from studies is that very few individuals are displaced in that way.  That's because what seems like a monolithic, inert population in a poor neighborhood is actually quite mobile.  People leave.  They move elsewhere.  Some get a decent job and move to a wealthier neighborhood.  The folks who migrate out are replaced by new residents with a similar socioeconomic (and racial in DC) profile.  Furthermore, studies have also found that the residents who do stay for long-term do significantly better by most metrics in gentrifying neighborhoods.

In DC what we've seen is this dynamic, but with wealthier middle-class residents replacing poorer residents as they naturally cycle out of the neighborhood.  While these neighborhoods have been "african american neighborhoods" since the 60s, and there are definitely long-term residents, the normative case is that poor people move out, poor people move in, poor people move out, poor people move in.
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