Reply to Is Bowser's goal really to damage and destroy DC public schools?

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Reply to "Is Bowser's goal really to damage and destroy DC public schools?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My understanding is that the charters school rose up because DCPS was such a disaster.  Talk to older people in DC and they are happy to tell you of the abysmal state of the schools in the Barry years, and particularly prior to Fenty.  The charters also generated an ability for middle class ("middle class" by DC standards, I mean, so between HHI of ~$80K to ~$200) families to remain in the district and get possibly decent education.

DCPS can still improve individual schools and attract those families.  They just weren't doing so in the "before" years.  Part of that seems to be due to wild mismanagement on the part of both the DC government but also the WTU.[/quote]

As someone who has lived in DC for 20 years and has kids who have attended both charters and DCPS, I can attest that this is accurate. The creation of charter schools enabled the middle class who used to leave DC for schools to stay. This also led to people being willing to try their poorly performing in boundary DCPS for early elementary. Each year, more and more families would stay past PK, past 1st, etc. There was a symbiotic effect and DCPS wouldn't have improved as much if charters weren't there to help keep more families in DC. WTU had such a bad influence on DCPS that many of us chose charters for this reason. However, I do believe that there's an argument to be made that charters are now siphoning off MC/UMC families who might go to their IB DCPS if they didn't have a charter spot. But that wasn't the case 10 years ago and there are still parts of the city with very poorly performing DCPS schools and we would lose those families if they didn't have a charter spot. There's no easy answer.

Fenty did more to improve public education in DC than any other Mayor. But remember that he butted heads with the WTU when he fired the worst of the worst teachers - including ones who abused children - and that cost him the election because a lot of blacks saw him as taking away good jobs from black people. That was the WTU message to vote against him and it worked. There are no perfect answers here, but WTU-endorsed Robert White would set us back to the pre-Fenty years and DCPS would basically become a jobs program. I'm not a big Bowser fan, but she at least tried to reopen schools when Robert White and WTU were agitating to keep them closed. She's by far the least worst candidate, so she has my vote.

P.S. The people voting against Bowser due to increased crime are ignorant at best. The increased crime is due to WTU keeping schools closed and bad policies like defunding the police from WTU-endorsed candidates like Robert White and Janeese Lewis George. Bowser is opposed to defunding the police and in favor of keeping schools open. Schools and crime would get much, much worse under Robert White as Mayor. He's done enough harm as a council member.[/quote]

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