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[quote=Anonymous]Thanks, PPs.

My better half doesn't come across as racist - he's chummy with AA neighbors and colleagues, and convinced me to live on the Hill, when we could have afforded Upper NW.  He believes in a DC public education in the sense that he's active on our ES PTA and hasn't been willing to move to the burbs yet.  If DCPS was running a solid test-in middle school magnet, or there was a charter high school out there attracting more than a handful of Asian and dispatching some graduates to Ivy League schools, he'd be interested.  He feels like we're about to hit the wall and doesn't relate to DC parents and educators who denounce public middle school tracking.

We know all about why weak students end up at Latin, Deal and Basis and, much as we sympathize with these kids and their families, we don't want our children in class with them past ES.  My older child, with her big personality and multitudinous abilities, began acting out in class this past spring, as her (very good) teachers had no choice but to focus on prepping weak students for the DC-CAS.  We started sending her to school with "lap" assignments to complete while she waited for other kids to complete their work.  He predicts that a DC middle school will simply mean more of the same, with tough kids calling her chink, accompanied by the standard pulling-on-corner-of-eyes gesture.  I remain much less convinced.

If DCPS and DC Charter want Asian parents to stay in the public system past ES, and we are far from convinced that this is the case, then the emphasis must shift from inclusiveness and diversity and a warm community (few Asian parents care about these things) in EVERY CASE to a focus on blue chip college admissions at at least one high school.  I can wax enthusiastic about liberal learning and a classical education and a school rejecting social promotion until I'm blue in the face, but he mainly wants to get our kids to an Ivy, Duke, Stanford, MIT or wherever after having some fun in HS (which he couldn't do as a teen).

My sense here is that we're around a decade ahead of our time in what we're looking for.  DC will surely get there.

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