Reply to DCPS Improving -- Let's Ignore Charters

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[quote=Anonymous]DCPS could easily make a concerted effort to up its game in attracting and retaining neighborhood families to neighborhood schools, including high SES families in gentrifying areas.  One obvious approach that hasn't been tried would be to offer in-boundary schools the very same cash incentives to draw in, and keep, neighborhood families DCPS currently offers for raising test scores. When I asked David Catania if he'd back such an initiative as mayor, he pledged to explore the idea. If DCPS admins and teachers knew that they, and their schools, would be rewarded with cash bonuses for catering to neighborhood parents, they'd surely make much more of an effort to do so.

DCPS could also establish test-in gifted and talented programs with a city-wide draw and neighborhood preference.  MoCo has long used GT and test in MS and HS programs as a tool to draw high SES neighborhood families to struggling schools on the socioeconomically and racially diverse eastern side of the county.

Back in 2009, the Brent Elementary PTA asked DCPS if they'd establish a test-in program at Jefferson MS as an incentive to induce in-boundary neighborhood families to try the school.  The answer was, unequivocally, NO. Then they asked DCPS if they could add MS grades to Brent.  Again, the answer was ABSOLUTELY NOT. Instead, DCPS created Jefferson Academy (within Jefferson MS) to meet these families' needs, with a proficiency pass rate of around one-third. As a result, in the last six years, almost every in-boundary 4th grader from Brent has hit the road, mainly for Washington Latin and BASIS. For Brent families, DCPS is not in fact improving after Brent. For most of them, ignoring charters after elementary school would mean moving to the burbs.

So let's not ignore charters. Instead, let's consider why most the overwhelming majority of high SES families outside the Deal District vote with their feet from DCPS before 6th grade. Then let's organize to back city politicians willing to stick their necks out for voters in a effort to stem the tide.  Grosso and Charles Allen are trying.

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