Reply to Help me Edit: Response to Brookings Report

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think you are reacting emotionally and defensively and if you take a few days to process this and calm down, you may see that the report has many good points.

Basically, many white gentrifiers don’t want their kids going to the public schools in the neighborhood they moved into and boards like this help them figure out how to send their kids to “better,” typically whiter and less economically diverse non neighborhood schools. That’s pretty obvious. [/quote]

But that's not what happens in DC.  By far the biggest factor around SES clustering in DC (as basically everywhere else in America) is the housing market.  Kids go to Deal and Lafayette and Murch and Janney and Ross and Oyster not because of the lottery, but because their parents bought expensive houses in those areas.  The lottery doesn't place that many kids in the Ward 3 elementaries.  In-bounds preference does.

The fact that there are many schools in DC that are majority-minority and whose test scores are low is a big, big, big problem.  But it's not because parents don't choose those schools in the lottery.  Which is what the report is trying (poorly) to argue.  
[/quote]

The housing market is also shaped by segregation.  The area around Fort Reno Park/Tenleytown was home to many African Americans after the Civil War.  They were deliberately pushed out by white developers, and with the active participation of the federal government.

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/e400085dbcf54a9aa0fc13c6fa541f87

https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/188488/the-battle-of-fort-reno/

And, of course, redlining, restrictive covenants, and other policies supporting residential segregation kept NW DC white.

So parents choosing that expensive house in NWDC are participating in and benefiting from segregation.  And they are often choosing those neighborhoods precisely because of the "good schools."[/quote]

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