Reply to Disadvantaged children can hurt achievement of others in their classrooms

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Why on earth is it parents responsibility to come up with solutions to educating the poor and disadvantaged in DC. Let our well-informed, public officials with access to experts and consultants and law firms come up with some ideas and we can support[/quote]

Because so much of that expertise has been directed at upper NW for so long that the number of disadvantaged in DC only grows larger?

Because the concentration of quality is so small that the only idea floated by the "experts" is redistribution?

Because public officials can only hear the demands of the wealthy?

Because the DINKs who can afford to stay in the city won't be asking for quality education?

Because your tax dollars can pay for better education now or bloated welfare rolls and overcrowded prisons later?[/quote]

I'm not sure I'd agree with the suggestion that expertise or quality is in NW - those schools have no special magic or extra DCPS resources - primarily the difference is that they have a lot of involved parents.  As for listening to demands of the wealthy - I don't think they do, else we wouldn't have all the overcrowding in those schools, the unmet demands which push wealthier families to charters, privates or the suburbs, or these cockamamie boundary proposals being floated around.  However I do agree with the remainder of your statements.[/quote]

It's ironic, but I'm starting to see this "involved parents" motif as perhaps the weakest aspect of DCPS policy.  I promise you that there are committed, involved, squeaky-wheel parents ALL OVER this city.  If DCPS were more equitable in the attention and resources, maybe those parents wouldn't be overcrowding your school.  I'd even say they need to invert the spending level for wards and send more EOTP and EOTR, where the population of school aged kids is higher, the needs are greater, and no one is threatening to move if they don't get exactly what they want.

If involved, wealthy parents are all that's needed, then you won't miss the funds.[/quote]

The assertion keeps being made that DCPS is spending more at those "sought after" schools - where is the hard data to back that up?   In fact when I look at individual yearly school budgets I see things like this:

Janney ES   $4.5m budget   599 enrolled   works out to $7500 per student
Amidon ES   $2.9m budget   293 enrolled   works out to $9800 per student

So how are you basing your judgement that somehow the "sought after" schools like JKLMs are somehow getting more money, attention and resources from DCPS?  What numbers are you using?

The flipside of it is that in those "sought after" schools, the parents themselves spend a lot of money toward activities, amenities and extracurriculars.  That, however, is not DCPS money and you can't count that as a function of DCPS resources, policy or spending. [/quote]

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