Reply to The Promise of Socio-Economically Integrated Schools in DC

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]PP, it's not "an attitude" or "values" - it's an acknowledgement of reality.  The studies and data confirm that if low-SES students comprise more than 20% of the student body, there are diminishing returns and increasing problems.

You can try and spin that however you like, but it doesn't change the reality of it.[/quote]

I read every post and can safely say I'm not the one spinning.

I'm still trying to figure out where to send my kid who's not yet pre-K, and everything I've been reading from and about the vaunted "west of the park" makes the schools there sound grossly unappealing.  I keep looking for evidence of inspiring teachers and/or principals and/or kids who go out and do fantastic things. All I keep finding are stories like the cupcake principal and an awful lot of whining and fearmongering about the certain destruction of DCPS if more brown faced kids are allowed to infiltrate public schools in Ward 3. [b]Maybe there are just 5-10 people with time and motivation to hang out on these boards [/b]and +1 the shit out of all the "studies that show" you're absolutely right to believe that socioeconomic diversity is the first step in the fall of mankind.

I'm actually grateful to see true feelings revealed because I was about to drink the kook aid on JKLM schools (and the best little secret, Hearst!) but I couldn't put my finger on what made these schools "better" beyond test scores and families who have money for real estate but not for private schools. I can finally understand why so many go for charters, where the diversity seems appreciated or and even essential to the success of a school.

Spin that however you want. [/quote]

You were on the right track noting that you maybe shouldn't form an opinion of an entire set of schools on the anonymous posts of one or possibly a handful of  people (who may or may not actually be parents at these schools). [/quote]

The last couple of responses totally miss the point.  The point is that there is no special magic to the JKLMs other than the fact that there is a critical mass cohort of families that value education and hard work and puts those values on its kids.  The critical mass is what it's all about, it has little to do with the school itself, nor skin color or anything else that keeps getting thrown around here.  If you were to swap those students with a cohort from Anacostia, the performance would go with the students.  The JKLM performance would drop like a rock with the Anacostia kids, and the Anacostia performance would rise with the JKLM kids.  And, were you to mix the kids around, the only way it would work is with 20% or less low-SES kids.  In that case, the low SES kids would benefit from that critical mass of middle class and higher SES kids and their performance would improve through modeling and mentoring, et cetera.  But once that threshold of 20% is crossed, the performance of the low-SES kids stops improving and the performance of the higher-SES kids starts to decline, more and more as there are more and more low-SES kids in the school.  This is not opinion, this is not ideology, this is not racism or classism, this is what objective data shows.  It's reflected in many studies and is reflected in the DC-CAS data.  Whether you agree is irrelevant, your disagreement will not change the data.[/quote]

Well here's another question. You assume that all families in Annacostia don't care about education. Yet for a child in Ward 7 just to get to ward 3  they would have to get very lucky in the lottery and then  they would do a one way 35 minute commute by car or hour commute by bus ONE WAY  to get to a wealthier school? I have cousins that did just that. Their family really valued education. They didn't have the same resources as a family who lived in Ward 3 but they certainly had to a lot of effort just to show up and then work hard to well in school. [/quote]

You are still stuck on the misguided notion that the Ward 3 school has some kind of magic to it.  It doesn't.  And in fact, DCPS puts LESS resources toward Ward 3 schools than it does to Ward 7 schools.  Further, if you've been to schools like Ballou, you would know that half of those kids can't even be bothered to get to school regardless.  Huge dropout rates.  All that makes it all the more foolish to think about shuttling kids across town.  If they can't be bothered to go to their neighborhood school, what makes anyone think it would work with a school across town?[/quote]

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