Reply to Trump's new educational secretary nominee, Betsy DeVos, have a reaching affect on VA Public Schools?

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Reply to "Trump's new educational secretary nominee, Betsy DeVos, have a reaching affect on VA Public Schools?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is what happens when you concentrate poverty. I hope south Arlington parents do fight for charters. I'll be right there with them. My kid is just as deserving as a kid at Jamestown. A day of reckoning is at hand.[/quote]

I don't really understand the issues in Arlington, so am asking for clarification because to me Arlington represents a very successful county that has integrated schools all under one supervisory administration with a lot of variation and lottery placement without the use of Charters. It's one I look up to as a successfully run county school system. It's also a very wealthy county with a well reputed school system overall. Living in Fairfax, I'd take any school in Arlington over Fairfax's lowest performing schools any day.

The concentration of poverty is primarily a zoning/land use issue that people often don't realize affects school so they take their fight to the school level when really they should be taking their fight to land use. Charters can provide some redistribution of wealth in schools, but to make it better for all parts of living, land use is the better mechanism. Any over concentration of apartments especially those that are built at the same time will in time result in a concentration of poverty as those properties deteriorate. So if there are natural pockets of poverty, it is likely that it was created by land use decisions that kept some northern single family areas devoid of apartments and concentrated apartments in the southern area of Arlington. Lax laws and enforcement of overcrowding in housing especially when an area is inviting to illegal immigrants furthers this unevenness.

What I see in Arlington at the school level is a great effort to provide variety in school choice through lottery process. All schools in Arlington seem to have at least four choices to attend. At least 8 schools out of 20 just at the elementary level seem to be lottery schools. These include immersion, traditional, science focus, Montessori and then even with the other schools there are focusses on year round calendars, arts, and sciences. At the middle and high school level there are also lotteries and the option of applying to Thomas Jefferson which is a top rated school in the nation. Practically all of Arlington's schools have received awards and the budget per pupil is the envy of all the surrounding school systems.

If Arlington can't make their school system work without charters, I'm not sure there is any hope for the rest of the country. Do you really want money to be siphoned off for private schools or do you just want less concentration of poverty in the county?[/quote]
You greatly exaggerate the degree of choice for those zoned for the low-performing middle and high schools in South Arlington.[/quote]

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