Anonymous wrote:Amidon is being reconstituted because it's been persistently failing for five years. NCLB demands it, not some gentry. In fact isn't the PTA president an Appletree parent? Have you been in Amidon lately? Nothing has improved at that school in years. Please don't try to make the case otherwise.

Wrong, wrong wrong.

Amidon was one of only a few DCPS schools selected to be reconstituted - not every school in its position was reconstituted (maybe five 30+ candidates were selected). There are several ways to address NCLB, and reconstitution is the most drastic and expensive. Gentrifiers AND long-time community residents lobbied Kwame Brown, Tommy Wells, DeShawn Wright, Abigail Smith, Peggy O'Brien, Amanda Alexander, and Mark King; the Chancellor was going to join a meeting, but the budget blew up and she was called away that morning, but she did follow-up via e-mail. The restructuring of Amidon was directly related to raising its profile, including events hosting Tommy Wells and Sekou Biddle and engaging the surrounding neighborhood. Getting Target to provide a big grant for the library was another step in garnering attention for of Amidon.

The PTA President has two children enrolled in Amidon.

There is no doubt that Amidon has lots of room for improvement. But the longest journey begins with a single step. The kids at Amidon have a superior staff and support services compared with last year, they have a new library and soon a modernized building, the grounds will be improved, the SW community is engaged and partnering (including the $2 billion Waterfront redevelopment) with Amidon. If you genuinely knew about Amidon and cared for its kids, you wouldn't blithely say that it still sucks like it always has - you are wrong and it is not helpful. I participate in Amidon events frequently and summary dismissals like yours makes sincere and real efforts to improve Amidon all that more difficult. You are a nattering nabob of negativism who is making unfounded assertions about a situation you know little about.

One should chart the experiences of children at two schools over the next few years. First, look at Amidon and Garfield with their almost 100 econ-disadvantaged populations. Then take a look at both schools in 2015, when Amidon has a somewhat more diverse (economic) population, and Garfield remains more-or-less the same. I think it is a safe bet that Amidon students will be in a much better place with things getting better each year. Garfield will remain relatively flat-lined unless something radical happens ((population shift, radical program change, huge $ infusion).

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, your position demands a lot of things happening for the people pushed out by gentrification that are not likely to happen unless there is a strong coordinated effort to make them happen - low income housing, funds and good programs shifting to the right schools at the right time. With all the money already spent on reform, there has not been success in these areas. Instead, schools in the poor wards are still doing terribly (and ward 3 still thrives).

As real estate becomes more expensive in the gentrifying areas, the poor people already living there will need cheaper alternatives. That's a no-brainer.

The whole "they'll be better off" rationale is just that - a rationalization.

I'm not against gentrification, but let's get real -- the benefit goes to the gentrifiers. Rationalizing that you're helping the indigents may help you sleep better at night, but it doesn't guarantee that their situation will be improved once they cede the neighborhood to the gentrifiers.

For poor kids to get the educational benefit of gentrification, the socio-economic balance in the schools needs to be reversed. This requires a huge population shift and shuffle. When the high SES people move in, low SES people need to disperse widely, to get the benefit of majority middle-class kids in their classes. So where do they go?

This is actually demonstrably untrue.

A new study by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Pittsburgh and Duke University, examined Census data from more than 15,000 neighborhoods across the U.S. in 1990 and 2000, and found that low-income non-white households did not disproportionately leave gentrifying areas. In fact, researchers found that at least one group of residents, high school–educated blacks, were actually more likely to remain in gentrifying neighborhoods than in similar neighborhoods that didn't gentrify — even increasing as a fraction of the neighborhood population, and seeing larger-than-expected gains in income.

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1818255,00.html

There are very strong protections in place for tenants in DC, from rent-control, to first-purchase laws, to tenants-rights laws. One of the PPs mentioned three poor families in a gentrifying neighborhood who were "displaced", but the examples strained the definition of gentrification-fueled displacement. In one case, the landlord sold the building. In the other two, economic circumstances led to them not being able to pay their (controlled) rent. But this happened all the time before gentrification--we just didn't ascribe it to "evil gentrifiers". In fact, contra popular myth, poor neighborhoods have always had a large amount of turnover. It's just that very poor people were replaced by other very poor people. Now more wealthy people are added into the mix. In places like Capitol Hill, that's allowed the majority of long-term (mostly older) residents to cash-out, take large bundles of cash, and move to places they'd rather be.

Obviously, the very poor who were renting don't have that option, but we're largely conflating the stable base of long-term working-class residents on the one hand, and the transient short-term poor residents on the other.

The researchers found, for example, that income gains in gentrifying neighborhoods — usually defined as low-income urban areas that undergo rises in income and housing prices — were more widely dispersed than one might expect. Though college-educated whites accounted for 20% of the total income gain in gentrifying neighborhoods, black householders with high school degrees contributed even more: 33% of the neighborhood's total rise. In other words, a broad demographic of people in the neighborhood benefited financially. According to the study's findings, only one group — black residents who never finished high school — saw their income grow at a slower rate than predicted. But the study also suggests that these residents weren't moving out of their neighborhoods at a disproportionately higher rate than from similar neighborhoods that didn't gentrify.

The reason the "displacement" narrative is so attractive is that it justifies the resentment many folks feel as they see old neighborhoods change. Of course, most of that demographic shift has come as long-term homeowners age; their children grow up, get jobs, and move to large, cheaper houses in the suburbs; and finally the elderly residents sell to younger (often white) newcomers. Obviously the poor who have long relied upon a cheap (and dangerous) housing stock to live in resent that shift, and the children of long-time residents who come back to visit their elderly relations (or to go to church) resent the cultural changes that have taken place. But frankly, that's no different than someone who grew up in Aspen Hill going back and seeing a bunch of Hispanics and thinking, "there goes the neighborhood."

The bottom line is, much of what we think of as "displacement" is voluntary, and the involuntary displacement has been going on for as long as there have been people struggling to make their rent. Of course, US stinginess towards housing subsidies is a national problem, and not something unique to DC. But the good thing about adding more and more middle-class residents to DC's population is that it funds DC's already generous (compared to MD and VA) social safety net. As someone pointed out up-thread, DC's population is 600k, and nowhere near its historic highs. If you want to help DC's poor, you should be fighting as hard as you can to enable new market-rate housing construction in DC.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, charters are a part of the solution because they keep middle class families in DC and increase economic integration in public schools.

I don't think that was the policy intent (although I can't claim to have lived here when the charter school system was foisted on DC). The idea is a different one: Charter schools have one important leg up over one's average, even if excellent, neighborhood school, namely the ability to specialize and respond to educational market trends a little more flexibly where needed. This would theoretically allow them to serve particular pockets of needs (gifted children, children with learning differences, children who're exceptionally strong in math/science, children who're through the roof in language/arts, language immersion needs, etc.) and some do. But by enlarge they're all trying to be everything to everybody (just look at the Basis' marketing for example). We only need to look around us to see where that's headed, namely for all of them to be average. For analogies, think about your phone company, internet service providers, cable TV, your grocery stores, your department store, your online suppliers etc.
With few exceptions, the only way they can claim to do better is by "adverse selection"; in plain terms, by helping those somehow performing better self-select out of the rest of the lot. So be it, you may say. But there is actually no added benefit to the individual child, it's just a statistical artifact. In other words, one and the same kid may not do any better here or there, they just sort themselves out into different pockets, which we then equate with "better school".

No, by and large, they are specializing their programs and succeeding beyond what DCPS can do. You have this completely ass-backwards.

Appletree? Early-learning, pre-school only
Bridges? Inclusion
EL Haynes? Year-round program
Elsie Stokes? French and Spanish immersion
Excel Academy? All-girl's school
Inspired Teaching? Demonstration school for the Center for Inspired Teaching
LAMB? Dual-language immersion
Mundo Verde? Spanish immersion, green school focus
ROOTS? African-centered school
SEED? College prep boarding school
Two Rivers? Expeditionary learning
Washington Latin? Classical education
Washington Yu Ying? Chinese immersion IB

etc. etc. etc.

Amidon is being reconstituted because it's been persistently failing for five years. Nclb demands it, not some gentry. In fact isn't the pta president an Appletree parent?

Have you been in amidon lately? Nothing has improved at that school in years. Please don't try to make the case otherwise.

If accurate, as stated (don't know about it myself) then that's excellent - and an example of what would have to happen on a massive scale if gentrification were to benefit all.

Anonymous wrote:It's hasn't done much for the in boundary school, Amidon-Bowen, if that's what your asking.

Au contraire.

Amidon was just reconstituted in part due to the efforts of gentrifiers. This was a HUGE deal. Children at Amidon are in a better place today because of that. And Amidon is about to announce an innovative plan for the future that will further improve the school - stay tuned for that announcement. Amidon now has a functioning PTA led by a gentrifier. New parent leaders are working on the school improvement team and planning for the modernization - and they are pushing for resources and results. Families that never would have considered Amidon before are now giving it consideration.

Capper Carrollsburg in Near Southeast was a hell-scape before 2005. No one would have wished living there upon their worst enemies. It is now a mixed income community, and the low income residents living in Capitol Quarter (which replaced Capper Carrollsburg) are in a much better neighborhood than before. And when Van Ness re-opens, the low income families will enroll in a school that is light years ahead of the the old Van Ness.

It's hasn't done much for the in boundary school, Amidon-Bowen, if that's what your asking.

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, your position demands a lot of things happening for the people pushed out by gentrification that are not likely to happen unless there is a strong coordinated effort to make them happen - low income housing, funds and good programs shifting to the right schools at the right time. With all the money already spent on reform, there has not been success in these areas. Instead, schools in the poor wards are still doing terribly (and ward 3 still thrives).

As real estate becomes more expensive in the gentrifying areas, the poor people already living there will need cheaper alternatives. That's a no-brainer.

The whole "they'll be better off" rationale is just that - a rationalization.

I'm not against gentrification, but let's get real -- the benefit goes to the gentrifiers. Rationalizing that you're helping the indigents may help you sleep better at night, but it doesn't guarantee that their situation will be improved once they cede the neighborhood to the gentrifiers.

For poor kids to get the educational benefit of gentrification, the socio-economic balance in the schools needs to be reversed. This requires a huge population shift and shuffle. When the high SES people move in, low SES people need to disperse widely, to get the benefit of majority middle-class kids in their classes. So where do they go?

How about the massive Hope VI project in Near Southeast?

Sorry, your position demands a lot of things happening for the people pushed out by gentrification that are not likely to happen unless there is a strong coordinated effort to make them happen - low income housing, funds and good programs shifting to the right schools at the right time. With all the money already spent on reform, there has not been success in these areas. Instead, schools in the poor wards are still doing terribly (and ward 3 still thrives).

As real estate becomes more expensive in the gentrifying areas, the poor people already living there will need cheaper alternatives. That's a no-brainer.

The whole "they'll be better off" rationale is just that - a rationalization.

I'm not against gentrification, but let's get real -- the benefit goes to the gentrifiers. Rationalizing that you're helping the indigents may help you sleep better at night, but it doesn't guarantee that their situation will be improved once they cede the neighborhood to the gentrifiers.

For poor kids to get the educational benefit of gentrification, the socio-economic balance in the schools needs to be reversed. This requires a huge population shift and shuffle. When the high SES people move in, low SES people need to disperse widely, to get the benefit of majority middle-class kids in their classes. So where do they go?

Anonymous wrote:Gentrification requires gentry , i.e., more children of gentry occupying the schools than non-gentry, meaning a lot of non's have to move out in order for the schools to become middle-class.

Some get to stay to be influenced by the gentry-children, but what happens to the others? Where do they go?

Really - for more schools to become middle-class enough to benefit the low-income kids, those kids have to become the minority in all DC schools. This means many will have to leave town.

That seems to be what it's all about -- please, most of you, just leave town so we gentrifiers can let our wonderfulness rub off on the few of you who stay behind.

You are so wrong. As stated before, as Brent becomes more gentrified, more taxpayer resources shift to other neighborhood schools that need more resources. So where do the OOB kids go if they are pushed out of Brent? Well, first, no one is pushed out unless they actually live outside of DC (a shockingly large number at Brent were MD residents a few years ago). To the extent that Brent is no longer an easy option for folks in other neighborhoods to use is likely not that big a deal to them because it is likely that their own DC neighborhood school is improving-- to some extent because Brent is not costing as much to run as it used to when it was underenrolled by the neighborhood families.

Can you see that this zero sum mentality is completely wrong?? The idea that if one school is improving it must be hurting another school? that if one child is happy, another child must be hurt?? Where does this concept come from? Point out one DCPS school that has been hurt by the success of another DCPS school.

And low-income kids don't need to leave town for the schools to provide better experiences to all kids. Ridiculous! What needs to happen is there needs to be more low income housing (and better rent control, etc.) mixed in all neighborhoods rather than just have low-income housing in certain areas of the city. That is something folks in the Brent neighborhood have pushed for, although without as much success as they would like.