Anonymous wrote:What was this thread about again?

Anonymous wrote:Or rather, her. But I'd be happy to mock you as well, as you seem equally "self actualized."

Anonymous wrote:Don't be angry that your husband often works late, and especially that he sometimes has to "stay in the office (wink, wink) overnight." You have only yourself to blame. Be satisfied that he's staying with you for the sake of the kid.

Anonymous wrote:I'll go toe-to-toe with you on whichever metric you choose. You clearly think you're clever; sadly, your mother has misled you. I'm glad, albeit amused, that you seem to draw meaning from your mutterings on an anonymous message board. I dislike being outwardly mean, but you're not special. You're no more intelligent than the average person to whom you're replying. Your child is wonderful, I'm confident, but he's left you bitter and angry. I'm sorry that's the case.

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Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Is the topic the actual stuff that is taught in school, or the opportunities to learn outside of school?

I'm not the poster you are addressing, but in her case as well as mine it is both. Brent is a fabulous school and the after school and neighborhood opportunities cannot be matched in fairfax.

Yes, so why both separating what a kid learns outside school for what they learn inside school when considering the kind of education they're getting? You can't argue that Brent is better academically than a Fairfax GT program; it isn't. But there's still a strong case to be made for our urban environment being far richer intellectually, and, in many ways, healthier, than the car-bound Fairfax scene. Our friends who've bailed for schools hardly seem to know their neighbors, even after living in the burbs for years, leaving them nostalgic for the Hill community. We know that the burbs aren't short of highly educated parents, but I'm still willing to hitch my start to the urban pioneering spirit, which confers its own benefits. These include my kids watching 4th of July fireworks from our roof, chatting with lawmakers in local restaurants, taking the Metro for free with their new passes, walking to CHAW lessons on their own (at age 7 or 8), getting to outdoor movies and Folger on bikes in the summer, and running into the same interesting families all over the Hill.

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Anonymous wrote:This is why DC can't have test in gifted programs especially in the early grades. They would skew white. I know my DD will be ok anywhere but at some point we will leave our mediocre IB to get away from the behavioral problems associated with the low income, under achieving kids.

That's bullshit dog-in-the-manger reasoning. DCPS could design a fair, integrated gifted program. Of course that would mean not all snowflakes would be guaranteed admission.

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Anonymous wrote:I own sending my kids to an economically diverse school, where my contributions make a difference. I also own not being a pathetic parasite working for the world Bank, an organization predicated on the idea that it can "end" poverty, while being afraid of poor people.

And I am so glad your poison is not something my children have to deal with

Then it's a win-win, isn't it?

I don't select my children's school based on where I can make a difference - we prefer the schools to be good already, and don't view them as vehicles of parental fulfillment. We self-actualize elsewhere.

Anonymous wrote:I own sending my kids to an economically diverse school, where my contributions make a difference. I also own not being a pathetic parasite working for the world Bank, an organization predicated on the idea that it can "end" poverty, while being afraid of poor people.

And I am so glad your poison is not something my children have to deal with

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Anonymous wrote:Even though it may be diversity in terms of ethnic background/birthplace, I'm not sure schools full of diplomats' and WB executives' kids is really more meaningfully "diverse" than many DC DCPS/HRCS especially at the ES level. That is, I think socioeconomic diversity sometimes matters a whole lot more...

Completely agree. World Bank culture is surprisingly homogenous. Many different languages, skin colors, birth places, but all middle/upper middle class childhoods with 2+ degrees from good universities. And many studied at the same universities in the US, UK and EU. SES diversity is much more noticeable than ethnic diversity after you've known someone for more than a day.

You need to have a degree in higher education to work at the world bank, IADB, IMF, etc.

And as someone who actually works at one of these places, I can tell you it's quite diverse.

It's 100% fair to say it's a different kind of diversity though. I'm a U.S. career FSO and would never deny that foreign diplomats posted to DC long term (as most countries do, especially poorer ones) are actually more "like me" than many of my NE neighbors. Theirs kids are even more like my kids, Since many of them have been 100% raised here.

I work for the WB, and this is 100% correct, and this is the only kind of diversity I want for my children. I don't really want them to have Section 8 friends.

Why not? Do you really worry about your children meeting poor children? Wow. Are you a recent immigrant to this country?

I don't worry about it, I just prefer that they are friends with children like them from families who value the same things that we can relate to. There is limited time and mental space for friendships, so I would rather they were friends with children of, say, other World Bankers (no matter what country they are from). They have nothing in common with Section 8 people so let's not engineer proximity where none exists.