Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the issue that everyone is dancing around is class. It’s considered fine to be “diverse” so long as they aren’t poor. And we all know that DCUM is afraid of the poor students - who in DC are predominantly Black and Hispanic - coming from homes with anything less than white-collar jobs with highly educated parents. It’s terrifying. Washingtonians aren’t necessarily racists as much as elitist and classist. And in DC class is divided by class. We don’t have a large population of working poor whites. If we did, those students wouldn’t be wanted at the high performing schools either.

I actually don't think this is true. Most White UMC are willing to accept a minority of POC UMC peers into their groups -- the moment educated POC become the majority, white people flee.

Where has that ever happened?

In PP’s imaginings that is what would happen

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that quibbling over the word choice feels a bit like dodging the issue, though. A clumsy word choice is a small issue -- the educational inequities across the city are a big issue, and I'd encourage folks to keep that perspective.

I for one am glad to be parenting a (white) child in a school system that values equity and recognizes that there's work to do on that front.

This! No need to attack the language. Let’s fix the problem. The high performing schools are largely in white, high income neighborhoods, which also have large PTA funds. This is just fact.

And they have involved parents who are highly educated, read to their kids and are frequently two-parent families. Schools simply cannot overcome that opportunity gap. Yes sometimes through charter schools, but just applying to a charger school is an indication of parental involvement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the issue that everyone is dancing around is class. It’s considered fine to be “diverse” so long as they aren’t poor. And we all know that DCUM is afraid of the poor students - who in DC are predominantly Black and Hispanic - coming from homes with anything less than white-collar jobs with highly educated parents. It’s terrifying. Washingtonians aren’t necessarily racists as much as elitist and classist. And in DC class is divided by class. We don’t have a large population of working poor whites. If we did, those students wouldn’t be wanted at the high performing schools either.

I actually don't think this is true. Most White UMC are willing to accept a minority of POC UMC peers into their groups -- the moment educated POC become the majority, white people flee.

Where has that ever happened?

Anonymous wrote:I think the issue that everyone is dancing around is class. It’s considered fine to be “diverse” so long as they aren’t poor. And we all know that DCUM is afraid of the poor students - who in DC are predominantly Black and Hispanic - coming from homes with anything less than white-collar jobs with highly educated parents. It’s terrifying. Washingtonians aren’t necessarily racists as much as elitist and classist. And in DC class is divided by class. We don’t have a large population of working poor whites. If we did, those students wouldn’t be wanted at the high performing schools either.

I actually don't think this is true. Most White UMC are willing to accept a minority of POC UMC peers into their groups -- the moment educated POC become the majority, white people flee.

Anonymous wrote:I was told there was a proposal where Janney would feed to Hardy -- but don't see that here. Were they mistaken?

I believe it's a possibility under Option 4 -- I have seen elsewhere that Janney is a candidate for one of the elementary schools that would shift to Hardy if the MacArthur property becomes a new Hardy MS:

See page 16, Scenario 4:
"Two elementary schools shift from Deal to Hardy in SY23-24"

Anonymous wrote:I was told there was a proposal where Janney would feed to Hardy -- but don't see that here. Were they mistaken?

What a great way to add to traffic congestion...

Maybe we could create equity with a rule that no one can go to a school within walking distance.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the issue that everyone is dancing around is class. It’s considered fine to be “diverse” so long as they aren’t poor. And we all know that DCUM is afraid of the poor students - who in DC are predominantly Black and Hispanic - coming from homes with anything less than white-collar jobs with highly educated parents. It’s terrifying. Washingtonians aren’t necessarily racists as much as elitist and classist. And in DC class is divided by class. We don’t have a large population of working poor whites. If we did, those students wouldn’t be wanted at the high performing schools either.

I really don't think it's this. The problem is massive and overcrowded elementary schools, feeding 1 (soon to be 2) massive and overcrowded MS, feeding 1 massive and overcrowded HS.

DC government wants set aside seats for (1) At-Risk kids AND (2) extra capacity for well-to-do OOB kids whose parents don't want to utilize their local schools because these are both influential political constituencies. DC politicos don't want to make the hard choice of taking away Hardy-Deal/Wilson from the wealthy OOB kids, which this is EXACTLY what needs to happen to make Cardozo, Coolidge, and other under-enrolled facilities become "the next Wilson."

And this is why DC has frantically started construction on two new schools WOTP, hopefully in time for the next Mayoral election. The Mayor is buttering her bread.

If DCPS really wanted the high SES inboundary students your thinking of to go to Cardozo, Coolidge, Roosevelt they'd build the programming that would attract them. AP classes for one. Instead they create programming around things like culinary arts (Roosevelt). Where I grew up our county has a specialized school focused on things like HVAC, plumbing, stylist/beauticians, carpentry, secretarial work. Why doesn't DC have any sort of school focused on non-college paths?

Anonymous wrote:I think the issue that everyone is dancing around is class. It’s considered fine to be “diverse” so long as they aren’t poor. And we all know that DCUM is afraid of the poor students - who in DC are predominantly Black and Hispanic - coming from homes with anything less than white-collar jobs with highly educated parents. It’s terrifying. Washingtonians aren’t necessarily racists as much as elitist and classist. And in DC class is divided by class. We don’t have a large population of working poor whites. If we did, those students wouldn’t be wanted at the high performing schools either.

I really don't think it's this. The problem is massive and overcrowded elementary schools, feeding 1 (soon to be 2) massive and overcrowded MS, feeding 1 massive and overcrowded HS.

DC government wants set aside seats for (1) At-Risk kids AND (2) extra capacity for well-to-do OOB kids whose parents don't want to utilize their local schools because these are both influential political constituencies. DC politicos don't want to make the hard choice of taking away Hardy-Deal/Wilson from the wealthy OOB kids, which this is EXACTLY what needs to happen to make Cardozo, Coolidge, and other under-enrolled facilities become "the next Wilson."

And this is why DC has frantically started construction on two new schools WOTP, hopefully in time for the next Mayoral election. The Mayor is buttering her bread.

I was told there was a proposal where Janney would feed to Hardy -- but don't see that here. Were they mistaken?

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Anonymous wrote:Maybe the issue is the word whitening. I’ve never heard that and it does sound hostile or just offensive even if trie. You’d never be caught dead saying blackening that’s for sure.

Right — concentration of white students would have been less awkward

But the problem isn’t the white students (who are IB and just following the rules and attending thei IB schools.) The problem is that black kids’ IB schools are failing.

What if “the rules” were changed to be less inclined to increasing levels of segregation? Eg, end by right high school, real set asides, synchronized middle and high school entry years. Would that fix every failing school? No. But it would address the inequalities that are unavoidable with segregated schools in America.

if it was persistent enough, you'd just see a new generation of white flight schools. No parent in Chevy Chase is sending their kid to Ballou

100%. Families will move out of the city or go private. I don't want to schlep across the city for a GREAT school and I definitely wouldn't put up with it for a poorly rated school. We want a school we can walk to, who's proximity makes it easy to be an active participant/parent, who's population is largely in the neighborhood (for easy after school socialization). If by right schools go away, we'd move to MoCo.

I'm okay with tightening up the boundaries to make room for at risk OOB students, but I think preserving neighborhood schools is extremely important.

I don't know why you guys bring up whites leaving. DCPS has made it very clear they don't care. They DO care about donors whose kids are already in private leaving or their childless donors. Not white families like yours, DCPS is actually interested in serving low SES families most of the time and they tend to not be white.

I used to believe that DCPS is interested in serving low SES families but I no longer do. We have failing schools full of low SES kids across the city with no improvement in their outcomes. DCPS is interested in covering up their failures by sending these kids to schools with higher performing kids, or sending higher performing kids to these schools. It’s lazy and doomed to fail because the higher performing kids have the means to leave if they don’t like the hand they are dealt. I feel for DCPS in a way because there is no way that school alone can help the issues plaguing many children in wards 7 & 8.

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Anonymous wrote:Ward 3 parent here- I have zero problem with the language. In fact, I applaud it.

I assume that you send your child EOTR for school so that you can be part of the solution

The solution is to have good schools in every neighborhood so no kid has travel across the city to get a good education. Do you disagree?

can you point to any good high schools that draw from extremely poor populations? Good schools everywhere is another way of saying 'not my problem' from people who know that the biggest factor in whether or not a school is good is the level of education of the students' parents.

DCPS *has* to find a way because it does have enough students with educated parents to go around.

exactly. what kind of magical thinking is it to posit that distributing white people equally throughout schools would fix everything?

Hmmm how many poor white people move here? Hmmmm what do high SES parents give and do for schools?
Or is it just you want those resources to mostly benefit white children?

Do you mean the resources donated by the parents?

Of the students in DCPS as of SY 19/20 74% of the 51k kids are economically disadvantaged. That leaves about 13k students across all schools who are not. DCPS operates 117 schools. So you could spread all those children out and have 113 non economically disadvantaged students at each school in DCPS. Do you really think that number would be concentrated enough at schools the size of Wilson to make it have any additional resources? It also presumes that all or most of the 26% are in some position to donate in large amounts and do so. It also assumes that non economically disadvantaged students are spread equally across the grade spectrum. I would hazard a guess that you find larger concentrations of these populations in the lower elementary grades across the system. There are not enough non economically disadvantaged students in all of DCPS to spread them across the schools like some panacea for fixing the issues in failing schools.

Anonymous wrote:I think the issue that everyone is dancing around is class. It’s considered fine to be “diverse” so long as they aren’t poor. And we all know that DCUM is afraid of the poor students - who in DC are predominantly Black and Hispanic - coming from homes with anything less than white-collar jobs with highly educated parents. It’s terrifying. Washingtonians aren’t necessarily racists as much as elitist and classist. And in DC class is divided by class. We don’t have a large population of working poor whites. If we did, those students wouldn’t be wanted at the high performing schools either.

* And in DC class is divided by race.

I think the issue that everyone is dancing around is class. It’s considered fine to be “diverse” so long as they aren’t poor. And we all know that DCUM is afraid of the poor students - who in DC are predominantly Black and Hispanic - coming from homes with anything less than white-collar jobs with highly educated parents. It’s terrifying. Washingtonians aren’t necessarily racists as much as elitist and classist. And in DC class is divided by class. We don’t have a large population of working poor whites. If we did, those students wouldn’t be wanted at the high performing schools either.

off the rails, people. off the rails.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Ward 3 parent here- I have zero problem with the language. In fact, I applaud it.

I assume that you send your child EOTR for school so that you can be part of the solution

The solution is to have good schools in every neighborhood so no kid has travel across the city to get a good education. Do you disagree?

can you point to any good high schools that draw from extremely poor populations? Good schools everywhere is another way of saying 'not my problem' from people who know that the biggest factor in whether or not a school is good is the level of education of the students' parents.

DCPS *has* to find a way because it does have enough students with educated parents to go around.

exactly. what kind of magical thinking is it to posit that distributing white people equally throughout schools would fix everything?

Hmmm how many poor white people move here? Hmmmm what do high SES parents give and do for schools?
Or is it just you want those resources to mostly benefit white children?

Do you mean the resources donated by the parents?