Anonymous wrote: In 2014, it is disheartening for me to witness that Washington, DC is being taken over by people who subconsciously hold white-supremacist values and assume that all AA children are low SES trouble makers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's statistics.

In DC, white= higher probability of being high SES= higher probability of no/low issues in academics in progeny= higher probability that the school attended will be 'good'.

Not because the school is actually good but because the load of issues that school might have to deal with is now significantly lower.

So if you are busy and have no time for deep analysis, a quick look at the demographics of the school will tell you how 'good' the school is.

Not exactly, schools with many high-performnig students and active parents raising oodles to support better facilities than the municipality provides, and keeping tabs on this and that are indeed good ones. But they aren't necessarily great. I would argue that the level of dysfunction in both DCPS and DC Charter mitigates against any DC PS emerging as first rate. The highest performing school, Lafayette, hasn't been renovated since the 1970s, is super crowded and doesn't have many interior walls. DC's language immersion schools, both DCPS and charter, can't compete with the best immersion schools in the Metro area burbs, although their demographics can be similar.

You can get a good school with favorable demographics, but you need exceptional leadership, piles of money to bring in a big team of competent support staff, and a range of policies supporting excellence (e.g. conflict resolution programs, screening for giftedness, pullout groups, lotteries for native speakers, preference in admissions for the children of staff, commitment to arts programs, tracking done thoughtfully) to get a great one. You can also get a good school with a predominantly low SES population.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^ You are killing me. You don't expect that people follow the law? Really???? And if they're non-residents not paying tuition (i.e. stealing), that's okay? Wow. Your neighborhood will stay the pits and never get better. I'd like to wish you good luck, but not really.

for the 15th million time. A license plate is not valid proof of cheating. If you have more substantial proof than that go ahead and turn those families in.

No, but it's a hell of a good indicator that merits investigation and substantiation. Use your brains.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not being "nosey", just observant since most kids in the neighborhood are more visible on the weekend instead of less. And you can stop the divorce/deceased/whatever trope, because that's not what it is -- it's called young single mothers leaving their children in the city with their parents (to go to the same schools they did when they were young), and then having the child live with them on the weekends.

Maybe the grandparents have official custody, who knows who claims whom on their taxes, etc., but this is what happens on the Hill and bothers the people who buy their homes, live in them with their children, and don't feel like they can really be part of their IB school without being called "gentrifiers" in a derisive way.

Again, I'm not reporting them, but it's hard to ignore.

Exactly, but not just young single mothers. Also the parents of the drugged-out, incarcerated and generally under-employed and dysfunctional if the experience of our block is in any way representative. The in-boundary grandparents and great-grandparents almost never have official custody, or rent or own jointly with the "lost generation" of parents - they don't need to bother to get custody, not with DCPS happy to let them furnish their offspring with in-boundary addresses for schools. Maury has cracked down on the practice and L-T should follow suit.

No point in reporting them when there's no chance in hell that DCPS will tangle with the elderly folk, who vote in droves coming off church buses.

^^^^^^ With people who think like this, DC will have its first elected Republican mayor soon. As a native Washingtonian, it is disheartening to see my hometown being gentrified by self-entitled, high SES, white supremacist interlopers from middle Amerikkka. If you are of the aforementioned group, you should sell your home and return to racially homogenized community of origin.[b]

Why is it ok for you to say the bolded? What would say to the white family who lived in, say, petworth in 1957 and whose son said this: "It is disheartening to see my hometown being altered by entitled, moderate and low SES black interlopers from kountry places in the south. If you are part of the aforementioned, you should leave my white neighborhood of Columbia heights/shaw/petworth/Brookland/Capitol Hill/eckington and return to your racially homogenized community in North Carolina. Or Georgia or wherever you migrated from."

You see, "your" black neighborhood in your hometown was mostly white before your people got there. Crazy, but absolutely true unless you live in one of a few small pockets of dc. Cities change, as DC did when your grandparents moved here from the south along with tens of thousands of other migrants and turned a previously white government town into a proud Chocolate City. Now the city is changing again.

Anonymous wrote:It's statistics.

In DC, white= higher probability of being high SES= higher probability of no/low issues in academics in progeny= higher probability that the school attended will be 'good'.

Not because the school is actually good but because the load of issues that school might have to deal with is now significantly lower.

So if you are busy and have no time for deep analysis, a quick look at the demographics of the school will tell you how 'good' the school is.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^ You are killing me. You don't expect that people follow the law? Really???? And if they're non-residents not paying tuition (i.e. stealing), that's okay? Wow. Your neighborhood will stay the pits and never get better. I'd like to wish you good luck, but not really.

for the 15th million time. A license plate is not valid proof of cheating. If you have more substantial proof than that go ahead and turn those families in.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand why everyone gets so up in arms about residency cheaters. From a city-wide budgeting standpoint, of course -- the kids cost the city money & their parents aren't paying taxes. The are breaking the rules, absolutely.

But how does the presence of a kid (or multiple kids) who lives in PG adversely affect the learning environment within a classroom, or the overall school atmosphere?

The top privates in DC are full of kids from Maryland and Virginia, but no one argues that they are detrimental to the school environment.

The objective is to make the school attractive to high-SES whites by cutting down on the number of low-SES blacks. A crackdown on residency is a quick and legal shortcut.

If it causes more tension of the variety that can be called "race-baiting at PTA meetings", oh well, it's for the good of the school.

And if any "good" black families who happen to live in the neighborhood are made uncomfortable by any of this, one of these good white parents has the name of a good black realtor in Brookland that you can call.

Anonymous wrote:^^^ You are killing me. You don't expect that people follow the law? Really???? And if they're non-residents not paying tuition (i.e. stealing), that's okay? Wow. Your neighborhood will stay the pits and never get better. I'd like to wish you good luck, but not really.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's not as simple as "white vs. black." It's more "white culture" vs. "black culture." In addition to the culture class, there is an economic class that breeds a lot of resentment. This resentment comes from both 1) entitled white people who want to attend their school of right and make it a high-SES and tier 1 (like the other gentrified schools in nearby communities) and 2) disenfranchised black people who have deep ties to the school community and feel the heat coming from white people who clearly want them out. The principal was in group 2 and was very defensive about it, which group 1 used to further their cause.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of people in the middle (lie myself) that don't fit either stereotype who are frustrated by the race discussion and just want everyone to focus on educating our kids.

"White culture vs Black culture"? What is this 1955? In the age where we have a African-American President & a First Lady who are both Ivy League educated with Law degrees, it's interesting how some people still want to look at white people as being entitled, higher SES type people, and black people as "disenfranchised".

It's also interesting how on this thread people are genuinely expressing there desire for more white kids at this school, when I think what people really want is more kids at the school that come from higher SES. If not, then would the people on this thread, who claim to want more white families at the school, welcome a more white kids from families like "Honey Boo Boo"? I think not. Alternatively, what if the school was majority black, but the black kids came from families like the Obamas (Ivy league educated lawyers)? Would this not be Ok?

In my opinion, if you want higher SES families at your school, then just say that. Don't say "Black", "White", "Latino", "Asian", etc.

BTW, I'm an African-American currently doing my master's at Johns Hopkins Univ and my wife is an African-American with a master's from George Washington University, we have two kids, and hopefully we won't be looked down upon if we decide to enroll our kids at Ludlow-Taylor Elementary School.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not being "nosey", just observant since most kids in the neighborhood are more visible on the weekend instead of less. And you can stop the divorce/deceased/whatever trope, because that's not what it is -- it's called young single mothers leaving their children in the city with their parents (to go to the same schools they did when they were young), and then having the child live with them on the weekends.

Maybe the grandparents have official custody, who knows who claims whom on their taxes, etc., but this is what happens on the Hill and bothers the people who buy their homes, live in them with their children, and don't feel like they can really be part of their IB school without being called "gentrifiers" in a derisive way.

Again, I'm not reporting them, but it's hard to ignore.

Exactly, but not just young single mothers. Also the parents of the drugged-out, incarcerated and generally under-employed and dysfunctional if the experience of our block is in any way representative. The in-boundary grandparents and great-grandparents almost never have official custody, or rent or own jointly with the "lost generation" of parents - they don't need to bother to get custody, not with DCPS happy to let them furnish their offspring with in-boundary addresses for schools. Maury has cracked down on the practice and L-T should follow suit.

No point in reporting them when there's no chance in hell that DCPS will tangle with the elderly folk, who vote in droves coming off church buses.

^^^^^^ With people who think like this, DC will have its first elected Republican mayor soon. As a native Washingtonian, it is disheartening to see my hometown being gentrified by self-entitled, high SES, white supremacist interlopers from middle Amerikkka. If you are of the aforementioned group, you should sell your home and return to racially homogenized community of origin.[b]

Anonymous wrote:If the new principal doesn't ferret out the cheaters immediately, she ought to get fired. The new sheriff in town has to lay down the law, NOW. Cheaters get lost!