OP - It's not awful. Not everyone aspires to have their kids attend a school with such a homogenous group because you're just so f***ing boring.

It's not awful, but it's not what everyone wants for their kids.

Watch out, there's a "biter" on many of the forums. Not sure why he or she's into biting....

Actually, 16:53, I think that you are missing the point. You can be quite average now and live way better than your pennniless farmer grandparents --- you live a better and safer, and if you choose to live sensibly, a much healthier life than even the upper middle class of their day. So, I don't think that we are nearly as badly off.

The issue of housing, which you are most concerned with, is tricky. Nice locations are limited and have always been price rationed. The current high prices are a reflection of the large number of people who can bid up prices in those locations --- it is a sign of relative prosperity, not of bad times.

I am mystified when you say that there are no places in Metro DC area that someone with a good professional degree can afford and where where more than 60% of the kids are at grade level. And also, the crappy state of "half our schools" is not due to lack of resources --- public schools in this area are well funded when compared to other parts of the country. Indeed, many of the charter schools people fight over have less funding that regular public schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Problem with cities like NY and Washington is that a lot of us "professionals" really are the former equivalent of working class. It just happens that the working class in this city works in the factory called government or non profit or education ect. So we want to think of ourselves as middle class because that means we are at least doing as well as our parents when the reality is that we are at best treading water. All I know is that my parents had way better options for housing, education both k-12 and college than I do or will likely have even with a master's degree.

argh! you depressed me.

but thank you for the reality check.

Right. Our parents had on the average much much better options. Not.

Do you really envy them their wonderful, unsafe, lead-spewing breakdown prone cars? Or their wonderful old small screen TVs, with so many entertainment options? Or access to those wonderful dental and medical technologies on the 70ies and 80ies. And the great way they communicated with folks across the world using their magic rotary land line telephones? And not having to bother to plan holidays because air travel was so expensive. And not to mention higher pollution levels. And the opportunity to live in houses that were, on the average, about 30% smaller than they are now. I could go on ....

I think you miss the point. Upward mobility was more available 20-30 years ago. My grandparents were penniless farmers in the 1930's and yet able to move up to good professional jobs. They did not worry about the quality of their neighborhood or of its schools or even god forbid have to face any number of lotteries that might determine their kids chances at opportunity. They were average and yet they could make it. I have a master's degree, I have a good professional job, I cannot afford to move to an area that has schools where even 60% of the kids can read or write on grade level, no other fancy request here like extra language otherwise. I am one of many, many in this boat in this area. Plasma, tv, the internet or leaded gas aside this country does not provide options for upward mobility in the way it used to and that upward mobility starts with the crappy state of at least half our schools.

Responding to 11:39, I know that my kids end up hanging for the most part with kids that are just like us. But the schools benefit from having those well-educated and possibly wealthy families in the mix, whether the social dynamic encourages interaction or not. And even though the kids typically self-segregate on a social level, they do interact in the classrooms, at recess, etc. And the parents, teachers and administrators have to deal with the whole spectrum of needs, desires, demands. It's a puzzle, I admit, but at a minimum I know that I cannot simply ignore the reality of families who are different from us, which would be possible or even likely in other nabes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Problem with cities like NY and Washington is that a lot of us "professionals" really are the former equivalent of working class. It just happens that the working class in this city works in the factory called government or non profit or education ect. So we want to think of ourselves as middle class because that means we are at least doing as well as our parents when the reality is that we are at best treading water. All I know is that my parents had way better options for housing, education both k-12 and college than I do or will likely have even with a master's degree.

argh! you depressed me.

but thank you for the reality check.

Right. Our parents had on the average much much better options. Not.

Do you really envy them their wonderful, unsafe, lead-spewing breakdown prone cars? Or their wonderful old small screen TVs, with so many entertainment options? Or access to those wonderful dental and medical technologies on the 70ies and 80ies. And the great way they communicated with folks across the world using their magic rotary land line telephones? And not having to bother to plan holidays because air travel was so expensive. And not to mention higher pollution levels. And the opportunity to live in houses that were, on the average, about 30% smaller than they are now. I could go on ....

I have to say I am one of those parents. I think a lot of it has to do with my own comfort level. So to the extent we want our kids to think beyond ourselves I have to agree it won't happen. It is a real challenge at a lot of levels, it skewes how parents see access to teachers, PTO/PTA and any number of school governance issues. A lot of us liberals are not good a walking the walk as we are at talking the talk. But it is not easy.

Anonymous wrote:I keep my kids in my neighborhood schools in part because I'm uncomfortable with the widening gap between haves/nots in this country. Sure, maybe my kids'd be better able to float down the highway of life within a bubble of fabulous, well-educated, well-off peers if I kept us within our peer group, educationally and financially. But I don't think that that's a tenable solution for us as a society. Siphoning off the top percentile and leaving the rest behind is a recipe for worsoning all sorts of things, including the economy, if the competitve edge thing is what's really at stake for parents. If I thought the schools were dangerous or that my kids were unhappy or that they weren't getting an adequate education, I'd put them in private. But I'm not gonna do it just to gild the lily, as it were.

How does your choice of neighborhood schools keep that gap from widening further? Do you live in a socioeconomically diverse neighborhood? Does your neighborhood elementary school have a diverse student population base with a wide range of household types and incomes? If so, do your children actually socialize with the children who have vastly lower household incomes? Do they invite them to birthday parties and playdates? Do they sign up to play on sports teams together?

I ask these questions because of my friends' experiences with our socioeconomically diverse neighborhood schools. They speak very earnestly of how valuable it is for their children to go to school with kids "whose families receive food stamps." They say it's "such a great experience to prepare them for real life." But the kids walk to school with the same group of children from their own (white liberal) neighborhood every day. All of the children are from white, liberal, two-parent, upper-middle-class, highly educated families. They play with the same kids during recess. They walk home with the same kids. They have playdates and parties with the same kids. And the new friends they've made at school are from the same types of families. Now granted these are kindergarteners, and this probably changes somewhat in middle school and high school. But for now the kids are having the "valuable experience" of going to school with poor kids while socializing entirely with children like themselves. Their parents are quite self-congratulatory about it, but it seems a bit skewed and condescending. That may well not be the case for your family, PP. But among these folks, there's more than a little irony involved.

Anonymous wrote:I went a private school with all upper middle class kids. I think the reason I will try and have my DC have a different experience is because those kids - like it or not- had not respect for the privileges they had. They wrecked cars and expected new ones. They treated "lower class" people like servants. And when I want to college I was clueless enough to think this is how the world worked.

I want my daughter to get a good education but not at the expense of humanity.

9:29 again

I went to elementary with lower to average middle class, middle with a wide spread, and the same for high school. Upper middle class to wealthy were unusual. All schools were coed with a range of levels of academics.

Private small single sex schools CAN [not always] present the most distortation for girls.

I went a private school with all upper middle class kids. I think the reason I will try and have my DC have a different experience is because those kids - like it or not- had not respect for the privileges they had. They wrecked cars and expected new ones. They treated "lower class" people like servants. And when I want to college I was clueless enough to think this is how the world worked.

I want my daughter to get a good education but not at the expense of humanity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in SE DC. I love it. My oldest DS goes to a good Hill DCPS school and went to a daycare where many of the children were poor. I think he's awesome - I am clearly biased. I think he has the best social skills of any 7 year old I've ever met. We are white. We have been to parties where everyone else is black - he walks right into the room of kids and is like, "What are we going to play?" He understands that some people have disabilities because he has classmates with disabilities. He understands that some families have gay parents because we have friends who are gay and go to church with families where the parents are gay.

I do think he might be getting a better reading/math education in Arlington/Mont. County or a good private school. However, I think we are preparing him for life in our amazingly diverse and diversify city and county. If he's really smart and becomes a doctor, he will walk into his first day of residency in an urban emergency room and be less freaked out and more comfortable with diversity.

With every school and every neighborhood there are trade offs.

Agreed. That's what I want for my kid.

I also agree.

On a larger societal note, it is profoundly depressing the degree to which income level, housing costs, and school quality are linked. The "good" public schools are all in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods where housing is basically unaffordable if your HHI is less than $100k. My husband and I are both educated professionals. In the context of the rest of our families (who live in other parts of the country), our $175k HHI is astronomically high. In DC, we cannot afford to buy in the "nice" neighborhoods because 3 bedroom houses in those areas are over a million dollars.

I predict the child will not go to Ballou or Anacostia for high school. Extreme placement unless the aggressive parent is angling to use it as a hook for a highly selective college. Public schools in Fairfax County distribute extra resources to schools based on percentages of ESOL and FRPM. It also has a new program for 2010-11 called priority schools initiative:
http://www.fcps.edu/news/priority.htm

then there is Young Scholars for those with observed potential for advanced learning for a grade level. I read recently that FCPS might only offer honors classes in certain middle schools. No more regular classes. What you have is a lowered standard or curriculum.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I want to clarify something: 900k is upper middle class??? If so, what is considered middle class in the dc metro area?

That's what I was wondering. ... But it seems pretty clear that an income of $300K, or a house of $1M in a good school district, is upper class, not upper middle.

This can be (and has been) debated for dozens of pages without reaching any real answer. Real academics who actually study this stuff cannot even come close to agreeing. So it seems unlikely that any of us can make many unequivocal pronouncements of fact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_middle_class_in_the_United_States

Translation: I want to make a self-serving assumption that my $300K income is middle class, and nobody can stop me.

Anonymous wrote:Problem with cities like NY and Washington is that a lot of us "professionals" really are the former equivalent of working class. It just happens that the working class in this city works in the factory called government or non profit or education ect. So we want to think of ourselves as middle class because that means we are at least doing as well as our parents when the reality is that we are at best treading water. All I know is that my parents had way better options for housing, education both k-12 and college than I do or will likely have even with a master's degree.

argh! you depressed me.

but thank you for the reality check.

Problem with cities like NY and Washington is that a lot of us "professionals" really are the former equivalent of working class. It just happens that the working class in this city works in the factory called government or non profit or education ect. So we want to think of ourselves as middle class because that means we are at least doing as well as our parents when the reality is that we are at best treading water. All I know is that my parents had way better options for housing, education both k-12 and college than I do or will likely have even with a master's degree.