Anonymous wrote:A big reason why the performance of poor kids improves is because those middle and upper income families have their voices heard and can lobby for the things needed to make a school successful. It is no secret that the voices of the poor are largely ignored in this country. Why would we think the school system is different? Without trying to integrate schools by SES, the only other option I see is for more people to lobby for quality public school education across the board. That will never happen though because as you can see from this board that many feel that the more exclusive the school the better leg up they can give their child. See the discussions of the "others" coming into their good school cluster.

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Anonymous wrote:You can argue that a more culturally diverse school would solve the problem. It won't. The kids, especially at the high school level, will self-segregate. And a lot of what I've observed across the county is not a race issue, it's a class issue. At any rate, as long as we continue to fear being around people other than ourselves, we move nowhere with regard to getting along in this country.

Actually, studies show that mixing poor kids in with wealthier ones raises poor kids' performance:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/magazine/who-knew-greenwich-conn-was-a-model-of-equality.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

From a recent study of MCPS: "On average, the poorer children in wealthier schools cut their achievement gap in half compared with their peers in poorer schools."

That's good for the handful of poor kids at schools in Bethesda or Potomac, but what about the poor (and middle-class) kids who make up the bulk of students in East County schools?

The problem with those studies is that they never ask what happens to the middle to upper middle class kids. I mean, a big part of the fear (and it is fear, not just avoidance) of parents sending their kids to PG County schools is that the supposedly overwhelming number of poor kids will bring their middle class kid's achievement down. If studies investigated this claim, maybe it would provide a counter to that argument. Or, of course, it would only validate it. But needless to say, the question needs to be asked.

The same argument that you site is the argument made for section 8 housing, that bringing poor families in to mix with middle class families helps those poor families, but I haven't seen studies back this up. And many people claim that what happens is the middle class areas where the section 8 housing is brought in end up going down hill. Of course, that could just be a self-fulfilling prophecy (i.e. the middle class families freak out over the section 8 housing and flee before finding out what happens). But again, it would be helpful in difficult conversations like this to actually have some statistics. That way, perhaps we could figure out what works and what doesn't work to actually help people while maintaining stable neighborhoods.

I feel like so much of the arguments made on both sides -- the people who are primarily interested in helping boost achievement among minority and lower SES kids AS WELL as the people who are concerned about their middle to upper middle class kids and ensuring they aren't negatively impacted by measures designed to help others -- so many of both sets of arguments are based on either ideology or fear, both with a significant helping of assumption. And so we kind of just go in circles.

Actually, the studies show that the kids from affluent families continue to do well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can argue that a more culturally diverse school would solve the problem. It won't. The kids, especially at the high school level, will self-segregate. And a lot of what I've observed across the county is not a race issue, it's a class issue. At any rate, as long as we continue to fear being around people other than ourselves, we move nowhere with regard to getting along in this country.

Actually, studies show that mixing poor kids in with wealthier ones raises poor kids' performance:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/magazine/who-knew-greenwich-conn-was-a-model-of-equality.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

From a recent study of MCPS: "On average, the poorer children in wealthier schools cut their achievement gap in half compared with their peers in poorer schools."

That's good for the handful of poor kids at schools in Bethesda or Potomac, but what about the poor (and middle-class) kids who make up the bulk of students in East County schools?

The problem with those studies is that they never ask what happens to the middle to upper middle class kids. I mean, a big part of the fear (and it is fear, not just avoidance) of parents sending their kids to PG County schools is that the supposedly overwhelming number of poor kids will bring their middle class kid's achievement down. If studies investigated this claim, maybe it would provide a counter to that argument. Or, of course, it would only validate it. But needless to say, the question needs to be asked.

The same argument that you site is the argument made for section 8 housing, that bringing poor families in to mix with middle class families helps those poor families, but I haven't seen studies back this up. And many people claim that what happens is the middle class areas where the section 8 housing is brought in end up going down hill. Of course, that could just be a self-fulfilling prophecy (i.e. the middle class families freak out over the section 8 housing and flee before finding out what happens). But again, it would be helpful in difficult conversations like this to actually have some statistics. That way, perhaps we could figure out what works and what doesn't work to actually help people while maintaining stable neighborhoods.

I feel like so much of the arguments made on both sides -- the people who are primarily interested in helping boost achievement among minority and lower SES kids AS WELL as the people who are concerned about their middle to upper middle class kids and ensuring they aren't negatively impacted by measures designed to help others -- so many of both sets of arguments are based on either ideology or fear, both with a significant helping of assumption. And so we kind of just go in circles.

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Anonymous wrote:Hilarious. Self-segregation is the ultimate goal of just about every parent in DC area. People pay insane amounts for housing and spend hours each day commuting to their jobs so that their kids can go to segregated schools. And when they succeed, someone writes an article denouncing it? Where does the author live? In Anacostia? Or does he simply avoid the issue by sending his kids to St.Albans?

I agree, totally agree.

This is an interesting piece:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/14/_.html

"You can call a facility "public" all you like, but if the only way to gain access to it is to first buy your way into an expensive neighborhood then there's nothing public about it."

Well, but some would say that it's not the school people are paying all of that money for. They pay to be in an area surrounded by other people -- and other kids -- with money.

Given that it is very clear that SES is tied to school performance, the effect is the same. Saying "I just want to be near other wealthy people just like me" is a cute way of sidestepping the issue/truth.

So that it's not that their kid goes to a school with better facilities and teachers; it's that their kids go to a school surrounded by better students, and that's what makes the difference. Most schools are rated by the performance of the students. Are the students performing so much better at the schools in wealthier neighborhoods because those schools have better teachers or is it that those wealthier neighborhoods and, therefore, the schools attract families with better students. It's an important question, and I don't know the answer. I think people are afraid to ask it, because it might mean that the answer to improving student achievement in low-performing schools isn't just going to be improving the actual school.

Again, higher HHI=better school performance. This has been documented clearly.

(I will also point out that in a county-based system like ours, facilities should be similar county-wide. But they are not. Visit Eastern Middle and you will see what I mean.)

It has also been well-documented that putting low-income students into classrooms with high-income students results in better performance from the low-income ones (and continued high-performance from the ones from high-income families).

And yet, we continue with - as a PP put it - this state of apartheid in our county.

It is a disgrace.