By way of comparison, here is NYC versus the state of NY:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Do you think a school system should focus on educating children? Or on righting all the wrongs of society? People often point to the per pupil spending in DCPS as evidence of its wastefulness. But that's not really fair when in reality it's both a shitty school system and a shitty social services system.

You seem to be promoting a socio-economic based version of "The Plan" in which poor people are somehow swept out of the District, leaving it to the gentrifiers. Given the likely race of the poor, that's not far from the original "The Plan". Rather than running the poor out, why not try to lift them up so that they are not poor? I can't remember all of the details, but in one of the school reform plans that the Council approved, there were plans for wrap-around services to be provided at schools. Things like health clinics and adult education that would make the schools a hub for addressing a host of neighborhood needs. Not all of those programs need to be run by the schools and their purpose is not to provide employment, but to deal with actual needs. It seems like a reasonable idea to at least test.

Actually, no I don't propose to sweep all poor people out of the District. What I propose is to allow the percentage of poor people living in DC to fall to some number higher than, but comparable to, the suburbs. It should be a policy goal of the DC government to ensure that people of *all* socioeconomic levels are represented in DC. It should not be the policy goal of the DC government to fight to make DC the jurisdiction of choice for the poorest of the poor and the homeless.

You say, "why not try to lift them up so that they are not poor?" But we do that. The dynamic currently is that we fund lots of services, and those services have real benefits. The children of the poor go to school and get educated. They grow up and get jobs. And then, largely, they move to the suburbs and pay lots of taxes. Those who "fail to launch" stay here in the District and are supported by DC taxpayers. People who fall through the cracks while living in MD and VA move into the District to take advantage of the more generous benefits (or move in with their elderly DC-resident parents). And the cycle continues.

DC spends enormous amounts of cash on poor DC residents. Some of those residents make good, get jobs, and move to the suburbs. Then they pay taxes in MD or VA. Some MD and VA residents fall out of the middle-class. So they move to DC and add to the social burden. Ironically DC's social programs get a lot of criticism because "they don't work!" After all the poverty numbers never seem to fall. But "DC's poor" are not static. The people who make up that group are constantly changing.

In a place like Chicago or NYC, the city is economically integrated with the suburbs. People in the city pay state taxes. People in the suburbs pay state taxes. And social services are largely funded through state and federal spending. In DC there is no economic integration between DC and its suburbs. The suburbs win to the extent that they can make DC "the place where all the poor people live." It's akin to residents of Wards 1-6 arguing that they shouldn't have any responsibility towards the poor in Wards 7 and 8 because, after all, the poor are citizens of Wards 7 and 8. Therefore they're not the responsibility of the wealthier wards.

If I have a Plan it's that at some point the region's poor will be more evenly distributed between the various jurisdictions so that DC's demographic profile looks similar to (but not exactly like) that of its neighbors.

Anonymous wrote:
Do you think a school system should focus on educating children? Or on righting all the wrongs of society? People often point to the per pupil spending in DCPS as evidence of its wastefulness. But that's not really fair when in reality it's both a shitty school system and a shitty social services system.

You seem to be promoting a socio-economic based version of "The Plan" in which poor people are somehow swept out of the District, leaving it to the gentrifiers. Given the likely race of the poor, that's not far from the original "The Plan". Rather than running the poor out, why not try to lift them up so that they are not poor? I can't remember all of the details, but in one of the school reform plans that the Council approved, there were plans for wrap-around services to be provided at schools. Things like health clinics and adult education that would make the schools a hub for addressing a host of neighborhood needs. Not all of those programs need to be run by the schools and their purpose is not to provide employment, but to deal with actual needs. It seems like a reasonable idea to at least test.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You've just explained in a nutshell why DCPS is going to suck as a school system until gentrification progresses much further than it already has. Unemployment among young people in DC is around 50% because we've pursued policies that ensure the poorest of the region's poor must live in the District. Fortunately that is changing. Hopefully in 5 years from now, unemployment among DC's young people will be around 20%. And MD's (and VA's) will be similar.

So long as the purpose of all of the District's institutions is to remediate regional poverty, those institutions are going to suck at what they're nominally supposed to be doing.

THe purpose of all the government institutions of a city is to address the issues of the people who live in that city -- all of them. It not the city's job to discourage some of its citizens from living here.

I noticed you dodged the point. Do you think a city's DMV should try to provide vehicle services to its residents as best as possible? Or do you think it should maximize employment for otherwise unemployable people? I'm honestly curious. Because that's actually a decision we made back in the 90s.

Do you think a school system should focus on educating children? Or on righting all the wrongs of society? People often point to the per pupil spending in DCPS as evidence of its wastefulness. But that's not really fair when in reality it's both a shitty school system and a shitty social services system.

When you say, "It's not the city's job to discourage some of its citizens from living there" I find it both touchingly naive but also very circular. The mayor's "task force" on affordable housing recently declared that their goal was simple: "Our vision is simple and aspirational: The District of Columbia is a city that provides housing that is affordable for all who wish to live and work here" (http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2013/03/12/gray-task-force-unveil-proposals-for-affordable-housing/)

While that's very nice and all, it's also a brain-dead recipe for cornering the market on every poor person in the mid-Atlantic region, and ensuring that the suburbs thrive as we deal with any and all of their social issues.

Anonymous wrote:I am not understanding a big part of this: for all you frustrated parents, railing at the system, hating Fenty, hating Rhee and hating the schools...why are you sending your kids to those schools? What exactly are you setting out to change?

PP. Who said anything about Fenty? I had issues with him as Mayor unrelated to Rhee but did like him on the Council. My kid only attends DCPS because it's the right program. Would leave for charter or private in a heartbeat if it wasn't

Anonymous wrote:
You've just explained in a nutshell why DCPS is going to suck as a school system until gentrification progresses much further than it already has. Unemployment among young people in DC is around 50% because we've pursued policies that ensure the poorest of the region's poor must live in the District. Fortunately that is changing. Hopefully in 5 years from now, unemployment among DC's young people will be around 20%. And MD's (and VA's) will be similar.

So long as the purpose of all of the District's institutions is to remediate regional poverty, those institutions are going to suck at what they're nominally supposed to be doing.

THe purpose of all the government institutions of a city is to address the issues of the people who live in that city -- all of them. It not the city's job to discourage some of its citizens from living here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Best part of the linked article:

"Rather than continue Rhee's reforms, the District should address health and other problems that lead to truancy..."

Love the hand-waving implicit in this line. Rather than provide an education system that might attract middle-class parents, we should take resources away from *teaching* and use it to fund public health initiatives and "other problems that lead to truancy". Good thinking, let's just zero out the school budget and spend it on substance abuse treatment, job training for adults, and other incredibly expensive initiatives. That's a recipe for increasing charter enrollment--and middle-class flight to the suburbs.

These are serious needs that would well serve lots of kids in the system right now. If you think services should only go to the middle class, you have a very short sighted view of the needs of the entire city. As a middle class resident it is in my interest that the poor kids get these services. I'm tutoring a kid right now whose difficulty reading will make it difficult for her to hold a good job after high school. In the meantime, her charter school keeps taking her on college tours rather than returning my phone calls and emails asking to meet with someone so we could figure a way to best support so she can do something other than work at McDonald's after high school. And given the structural changes in the job market, she is going to need to be able to do a whole lot more intellectually if she is going to do anything other than work as a cashier.

Unemployment among young people in DC is, last I heard, around 50%. Do you really think it's good for the city to have so many unemployed young people? I live in a neighborhood where a lot of these unemployed young people are my neighbors. It is not good for them or me to have them spending their days hanging out doing nothing. So, yeah, bring on the job training. I can think of a couple of basically good kids who can't read well or who are doing arithmetic using their fingers and who don't have parents who even know how to begin to teach them to look for a job and whose teachers at their glorified charter don't seem to be helping them all that much. Those kids could really use some focused job training. Neighborhood would be a whole lot better place if these good kids got some help getting employment.

You've just explained in a nutshell why DCPS is going to suck as a school system until gentrification progresses much further than it already has. Unemployment among young people in DC is around 50% because we've pursued policies that ensure the poorest of the region's poor must live in the District. Fortunately that is changing. Hopefully in 5 years from now, unemployment among DC's young people will be around 20%. And MD's (and VA's) will be similar.

So long as the purpose of all of the District's institutions is to remediate regional poverty, those institutions are going to suck at what they're nominally supposed to be doing.

These are serious needs that would well serve lots of kids in the system right now. If you think services should only go to the middle class, you have a very short sighted view of the needs of the entire city.

What I think is that a school system should be a school system. A DOH should be a department of health. Once you decide to turn the school system into a department of health, you have pretty much written off as a school system that will serve middle-class families forever. Money is finite. If we're spending half of the DCPS budget on social welfare, you end up with what we have: a system where 30% of students test on grade level.

It's the exact same thing that happens when your DMV is a jobs program: people get jobs, but you get a shitty DMV.

Anonymous wrote:Best part of the linked article:

"Rather than continue Rhee's reforms, the District should address health and other problems that lead to truancy..."

Love the hand-waving implicit in this line. Rather than provide an education system that might attract middle-class parents, we should take resources away from *teaching* and use it to fund public health initiatives and "other problems that lead to truancy". Good thinking, let's just zero out the school budget and spend it on substance abuse treatment, job training for adults, and other incredibly expensive initiatives. That's a recipe for increasing charter enrollment--and middle-class flight to the suburbs.

These are serious needs that would well serve lots of kids in the system right now. If you think services should only go to the middle class, you have a very short sighted view of the needs of the entire city. As a middle class resident it is in my interest that the poor kids get these services. I'm tutoring a kid right now whose difficulty reading will make it difficult for her to hold a good job after high school. In the meantime, her charter school keeps taking her on college tours rather than returning my phone calls and emails asking to meet with someone so we could figure a way to best support so she can do something other than work at McDonald's after high school. And given the structural changes in the job market, she is going to need to be able to do a whole lot more intellectually if she is going to do anything other than work as a cashier.

Unemployment among young people in DC is, last I heard, around 50%. Do you really think it's good for the city to have so many unemployed young people? I live in a neighborhood where a lot of these unemployed young people are my neighbors. It is not good for them or me to have them spending their days hanging out doing nothing. So, yeah, bring on the job training. I can think of a couple of basically good kids who can't read well or who are doing arithmetic using their fingers and who don't have parents who even know how to begin to teach them to look for a job and whose teachers at their glorified charter don't seem to be helping them all that much. Those kids could really use some focused job training. Neighborhood would be a whole lot better place if these good kids got some help getting employment.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rhee succeeded in getting middle-class white parents to buy into DCPS in many neighborhood schools. As DC's demographics continue to change, individual local schools will continue to come around. Rhee didn't effect a district-wide improvement in all metrics because DCPS is a majority-poor school district. And majority poor school districts are failing school districts. When DCPS is no longer majority poor, it will then begin to improve across the entire district. Until then, it will improve at the local school level.

That means that instead of 4 elementary schools where a middle-class parent would consider sending their child to school, there may be 8. Or 10. Or 12. Instead of two middle schools where a middle-class parent would consider sending their kids to school, there may be 4.

That's what DCPS improvement is going to look like.

That and actually getting textbooks to students on time.

not buying. the demographics were moving in this direction well ahead of Rhee and will continue to do so. Schools with improvement have done it ground up with parent engagement more than DCPS management. Not sure about 4 MS schools btw. Still looks more like 2. Lots of charters picking up the slack, so I guess Rhee gets credit for propping up the competition, and charters have hired some good teachers churned out by DCPS.

signed middle-class white parent with kid in DCPS in neighborhood school despite Rhee.

Yes, gentrification, for better or worse, is a national trend as young people choose to move into urban areas. Concern about schools grows after these young people start settling down and having families. I saw it happen in Capitol Hill where parents with young children got engaged with their local schools before Rhee arrived on the scene and it's continuing now. Rhee didn't start that movement but she did try to capitalize off it - like any good politician would, mind you. It's unfortunate she wasn't as smart about the rest of it. It would have been better for everyone.

Of course, in a high poverty, highly polarized environment like DC, Rhee was put in an impossible position. By trying to encourage middle-class families to enroll their kids in their neighborhood schools, she alienated existing families. Every one of those middle-class kids enrolling in an up-and-coming school was removing a spot from an out-of-boundary family, breeding resentment that we saw explode during the Fenty-Gray election.

In DC, encouraging middle-class families to attend their neighborhood school is a controversial political act.

As I noted above, gentrifiers were doing this before Rhee arrived and they continue to do it after Rhee arrived. Let me be clear, I'm a gentrifier and Rhee pissed me off.

Anonymous wrote:I am not understanding a big part of this: for all you frustrated parents, railing at the system, hating Fenty, hating Rhee and hating the schools...why are you sending your kids to those schools? What exactly are you setting out to change?

For the record, I voted for Fenty and was optimistic about him. I was agnostic about the mayoral takeover of the schools - hated the underhanded way he went about it - got elected in the Democratic primary first and then announced it after he was in effect elected mayor via the primary but later I was convinced it was a good idea. Was also agnostic about Rhee at first until I saw her make my daughter's school worse. And then I watched while she refused to take any responsibility for her mistakes and while her supporters acted as if anyone who criticized her were gleefully supporting failing schools.

My point is - I didn't start out hating Fenty or Rhee at all. Their massive screw ups and unwillingness to learn from them turned me off. And many of their supporters continue to frame this as a difference of intentions as in Rhee wants accountability and good teaching while people like me cling to mediocrity when the truth of the matter is that it was a matter of inexperience and incompetence.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rhee succeeded in getting middle-class white parents to buy into DCPS in many neighborhood schools. As DC's demographics continue to change, individual local schools will continue to come around. Rhee didn't effect a district-wide improvement in all metrics because DCPS is a majority-poor school district. And majority poor school districts are failing school districts. When DCPS is no longer majority poor, it will then begin to improve across the entire district. Until then, it will improve at the local school level.

That means that instead of 4 elementary schools where a middle-class parent would consider sending their child to school, there may be 8. Or 10. Or 12. Instead of two middle schools where a middle-class parent would consider sending their kids to school, there may be 4.

That's what DCPS improvement is going to look like.

That and actually getting textbooks to students on time.

not buying. the demographics were moving in this direction well ahead of Rhee and will continue to do so. Schools with improvement have done it ground up with parent engagement more than DCPS management. Not sure about 4 MS schools btw. Still looks more like 2. Lots of charters picking up the slack, so I guess Rhee gets credit for propping up the competition, and charters have hired some good teachers churned out by DCPS.

signed middle-class white parent with kid in DCPS in neighborhood school despite Rhee.

Yes, gentrification, for better or worse, is a national trend as young people choose to move into urban areas. Concern about schools grows after these young people start settling down and having families. I saw it happen in Capitol Hill where parents with young children got engaged with their local schools before Rhee arrived on the scene and it's continuing now. Rhee didn't start that movement but she did try to capitalize off it - like any good politician would, mind you. It's unfortunate she wasn't as smart about the rest of it. It would have been better for everyone.

Of course, in a high poverty, highly polarized environment like DC, Rhee was put in an impossible position. By trying to encourage middle-class families to enroll their kids in their neighborhood schools, she alienated existing families. Every one of those middle-class kids enrolling in an up-and-coming school was removing a spot from an out-of-boundary family, breeding resentment that we saw explode during the Fenty-Gray election.

In DC, encouraging middle-class families to attend their neighborhood school is a controversial political act.

Best part of the linked article:

"Rather than continue Rhee's reforms, the District should address health and other problems that lead to truancy..."

Love the hand-waving implicit in this line. Rather than provide an education system that might attract middle-class parents, we should take resources away from *teaching* and use it to fund public health initiatives and "other problems that lead to truancy". Good thinking, let's just zero out the school budget and spend it on substance abuse treatment, job training for adults, and other incredibly expensive initiatives. That's a recipe for increasing charter enrollment--and middle-class flight to the suburbs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rhee succeeded in getting middle-class white parents to buy into DCPS in many neighborhood schools. As DC's demographics continue to change, individual local schools will continue to come around. Rhee didn't effect a district-wide improvement in all metrics because DCPS is a majority-poor school district. And majority poor school districts are failing school districts. When DCPS is no longer majority poor, it will then begin to improve across the entire district. Until then, it will improve at the local school level.

That means that instead of 4 elementary schools where a middle-class parent would consider sending their child to school, there may be 8. Or 10. Or 12. Instead of two middle schools where a middle-class parent would consider sending their kids to school, there may be 4.

That's what DCPS improvement is going to look like.

That and actually getting textbooks to students on time.

not buying. the demographics were moving in this direction well ahead of Rhee and will continue to do so. Schools with improvement have done it ground up with parent engagement more than DCPS management. Not sure about 4 MS schools btw. Still looks more like 2. Lots of charters picking up the slack, so I guess Rhee gets credit for propping up the competition, and charters have hired some good teachers churned out by DCPS.

signed middle-class white parent with kid in DCPS in neighborhood school despite Rhee.

Yes, gentrification, for better or worse, is a national trend as young people choose to move into urban areas. Concern about schools grows after these young people start settling down and having families. I saw it happen in Capitol Hill where parents with young children got engaged with their local schools before Rhee arrived on the scene and it's continuing now. Rhee didn't start that movement but she did try to capitalize off it - like any good politician would, mind you. It's unfortunate she wasn't as smart about the rest of it. It would have been better for everyone.

Anonymous wrote:Agree with 12:42. Now what? What is the brilliant plan to turn it around, and reverse the trends?

From what I can gather, that would be "Allen Lew" plus "curriculum". Did I mention Michelle Rhee is the worst person who ever lived?