Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This post is interesting because it seems to have drawn anxious posts from parents in MoCo AND in DC. Both sets of parents seem to think the study applies to their situation. What say you, angry VA parents???

Why would I be angry? My snowflake DD attends a high FARMS, high minority population school. We just don't have the social dysfunction you find in the ghetto schools in DC. The immigrant kids populating our school all come from stable, if poor, families that want their kids to have a good education. I see it in the PTA meetings and I see it in the respect and discipline of the kids for their teachers and each other,

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This post is interesting because it seems to have drawn anxious posts from parents in MoCo AND in DC. Both sets of parents seem to think the study applies to their situation. What say you, angry VA parents???

Why would I be angry? My snowflake DD attends a high FARMS, high minority population school. We just don't have the social dysfunction you find in the ghetto schools in DC. The immigrant kids populating our school all come from stable, if poor, families that want their kids to have a good education. I see it in the PTA meetings and I see it in the respect and discipline of the kids for their teachers and each other,

Anonymous wrote:This post is interesting because it seems to have drawn anxious posts from parents in MoCo AND in DC. Both sets of parents seem to think the study applies to their situation. What say you, angry VA parents???

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a difference between "low income" and "disadvantaged" and "high risk factor." The Article should be titled, "Children With Risk Factors Can Hurt Achievement of Others in Their Classrooms."

Somebody at the Wash Post screwed up by either failing to read and understand the article, or was very careless in giving it a title. The whole thing is misleading unless you realize it was given an incorrect title.

Thank you for being the only person on this thread with decent reading comprehension.

There is a huge difference for children who are poor but have a loving family and stable home life vs kids who are at risk due to neglect, abuse, homelesness, Etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Not me! Maybe it's because I went to the equivalent of HS in Europe, but I have no problem with a longer calendar school year. I associate it with seriousness, studiousness, and quality. The American desire for long, lazy summers seem very anti-intellectual.

+1!

I keep wondering when we're going to put agrarian needs to rest on the school calendar. I thought maybe charter schools would be the vanguard and still hoping so.

Not me! Maybe it's because I went to the equivalent of HS in Europe, but I have no problem with a longer calendar school year. I associate it with seriousness, studiousness, and quality. The American desire for long, lazy summers seem very anti-intellectual.

Anonymous wrote:There is a difference between "low income" and "disadvantaged" and "high risk factor." The Article should be titled, "Children With Risk Factors Can Hurt Achievement of Others in Their Classrooms."

Somebody at the Wash Post screwed up by either failing to read and understand the article, or was very careless in giving it a title. The whole thing is misleading unless you realize it was given an incorrect title.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree. Knee jerk accusations of discrimination and racism get us absolutely nowhere. Especially considering that the AA middle class families in DC make schools choices almost identically to the way white middle class families do. Racism is not an issue here.

+1

But in the vein of "let's face reality," race is very much an issue in this city and I'd say it's concentrated and even exacerbated in the school boundary debate. There have been a whole lot of knees jerking in every direction these days. Sure, we can keep it terms of income but race is embedded in every reference to FARMS, SES, behavior, capabilities and achievement. It may or may not be there with the OOB ruckus, because parents should be concerned about overcrowding; it's certainly an element when people weigh the value of a WOTP school by its OOB percentages.

No one here thought of poor white children as they read the header of this thread. For every "snowflake" insult thrown out, there are many more equally insulting generalizations about low income people.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree. Knee jerk accusations of discrimination and racism get us absolutely nowhere. Especially considering that the AA middle class families in DC make schools choices almost identically to the way white middle class families do. Racism is not an issue here.

+1

But in the vein of "let's face reality," race is very much an issue in this city and I'd say it's concentrated and even exacerbated in the school boundary debate. There have been a whole lot of knees jerking in every direction these days. Sure, we can keep it terms of income but race is embedded in every reference to FARMS, SES, behavior, capabilities and achievement. It may or may not be there with the OOB ruckus, because parents should be concerned about overcrowding; it's certainly an element when people weigh the value of a WOTP school by its OOB percentages.

No one here thought of poor white children as they read the header of this thread. For every "snowflake" insult thrown out, there are many more equally insulting generalizations about low income people.

There's an element of desperation to this effort to prove that poor kids are dragging everyone down. While I'm not one who's going to put my kid in a failing school to prove a point, I do feel pretty strongly that continued failure--even if it stays isolated on the other side of town or gets pushed out to the suburbs--is going to impact his future. My takeaway from this research about disadvantaged kids is that kids grow into adults who have more disadvantaged kids who . . . drag everyone down.

Give that some thought. This public discourse cannot be limited to "get them out of my child's school."

Who says that the discourse is limited to "get them out of my school"? In fact, I don't think that is even a fair characterization of what is being said. In all the research cited on these threads there is a tipping point where a school becomes a "high poverty" school and requires specialized inputs for the success if the students there. Research also shows that those specialized inputs are not necessarily what kids from more advantages backgrounds need.

For example, even if a high-poverty school started some great programming and convinced me that my child's academic needs would be met, I am completely turned off by the prospect being thrown around requiring longer school days and longer school years for high-poverty schools. I absolutely refuse to sign up for that.

The discourse is really around yes, pleas let's provide extra funding and supports for schools with high numbers of disadvantaged kids. Give it all you've got, try everything to make a difference. You have my tax money and my support. What people are reacting against is some sort of policy level decision to make sure that middle class families are evenly distributed around schools and not allowed to cluster in certain schools--as if THAT is the way to fix inequities. To me it seems like a final refuge of a city educational bureaucracy who is out of ideas.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:F u.

I was disadvantaged. I have a doctorate, earn 230K/yr, enjoy the respect of colleagues and have many friends.

and am usually happy except when the anti-poor posters post.

Then unless you never had to take stats, you should be aware that population studies don't apply on the individual level. It's nothing but admirable that you personally overcame adverse circumstances. It's also, as you well know, the exception and not the rule. The presence of a significant number of students with high risk factors (many of which apply to lower SES students) has been proven to negatively impact other students in the classroom. In other words, when the teacher has to waste time instructing Johnny on remedial reading and basic behavior, that comes at the opportunity cost of Mary and Andrew getting attention for their advanced learning.

Anonymous wrote:DC is considering a weighted lottery and quotas for low income and disadvantaged students to attend higher performing schools. This is being done in other urban school systems around the country. So conceivably, it would be easier for a kid from Anacostia to attend Brent or a Brightwood kid attend Janney.

Anonymous wrote:This post is interesting because it seems to have drawn anxious posts from parents in MoCo AND in DC. Both sets of parents seem to think the study applies to their situation. What say you, angry VA parents???