Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not going to tell anyone that Whitman has great diversity (unless you value international diversity), but it does have a lot of very high achieving AA students, and they tend to do very well in the college admissions process. Just something to keep in mind if that's a priority.

Not sure if you can make many generalizations given the tiny sample size (< 4% of the school is AA).

Also, I listened to a WAMU event earlier this year in which some AA students emotionally described their negative experiences at Whitman. For example:


"Breanna McDonald, a senior at Walt Whitman High School and a leader in the countywide student-run Minority Scholars Program, puts her support for the boundary study in the context of her own experiences, as one of the few students of color in most of her classes at Whitman. She’s seen the school community fractured by a number of hateful incidents — a student calling another student the n-word, a Black History Month assembly mocked online, a racist Snapchat post, a teacher who she says made her feel “less than”– and she hopes that increased diversity at the school could improve the climate and make her feel less isolated.

McDonald didn’t sugarcoat her experiences in comments at the town hall.

“If I had known what I know now, I would’ve transferred from Whitman,” she told the room. “There’s no amount of equity and wealth that that school can provide me,” to make up for the “trauma” that she experienced there.

https://wamu.org/story/19/04/02/how-students-in-montgomery-county-are-leading-the-push-for-school-redistricting/

Anonymous wrote:
This is purely anecdotal, but after having spent years in MCPS, and talking to my friends and acquaintances who all have their kids in different MCPS schools than my kids, I have found an interesting thing: it seems to me that AA children have a better experience as minorities in wealthier schools than as the plurality in more average schools. This is because the area is progressive and wealthy/prominent progressives have a stake in at least appearing to defend minorities - and to be honest, most are perfectly sincere in that belief! You can take advantage of that.

Allow me to explain: Whitman HS in Bethesda, the whitest, wealthiest and most high-scoring high school in MCPS, dealt with racist issues last year, the most egregious of which was the case of a white student who was caught with a photo of herself in blackface with the n-word. There was an uproar, and AA parents at the school immediately worked with the administration to engage the community in race conversations. I went to one presentation, and the AA parent and Principal who spoke were both very impressive in their delivery and choice of plans going forward. I felt their voices were heard. MCPS has a team dedicated to facilitating such discussions, but I forget their name. They were also present at the meeting.

On the other hand, most students at the diverse Sligo MS in Silver Spring feel the need to group themselves according to skin color, and my friend's daughter felt excluded from her white friends' group because she was not white. Race is such a constant factor there that the administration doesn't even get involved. I'm not sure that a blackface photo would generate the amount of angst and public debate that it triggered at Whitman. It just seems to be a fact of life there.

I may be viewing this completely wrong, of course. Perhaps your children would prefer to not stand out as one of the very few AA students. I understand that.

In addition, MCPS schools are not created equal in the sense that they do not control the class atmosphere and whether students are more academically motivated or not. This depends entirely on the neighborhood, and not to put too fine a point on it, on the wealth/education of the parents, since these families will be able to emphasize college readiness and support it with tutors or whatever is needed. Education begins at home, so there is no reason that a child cannot be successful in a lower-income school, however they will have to expend some energy in avoiding students who are not college-bound. Wheaton and some Silver Spring schools have gang issues. There are drugs everywhere, of course. But wealthier high schools will have more students who have the means to succeed despite temptations, than the other high schools, and children always benefit from being part of a strong cohort. I am talking about high schools, because ultimately you are choosing a school pyramid and investing in a neighborhood, even if your children are very young.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whitman pyramid. And private tutoring.

This got to be a joke, right ?

I imagine it was posted by one of the usual Whitman haters in an effort to encourage negative posts about the school. There have been a lot of those on DCUM lately.

An exceptionally poor option for AA kids given recent incidents of bias at the school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whitman pyramid. And private tutoring.

This got to be a joke, right ?

I imagine it was posted by one of the usual Whitman haters in an effort to encourage negative posts about the school. There have been a lot of those on DCUM lately.

Anonymous wrote:Hi OP. We are zoned for Beverly Farms/Hoover/Churchill, houses here are well within your budget, and we have a number of AA/POC neighbors. We are a close knit neighborhood and the kids are happy and well-adjusted.

Anonymous wrote:One pyramid to consider is the following, which we have found much more diverse than what we experienced in DCPS in 2 different schools, one of which (at the time at least) touted its diversity:

Rosemary Hills (K-2), Chevy Chase/North Chevy Chase (3-5), Silver Creek (6-8), BCC (9-12)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Whitman pyramid. And private tutoring.

This got to be a joke, right ?

Anonymous wrote:Whitman pyramid. And private tutoring.

Anonymous wrote:We are an AA family planning on staying in DC (Shepherd/Deal/Wilson), but if we were moving to the suburbs, I think I'd look in several areas of Silver Spring/Takoma Park, based on the diversity and the presence of other black educated families we know there. I'm thinking about Forest Glen, Woodside Park, etc.

There was a study featured in the NYT a couple of years ago that looked at earnings in adulthood for black and white boys. It found that black boys, even from middle class or UMC backgrounds, earn less in adulthood relative to white boys from of similar SES backgrounds. This was true in all but a few areas in the country, with one such area being in Silver Spring:


"The authors, including the Stanford economist Raj Chetty and two census researchers, Maggie R. Jones and Sonya R. Porter, tried to identify neighborhoods where poor black boys do well, and as well as whites.

“The problem,” Mr. Chetty said, “is that there are essentially no such neighborhoods in America.”

The few neighborhoods that met this standard were in areas that showed less discrimination in surveys and tests of racial bias. They mostly had low poverty rates. And, intriguingly, these pockets — including parts of the Maryland suburbs of Washington, and corners of Queens and the Bronx — were the places where many lower-income black children had fathers at home. Poor black boys did well in such places, whether their own fathers were present or not."

Here's the original paper, which mentions "Downtown Silver Spring, Woodside Park, Woodside Forest" in Table XV.

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/assets/documents/race_paper.pdf


If even poor black kids do well in these areas of Silver Spring, that would give me some confidence that my child from a middle/upper middle class background would also do well there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not going to tell anyone that Whitman has great diversity (unless you value international diversity), but it does have a lot of very high achieving AA students, and they tend to do very well in the college admissions process. Just something to keep in mind if that's a priority.

Not sure if you can make many generalizations given the tiny sample size (< 4% of the school is AA).

Also, I listened to a WAMU event earlier this year in which some AA students emotionally described their negative experiences at Whitman. For example:


"Breanna McDonald, a senior at Walt Whitman High School and a leader in the countywide student-run Minority Scholars Program, puts her support for the boundary study in the context of her own experiences, as one of the few students of color in most of her classes at Whitman. She’s seen the school community fractured by a number of hateful incidents — a student calling another student the n-word, a Black History Month assembly mocked online, a racist Snapchat post, a teacher who she says made her feel “less than”– and she hopes that increased diversity at the school could improve the climate and make her feel less isolated.

McDonald didn’t sugarcoat her experiences in comments at the town hall.

“If I had known what I know now, I would’ve transferred from Whitman,” she told the room. “There’s no amount of equity and wealth that that school can provide me,” to make up for the “trauma” that she experienced there.

https://wamu.org/story/19/04/02/how-students-in-montgomery-county-are-leading-the-push-for-school-redistricting/

Really strong post. I couldn't sympathize more with her.

Anonymous wrote:I honestly thought the first response of "Whitman, and private tutoring" was meant to be sarcastic! I would not think of Whitman for the OP at all. Silver Spring/TP schools are much more diverse. Good luck, OP