Anonymous wrote:I think the SWS thread is openly racist as well. Only the posters think no one gets their code.

I guess it's fun to call everyone a racist without actually thinking about the issues, but the SWS threads (and others) bring up the real point -- poverty. Poverty is not good, and it's not something that we as a society should encourage or reward. Good neighborhoods are important, and part of what makes a neighborhood good is its schools. If we really want to address poverty, inclusionary zoning is one way (among others) to do that. But the whole linchpin of IZ is the concept of "good neighborhoods" and diluting poverty by engendering real socioeconomic diversity. If we can't (as all the people howling "racist!" seem to suggest) even maintain neighborhood schools for neighborhood kids, how can we have any success diluting poverty?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a handful of "Benetton" schools. If you like your multi-culti to be high-end, it's an option, but only at a few schools. Lamb, Mundo Verde, Yu Ying, and Latin will satisfy your Upper-West-Side aesthetic, if you can get in.

If you want "lily-white" go to upper NW or go private. Better yet, go to Fairfax or Montgomery County.

Dumb. The lily white areas in this region are Upper NW and North Arlington, not Fairfax or Montgomery. If DC had the diversity you find in most of Fairfax or Montgomery, questions like this would never get posed.

Yes. Double dumb. Diversity in DC dictionary really just comes in one kind - AA. Two minor subtypes are Hispanic kids and embassy kids. It's kind of amusing.

Look into any FFX classroom and you'll see diversity of the Benetton kind. Not just white and black.

Which is funny considering Fairfax's fairly recent racist past.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a handful of "Benetton" schools. If you like your multi-culti to be high-end, it's an option, but only at a few schools. Lamb, Mundo Verde, Yu Ying, and Latin will satisfy your Upper-West-Side aesthetic, if you can get in.

If you want "lily-white" go to upper NW or go private. Better yet, go to Fairfax or Montgomery County.

Dumb. The lily white areas in this region are Upper NW and North Arlington, not Fairfax or Montgomery. If DC had the diversity you find in most of Fairfax or Montgomery, questions like this would never get posed.

Yes. Double dumb. Diversity in DC dictionary really just comes in one kind - AA. Two minor subtypes are Hispanic kids and embassy kids. It's kind of amusing.

Look into any FFX classroom and you'll see diversity of the Benetton kind. Not just white and black.

Anonymous wrote:^. In urban centers like DC where around a quarter of minority kids lives in poverty, you can either have fairly constructive partial economic segregation, or near total unconstructive economic segregation.

Two simple, no-brainer reasons. Reason 1: you can't force upper-middle-class families to stay in schools where parents worry about academic challenge and negative social influences. Reason 2: the high-SESmostly white/low-SES mostly minority gap remains large.

So you can have schools like Brent and Maury, with a low enough percentage of low-SES kids that high-SES parents stick around, or gifted and talented programs designed to enable a minority of low-SES kids to keep up with a majority of high-SES kids (NYC borough-wide model). What you can't have are a lot of low-SES and high-SES kids in the same classes in the same schools past around 2nd grade. If you doubt this, look at what's been happening at Watkins since the early 90s. The well-intentioned but deeply impractical Capitol Hill Cluster rejects economic segregation but gets it in a big way (a little more all the time).

For those who think that KIPP is abusive, there are other, kinder, ES charter franchises catering to low-income minority kids to pick from. Achievement Prep boasts higher test scores than KIPP, and SEED does well. Scores for AA kids at Wash Latin are good deal lower than in more economically segregated schools. Scores obviously aren't everything of course, but think about scores anyway if you will.

This.

^. In urban centers like DC where around a quarter of minority kids lives in poverty, you can either have fairly constructive partial economic segregation, or near total unconstructive economic segregation.

Two simple, no-brainer reasons. Reason 1: you can't force upper-middle-class families to stay in schools where parents worry about academic challenge and negative social influences. Reason 2: the high-SESmostly white/low-SES mostly minority gap remains large.

So you can have schools like Brent and Maury, with a low enough percentage of low-SES kids that high-SES parents stick around, or gifted and talented programs designed to enable a minority of low-SES kids to keep up with a majority of high-SES kids (NYC borough-wide model). What you can't have are a lot of low-SES and high-SES kids in the same classes in the same schools past around 2nd grade. If you doubt this, look at what's been happening at Watkins since the early 90s. The well-intentioned but deeply impractical Capitol Hill Cluster rejects economic segregation but gets it in a big way (a little more all the time).

For those who think that KIPP is abusive, there are other, kinder, ES charter franchises catering to low-income minority kids to pick from. Achievement Prep boasts higher test scores than KIPP, and SEED does well. Scores for AA kids at Wash Latin are good deal lower than in more economically segregated schools. Scores obviously aren't everything of course, but think about scores anyway if you will.

PP here and guess what, my PC self works in a title 1 school. I find it highly problematic to encourage more economic segregation in schools. Why should only upper middle class kids get the nurturing environment of Montessori or Reggio? They would benefit from it too.

KIPP has several schools in the city for the same reason that every ward except ward 3 has lots of charters, people keep opening them and dcps keeps allowing it. Some charters are good, some are terrible. KIPP has good test scores but at the cost of teachers bullying students and a high attrition rate for the kids who can't take the abuse.

Anonymous wrote:AWww race is a social construct! I need to find a racism bingo card

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3109/3185596402_18d49d5f62_o.jpg

As far as I can tell, the OP committed the sin of being openly racist while most of the other poster code it into socioeconomic terms. Go look at the SWS thread where all the hill folks want to cordon all the poor kids into KIPP schools while their little angels can enjoy the nurturing environment of sws and capitol Montessori to themselves.

Really a cynical take on a lively and welcome debate on the two active SWS threads. Plenty of proof that kids do better in KIPP schools than very diverse schools, other than in gifted and talented ES programs e.g. NYC's. If you really want help poor kids, get over your PC self and keep an open mind about ANYTHING that might actually work. KIPP has many schools in this city for a reason, and it's not because DCPS is doing a fantastic job on the Hill or anywhere else. A few great PTAs yes, DCPS, no.

Anonymous wrote:There are a handful of "Benetton" schools. If you like your multi-culti to be high-end, it's an option, but only at a few schools. Lamb, Mundo Verde, Yu Ying, and Latin will satisfy your Upper-West-Side aesthetic, if you can get in.

If you want "lily-white" go to upper NW or go private. Better yet, go to Fairfax or Montgomery County.

Dumb. The lily white areas in this region are Upper NW and North Arlington, not Fairfax or Montgomery. If DC had the diversity you find in most of Fairfax or Montgomery, questions like this would never get posed.

Anonymous wrote:I think the SWS thread is openly racist as well. Only the posters think no one gets their code.

Plenty of open racism on the "when did you know it was time to leave your EotP school," too. Which group is worse, Hispanics or blacks!?

But race is just a "social construct," so I guess we should just ignore all of that shit.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are not enough whites in the school system to make them a significant majority at any school. It is just not going to happen in this city. Again, by the time a white couple has their 2.5 children in a 5-year period, the AA family will have about 4 children in the same time period.

Now this is Racist. Unfortunately, my timing was off. I'm AA and I didn't get the 4 children or the 2.5. Only had 1. I need to get my DNA checked.

From the census, fertility rates per 1000 women in 2008, and the differences are probably lower now as that's the way they've been trending:

White - 68 .6
Black - 71.9

What he really meant to say was by the time the white couple has their 2.5 kids, the black couple will have had 2.62 kids.

And the infant mortality rate is about three times as high for AA infants - somewhere around 15%. I'm guessing the disparity might be greater in DC, given the near-absence of poor whites with higher infant mortality.

That 10ish/1000 difference in mortality more than offsets the 3.3/1000 difference in birthrate. White ladies just be pumping out those babies! Irresponsible!

I think the SWS thread is openly racist as well. Only the posters think no one gets their code.

AWww race is a social construct! I need to find a racism bingo card

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3109/3185596402_18d49d5f62_o.jpg

As far as I can tell, the OP committed the sin of being openly racist while most of the other poster code it into socioeconomic terms. Go look at the SWS thread where all the hill folks want to cordon all the poor kids into KIPP schools while their little angels can enjoy the nurturing environment of sws and capitol Montessori to themselves.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At my charter, there's a large number of kids who are mixed-race and parents who are from different backgrounds. How do folks classify them?

However they classify themselves, just like the census. If you claim two races, then you count in the percentages of both.

Yup. I count my kids as both. I hope it screws up every demographic because there is JUST ONE HUMAN RACE. The notion of white/black/asian races is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT and a relic that needs to be left in the past.

Anonymous wrote:At my charter, there's a large number of kids who are mixed-race and parents who are from different backgrounds. How do folks classify them?

However they classify themselves, just like the census. If you claim two races, then you count in the percentages of both.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are not enough whites in the school system to make them a significant majority at any school. It is just not going to happen in this city. Again, by the time a white couple has their 2.5 children in a 5-year period, the AA family will have about 4 children in the same time period.

Now this is Racist. Unfortunately, my timing was off. I'm AA and I didn't get the 4 children or the 2.5. Only had 1. I need to get my DNA checked.

From the census, fertility rates per 1000 women in 2008, and the differences are probably lower now as that's the way they've been trending:

White - 68 .6
Black - 71.9

What he really meant to say was by the time the white couple has their 2.5 kids, the black couple will have had 2.62 kids.