Anonymous wrote:Overcrowding leads to lower outcomes for all students, more so for lower SES due to the lack of supplementation/enrichment outside of school.

Can DC achieve integrated schools that are not overcrowded?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear you, within reason. But too many needy low SES classmates in large classes and all the supplementing can become oppressive. I didn't mind it in the lower grades, but we're not planning to stay at our EotP DCPS for 5th grade. I'll leave it to the avowedly pro-integrationist to supplement like mad open-endedly.

The research that shows that high SES students don't have worse outcomes from being in integrated classes indicates that there is a tipping point at around, if I recall correctly, 20% of the class. Beyond that point, if I understand the research right, outcomes for low SES kids suffer, although outcomes for high SES kids don't suffer as one might expect, likely due to parents supplementing outside of the classroom.

Also, some of that research may have been done before the current inclusion model for special ed, which puts an added burden on classroom teachers and could shift that tipping point.

The existence of this tipping point suggests to me that just integrating DC schools -- spreading high SES kids evenly throughout DC schools won't do much to improve outcomes for low SES DC kids. To do get a benefit, you'd need to include VA and MD schools. It does, however, suggest that OOB access for a limited number of kids to high SES schools (mostly WOTP) is helpful to the low SES OOB kids and probably one of the best realistic interventions available, although the same selection bias issue will be there as for charter kids.

Anonymous wrote:I hear you, within reason. But too many needy low SES classmates in large classes and all the supplementing can become oppressive. I didn't mind it in the lower grades, but we're not planning to stay at our EotP DCPS for 5th grade. I'll leave it to the avowedly pro-integrationist to supplement like mad open-endedly.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The data also shows that high SES students/whites aren't hurt by integrated classrooms. Not buying it. Two or three of the half dozen public housing project denizens in my kid's 3rd grade classroom EotP were a real problem this past school year, sucking up a great deal of the classroom teacher's time, focus and energy.

You will appreciate how I am arguing using facts in the real world when I state that she was hurt by having these kids in her class, particularly on the day when one of them slugged her in the mouth and cussed her out. The kid wasn't punished or even removed from the class on that day - he was simply made to apologize.

My child was bored in her reading group, and not particularly challenged in math, even as the poor teacher battled to get, and keep the several disruptive and academically disastrous SES kids on track emotionally and academically. We're planning to give DCPS one more year. If things don't improve, we're gone.

This story is what's technically known as an "anecdote." While I'm sure it's deeply meaningful to you, it's not useful for making policy.

Here's another anecdote -- my grandpa smoke like a chimney and drank like a fish his whole life. He lived to 95, at which point he died peacefully in his sleep. What policy choices shall we make based on Granpa's experience?

The data shows that high SES whites don't have lower test scores or worse outcomes through graduate school by going to integrated schools. You can "not buy it", but that's what's happening in the actual real world.

It's interesting to see that you're not pretending that you're not pro-segregation. I don't think I've interacted with an actual avowed segregationist since my kindergarten class was integrated in 1970 in the south.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

The data also shows that high SES students/whites aren't hurt by integrated classrooms. Not buying it. Two or three of the half dozen public housing project denizens in my kid's 3rd grade classroom EotP were a real problem this past school year, sucking up a great deal of the classroom teacher's time, focus and energy.

You will appreciate how I am arguing using facts in the real world when I state that she was hurt by having these kids in her class, particularly on the day when one of them slugged her in the mouth and cussed her out. The kid wasn't punished or even removed from the class on that day - he was simply made to apologize.

My child was bored in her reading group, and not particularly challenged in math, even as the poor teacher battled to get, and keep the several disruptive and academically disastrous SES kids on track emotionally and academically. We're planning to give DCPS one more year. If things don't improve, we're gone.

This story is what's technically known as an "anecdote." While I'm sure it's deeply meaningful to you, it's not useful for making policy.

Here's another anecdote -- my grandpa smoke like a chimney and drank like a fish his whole life. He lived to 95, at which point he died peacefully in his sleep. What policy choices shall we make based on Granpa's experience?

The data shows that high SES whites don't have lower test scores or worse outcomes through graduate school by going to integrated schools. You can "not buy it", but that's what's happening in the actual real world.

It's interesting to see that you're not pretending that you're not pro-segregation. I don't think I've interacted with an actual avowed segregationist since my kindergarten class was integrated in 1970 in the south.

Anonymous wrote:I’m a parent at an EotP elementary school (rising 4th grader). I hate OOB discussions on DCUM. Posters frame OOB kids with the nastiest stereotypes. Many of my kid’s friends are OOB and they are wonderful kids with great parents. These are actual people you are maligning.

Anonymous wrote:

The data also shows that high SES students/whites aren't hurt by integrated classrooms. Not buying it. Two or three of the half dozen public housing project denizens in my kid's 3rd grade classroom EotP were a real problem this past school year, sucking up a great deal of the classroom teacher's time, focus and energy.

You will appreciate how I am arguing using facts in the real world when I state that she was hurt by having these kids in her class, particularly on the day when one of them slugged her in the mouth and cussed her out. The kid wasn't punished or even removed from the class on that day - he was simply made to apologize.

My child was bored in her reading group, and not particularly challenged in math, even as the poor teacher battled to get, and keep the several disruptive and academically disastrous SES kids on track emotionally and academically. We're planning to give DCPS one more year. If things don't improve, we're gone.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:
Not the PP you're slamming. I like posts that present the unvarnished truth about schools that have become heavily UMC quickly, however inconvenient and non PC the sentiments expressed might be.

There's no denying that poor kids are doing a lot better collectively in KIPP type charters than in traditional public schools. This issue isn't race, it's class in a city with vast income disparities.

Unless DCPS is willing to get more adults in the buildings and to pay for extended day and year options for poor kids in traditional public schools with support from the teachers union (not happening) these problems, and solutions, are real. You can pretend they aren't real to suit your politics, PP, without anybody benefiting.

You seem confused and to be presenting a false dichotomy.

Kids don't do better in heavily segregated schools where everyone is poor. Research is clear on that. What the PP that I was responding to was arguing against however, was not that.

PP was concern trolling that poor kids will be overwhelmed and socially outcast going to good schools with wealthy students ("...at-risk kids pretty clearly belong in schools set up to serve needy kids, vs. schools serving hundreds of UMC students". This is an explicit call for segregation, and presents as undisputed fact a fringe assertion that's 100% disproved by all evidence over the past 60 years.

This exact argument was made in the 50s as a reason not to de-segregate schools, and it was widely recognized as what it is: paternalistic and racist (in that it assumes poor kids can't handle going to wealthy, high achieving schools). Since that time, mountains of evidence have shown that going to integrated, well functioning schools is the single best thing for poor kids from segregated schools. Integrating local schools and also busing -- which racists succeeded in branding as a failure -- worked, absolutely and indisputably in terms of improving outcomes for black kids and communities.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/23/forced-busing-didnt-fail-desegregation-is-the-best-way-to-improve-our-schools
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/07/01/busing-for-school-integration-succeed-work-research/
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kamala-harris-joe-biden-busing-louisville_n_5d2ceff0e4b0bca60364197f

Get a life. In this City, KIPP scores for at-risk kids are higher than scores in traditional public schools.

Comparing aggregate test scores for a cohort of kids who are attending their default public school to aggregate test scores for a cohort of kids whose parents have gone through the lottery and then undertake the effort to get them to a charter school every day is not an apples to apples comparison given that parental achievement/involvement is the #1 predictor of academic success. Ever heard of selection bias? Based on the level of familiarity with data demonstrated so far in this thread, I'm guessing not.

+1. Families who elect to apply to a charter are not the same as those in the general populace. This means the extent to which KIPP is doing something specific to raise test scores--vs. the contribution of particularly motivated & stable families--is unclear.

So, I don't think that's true, because KIPP has a proven track record of doing -- in many different sites, with many different teachers, subject only to random lottery luck -- what almost no other charter schools in DC do: consistently get good tests scores from poor children. Of course there is selection bias in charter v IB/default and there may even be selection bias in KIPP v other charter v better IB, but I doubt the selection bias that exists in that latter case is 100% responsible for the rings KIPP runs around other charters/most IBs. That said, I completely agree w/ the first sentence of your post and that, long-term, integration is the single most successful way to close the achievement gap... I just don't think that in a school system that still has a massive achievement gap, the KIPP success story for the left behinds is purely illusory.