Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who do you think went to WOTP schools OOB in the 90s? The children of the same middle mgmt DC bureaucrats who benefitted from the Barry patronage and friends and families contracting. The schools WOTP weren't abyssmal, but neither were they nearly the performers they became after the neighborhood families invested in the schools, started serious HSA fundraising, and got the schools to get "autonomous status" free from a lot of Central Office meddling.

But that left the Barryites out in the cold, once getting in WOTP wasn't guaranteed.

I think you are right about what the Deputy Mayor's agenda is. I think her thinking is ridiculous-- if that's her goal-- more EOTP parents staying in regular DCPS-- then she should engage in economic gerrymandering on a massive scale and recreate a feeder grouping of already decent ES. But that would be "classist" so she won't do it.

But hers is not the only agenda. Drive out the upper middle income or highly educated parents and then there will be room WOTP for the old guard's kids once again.

Again, trying to follow you but your reasoning sounds paranoid. All the DC natives I know are white and lived WOTP, in areas that were then solidly middle class.

There aren't many "already decent" schools EOTP, but there is a solid and growing middle class. That wasn't the case 20 years ago. Many--I'd say most--young families in that middle class arrived in the last 10 years and don't know much of what DC was like before Tony Williams. I've lived here since the late 80s and while I'm not a fan of Gray, I have a hard time believing that the DME has a plan to drive out upper income families.

They need to make DCPS more desirable to families outside of Ward 3, and that has to be about making the schools outside of Ward 3 better.

Seriously? You sound like the Dukakis voter from the Upper West Side who couldn't believe he lost, because everyone she knew voted for him.

If all the DC natives you know are white and wotp, then you don't know DC.

The way to make DCPS more desirable to families outside of Ward 3 is to create magnet programs and funnel the ES that are solidly performing into one junior high/HS cohort---an incremental approach to creating another Deal/Wilson success story.

Simultaneously, throw serious wrap-around services to the high-poverty elementary schools a la the formula followed by schools like KIPP.

If you do both of those things simultaneously, then DCPS might---and I emphasize might---be able to retain enough of a educated, middle and upper middle class parent demographic EOTP to actually achieve its desired goal of "socio-economically diverse high performing public schools". But trying to shortcut the hard work necessary to get to that point by trying this forced pollination approach is going to just drive families away.

"700 student x 5 year high school x $ 35,000 = 122 million USD

This is the stock of money that the NW DC private school system has lost in the process of Wilson's take off. And the amount grows by 20% every year as a new cohort is added."

Do you actually think such an illogical and unsupported statement is going to help your ludicrous "private school lobbyists" claims?

Anonymous wrote:Who do you think went to WOTP schools OOB in the 90s? The children of the same middle mgmt DC bureaucrats who benefitted from the Barry patronage and friends and families contracting. The schools WOTP weren't abyssmal, but neither were they nearly the performers they became after the neighborhood families invested in the schools, started serious HSA fundraising, and got the schools to get "autonomous status" free from a lot of Central Office meddling.

But that left the Barryites out in the cold, once getting in WOTP wasn't guaranteed.

I think you are right about what the Deputy Mayor's agenda is. I think her thinking is ridiculous-- if that's her goal-- more EOTP parents staying in regular DCPS-- then she should engage in economic gerrymandering on a massive scale and recreate a feeder grouping of already decent ES. But that would be "classist" so she won't do it.

But hers is not the only agenda. Drive out the upper middle income or highly educated parents and then there will be room WOTP for the old guard's kids once again.

Again, trying to follow you but your reasoning sounds paranoid. All the DC natives I know are white and lived WOTP, in areas that were then solidly middle class.

There aren't many "already decent" schools EOTP, but there is a solid and growing middle class. That wasn't the case 20 years ago. Many--I'd say most--young families in that middle class arrived in the last 10 years and don't know much of what DC was like before Tony Williams. I've lived here since the late 80s and while I'm not a fan of Gray, I have a hard time believing that the DME has a plan to drive out upper income families.

They need to make DCPS more desirable to families outside of Ward 3, and that has to be about making the schools outside of Ward 3 better.

Who do you think went to WOTP schools OOB in the 90s? The children of the same middle mgmt DC bureaucrats who benefitted from the Barry patronage and friends and families contracting. The schools WOTP weren't abyssmal, but neither were they nearly the performers they became after the neighborhood families invested in the schools, started serious HSA fundraising, and got the schools to get "autonomous status" free from a lot of Central Office meddling.

But that left the Barryites out in the cold, once getting in WOTP wasn't guaranteed.

I think you are right about what the Deputy Mayor's agenda is. I think her thinking is ridiculous-- if that's her goal-- more EOTP parents staying in regular DCPS-- then she should engage in economic gerrymandering on a massive scale and recreate a feeder grouping of already decent ES. But that would be "classist" so she won't do it.

But hers is not the only agenda. Drive out the upper middle income or highly educated parents and then there will be room WOTP for the old guard's kids once again.

^^NP at 13:42 btw

Anonymous wrote:13:09 again . . . and the demographics are such that this proposed "algorithm" approach would result in schools of well over 30% FARMS each---simply because of DC's extremely high poverty rate.

In contrast to the San Francisco "controlled choice" model---which doesn't appear to work very well in SF---in DC we have seen---through Charter schools like KIPP and DC Prep---what approaches HAVE been successful with lower income kids. But DCPS doesn't seem interested in trying to replicate those models within its own framework.

But back to an earlier post I made---"controlled choice"---I don't think---is about actually helping low income kids. Instead, it is a policy decision with the desired result by entrenched interests to return DCPS to how it existed in the 70s, 80s and 90s. DCPS was still economically segregated in terms of schools---it was just that the parochial interests who pillaged DCPS would eschew their neighborhood public schools and send their kids OOB WOTP, since the high SES families living WOTP didn't avail themselves of the public schools.

Trying to follow your reasoning here but can't. Why would anyone want a return to the DCPS of the past? I know people who grew up here but all went to WOTP schools. Everything else was deplorable.

I think the current goal is to keep higher SES families who are EOTP in their neighborhood schools to raise quality there, but that objective is drowned out in all the noise from WOTP families who think either a) there will be city-wide lottery for MS and HS, or b) their kids will be forced to go to EOTP schools.

I don't understand all the biz about Barry's Old School.

Anonymous wrote:What ward 3 parents (and this ward 1 parent) object to is that there seems to be a policy juggernaut that has not been shown to increase educational outcomes for low SES kids, and apparently has resulted in driving out families of school age jurisdictions in areas where it has been tried. It seems that absent specialized, targeted wrap-around programs to benefit kids from high poverty areas--then once a school has a FARMs percentage of over 25 percent, then the result is poorer performance for kids of all SES backgrounds.

Yes, but this is catnip to Barry, Gray, and old-style DC pols. As is anything that is unwelcoming to the higher-SES residents who are moving into the city and enacting "the plan."

The cynic in me says that nothing final will be decided, much less be announced, until after the elections.

The cynic in me is also a DC realist, and is consistently right.

13:09 again . . . and the demographics are such that this proposed "algorithm" approach would result in schools of well over 30% FARMS each---simply because of DC's extremely high poverty rate.

In contrast to the San Francisco "controlled choice" model---which doesn't appear to work very well in SF---in DC we have seen---through Charter schools like KIPP and DC Prep---what approaches HAVE been successful with lower income kids. But DCPS doesn't seem interested in trying to replicate those models within its own framework.

But back to an earlier post I made---"controlled choice"---I don't think---is about actually helping low income kids. Instead, it is a policy decision with the desired result by entrenched interests to return DCPS to how it existed in the 70s, 80s and 90s. DCPS was still economically segregated in terms of schools---it was just that the parochial interests who pillaged DCPS would eschew their neighborhood public schools and send their kids OOB WOTP, since the high SES families living WOTP didn't avail themselves of the public schools.

What ward 3 parents (and this ward 1 parent) object to is that there seems to be a policy juggernaut that has not been shown to increase educational outcomes for low SES kids, and apparently has resulted in driving out families of school age jurisdictions in areas where it has been tried. It seems that absent specialized, targeted wrap-around programs to benefit kids from high poverty areas--then once a school has a FARMs percentage of over 25 percent, then the result is poorer performance for kids of all SES backgrounds.

Yes it is. I may be an advocate for educational parity but my child comes first. (also my property values)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+1. "Controlled Choice" isn't a private school conspiracy----it is a calculated move by the DC old guard (think Barry, Gray and all of the cronyism that is associated with them) acting to protect the cash cow that DCPS has been for their friends and family government contracting. The people who make money when they can operate without the scrutiny of demanding, educated parents are desperate to get those meddling gentrifiers out of the DCPS system. What better way than to hoodwink misguided education lefty do-gooders into embracing "controlled choice" and asserting that socio-economic diversity should be a pre-eminent educational goal unto itself---knowing full well that the result of "controlled choice" will be abandonment of DCPS by the parents they would like to get rid of anyway.

I'm not sure you're correct about "lefty do-gooders" as at the end of the day, they are all for social experiments as long as it only affects other people's children.

The DC old guard does need to go. The corruption is an embarrassment for the entire city. If this gets through we're returning full circle to the Barry years, where once again the middle class is not welcome in DC. Hope you're planning to vote the anybody-but-Gray candidate(s).

I am not so fond of Barry and crew but frankly I don't think the Ward 3 knee jerk reaction that they might be exposed to poor kids east of the river is warranted either. It is hard to get Ward 3 day in and day out, I do it from Ward 5 every day and it is is not something most parents are even going to try. There are bigger issues at stake here and I think ward 3 parents if they even care a smidgen about the future of this city need to think beyond their immediate parochial interests. It is not just about them.

Anonymous wrote:+1. "Controlled Choice" isn't a private school conspiracy----it is a calculated move by the DC old guard (think Barry, Gray and all of the cronyism that is associated with them) acting to protect the cash cow that DCPS has been for their friends and family government contracting. The people who make money when they can operate without the scrutiny of demanding, educated parents are desperate to get those meddling gentrifiers out of the DCPS system. What better way than to hoodwink misguided education lefty do-gooders into embracing "controlled choice" and asserting that socio-economic diversity should be a pre-eminent educational goal unto itself---knowing full well that the result of "controlled choice" will be abandonment of DCPS by the parents they would like to get rid of anyway.

I'm not sure you're correct about "lefty do-gooders" as at the end of the day, they are all for social experiments as long as it only affects other people's children.

The DC old guard does need to go. The corruption is an embarrassment for the entire city. If this gets through we're returning full circle to the Barry years, where once again the middle class is not welcome in DC. Hope you're planning to vote the anybody-but-Gray candidate(s).

Randomizing...this freaking auto correct