Report a Comment

To answer David's question: there are DCPS schools I'd be comfortable sending my kids to, but they are not in neighborhoods I can afford to live in. But I should be clear here: although it seems that the DCPS central administration can be a bit heavy-handed and arbitrary (re-assigning principals and the like), I do not think the problem is DCPS itself. Rather, DCPS is stuck with an enormous number of at-risk students, and as an educated, middle-class parent, I am absolutely not going to send my kids to a school that is predominantly at-risk students.

I get uneasy with wording like "there aren't enough highly-performing charter schools to serve everyone." This is true, in a sense, but it comes very close to making the assumption that school quality is somehow independent of student demographics. High-performing schools perform highly precisely because they have a low fraction of at-risk students.

Has there actually been an example of a school composed predominantly of at-risk students that performs highly? Is the method of such success generalizable and sustainable? (Tricks like transferring out the low-performing students don't count. And there are lots of programs that are successful in their first year, owing to the enthusiasm and extra energy that a new idea brings, but which can't keep up with the success, as the willingness of everyone to put in effort above and beyond can't last forever: this is known as the Hawthorne Effect.)

Fortunately, there are charter schools (I send my older son to one, and will send the younger when he's old enough.) And even though the best ones--meaning, those that draw lots of middle-class students--are oversubscribed, new ones keep getting formed, often spurred on by middle-class parents in search of a good school. I believe this is how Two Rivers was founded.

The ideal school would have predominantly middle-class students with a smaller fraction of at-risk students. This arrangement is generally agreed to be the best for the at-risk students. (The opposite, a small fraction of middle-class students in a predominantly at-risk school, not to much.) DC at present doesn't have nearly enough middle-class students to make this arrangement work for everybody. It might if someday there are more middle-class families in DC, and if the population of at-risk students is divided more equally amongst the surrounding jurisdictions.

The charters are vitally important in a transition to this model, as they facilitate the accumulation of middle-class families and the general recognition of a neighborhood as middle-class acceptable. At some point, there will be a critical mass of middle-class students such that the local DCPS schools, should they all attend, will be considered good as well.

by thm on Jul 17, 2012 1:56 pm • link • report