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Last week DC Mayor Vincent Gray accepted the new school boundaries and feeder patterns proposed by the advisory committee that has been working on the issue for the past 10 months. While some residents have legitimate concerns about the change, it may not prove as bad as they fear.

Even after the committee backed away from the more radical proposals it floated in April, the plan still managed to disgruntle many residents who found themselves rezoned to less desirable schools. The charter community is ticked off as well, angered by the committee’s recommendation that charter schools with more affluent student bodies reserve 25% of their seats for “at-risk” students.

But Gray, immunized from popular disapproval by his lame-duck status, has taken a statesmanlike position. As he said in his letter to the committee, “there will never be a good time to make changes to our assignment policies.” Unless, perhaps, you’re about to leave office.

The conventional wisdom, of course, is that the next mayor will undo the whole thing. While neither of the leading candidates has weighed in specifically on the proposal Gray has adopted, both have said they would prefer to delay the boundary overhaul.

But undoing the plan may take some doing. One senior government official told WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle that Gray’s adoption of the proposal will set into motion a process that will be difficult to reverse. The official cited the fact that the school lottery scheduled to begin in December would have to be started over again when a new mayor takes office in January.

And the Post’s Mike DeBonis has suggested that Gray has done his successor “a huge favor” by making a decision that is politically unpopular but necessary. It might be convenient for the next mayor to say that his or her hands are tied.

As DeBonis points out, the current system has led to overcrowding in some schools and underenrollment in others, while many students are assigned to multiple schools. And putting off the change until all DC’s schools are “high-quality,” as some have advocated, is likely to mean that changes in the assignment system would be held in abeyance for a decade if not longer.

At the same time, I can understand why parents may feel apprehensive, or even panicky, if their children have been reassigned, say, from Wilson High School to lower-performing Roosevelt, or from Eastern to lower-performing H.D. Woodson—or even from Wilson to Eastern.

Such reactions don’t mean they’re bigoted or racist. Parents want what’s best for their children. And no one wants her child to be the only one, or one of a handful, of any category in a school.

No doubt some parents will depart the system for charter schools or other school systems in the region. But I hope they’ll consider the following factors before making that decision—and that DCPS will do whatever it can to ensure that they do:

Nothing is happening right away. While the proposals are set to take effect a year from now, no student who is currently attending her neighborhood school will have to switch. And students in 3rd grade or above will be able to stay in the same feeder pattern—as can younger ones with older siblings in the pattern. So there’s time for middle and high schools, the sources of the most concern, to improve.

Your new school may be better than you think. It might be worth a visit, and DC Public Schools should make it easy for parents to tour a prospective school and sit in on classes. The quality of a school isn’t necessarily reflected in its test scores. I’ve seen some impressive teachers and motivated students in relatively “low-performing” DCPS schools.

You may be able to band together with other parents in the same situation. In some neighborhoods, like Capitol Hill, parents have pledged to send their children to the local public school and sometimes worked together to improve a school even before their kids enroll. DCPS and individual school administrators should do whatever they can to encourage such commitments and work with prospective parents.

Your child may be challenged academically even in a generally low-performing school. No parent wants his child to be held back by classmates who require a slower pace. But AP classes are currently offered in all neighborhood high schools, and Eastern has just begun offering the rigorous International Baccalaureate Diploma program.

Indeed, one of the advisory committee’s recommendations is that all neighborhood high schools should “ensure that specialized and selective programs are developed and supported.” But that won’t be enough to ensure that more advanced students are challenged. Schools will also need to limit those selective programs to students who can actually handle advanced work.

Right now AP classes in DCPS high schools are open to all, and DCPS requires students to earn at least two credits in an AP or IB course in order to graduate. (Students can also fulfill that requirement with a Career and Technical Education course, but many don’t.)

While some argue that lower-achieving students benefit from taking AP or other advanced classes even if they don’t perform well in them, they would probably benefit just as much if not more from a truly rigorous class pitched at a level they’re equipped to handle. And they’ll almost certainly hold back the students in an advanced class who are better prepared.

Some may object to this kind of sorting by ability as “tracking,” and perhaps it is. But if the alternative is socioeconomic segregation on a school-by-school basis, tracking doesn’t seem so bad. And it may be the only way to keep higher-achieving students in the system.

While middle schools generally don’t engage in as much tracking as high schools, technology is making it possible for learning to become more individualized there, enabling each student to move at her own pace. The same is true at the elementary level.

No doubt some parents will object that all of this is easy for me to say, since I don’t have a school-age child who has been reassigned. They certainly have a point. I can only say: I hope that if I did, I would be willing to take my own advice.

Natalie Wexler is a DC education journalist and blogger. She chairs the board of The Writing Revolution and serves on the Urban Teachers DC Regional Leadership Council, and she has been a volunteer reading and writing tutor in high-poverty DC Public Schools.