Thanks to all who attended last night's public release of the Quality Schools and Healthy Neighborhoods report. We had representation from a broad range of communities - teachers, education researchers and advocates, housing researchers and advocates, DC government folks, and others. Several interesting questions were raised that I'd like to share here:
1. What is the "right" vision for the future of DC? Do we want to become a more family-friendly city? What would be the benefits or the downsides to policy that encouraged families with children to remain or move to the District?
2. Should charter schools be encouraged not to locate near high-performing schools, but instead in neighborhoods that currently lack high-performing schools? How could this be accomplished, given that charters often locate where space is available on the private market?
3. How can we expect families to stay in the city when many housing units (especially those that are affordable) are small? Maybe where births are rising, the city should concentrate more family-friendly (larger) housing units.
4. When we talk about families making school and housing choices, how many of these choices are by force, because of economic circumstances? How can everybody benefit from the District's prosperity, and who is making the decisions about who is "we"?
5. What can the studies showing links between better schools, better neighborhoods, and lower crime tell us about efforts for greater policy coordination? Are there examples in other cities where this work is being successfully done?
I will post the panelists' remarks separately.
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4 comments:
As a staff to Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells, I wonder why Ludlow Taylor ES, Tyler ES, JO Wilson ES and KIPP CS were not included in the high performing, high demand schools listed for Ward 6.
Ward 6 schools are improving, particulary in the SY 2007-2008, so, of course, we are cheerleaders.
I want to share some info that I think is essential for this conversation about schools and neighborhoods. This is from a post I made earlier this year on eduwonk.com:
"In digging back through the Master Education Plan for DCPS from a couple years ago, I found some very interesting statistics set off in a sidebar:
• 23% of all DCPS high school students attend citywide schools that use an admissions process;
• In the comprehensive, attendance-area high schools, 40% of students attend out-of-boundary schools;
• 55% of middle school students attend out-of-boundary schools;
• Only 50.5% of DCPS elementary school students attend the schools to which they are assigned.
Approximately 30% of D.C. students attend public charter schools and close to 17% of D.C. students attend private schools, leaving approximately half of city students attending DCPS schools. Given the statistics above, over 70% of families in the District of Columbia are choosing a school other than their assigned neighborhood public school.
We can extrapolate many causes and results from these figures, but it says to me that our “neighborhood schools” in D.C. have already disappeared, most school choice doesn’t even involve charter schools, and that the problem with District schools is not uninvolved parents."
Bonnie -
The data presented in the Quality Schools report use information from the 06-07 school year, which may explain some of the discrepancies you have pointed out. We hope to be able to update using 07-08 data shortly, and in the meantime certainly welcome updated information from folks on the ground.
It will be interesting to examine the trends in the data and try to understand what is driving some of the positive gains. For example, is the increased demand you are seeing in Ward 6 elementary schools caused by higher enrollment at the younger grades, or is it driven by more children staying in the public schools at the middle grades, a time when enrollment has traditionally dropped? How can the local schools take advantage of population and housing trends to grow their enrollment? Is there sufficient space to meet increased demand? On the results side, are there leadership changes that can be linked to gains in student achievement? What about expansion in program offerings, or building improvements? Are schools with strong community support seeing greater demand, and/or higher results?
Michael,
Based on your comment above (10/8) are there actually any families who would benefit from an out-of-boundary enrollment preference if that student lived closer to an out-of-boundary school than to their assigned school? As recommended in the Quality School Policy Report:
http://www.21csf.org/csf-home/publications/QualitySchoolsResearchReport/Quality%20Schools%20Policy%20Report%209-18-08.pdf
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