Dream Schools and middle-class families

SFUSD has some schools designated Dream Schools, a program implemented by ex-Superintendent Arlene Ackerman aimed at giving a boost to low-income students of color — those most likely to fail in school. They've been controversial for reasons that are irrelevant to this post, so I won't go into that aspect.

This isn't the official descriptor, but it's clear that the Dream Schools were intended to emulate aspects of the KIPP chain of schools, which are hailed for their success with low-income children. (In this case, my criticisms of the KIPP schools — mainly that they aggressively self-select for the most motivated, high-functioning, compliant students — are also irrelevant.)

Both the KIPP schools and the Dream Schools offer longer school days and school on some Saturdays, and a longer school year. The extra time, obviously, is intended to give more intensive instruction to kids who are likely to need it the most. It also gives children extra time in protective seclusion from the "Code of the Street" (as an illuminating book by the same name terms the dangerous complex of pathologies of the inner city).

The Dream Schools offer enrichments that the KIPP schools don't: extra music and arts; resources such as foreign language and golf lessons. Based on test scores and reputation, they are nowhere near as successful academically as most KIPP schools, and the outside world knows little about them. A Dream School teacher told me bitterly that they can't be successful because they aren't allowed to readily expel problem kids (as the KIPP schools evidently do).

But anyway: in this year's chaotic SFUSD assignment process, a number of non-low-income white families who didn't get any of their requested schools have been assigned to Paul Revere, a Dream School in hip, fast-gentrifying Bernal Heights. It's attractive to those families because of its location, its Spanish immersion program and its K-8 setup, so it sounds like a lot of them will be checking it out.

But on The SF K Files blog, where I'm learning all this, parents are starting to wonder about Paul Revere's extra-long hours. This is not a feature that middle-class families tend to want for their (our) kids.

It's intriguing, because when the KIPP schools implement procedures — such as their discipline policy, ostracizing miscreants from the community — that no middle-class family would tolerate, KIPP supporters avoid discussing it. Since no middle-class white families are ever likely to apply at KIPP schools — not counting my undercover effort to enroll my daughter for purely investigative purposes — there's not likely to be a direct clash over it.

I don't know what Dream Schools' discipline policies are, but it looks like we may be about to see a situation where a policy aimed at benefiting low-income children of color clashes with the values of non-low-income whites. Actually, that has been happening with dress codes and uniforms for some time. When Aptos Middle School experimented one year with banning red and blue due to their popularity with street gangs, it struck the increasing Aptos population of whites and Asians as ridiculous. (Since the ban was lifted, no one has yet mistaken my blonde daughter for a Sureno.)

We may have to start asking tough questions about whether privileged children and kids from the underclass should be treated differently — not to mention the notion of post-integration segregation.