I read this article by Brigid Schulte in today's Washington Post, about an elementary school in Alexandria, VA (a close-in suburb of Washington, D.C.), with particular interest since it is the school my son will attend.  Schulte, who is white and middle class, writes about struggling to decide whether to send her child to the neighborhood elementary school, where:

 . . . the student body is 55 percent Hispanic, 22 percent black and 19 percent white. More than 60 percent of the children are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. More than 40 percent speak a language other than English at home. And the test scores, while passable, aren't among the school district's best.

Parents at the local playground tell her that white people in Alexandria send their children private schools.  After attending a school open house, though, she and her husband are duly impressed with the school and enroll their child in kindergarten.  Their son, who is now in third grade, has thrived, both academically and socially, and he and his sister, who just started kindergarten write Schulte, "have made friends across racial, ethnic and class lines with an ease that I never experienced as a child."

Schulte paints an honest picture of how white, middle class parents approach the public schools in Alexandria--either with some measure of trepidation or by just totally dismissing them out of hand.  Many of these parents move to Arlington or Fairfax County (two other close-in DC subrurbs) because the test scores are better and, while ethnically diverse, they are not diverse as far as class goes. 

If I feel like getting into it with a parent at a dinner party or a brunch (and oftentimes I don't--I consider myself "off-duty" in defending teacher unions and the public schools at social gatherings--I will point out that Alexandria is more economically mixed than Arlington or Fairfax.  Old Town Alexandria--a beautiful, historic part of the city--includes large tracts of public housing, something that cannot be said of these other communities, and that this might have something to do with the fact that test scores are lower in the district.  Sorry, poverty matters.

A story similar to the one about this school ran a few months back about another elementary school in a different neighborhood in Alexandria that is working hard to improve and, let's just be honest here, attract white, middle class parents. It seems to be working.  Not all white, middle class parents think their only option is to move or send their kids to private schools.

A couple of things that Schulte leaves out about this section of Alexandria, known as Del Ray, are worth pointing out.  First, the elementary school she describes also has a dual immersion Spanish/English program that is very popular with white parents and has helped attract them to the school.  Second, Del Ray as a neighborhood has changed considerably in the last five to ten years.  We have watched our own little section of the neighborhood change--we had several families on our street who were getting Section 8 vouchers who have since moved out as the owners raised rents or decided to sell.  The neighbors to our immediate right sold drugs out of his home (interesting dynamic when the neighbor to our left was a DC cop)--they are now gone too.  More people like us who are, yes, white and middle class, have replaced them.  And, Del Ray has gotten much pricier, with most single family homes going for $650,000 to $750,000.  It's still cheaper to buy in Alexandria than in Arlington or Fairfax, but the days may be soon approaching where all of these communities, and their schools, will be more similar than they are today.

p.s. No, I am not watching the Super Bowl.