School Choice and Segregation in DC

By Isabel Corvington

(Students learning, Reading Rocks)

SILVER SPRING, Md.-- For DC residents, sending their child to school is a complicated

task. Families are not required to attend their neighborhood school, and

many students travel across DC’s eight wards just to receive their

education.

This is due to DC’s school choice system, the common lottery.

Comparable to only a few other city’s systems around the country and

designed by the organization My School DC the lottery has

revolutionized school choice. Students rank their top 12 choices out of

the 220 public and charter schools participating in the lottery, and Commented [1]: the map should read, (Map of DC,
DC Planning Office)
then they are placed in a school.

Prior to the common lottery, students could attend their DC in-boundary neighborhood

school, or apply to individual school lotteries. Getting one’s child into a more desirable school

required a lot of time, work and resources many families don’t have.
 This system excluded less affluent families, and made it difficult for them to have access

to the same systems as Whiter, wealthier families.

Cat Peretti, the executive director of My School DC, says, “as the number of options

rose, so did the burden on parents to navigate all of those things; with complicated systems it

starts to favor those with time and resources to manage all of those disparate processes.”

My School DC and the common lottery were created to bring equity and accessibility

into the school choice process. Not only does My School DC feature the common lottery, but it

also is a one-stop place to learn about different schools and enroll in school.

Through My School DC, the lottery has become more accessible to non-english speakers,

and less affluent families. The website is offered in five languages in addition to english. It also

provides outreach to communities needing more assistance with the choice process. Peretti says,

“we target families that might not have internet access, that might be language minorities, might

be low income, might be juggling a bunch of different demands on their time and we try to go to

them.”

Even though DC has come a long way to bring equity into the school choice system, a

problem still remains: DC schools are heavily segregated. According to the DC Policy Center,

102 out of 220 schools in DC were 90 percent Black in the 2018-2019 school year. Out of those

102 schools, 70 are in Wards Seven and Eight (DC Policy Center). Ward Seven is 92 percent

Black and Ward Eight is 94 percent Black (Suburban Stats).

On the other hand, Wards Two and Three, some of the most affluent Wards in DC, only

make up 8 percent of school enrollment (WAMU). 71 percent of Ward Two’s population and 83

percent of Ward 3’s population are white (Suburban Stats). This is a result of the majority of
wealthier, White students opting for private school, perpetuating the segregation of the public

and charter schools in DC.

Additionally, travel is a prominent factor when

deciding where a student goes to school as DC does not

provide school buses except to students with special

needs. Therefore, students must rely on public

transportation or someone driving them which isn’t an

option for many students.

It is difficult for students living in Ward Eight to Commented [2]: caption: ( Share of students living
and attending school in the same ward, DC Policy
Center)
go all the way across the city to attend school in a

different ward; therefore, 79 percent of students in

Ward Eight attend school in the same Ward that they live in, while only 18 percent of students

living in Ward Two also attend school in said Ward. This keeps students of color in Wards that

are a majority people of color, continuing segregation. As much as the common lottery has

improved where students can go to school, segregation persists in the DC school system.

DC’s unique school choice system has reintroduced equity into the school choice process;

increasing accessibility for more families. However, DC still has a long way to go to make the

school choice system work for all students.

Works Cited
Austermuhle, Martin. "What You Need To Know About The D.C. School Lottery."

WAMU, 28 Mar. 2019, wamu.org/story/19/03/28/

after-five-years-is-d-c-s-school-lottery-working-for-families/. Accessed 15

Jan. 2020.

DC Planning Office. Wards of the District of Columbia. DC.gov Office of

Planning, planning.dc.gov/page/neighborhood-planning-01. Accessed 16

Jan. 2020.

DC Policy Center. "2018-19 State of DC Schools." DC Policy Center, 16 Jan. 2020,

mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/

FMfcgxwGCkkDhZKqWWsgZdQTcBgNXBSJ?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1. Accessed

16 Jan. 2020.

Gallagher, Meghan, and Chelsea Coffin. "New D.C. education data show how school

choice plays out across wards." DC Policy Center, Oct. 2019,

www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/new-education-data-urban/. Accessed 15

Jan. 2020.

Peretti, Catherine. Telephone interview. 8 Jan. 2020.

Reading Rockets. Supporting Students with Autism: 10 Ideas for Inclusive

Classrooms. Reading Rockets, www.readingrockets.org/article/

supporting-students-autism-10-ideas-inclusive-classrooms. Accessed 15 Jan.

2020.

Washington DC Population Demographics. 2019, suburbanstats.org/population/

washington-dc/how-many-people-live-in-ward-3.