Tasty Morning Bytes – Questionable DCPS Gains, Barry’s Gentrified Old Block and Reverse Migrations
Good morning, DCentric readers! Happy Monday.
USA Today Investigates DC Test Scores Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus was a 2009 National Blue Ribbon School. Former schools chancellor Michelle Rhee used the campus as proof that her methods were effective. But an investigation by USA Today uncovered some disturbing information about the school: “for the past three school years most of Noyes’ classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones. Noyes is one of 103 public schools here that have had erasure rates that surpassed D.C. averages at least once since 2008. That’s more than half of D.C. schools.” (WUSA Washington, DC)
Marion Barry’s old block: a D.C. neighborhood’s racial evolution Gentrification and census news, as seen on the Mayor-for-life’s old street: “Joanna Willis, 64, an African American nurse who has lived on E Street for 34 years, said she recognizes the neighborhood’s improvements…But she feels something is missing. The woman she knew as Mrs. Pernell occupied the house to her right, and Mrs. Pernell’s sister, Cora, lived in the house a couple of doors over on the left. Both are gone, she said, and she’s not sure who replaced them. “At one time, the neighborhood was close-knit,” Willis said. “It’s not that way anymore.” (The Washington Post)
Census Shows Rise in Number of Multiracial Children A decade ago, the most common racial combination on the census was white and “some other race”; this option was utilized primarily by members of the Hispanic community. Now, the most common combination is black and white, which was chosen by 1.8 million Americans in 2010– a 134 percent increase since 2000. “I think this marks a truly profound shift in the way Americans, particularly African-Americans, think about race and about their heritage,” said C. Matthew Snipp, a professor in the sociology department at Stanford University.” (The New York Times)
Back to the future? Barry speech in ’95 might suggest path Gray takes In 1995, then-mayor Marion Barry faced scandals, investigations and the impending arrival of a Financial Control Board: “Gray doesn’t face a control board, but he does have to close a $320 million budget gap and try to find answers to 30 percent unemployment in the District’s poorest ward. (In 1995) Barry didn’t address his scandals. Instead, he took aim at the city’s budget woes.” (Washington Examiner )
Many U.S. Blacks Moving to South, Reversing Trend “And Atlanta, for the first time, has replaced Chicago as the metro area with the largest number of African-Americans after New York…At the same time, blacks have begun leaving cities for more affluent suburbs in large numbers, much like generations of whites before them.” (The New York Times)