Response to Recent Neighborhood Preference Article

By Scott Pearson

In his April 14 article in The Examiner Mark Lerner stated that I was “open to the suggestion” of a neighborhood preference, and that the “genie is now out of the bottle” on such a preference and to “Get ready for school choice to take a major blow in D.C.”

In reality, my comments do not reflect a dramatic change in our approach to such preferences, but rather a continued willingness to explore all opportunities to expand access to high quality schools for the students that need it the most. My exact statement was:

“We studied this at the Council’s request in 2012, a committee was put together, broadly represented included people from the Council, from DCPS from the Mayor’s office, and the overwhelming conclusion was that there were thousands of students from Ward 8 who were traveling west to attend charter schools in other wards, and that if implemented improperly a neighborhood preference would essentially freeze those students out and could lock-in traditional neighborhood based patterns of segregation and hurt the most educationally disadvantaged students in the city.  So that task force a couple years ago recommended that we have only very limited cases with the neighborhood preference”

“Now we have a new mayor, we have many new members of the City Council, if there is a desire to relook at that [neighborhood preference], we’re certainly open to doing so”

“I hear from parents and many charter schools that they love a neighborhood preference, but I want to make sure as we do [consider this], that we keep in mind the least advantaged children in the city and make sure that this isn’t hurting them.”

The full audio recording can be found here.

A national leader in education policy and charter school oversight, Scott Pearson is the Executive Director of the Public Charter School Board. Since joining PCSB in 2012, Mr. Pearson has implemented significant reforms in how the Board approves and oversees charter schools, making it a national model for charter school authorizing.

PCSB's Scott Pearson responds to a recently published article.