I Just Couldn't Sacrifice My Son

Instead of giving letter grades, the school evaluated children as having been "presented," "practicing" or having "mastered" material. My son's first report card said he'd been "presented" the short "e" sound. That seemed strange for a child already reading at a fifth- or sixth-grade level. The teacher agreed that it wasn't an accurate assessment of his abilities. But she said she'd had so many reports to do, it had been easier to assess every student as "presented" in all areas.

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Then there was something that's uncomfortable to write about because it shows how diversity can be messier than most of us want to acknowledge. Half the children at the school were Hispanic, as were most of the teachers and staff members. In four years, four black teachers came and went, none staying more than a year or so. Administrators agreed that they needed to do a better job of hiring and keeping black teachers but said they couldn't find anybody qualified.

They should have tried harder. Those teachers might have been able to address issues that alarmed me and other parents of black and biracial children.

One mother in my son's class said her children came home crying because Latino children teased them about their skin color and their hair. Parents of black boys thought that their sons were disciplined when Latino children were not. Volunteering in my son's classroom, I watched a teacher's aide line up the students to go outside. She called them one by one, summoning the three black children last and grouping them together.

Was it deliberate, or did she just not see how it might appear, given the other problems in the class? I don't know. My e-mail to the principal expressing concern went unanswered.

Any one of these academic and social issues would have been problematic; together, they were reasons to start looking elsewhere. So in early September -- after putting our house on the market at the start of the mortgage loan crunch, after closing on one house in the morning and the other in the afternoon and then moving the next day -- our son started at his new school in Vienna. Fairfax County schools have consistently been rated excellent, and I was encouraged by the simple things that parents here take for granted, but that too often turn out to be impossible in Washington.

When I e-mailed a Fairfax principal one evening in May, I didn't expect a response before the morning. Ten minutes later, he replied with an invitation to visit his school. I said that I wanted to talk to a teacher or two. One called the next day. I couldn't return her call immediately. A day later, she left a message asking me to phone her at home that weekend.

When I called my high school friend to tell him that I was writing this, he was surprised to hear that we'd moved. "I'd always sort of admired you," he said, "for your commitment to the city." I felt as guilty as I'd probably made him feel years ago.

And yet, I'm surprised by how little I miss Washington. I put up with a host of irritants for years -- drug raids on nearby houses, teenagers smoking pot on the steps of the local library, clerks at the Department of Motor Vehicles who acted as though I were working for them-- accepting it all as part of life in a great city.

In the end, though, I couldn't sacrifice my son to an education system that seems at best inefficient and at worst willfully corrupt. As much as I admire Mayor Fenty, I can't help noting that his children go to a private school.

And if he doesn't send his kids to D.C. schools, why should I?

dnicholson6@excite.com

David Nicholson is a former assistant editor

of The Post's Book World.