Category: Observations

Back to School, for what?

If you look at data for Black children’s literacy rates in America, it is just so depressing. The shut down of schools during Covid didn’t help.  There is lots of blame to go around. Parents, community, culture, education fads, and the kids themselves play a part.

So take your anti-depression meds and lets look at Shaw education as school gets back in session.

Back in the Winter of 2019-2020 I looked at all the Shaw schools I could get data on. To be fair, I’ll stick to the 2018-2019 PARCC data, because in 2020 everything went to Hell in a hand basket. Even if there is 2019-2020 data, it would be worse.

Black students PARCC Test Meets/Exceeds Below Adv & Failing
Dunbar ELA 2018-19 16.50% 83.50%
Dunbar Math 2018-19 0.50% 99.50%
Dunbar Males ELA 13.40% 86.60%
Dunbar Males Math 0.90% 99.10%
Cleveland E ELA 2018-19 20.30% 79.70%
Cleveland E Math 2018-19 20.30% 79.70%
Cleveland E Males ELA 10.80% 89.20%
Cleveland E Males Math 24.30% 75.70%
St. Augustine** ELA 2017-2018 49% 51%
St. Augustine** Math 2017-2018 51% 49%
Friendship PCS- Armstrong Elementary ELA 2018-19 9.20% 90.80%
Friendship PCS- Armstrong Elementary Math 2018-19 22.90% 77.10%
Friendship PCS- Armstrong Elementary Males ELA 7.30% 92.70%
Friendship PCS- Armstrong Elementary Males Math 18.20% 81.80%
Center City PCS – Shaw ELA 2018-19 26.50% 73.50%
Center City PCS – Shaw Math 2018-19 28.90% 71.10%
Center City PCS – Shaw Males ELA 13.60% 86.40%
Center City PCS – Shaw Males Math 31.80% 68.20%
KIPP- LEAD (1-4) ELA 2018-19 39.70% 60.30%
KIPP- LEAD (1-4) Math 2018-19 68.60% 31.40%
KIPP- LEAD (1-4) Males ELA 30.00% 70.00%
KIPP- LEAD (1-4) Males Math 62.20% 37.80%
KIPP- WILL (5-8) ELA 2018-19 36.40% 63.60%
KIPP- WILL (5-8) Math 2018-19 32.10% 67.90%
KIPP- WILL (5-8) Males ELA 29.30% 70.70%
KIPP- WILL (5-8) Males Math 28.70% 71.30%
Garrison ES ELA 2018-19 37.50% 62.50%
Garrison ES Math 2018-19 27.50% 72.50%
Garrison ES Males ELA 45.50% 54.50%
Garrison ES Males Math 36.40% 63.60%
Meridian ELA 2018-19 16.80% 83.20%
Meridian Math 2018-19 14.20% 85.80%
Meridian Males ELA 14.70% 85.30%
Meridian Males Math 14.70% 85.30%
Mundo Verde ELA 2018-19 22.00% 78.00%
Mundo Verde Math 2018-19 22.00% 78.00%
Mundo Verde Males ELA 20.00% 80.00%
Mundo Verde Males Math 25.00% 75.00%
Seaton ES ELA 2018-19 35.00% 65.00%
Seaton ES Math 2018-19 37.50% 62.50%
Seaton ES Males ELA 31.60% 68.40%
Seaton ES Males Math 26.30% 73.70%

**St. Augustine is a predominately African American school and does not break down data by race.

I am left asking myself what percentage of Black students who are below reading level or does not meet expectations in math acceptable? It sure as heck isn’t 99% or 80% as it is at Dunbar.

Ads on InShaw

I’m trying something.

And I have no idea of what I’m doing.

I’ve been approved to add Google ads to the site. I’m trying to figure out how to not put them all over the place and be obnoxious. If you don’t see anything, good. If you see one or two ads, good. If they are all over the friggin place, not good, and tell me.

New Year, New Job, New Goals 2022

Last year I moved out of Truxton Circle after selling my home of 19 years to the wilds of PG County. Despite that I am still the world’s expert on Truxton Circle History and it is not a skill I will be giving up anytime soon.

Speaking of skills, doing the Black Home Owners of Truxton Circle series, has helped me get a new job. Nineteen seems to be a magic number, as I worked in the same Bureau of Fight Club (they are funny and don’t want me to talk about them) department for 19 years. This weekly, sometimes daily, habit of hunting down people, possibly long dead, and writing up a quick biography has developed a skill of a quickie genealogist. It was a skill I could point to in my job interview, semi paraphrasing Liam Neeson in Taken:

I do have a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. If you are obviously still alive, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will protect your privacy. But if I’m not sure, I will look for you, I will find you, and I make sure you are dead.

It’s easier to do the job if the persons in the document are dead.

However, the new work environment will be a bit more restrictive. I don’t know how much attention I can pay to this site. I do know that I will no longer have access to the primary records related to Shaw and Washington, DC history, as I did with the old job.

I hope that I can work on a few new projects. I have warned that I will look at Squares 552 and 615, the core Bates area of the TC, and because my past research has been used for historic preservation/landmark, I want present owners to make the changes they can now before any restrictions come. There is also a journal article I want to write, but I have to figure out what story the data I’ve cobbled together actually says.

I’m a little sad that my job move means I won’t be exploring the history of DC public housing. Once upon a time public housing didn’t suck, and wasn’t shorthand for crappy crime ridden living conditions. But now it is, what it is.

The new job does pay more…. so I could conceivably hire someone to do the leg work of scanning those records.

 

 

1640 4th St NW- Blocked from Google Street View

So here’s a little break from Black Home Owners.

I noticed on Google Streetview this property on my old block is blocked. It’s just a blur. But here is what you’re missing.


and

photo of property

Back when it was yellow.

It is probably blocked because the builders are throwing on a pop up and a bit of a pop back.

So when it is done. I wonder if it will be a fugly thing, of which there is a 50/50 chance. Or would it be an interesting addition.

The Darth Vader house, 1649 New Jersey Ave NW, is, interesting.

That little part that juts out at the front… that’s allowed now?

And yes, some of you are saying, ‘well that’s what you get for not being in an historic district.’ Remind me, Bloomingdale is a historic district and there are some monstrosities popping up and back on Quincy. And around the corner from Quincy on North Capitol, what’s all that going on? Also when the Wardman Flats (Sq. 519 4th, Florida Av, 3rd and R Sts) became historic the residents were not too thrilled about that.

Anyway,  we’ll see. Which reminds me, people of Bates St., you have a history, and I’m going to write about it once I’m done with the Black Home Owners of the 1920 census. Do your pop ups, pop backs, and vinyl window replacing now before I provide the world with enough evidence for a historic anything application.

Mulatto vs Black in the 1920 Census

As you may know I am working with the 1920 census looking at and for Black home owners in Truxton Circle. I have noticed in the 1920 census African Americans are not called African Americans, that is a more ‘recent’ term. In 1920, we were described as either Black or Mulatto.

I have seen in the census where some members of the family are described as Black and others as mulatto. This confused me, but I tended to dismiss it because those descriptions went away in the 1930 census and I clumped Black and mulatto into one group for my research.

So one day I asked an expert if there were any studies about what made someone mulatto vs Black. As an undergrad I studied the country that is modern day Haiti and the term mulatto has a definition as well as other like terms (quadroon) recognized in law and culture. Outside of Louisiana, it is meaningless in the US if not offensive to those who take offense.

The expert pointed me to the Instructions to Enumerators.My mind was blown because I was under the impression that people were self identifying as mulatto or Black for the census. I was wrong, it was the enumerator who determined if someone was Black or mulatto. It was the enumerator’s subjective opinion that Morgan H. Dawkins was Black but his wife was mulatto.

Above I have an image of a snippet from the enumerator’s instruction book. It reads:

121. For census purposes the term “black” (B) includes all Negroes  of full blood, while the term mulatto (Mu) includes all Negroes having some proportion of white blood.

I believe the African American is a unique person who is of America. Made in America with a percentage of non-African heritage reflecting the diversity of America. With a little bit of Native American here, a little bit of European there, and a whole lot of West African everywhere. So most everyone would be mulatto. I know what they meant….

This makes me wonder if I should take a closer look at census enumerators. Then I remember I have the rest of 1920 to do and then 1930.

Lessons Learned from Black Home Owners of Truxton Circle- Don’t leave property to a bunch of people

Okay, I have a pet peeve and I want to get it off my chest. So I have been documenting the property transactions of African American home owners from the 1920 census who lived in this Washington, DC neighborhood of Truxton Circle. Do I understand the records I’m looking at? Not 100% but I can tell there is some problem when the home owner I am tracking leaves their home to more than one person.

I have a sense of what the owner might have been thinking if they left a will. Maybe they wanted to treat all their children equally. Maybe they wanted to leave something to all the people in their lives who meant something and the only thing of great value they had was their home. That’s sweet. But the problem is all their adult children don’t want to live together in the same house they grew up in.

What I see in the land records are papers where all the heirs have to sign off to let one family member have the property. Or all the heirs, and their spouses, sell the property.

Now let me dig and find something useful from my graduate education. I learned why pre-industrial and industrial England was more prosperous than France and it was because of primogeniture. Primogeniture was when the first born (usually male heir) get the main land, properties, and business interest of the deceased. Second plus sons and daughters were lucky to get an allowance, small plots of land or what have you, but not the main prize. This meant the farm was not broken up. Whereas in France, they broke up the farms and the lands into smaller portions, which meant they were less productive.

So back to Truxton Circle. One could theoretically divide a house if it were a two unit structure. So far I have not seen that.

What I have seen with other property owners of Truxton Circle, are requests to allow wives/widows to remain in the home until their death while the named heir holds the title.

In conclusion, the inheriting parties sell the property or transfer it to one of the heirs, who later sells the property.  So one may as well direct the sale of the property and have the proceeds divvied up equally by the heirs and save everyone the headache.

Because of another TC related side project the generational wealth that TC property gives is not in the property itself. It may be more the idea of having property and being a homeowner. My parents are still alive so I’m not getting their old ramshackle house any time soon. But they provided an example of the idea of owning one’s own home.

Examples of several heirs- Black Home Owners of Truxton Circle: Annie Brown 69 N St NW

Black Home Owners of Truxton Circle: Wallace J. Broadas- 1607 New Jersey Ave NW

Black Home Owners of Truxton Circle: Malinda Powell- 71 N St NW

Old Drafts- Assuming class & income

This is a post that for some reason I did not publish. If I did it would have been published on 7/29/2008.

Taken June 14, 2019 at Archives-Navy Memorial

I’m writing this post to acknowledge that when I observe my neighbors and fellow citizens, talking about their wealth or lack thereof is at best a guessing game. I hesitate to talk about the ‘suspected’ homeless guys who hang out all year, near where I work, because I don’t know if they are homeless. They don’t have a shopping cart of stuff and they appear cleaner than some of the ragged tourists who march around. It’s just that they hang out in the same spot day after day, winter, spring. summer, and fall, during work hours and occasionally one guy will whip out a cup with some change and shake it. There are all sorts of signs that strongly signal that they are homeless, but to my knowledge few to none have self identified themselves as such. So when I question and analyze my presumptions, I’ll say I’m about 80% sure. Because honestly, taking in their ages 1/2 of them, and they are doing what my retired uncle is doing, sitting around and staying out of Aunt M.’s way. They could be the same.
There are things about our neighbors that point in this, that and the other direction as to which is their economic class. Because we are not privy to that which, frankly is none of our business, our guesses about whether someone is a member of the underclass, the overwhelmed middle class, or wealthy is just that, a guess. Unless they tell us.
I guess this comes from some people watching I was doing.

Old Draft–Problem houses

I’m looking at my drafts folder and wondering why I didn’t publish this. This was supposed to be published on 1/28/2009. The link I had no longer works, so I removed it.

Here’s the dilemma. On one hand you don’t want to seem unfair and blame all of your neighborhood woes on one person, or one family or household. On the other hand, when the city drives up in the form or police, fire/EMT, or an array of social services with sharp teeth and you instantly and correctly know where they’re going, you’ve got a problem house.
I thought of that when reading Blagden Alley’s post on 1258 10th St, regarding an address with a history of problems. I also thought, as the problem houses become fewer, we may do, as people do when something unpleasant goes to the past from the immediate present. We romanticize the past and the people. We get more sympathetic towards the residents and overlook the transgressions, such as the crack dealing. Mainly because it is tucked safely well into the past, unable to terrorize, threaten or destroy our tomorrows.

Shaw Schools- A sort of review PARCC scores

The 2019-2020 academic year was…… so it’s kind of pointless to look back at that year. Which leaves me with the 2018-2019, the last normal year. Besides, the PARCC scores posted by OSSE end with the 2018-2019. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that kids’ grasp of math and English language arts did not improve with distance learning.

Let’s get this over with:

From Shaw School Review: Dunbar High School:PARCC by Race

PARCC Scores 2018-19, % meeting & exceeding expectations
Black White Hispanic Asian
ELA 2018-19 16.5% N/A n<10 N/A
Math 2018-19 .5% N/A n<10 n<10
Males ELA 13.4% N/A n<10 N/A
Males Math .9% N/A n<10 n<10

Continue reading Shaw Schools- A sort of review PARCC scores

George Basiliko Odd Notes

I’m going to admit this is a super dull post. Feel free to skip it.

So I looked for information about this man including obituaries. Obits are very informative. They tell you about connections you might not have been aware of.

From Legacy.com

On Friday, April 27, 2007, of Washington, DC, preceded in death by his loving wife Sophia; loving daughter, Katherine and his long time companion, Helen Verstandig and his brothers, Nick, Gus, Harry, Gregory and John. Survivors include his son, William and William’s partner, Marcus and his nephew and right hand man, John Swagart. Surviving siblings include, Marche, Oscar, Eftehia, Achilles and his loving brother and best friend Arthur. Also surviving are loving friends, John Verstandig and Joan Lipnick. He leaves many nieces, nephews, and life long friends.

vs

Findagrave.com

Preceded in death by wife, Sophia Basiliko, in 1989, daughter, Katherine; his companion, Helen Verstandig; brothers, Nick, Gus, Harry, & John. Surviving are his son, William; nephew, John Swagart; siblings, Marche, Oscar, Eftehia, Aschilles, & Arthur. Interment followed funeral services conducted at the St. Constantine & Helen Greek Orthodox Church, Washington, D.C., Tuesday, May 1, 2007.

Both inform us of Helen Verstandig, his late partner/companion, a relationship that does not usually make itself known in the usual genealogical resources. Legacy informs us that his son had a partner named Marcus, who is left off the FindaGrave site. Legacy said his brother Arthur was his best friend.  Legacy included non-family, friends John Vertandig (relative of Helen?) and Joan Lipnick. There was another paragraph about the funeral and the church with Legacy, which FindaGrave has in one single paragraph.

I want to point out John Swagart, who is the nephew, of so many nieces and nephews, who is singled out by both Legacy and FindaGrave. His name has shown up in the odd newspaper article or two with his uncle George Basiliko, so they have done business together.