How bad is Miner Elementary?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most honest review I ever had of Miner was a little 3rd grader I met at the rec ctr. I asked her how she liked it and she said "It's a damn shame how disrespectful most them kids are. One teacher cannot control her class in anyway, I hear her - I'm in the class next door."

hmm.

Wopw - that is an awfully coherent and well-thought out review from a 3rd grader. I'm impressed!

This is what's called an "anecdote". As a prospective parent, what you need to find out is whether this is the norm or an aberration, which I believe it is. And you'll want to know how the school handles and supports teachers in these kinds of common challenges (often new, inexperienced) teachers face. (My kids go to a high performing school in CH and can tell you numerous such anecdotes, often involving subs; kids of all ages, including mine, can be ruthless.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The most honest review I ever had of Miner was a little 3rd grader I met at the rec ctr. I asked her how she liked it and she said "It's a damn shame how disrespectful most them kids are. One teacher cannot control her class in anyway, I hear her - I'm in the class next door."

hmm.

Wopw - that is an awfully coherent and well-thought out review from a 3rd grader. I'm impressed!

This is what's called an "anecdote". As a prospective parent, what you need to find out is whether this is the norm or an aberration, which I believe it is. And you'll want to know how the school handles and supports teachers in these kinds of common challenges (often new, inexperienced) teachers face. (My kids go to a high performing school in CH and can tell you numerous such anecdotes, often involving subs; kids of all ages, including mine, can be ruthless.)

careful suggesting anecdote not equal to evidence. you'll make someone's head explode.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Diversity is key...if there's no white kids in the school then it is doomed. How come DCPS headquarters hasn't figured that out yet? We need an all out blitz to recruit white kids to DCPS....I am open up for ideas

Are you serious? PLEASE go away.

I wish there were way to discuss the Hill schools without these kinds of racially clueless/hostile comments.

I live on the Hill and would totally consider Miner, Tyler, or Payne for Pre-K 3 or 4 if they were convenient and I was confident in the aftercare. (For me, aftercare is actually the sticking point with these schools.) With small classes and high ratios, the fact is that most pre-K classes are going to be good places as long as they have good teachers. There just isn't a need for "differentiation" for THREE YEAR OLDS - three year olds all pretty much have the same needs. If anything, the less advantaged 3 year olds might benefit from more exposure to books & pre-literacy activities, which would benefit all the kids.

I'll bite - this is true, about 3 year olds, but I'm not sure you should justify your "free daycare" if you wouldn't deign to attend the school after PK. So while you're parting yourself on the back for being racially sensitive, what you're really doing is advocating a scene that will pop up all over the city soon - a repeat of Ludlow-Taylor the last 5 years, where all the little kids are white and the rest of the school is black. How does this help - since you're so clued-in?

If Miner's upper-grades black kids started outperforming all those IB white kids at Brent and Maury on tests, as they did last year at Ludlow-Taylor, I'd be OK with that.

have you looked at the PARCC results? nothing to brag about for LT. makes the DC CAS results look like a mirage

The "mirage" possibility is interesting (and probably not resolved with a single PARCC year), but so is the question of whether the perception that was based on the DC CAS results added more momentum to a school that was already improving and is located in a advantageous spot. Can't yet rule out the possibility that DC CAS was a "mirage" but if the decisions made by families based on the perception were real and contributed to getting over the hurdle to a critical mass of higher SES usage, then it may not matter. Not everyone is going to land in Brent or Maury and, after visiting LT, some families may rank it higher in the next tier based on involvement of families that chose LT based on (possibly flawed) DC CAS results. Ironic, no?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Diversity is key...if there's no white kids in the school then it is doomed. How come DCPS headquarters hasn't figured that out yet? We need an all out blitz to recruit white kids to DCPS....I am open up for ideas

Are you serious? PLEASE go away.

I wish there were way to discuss the Hill schools without these kinds of racially clueless/hostile comments.

I live on the Hill and would totally consider Miner, Tyler, or Payne for Pre-K 3 or 4 if they were convenient and I was confident in the aftercare. (For me, aftercare is actually the sticking point with these schools.) With small classes and high ratios, the fact is that most pre-K classes are going to be good places as long as they have good teachers. There just isn't a need for "differentiation" for THREE YEAR OLDS - three year olds all pretty much have the same needs. If anything, the less advantaged 3 year olds might benefit from more exposure to books & pre-literacy activities, which would benefit all the kids.

I'll bite - this is true, about 3 year olds, but I'm not sure you should justify your "free daycare" if you wouldn't deign to attend the school after PK. So while you're parting yourself on the back for being racially sensitive, what you're really doing is advocating a scene that will pop up all over the city soon - a repeat of Ludlow-Taylor the last 5 years, where all the little kids are white and the rest of the school is black. How does this help - since you're so clued-in?

If Miner's upper-grades black kids started outperforming all those IB white kids at Brent and Maury on tests, as they did last year at Ludlow-Taylor, I'd be OK with that.

have you looked at the PARCC results? nothing to brag about for LT. makes the DC CAS results look like a mirage

The "mirage" possibility is interesting (and probably not resolved with a single PARCC year), but so is the question of whether the perception that was based on the DC CAS results added more momentum to a school that was already improving and is located in a advantageous spot. Can't yet rule out the possibility that DC CAS was a "mirage" but if the decisions made by families based on the perception were real and contributed to getting over the hurdle to a critical mass of higher SES usage, then it may not matter. Not everyone is going to land in Brent or Maury and, after visiting LT, some families may rank it higher in the next tier based on involvement of families that chose LT based on (possibly flawed) DC CAS results. Ironic, no?

5 years experience at LT before testing kicks in will weigh more decisively than any perception about results

[Anonymous]

Definitely go visit and get a feel for it. 29% proficient and advanced? that's pretty bad, worse than any of the schools we were considering in Petworth. I'd be reluctant to put it on my list - although you may be surprised once you see it for yourself. We found the behavioral/differentiation concerns that a lot of DCUM people worry about are not as bad when you are looking at/get to know the actual little kids. Esp in the pre-K grades.
We lucked out during our first go round, apllying to a school with effective teachers but not yet discovered in the lottery. But don't make the mistake we made, and waste slots applying at schools where you have NO chance of getting in (i.e. no OOB spots), no prox/sibling preference, or no chance of actually making the commute every day even if you did get in...We wasted half our slots on schools with high test scores because we heard they were good or had friends with kids there, when we should have studied the waitlists and avail slot numbers.

[Anonymous]

We have friends in the PK3 program (white, if it matters). They like it and are not playing the lottery for pk4.

[Anonymous]

This used to be our IB school before we moved.

We asked our next door neighbor about it because she was, at the time, a teacher in the DCPS system. She just shook her head and said, "Uh uh". She also refused to send her own daughter there. And, just in case anyone assumes she's some snotty white lady -- no. She's AA. And while I did not tour the school, the area it's in is pretty bad.

On the other hand, another friend, also AA, says that she knows many Miner parents who love it, that there's an active parents' association, and that the school is rapidly improving. Yes, it's like 95% black or something, but so what? We live in a black city. If you live in DC and you're uncomfortable being a white minority, I don't really know what to tell you.

In the end we decided to move and our kid got into a charter near our new house, so it became a moot issue for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This used to be our IB school before we moved.

We asked our next door neighbor about it because she was, at the time, a teacher in the DCPS system. She just shook her head and said, "Uh uh". She also refused to send her own daughter there. And, just in case anyone assumes she's some snotty white lady -- no. She's AA. And while I did not tour the school, the area it's in is pretty bad.

On the other hand, another friend, also AA, says that she knows many Miner parents who love it, that there's an active parents' association, and that the school is rapidly improving. Yes, it's like 95% black or something, but so what? We live in a black city. If you live in DC and you're uncomfortable being a white minority, I don't really know what to tell you.

In the end we decided to move and our kid got into a charter near our new house, so it became a moot issue for us.

When did you move?

[Anonymous]

Bump. Would love to hear from Miner parents. How is the school year going?

[Anonymous]

The class of high SES IB kids with the hyper involved parents is now in PK 4. My impression is many/most stayed for PK 4, which I take as a good sign. That said, I think pretty much all are planning to lottery and/or move by 1st grade at the latest, so I think they'll have made a lasting improvement on the ECE classes (seriously, the PTA is super active and this group of parents have gone above and beyond in trying to recruit IB kids to give the PK a chance), but nothing beyond that. Still, it's a start.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Diversity is key...if there's no white kids in the school then it is doomed. How come DCPS headquarters hasn't figured that out yet? We need an all out blitz to recruit white kids to DCPS....I am open up for ideas

Are you serious? PLEASE go away.

I wish there were way to discuss the Hill schools without these kinds of racially clueless/hostile comments.

I live on the Hill and would totally consider Miner, Tyler, or Payne for Pre-K 3 or 4 if they were convenient and I was confident in the aftercare. (For me, aftercare is actually the sticking point with these schools.) With small classes and high ratios, the fact is that most pre-K classes are going to be good places as long as they have good teachers. There just isn't a need for "differentiation" for THREE YEAR OLDS - three year olds all pretty much have the same needs. If anything, the less advantaged 3 year olds might benefit from more exposure to books & pre-literacy activities, which would benefit all the kids.

I'll bite - this is true, about 3 year olds, but I'm not sure you should justify your "free daycare" if you wouldn't deign to attend the school after PK. So while you're parting yourself on the back for being racially sensitive, what you're really doing is advocating a scene that will pop up all over the city soon - a repeat of Ludlow-Taylor the last 5 years, where all the little kids are white and the rest of the school is black. How does this help - since you're so clued-in?

If Miner's upper-grades black kids started outperforming all those IB white kids at Brent and Maury on tests, as they did last year at Ludlow-Taylor, I'd be OK with that.

have you looked at the PARCC results? nothing to brag about for LT. makes the DC CAS results look like a mirage

I was hoping PP could point to the data evidencing that AA students in Grades 3-5 at LT outperformed IB white students at Brent on DC-CAS and the years during which this occurred. Waiting ...

or simply ignore evidence that the results were far more telling on the more rigorous common core based test which was far more difficult to game via test prep?

Not PP, but I can clarify: on the most recent PARCC exams, LT's scores (40-ish percent proficiency) were on par with Maury and Two Rivers. Brent's scores were indeed higher. I think the PP was pointing out that LT's students (nearly all black in the testing grades - at least not enough whites to differentiate statistically) performed on par with Maury's students who, in the testing grades, are much more white. For this, LT deserves enormous credit.

[Anonymous]

Whatever. Most of us care little about PARCC scores because our kids are high SES, and high SES kids generally ace the tests. We care about other things, like class sizes, enrichment, extra curriculars, healthy lunches, a well-run PTA raising dough for extra staff in the elementary grades, a strong field trip program etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whatever. Most of us care little about PARCC scores because our kids are high SES, and high SES kids generally ace the tests. We care about other things, like class sizes, enrichment, extra curriculars, healthy lunches, a well-run PTA raising dough for extra staff in the elementary grades, a strong field trip program etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whatever. Most of us care little about PARCC scores because our kids are high SES, and high SES kids generally ace the tests. We care about other things, like class sizes, enrichment, extra curriculars, healthy lunches, a well-run PTA raising dough for extra staff in the elementary grades, a strong field trip program etc.

My child goes to a DCPS with a high percentage of lower SES kids. We have a PTA that is well-run but not a huge fundraising machine that could ever pay the salary of even one additional teacher. We use the same food vendor that the rest of DCPS uses, and it leaves plenty to be desired (if this is a priority for you, send your kid with lunch, seriously). We do have enough money through the PTA to send kids on field trips regularly, and our class sizes are small because our principal doesn't offer anything in the lottery as a rule. We have some sports and extras, but it's not the kind of robust program you'd see WOTP.

[Anonymous]

OP, you'll want a voucher.