Current experience at Stuart Hobson?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People are always posting about DC public middle schools as though we have a world of choice, as in why go with SH when BASIS, Latin, Hardy and Deal and the burbs are better?! OK, so they're better, but many of us just aren't in a great position to do better than SH. It's much easier, and cheaper, for some of us to bump up the social studies and science at SH ourselves than move to Upper NW, VA or MoCo after we struck out in the charter lotteries. Or maybe we didn't strike out but were turned off by the difficult commute to DCI from CH SE, or we got into BASIS and realized that our kid would be miserable there. My kid's round-trip commute to SH is less than five minutes on foot, vs. two hours by public transportation with DCI (my other option). This is a no-brainer, folks.

same, except EH! And it’s not like the schools in MoCo and NOVA I could afford to move to are all that superior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are always posting about DC public middle schools as though we have a world of choice, as in why go with SH when BASIS, Latin, Hardy and Deal and the burbs are better?! OK, so they're better, but many of us just aren't in a great position to do better than SH. It's much easier, and cheaper, for some of us to bump up the social studies and science at SH ourselves than move to Upper NW, VA or MoCo after we struck out in the charter lotteries. Or maybe we didn't strike out but were turned off by the difficult commute to DCI from CH SE, or we got into BASIS and realized that our kid would be miserable there. My kid's round-trip commute to SH is less than five minutes on foot, vs. two hours by public transportation with DCI (my other option). This is a no-brainer, folks.

That’s fine if you want to prioritize convenience and saving money over your kids education.

Not it’s not a no brainer to choose SH. You absolutely have choices and have decided to put lower on the list your child’s education.

For us, it a no brainer to go private or move to a much better school if the lottery doesn’t work out.

Spare us this sort of super judgmental, holier than thou post.

We know a couple SH grads from five years ago, when the school obviously wasn't nearly as good as gentrified as it is now, who are undergrads at top 10 SLACs. That's right, they went from Walls to colleges admitting in the single digits. Maybe your kid needs a private middle school or a high-powered suburban school to reach for the stars academically. Every student and family doesn't. We know SH families without TVs: these families read like crazy. We know SH students whose parents who are engineers teaching the kids extra math as a matter of course. As far as I can tell, they prioritize their children's education like mad.

Come on, there are obviously students who attend OK middle schools who wind up a top colleges.

[Anonymous]

+100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are always posting about DC public middle schools as though we have a world of choice, as in why go with SH when BASIS, Latin, Hardy and Deal and the burbs are better?! OK, so they're better, but many of us just aren't in a great position to do better than SH. It's much easier, and cheaper, for some of us to bump up the social studies and science at SH ourselves than move to Upper NW, VA or MoCo after we struck out in the charter lotteries. Or maybe we didn't strike out but were turned off by the difficult commute to DCI from CH SE, or we got into BASIS and realized that our kid would be miserable there. My kid's round-trip commute to SH is less than five minutes on foot, vs. two hours by public transportation with DCI (my other option). This is a no-brainer, folks.

That’s fine if you want to prioritize convenience and saving money over your kids education.

Not it’s not a no brainer to choose SH. You absolutely have choices and have decided to put lower on the list your child’s education.

For us, it a no brainer to go private or move to a much better school if the lottery doesn’t work out.

Spare us this sort of super judgmental, holier than thou post.

We know a couple SH grads from five years ago, when the school obviously wasn't nearly as good as gentrified as it is now, who are undergrads at top 10 SLACs. That's right, they went from Walls to colleges admitting in the single digits. Maybe your kid needs a private middle school or a high-powered suburban school to reach for the stars academically. Every student and family doesn't. We know SH families without TVs: these families read like crazy. We know SH students whose parents who are engineers teaching the kids extra math as a matter of course. As far as I can tell, they prioritize their children's education like mad.

Come on, there are obviously students who attend OK middle schools who wind up a top colleges.

An independently motivated student can succeed at any school. The point of OP's post was that her child isn't independently motivated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no really great middle school option in this area. Read some of the posts about Basis. It has a for-profit parent company, high teacher turnover rate, and a not so great facility. It also self-selects for a smart and motivated peer group which makes it the overall best option for some students but being self-motivated and willing to do a large volume of homework is important and a lot of kids are not developmentally going to be ready for or happy at that type of middle school program.

Never fails that a BASIS hater comes out of the blue. You probably don't even have a kid at BASIS/

OP- BASIS is fine, great even. Convenient location, likeminded peers, sports, a Spring musical. Yes, the building sucks, but it goes through 12th grade, so you don't need to deal with the HS application process. If your child is smart and likes to learn, I don't see why you wouldn't at least apply.

Why not apply? No outdoor space, uninspired leadership, high teacher turnover, essentially no performing arts, weak sports/no playing fields, essentially no recognition of kids' talents outside a narrowly academic sphere, no languages taught before 8th grade (then just for beginners). Need I go on? The truth is that SH offers most of what BASIS is lacking outside serious academics. If only there was a way to meld BASIS academics and SH enrichment with a stable faculty and a good Head in this obnoxious DC political climate. I'd sign up for that in-boundary middle school fast.

Ridiculous.

You are comparing a school where most of the students are below grade level to Basis, the top public school in the city?

No, BASIS isn't the top public school in the city. Walls, JR top tier and possible Banneker are. Look at their college admissions successes for their upper echelon. They beat BASIS. Weak high school ECs, cramming four years of HS academics into three and too much math acceleration for average students hurt most BASIS students.

A good many SH students end up at Walls and Banneker. I know of 10 kids from my boy's cohort at a DCPS ES who applied to Walls, 3 from SH, 3 from BASIS, 4 from Latin. All 3 from SH were admitted along with 1 from Latin. That's it. Sure, this evidence of preferential treatment in Walls admissions from SH is anecdotal but it's still interesting.

Where does one find this data?
and I meant top middle school in the city, as this thread is about SH.

I can't find the data on admissions to selective DCPS high schools by middle school and I've looked hard and called DCPS and OSSE (leaving messages).

If anybody knows where to find it, please let us know.

https://edscape.dc.gov/page/student-enrollment-pathways

Lots of n<10, which makes it harder to get a good sense, but you can get a rough sense based on the variety of selective high schools students are admitted to and the consistency of admission over multiple school years.

Deal, Hardy, Oyster and DCI are the only ones with exact numbers (10 or over), everyone else is less than 10. includes SH, EH, Basis, Latin, Francis, ITS, etc. Many middle schools on the list.

Keep in mind the overall class size at each of these schools. It would be unrealistic for Deal (400+ 8th graders) and ITDS (40+ 8th graders) to send an equivalent number of students. It helps here to look over multiple years. Which schools are consistently sending students to Walls?

There are TON of schools that send between 1 and 9 kids to Walls every year. Like, 20 different schools.

So look at it the other way. Since this thread is about Stuart-Hobson, Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Walls in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: 11
SY21-22: n<10
SY22-23: n<10

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Banneker in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: n<10
SY21-22: 10
SY22-23: n<10

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to McKinley in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: 14
SY21-22: 12
SY22-23: 23

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Duke Ellington in
SY19-20: 14
SY20-21: 11
SY21-22: 10
SY22-23: 14

This is useful information, and it's pretty impressive. No stake in SH (not in bounds and have a kid already in a different middle school.) If I was at a feeder and my kid really wanted to go, I would have a hard time saying no.

No not really. SH is similar size to Deal and Deal sends significantly more kids to Walls.

The other elephant in the room is just because you got into Walls doesn’t mean you will be prepared and competitive with many of the other kids from much higher performing schools who took more rigorous and more advance class offerings

The elephant in the room is that Deal sends a lot more kids to Walls because there are a lot more kids at Deal who are prepared to keep up at Walls, because there are more kids at Deal from well-resourced families who can provide the support and home environment needed to allow kids to excel academically.

The kids from SH getting into Deal are prepared to attend Deal. They aren't charity cases. But the proportion of SH's population who both wants to attend Walls AND has the academic ability to do well there is smaller than it is at Deal. However it is growing and is already twice what it was 5 or 6 years ago. The number of UMC families deciding to stick with SH goes up every year. If you live in the neighborhood you can see how it's nearing the critical mass needed to start to make SH a first choice (right now it still tends to be a 2nd or 3rd choice for many parents -- though even that is a huge improvement over a decade ago when it was the 4th or 5th choice or simply not on the table for a lot of Hill families).

As SH gentrifies you will likely see it sending more and more kids to Walls, Banneker, McKinley, especially since it appears that the gentrification of Eastern will lag behind the gentrification of its feeders.

The truth is that there is nothing inherently special about Deal or inherently inferior about SH. Academic outcomes for the average student are different because academic outcomes are strongly correlated to socioeconomic status. If you are a UMC family with two college-educated parents there is not reason to think Deal would prepare your child for a school like Walls any better than SH would.

There is absolutely something superior about Deal and inferior about SH: the high school feeder. We are a family that looked over SH because we didn’t want to have the high school problem in three years.

This is true. I’m not happy about not having a HS locked in.

If academic outcomes are strongly correlated to socioeconomic status, then why are Hill parents afraid to send their kids to Eastern?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are always posting about DC public middle schools as though we have a world of choice, as in why go with SH when BASIS, Latin, Hardy and Deal and the burbs are better?! OK, so they're better, but many of us just aren't in a great position to do better than SH. It's much easier, and cheaper, for some of us to bump up the social studies and science at SH ourselves than move to Upper NW, VA or MoCo after we struck out in the charter lotteries. Or maybe we didn't strike out but were turned off by the difficult commute to DCI from CH SE, or we got into BASIS and realized that our kid would be miserable there. My kid's round-trip commute to SH is less than five minutes on foot, vs. two hours by public transportation with DCI (my other option). This is a no-brainer, folks.

That’s fine if you want to prioritize convenience and saving money over your kids education.

Not it’s not a no brainer to choose SH. You absolutely have choices and have decided to put lower on the list your child’s education.

For us, it a no brainer to go private or move to a much better school if the lottery doesn’t work out.

Spare us this sort of super judgmental, holier than thou post.

We know a couple SH grads from five years ago, when the school obviously wasn't nearly as good as gentrified as it is now, who are undergrads at top 10 SLACs. That's right, they went from Walls to colleges admitting in the single digits. Maybe your kid needs a private middle school or a high-powered suburban school to reach for the stars academically. Every student and family doesn't. We know SH families without TVs: these families read like crazy. We know SH students whose parents who are engineers teaching the kids extra math as a matter of course. As far as I can tell, they prioritize their children's education like mad.

Come on, there are obviously students who attend OK middle schools who wind up a top colleges.

S-H feeds to Eastern.

Once in a while a kid gets accepted to an Ivy from Eastern.

You plan on sending your kids to Eastern?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no really great middle school option in this area. Read some of the posts about Basis. It has a for-profit parent company, high teacher turnover rate, and a not so great facility. It also self-selects for a smart and motivated peer group which makes it the overall best option for some students but being self-motivated and willing to do a large volume of homework is important and a lot of kids are not developmentally going to be ready for or happy at that type of middle school program.

Never fails that a BASIS hater comes out of the blue. You probably don't even have a kid at BASIS/

OP- BASIS is fine, great even. Convenient location, likeminded peers, sports, a Spring musical. Yes, the building sucks, but it goes through 12th grade, so you don't need to deal with the HS application process. If your child is smart and likes to learn, I don't see why you wouldn't at least apply.

Why not apply? No outdoor space, uninspired leadership, high teacher turnover, essentially no performing arts, weak sports/no playing fields, essentially no recognition of kids' talents outside a narrowly academic sphere, no languages taught before 8th grade (then just for beginners). Need I go on? The truth is that SH offers most of what BASIS is lacking outside serious academics. If only there was a way to meld BASIS academics and SH enrichment with a stable faculty and a good Head in this obnoxious DC political climate. I'd sign up for that in-boundary middle school fast.

Ridiculous.

You are comparing a school where most of the students are below grade level to Basis, the top public school in the city?

No, BASIS isn't the top public school in the city. Walls, JR top tier and possible Banneker are. Look at their college admissions successes for their upper echelon. They beat BASIS. Weak high school ECs, cramming four years of HS academics into three and too much math acceleration for average students hurt most BASIS students.

A good many SH students end up at Walls and Banneker. I know of 10 kids from my boy's cohort at a DCPS ES who applied to Walls, 3 from SH, 3 from BASIS, 4 from Latin. All 3 from SH were admitted along with 1 from Latin. That's it. Sure, this evidence of preferential treatment in Walls admissions from SH is anecdotal but it's still interesting.

Where does one find this data?
and I meant top middle school in the city, as this thread is about SH.

I can't find the data on admissions to selective DCPS high schools by middle school and I've looked hard and called DCPS and OSSE (leaving messages).

If anybody knows where to find it, please let us know.

https://edscape.dc.gov/page/student-enrollment-pathways

Lots of n<10, which makes it harder to get a good sense, but you can get a rough sense based on the variety of selective high schools students are admitted to and the consistency of admission over multiple school years.

Deal, Hardy, Oyster and DCI are the only ones with exact numbers (10 or over), everyone else is less than 10. includes SH, EH, Basis, Latin, Francis, ITS, etc. Many middle schools on the list.

Keep in mind the overall class size at each of these schools. It would be unrealistic for Deal (400+ 8th graders) and ITDS (40+ 8th graders) to send an equivalent number of students. It helps here to look over multiple years. Which schools are consistently sending students to Walls?

There are TON of schools that send between 1 and 9 kids to Walls every year. Like, 20 different schools.

So look at it the other way. Since this thread is about Stuart-Hobson, Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Walls in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: 11
SY21-22: n<10
SY22-23: n<10

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Banneker in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: n<10
SY21-22: 10
SY22-23: n<10

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to McKinley in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: 14
SY21-22: 12
SY22-23: 23

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Duke Ellington in
SY19-20: 14
SY20-21: 11
SY21-22: 10
SY22-23: 14

This is useful information, and it's pretty impressive. No stake in SH (not in bounds and have a kid already in a different middle school.) If I was at a feeder and my kid really wanted to go, I would have a hard time saying no.

No not really. SH is similar size to Deal and Deal sends significantly more kids to Walls.

The other elephant in the room is just because you got into Walls doesn’t mean you will be prepared and competitive with many of the other kids from much higher performing schools who took more rigorous and more advance class offerings

The elephant in the room is that Deal sends a lot more kids to Walls because there are a lot more kids at Deal who are prepared to keep up at Walls, because there are more kids at Deal from well-resourced families who can provide the support and home environment needed to allow kids to excel academically.

The kids from SH getting into Deal are prepared to attend Deal. They aren't charity cases. But the proportion of SH's population who both wants to attend Walls AND has the academic ability to do well there is smaller than it is at Deal. However it is growing and is already twice what it was 5 or 6 years ago. The number of UMC families deciding to stick with SH goes up every year. If you live in the neighborhood you can see how it's nearing the critical mass needed to start to make SH a first choice (right now it still tends to be a 2nd or 3rd choice for many parents -- though even that is a huge improvement over a decade ago when it was the 4th or 5th choice or simply not on the table for a lot of Hill families).

As SH gentrifies you will likely see it sending more and more kids to Walls, Banneker, McKinley, especially since it appears that the gentrification of Eastern will lag behind the gentrification of its feeders.

The truth is that there is nothing inherently special about Deal or inherently inferior about SH. Academic outcomes for the average student are different because academic outcomes are strongly correlated to socioeconomic status. If you are a UMC family with two college-educated parents there is not reason to think Deal would prepare your child for a school like Walls any better than SH would.

There is absolutely something superior about Deal and inferior about SH: the high school feeder. We are a family that looked over SH because we didn’t want to have the high school problem in three years.

This is true. I’m not happy about not having a HS locked in.

If academic outcomes are strongly correlated to socioeconomic status, then why are Hill parents afraid to send their kids to Eastern?

You're not really asking the question and, thus, don't deserve an answer. You're being cute. Bully for you.

Come on, you know full well that by high school, even well-educated UMC parents can no longer compensate for much of what a school lacks. They can't pay enough tutors or book enough summer enrichment programs. They also can't manufacture a high performing peer group. SH has a sizeable high performing peer group. Eastern doesn't and probably won't acquire one for a decade or longer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are always posting about DC public middle schools as though we have a world of choice, as in why go with SH when BASIS, Latin, Hardy and Deal and the burbs are better?! OK, so they're better, but many of us just aren't in a great position to do better than SH. It's much easier, and cheaper, for some of us to bump up the social studies and science at SH ourselves than move to Upper NW, VA or MoCo after we struck out in the charter lotteries. Or maybe we didn't strike out but were turned off by the difficult commute to DCI from CH SE, or we got into BASIS and realized that our kid would be miserable there. My kid's round-trip commute to SH is less than five minutes on foot, vs. two hours by public transportation with DCI (my other option). This is a no-brainer, folks.

That’s fine if you want to prioritize convenience and saving money over your kids education.

Not it’s not a no brainer to choose SH. You absolutely have choices and have decided to put lower on the list your child’s education.

For us, it a no brainer to go private or move to a much better school if the lottery doesn’t work out.

Spare us this sort of super judgmental, holier than thou post.

We know a couple SH grads from five years ago, when the school obviously wasn't nearly as good as gentrified as it is now, who are undergrads at top 10 SLACs. That's right, they went from Walls to colleges admitting in the single digits. Maybe your kid needs a private middle school or a high-powered suburban school to reach for the stars academically. Every student and family doesn't. We know SH families without TVs: these families read like crazy. We know SH students whose parents who are engineers teaching the kids extra math as a matter of course. As far as I can tell, they prioritize their children's education like mad.

Come on, there are obviously students who attend OK middle schools who wind up a top colleges.

An independently motivated student can succeed at any school. The point of OP's post was that her child isn't independently motivated.

Any decent school, vs. any school. PP's have been advising OP not to send her kid who isn't independently motivated child to SH. She doesn't sound inclined to listen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no really great middle school option in this area. Read some of the posts about Basis. It has a for-profit parent company, high teacher turnover rate, and a not so great facility. It also self-selects for a smart and motivated peer group which makes it the overall best option for some students but being self-motivated and willing to do a large volume of homework is important and a lot of kids are not developmentally going to be ready for or happy at that type of middle school program.

Never fails that a BASIS hater comes out of the blue. You probably don't even have a kid at BASIS/

OP- BASIS is fine, great even. Convenient location, likeminded peers, sports, a Spring musical. Yes, the building sucks, but it goes through 12th grade, so you don't need to deal with the HS application process. If your child is smart and likes to learn, I don't see why you wouldn't at least apply.

Why not apply? No outdoor space, uninspired leadership, high teacher turnover, essentially no performing arts, weak sports/no playing fields, essentially no recognition of kids' talents outside a narrowly academic sphere, no languages taught before 8th grade (then just for beginners). Need I go on? The truth is that SH offers most of what BASIS is lacking outside serious academics. If only there was a way to meld BASIS academics and SH enrichment with a stable faculty and a good Head in this obnoxious DC political climate. I'd sign up for that in-boundary middle school fast.

Ridiculous.

You are comparing a school where most of the students are below grade level to Basis, the top public school in the city?

No, BASIS isn't the top public school in the city. Walls, JR top tier and possible Banneker are. Look at their college admissions successes for their upper echelon. They beat BASIS. Weak high school ECs, cramming four years of HS academics into three and too much math acceleration for average students hurt most BASIS students.

A good many SH students end up at Walls and Banneker. I know of 10 kids from my boy's cohort at a DCPS ES who applied to Walls, 3 from SH, 3 from BASIS, 4 from Latin. All 3 from SH were admitted along with 1 from Latin. That's it. Sure, this evidence of preferential treatment in Walls admissions from SH is anecdotal but it's still interesting.

Where does one find this data?
and I meant top middle school in the city, as this thread is about SH.

I can't find the data on admissions to selective DCPS high schools by middle school and I've looked hard and called DCPS and OSSE (leaving messages).

If anybody knows where to find it, please let us know.

https://edscape.dc.gov/page/student-enrollment-pathways

Lots of n<10, which makes it harder to get a good sense, but you can get a rough sense based on the variety of selective high schools students are admitted to and the consistency of admission over multiple school years.

Deal, Hardy, Oyster and DCI are the only ones with exact numbers (10 or over), everyone else is less than 10. includes SH, EH, Basis, Latin, Francis, ITS, etc. Many middle schools on the list.

Keep in mind the overall class size at each of these schools. It would be unrealistic for Deal (400+ 8th graders) and ITDS (40+ 8th graders) to send an equivalent number of students. It helps here to look over multiple years. Which schools are consistently sending students to Walls?

There are TON of schools that send between 1 and 9 kids to Walls every year. Like, 20 different schools.

So look at it the other way. Since this thread is about Stuart-Hobson, Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Walls in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: 11
SY21-22: n<10
SY22-23: n<10

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Banneker in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: n<10
SY21-22: 10
SY22-23: n<10

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to McKinley in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: 14
SY21-22: 12
SY22-23: 23

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Duke Ellington in
SY19-20: 14
SY20-21: 11
SY21-22: 10
SY22-23: 14

This is useful information, and it's pretty impressive. No stake in SH (not in bounds and have a kid already in a different middle school.) If I was at a feeder and my kid really wanted to go, I would have a hard time saying no.

No not really. SH is similar size to Deal and Deal sends significantly more kids to Walls.

The other elephant in the room is just because you got into Walls doesn’t mean you will be prepared and competitive with many of the other kids from much higher performing schools who took more rigorous and more advance class offerings

The elephant in the room is that Deal sends a lot more kids to Walls because there are a lot more kids at Deal who are prepared to keep up at Walls, because there are more kids at Deal from well-resourced families who can provide the support and home environment needed to allow kids to excel academically.

The kids from SH getting into Deal are prepared to attend Deal. They aren't charity cases. But the proportion of SH's population who both wants to attend Walls AND has the academic ability to do well there is smaller than it is at Deal. However it is growing and is already twice what it was 5 or 6 years ago. The number of UMC families deciding to stick with SH goes up every year. If you live in the neighborhood you can see how it's nearing the critical mass needed to start to make SH a first choice (right now it still tends to be a 2nd or 3rd choice for many parents -- though even that is a huge improvement over a decade ago when it was the 4th or 5th choice or simply not on the table for a lot of Hill families).

As SH gentrifies you will likely see it sending more and more kids to Walls, Banneker, McKinley, especially since it appears that the gentrification of Eastern will lag behind the gentrification of its feeders.

The truth is that there is nothing inherently special about Deal or inherently inferior about SH. Academic outcomes for the average student are different because academic outcomes are strongly correlated to socioeconomic status. If you are a UMC family with two college-educated parents there is not reason to think Deal would prepare your child for a school like Walls any better than SH would.

There is absolutely something superior about Deal and inferior about SH: the high school feeder. We are a family that looked over SH because we didn’t want to have the high school problem in three years.

This is true. I’m not happy about not having a HS locked in.

If academic outcomes are strongly correlated to socioeconomic status, then why are Hill parents afraid to send their kids to Eastern?

There’s a tiny bit of momentum there, but I think it’s a bridge too far to go to a HS with little/no infrastructure to support college admissions and advanced classes. But we’re still going to the open house. it’s a chicken-egg problem and if every kid at SH and EH attended it would be fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no really great middle school option in this area. Read some of the posts about Basis. It has a for-profit parent company, high teacher turnover rate, and a not so great facility. It also self-selects for a smart and motivated peer group which makes it the overall best option for some students but being self-motivated and willing to do a large volume of homework is important and a lot of kids are not developmentally going to be ready for or happy at that type of middle school program.

Never fails that a BASIS hater comes out of the blue. You probably don't even have a kid at BASIS/

OP- BASIS is fine, great even. Convenient location, likeminded peers, sports, a Spring musical. Yes, the building sucks, but it goes through 12th grade, so you don't need to deal with the HS application process. If your child is smart and likes to learn, I don't see why you wouldn't at least apply.

Why not apply? No outdoor space, uninspired leadership, high teacher turnover, essentially no performing arts, weak sports/no playing fields, essentially no recognition of kids' talents outside a narrowly academic sphere, no languages taught before 8th grade (then just for beginners). Need I go on? The truth is that SH offers most of what BASIS is lacking outside serious academics. If only there was a way to meld BASIS academics and SH enrichment with a stable faculty and a good Head in this obnoxious DC political climate. I'd sign up for that in-boundary middle school fast.

Ridiculous.

You are comparing a school where most of the students are below grade level to Basis, the top public school in the city?

No, BASIS isn't the top public school in the city. Walls, JR top tier and possible Banneker are. Look at their college admissions successes for their upper echelon. They beat BASIS. Weak high school ECs, cramming four years of HS academics into three and too much math acceleration for average students hurt most BASIS students.

A good many SH students end up at Walls and Banneker. I know of 10 kids from my boy's cohort at a DCPS ES who applied to Walls, 3 from SH, 3 from BASIS, 4 from Latin. All 3 from SH were admitted along with 1 from Latin. That's it. Sure, this evidence of preferential treatment in Walls admissions from SH is anecdotal but it's still interesting.

Where does one find this data?
and I meant top middle school in the city, as this thread is about SH.

I can't find the data on admissions to selective DCPS high schools by middle school and I've looked hard and called DCPS and OSSE (leaving messages).

If anybody knows where to find it, please let us know.

https://edscape.dc.gov/page/student-enrollment-pathways

Lots of n<10, which makes it harder to get a good sense, but you can get a rough sense based on the variety of selective high schools students are admitted to and the consistency of admission over multiple school years.

Deal, Hardy, Oyster and DCI are the only ones with exact numbers (10 or over), everyone else is less than 10. includes SH, EH, Basis, Latin, Francis, ITS, etc. Many middle schools on the list.

Keep in mind the overall class size at each of these schools. It would be unrealistic for Deal (400+ 8th graders) and ITDS (40+ 8th graders) to send an equivalent number of students. It helps here to look over multiple years. Which schools are consistently sending students to Walls?

There are TON of schools that send between 1 and 9 kids to Walls every year. Like, 20 different schools.

So look at it the other way. Since this thread is about Stuart-Hobson, Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Walls in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: 11
SY21-22: n<10
SY22-23: n<10

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Banneker in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: n<10
SY21-22: 10
SY22-23: n<10

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to McKinley in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: 14
SY21-22: 12
SY22-23: 23

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Duke Ellington in
SY19-20: 14
SY20-21: 11
SY21-22: 10
SY22-23: 14

This is useful information, and it's pretty impressive. No stake in SH (not in bounds and have a kid already in a different middle school.) If I was at a feeder and my kid really wanted to go, I would have a hard time saying no.

No not really. SH is similar size to Deal and Deal sends significantly more kids to Walls.

The other elephant in the room is just because you got into Walls doesn’t mean you will be prepared and competitive with many of the other kids from much higher performing schools who took more rigorous and more advance class offerings

The elephant in the room is that Deal sends a lot more kids to Walls because there are a lot more kids at Deal who are prepared to keep up at Walls, because there are more kids at Deal from well-resourced families who can provide the support and home environment needed to allow kids to excel academically.

The kids from SH getting into Deal are prepared to attend Deal. They aren't charity cases. But the proportion of SH's population who both wants to attend Walls AND has the academic ability to do well there is smaller than it is at Deal. However it is growing and is already twice what it was 5 or 6 years ago. The number of UMC families deciding to stick with SH goes up every year. If you live in the neighborhood you can see how it's nearing the critical mass needed to start to make SH a first choice (right now it still tends to be a 2nd or 3rd choice for many parents -- though even that is a huge improvement over a decade ago when it was the 4th or 5th choice or simply not on the table for a lot of Hill families).

As SH gentrifies you will likely see it sending more and more kids to Walls, Banneker, McKinley, especially since it appears that the gentrification of Eastern will lag behind the gentrification of its feeders.

The truth is that there is nothing inherently special about Deal or inherently inferior about SH. Academic outcomes for the average student are different because academic outcomes are strongly correlated to socioeconomic status. If you are a UMC family with two college-educated parents there is not reason to think Deal would prepare your child for a school like Walls any better than SH would.

There is absolutely something superior about Deal and inferior about SH: the high school feeder. We are a family that looked over SH because we didn’t want to have the high school problem in three years.

This is true. I’m not happy about not having a HS locked in.

If academic outcomes are strongly correlated to socioeconomic status, then why are Hill parents afraid to send their kids to Eastern?

There’s a tiny bit of momentum there, but I think it’s a bridge too far to go to a HS with little/no infrastructure to support college admissions and advanced classes. But we’re still going to the open house. it’s a chicken-egg problem and if every kid at SH and EH attended it would be fine.

Not surprised with the direction this thread took, but I will chime in for a second to say that I appreciate this prior poster is actually going to attend an open house at Eastern. I have been to one, and have spent time talking to families who are there. That's the way to actually learn about a school. Not saying they have the same programs as every other school, but they do have advanced classes, and in the last data point they shared, 88% of their students went onto a 4 year college. My impression of the school is there are some really strong rigorous options/tracks, and internships and university partnerships, for kids that take advantage of them. Question/goal is how many kids take advantage of them and how to increase numbers, but the foundation seems to be there, and leadership and teacher experience seems strong. And there is more buy in every year. So who knows, schools in DC are a crystal ball.

[Anonymous]

“Eastern is not a dystopian hellscape. Let’s all sign our kids up!”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are always posting about DC public middle schools as though we have a world of choice, as in why go with SH when BASIS, Latin, Hardy and Deal and the burbs are better?! OK, so they're better, but many of us just aren't in a great position to do better than SH. It's much easier, and cheaper, for some of us to bump up the social studies and science at SH ourselves than move to Upper NW, VA or MoCo after we struck out in the charter lotteries. Or maybe we didn't strike out but were turned off by the difficult commute to DCI from CH SE, or we got into BASIS and realized that our kid would be miserable there. My kid's round-trip commute to SH is less than five minutes on foot, vs. two hours by public transportation with DCI (my other option). This is a no-brainer, folks.

That’s fine if you want to prioritize convenience and saving money over your kids education.

Not it’s not a no brainer to choose SH. You absolutely have choices and have decided to put lower on the list your child’s education.

For us, it a no brainer to go private or move to a much better school if the lottery doesn’t work out.

Spare us this sort of super judgmental, holier than thou post.

We know a couple SH grads from five years ago, when the school obviously wasn't nearly as good as gentrified as it is now, who are undergrads at top 10 SLACs. That's right, they went from Walls to colleges admitting in the single digits. Maybe your kid needs a private middle school or a high-powered suburban school to reach for the stars academically. Every student and family doesn't. We know SH families without TVs: these families read like crazy. We know SH students whose parents who are engineers teaching the kids extra math as a matter of course. As far as I can tell, they prioritize their children's education like mad.

Come on, there are obviously students who attend OK middle schools who wind up a top colleges.

An independently motivated student can succeed at any school. The point of OP's post was that her child isn't independently motivated.

Any decent school, vs. any school. PP's have been advising OP not to send her kid who isn't independently motivated child to SH. She doesn't sound inclined to listen.

I appreciate all of the responses I’m reviewing. I am actually not sure whether my kid is independently motivated or enough. That’s part of the issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no really great middle school option in this area. Read some of the posts about Basis. It has a for-profit parent company, high teacher turnover rate, and a not so great facility. It also self-selects for a smart and motivated peer group which makes it the overall best option for some students but being self-motivated and willing to do a large volume of homework is important and a lot of kids are not developmentally going to be ready for or happy at that type of middle school program.

Never fails that a BASIS hater comes out of the blue. You probably don't even have a kid at BASIS/

OP- BASIS is fine, great even. Convenient location, likeminded peers, sports, a Spring musical. Yes, the building sucks, but it goes through 12th grade, so you don't need to deal with the HS application process. If your child is smart and likes to learn, I don't see why you wouldn't at least apply.

Why not apply? No outdoor space, uninspired leadership, high teacher turnover, essentially no performing arts, weak sports/no playing fields, essentially no recognition of kids' talents outside a narrowly academic sphere, no languages taught before 8th grade (then just for beginners). Need I go on? The truth is that SH offers most of what BASIS is lacking outside serious academics. If only there was a way to meld BASIS academics and SH enrichment with a stable faculty and a good Head in this obnoxious DC political climate. I'd sign up for that in-boundary middle school fast.

Ridiculous.

You are comparing a school where most of the students are below grade level to Basis, the top public school in the city?

No, BASIS isn't the top public school in the city. Walls, JR top tier and possible Banneker are. Look at their college admissions successes for their upper echelon. They beat BASIS. Weak high school ECs, cramming four years of HS academics into three and too much math acceleration for average students hurt most BASIS students.

A good many SH students end up at Walls and Banneker. I know of 10 kids from my boy's cohort at a DCPS ES who applied to Walls, 3 from SH, 3 from BASIS, 4 from Latin. All 3 from SH were admitted along with 1 from Latin. That's it. Sure, this evidence of preferential treatment in Walls admissions from SH is anecdotal but it's still interesting.

Where does one find this data?
and I meant top middle school in the city, as this thread is about SH.

I can't find the data on admissions to selective DCPS high schools by middle school and I've looked hard and called DCPS and OSSE (leaving messages).

If anybody knows where to find it, please let us know.

https://edscape.dc.gov/page/student-enrollment-pathways

Lots of n<10, which makes it harder to get a good sense, but you can get a rough sense based on the variety of selective high schools students are admitted to and the consistency of admission over multiple school years.

Deal, Hardy, Oyster and DCI are the only ones with exact numbers (10 or over), everyone else is less than 10. includes SH, EH, Basis, Latin, Francis, ITS, etc. Many middle schools on the list.

Keep in mind the overall class size at each of these schools. It would be unrealistic for Deal (400+ 8th graders) and ITDS (40+ 8th graders) to send an equivalent number of students. It helps here to look over multiple years. Which schools are consistently sending students to Walls?

There are TON of schools that send between 1 and 9 kids to Walls every year. Like, 20 different schools.

So look at it the other way. Since this thread is about Stuart-Hobson, Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Walls in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: 11
SY21-22: n<10
SY22-23: n<10

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Banneker in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: n<10
SY21-22: 10
SY22-23: n<10

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to McKinley in
SY19-20: n<10
SY20-21: 14
SY21-22: 12
SY22-23: 23

Stuart-Hobson 8th graders to Duke Ellington in
SY19-20: 14
SY20-21: 11
SY21-22: 10
SY22-23: 14

This is useful information, and it's pretty impressive. No stake in SH (not in bounds and have a kid already in a different middle school.) If I was at a feeder and my kid really wanted to go, I would have a hard time saying no.

No not really. SH is similar size to Deal and Deal sends significantly more kids to Walls.

The other elephant in the room is just because you got into Walls doesn’t mean you will be prepared and competitive with many of the other kids from much higher performing schools who took more rigorous and more advance class offerings

The elephant in the room is that Deal sends a lot more kids to Walls because there are a lot more kids at Deal who are prepared to keep up at Walls, because there are more kids at Deal from well-resourced families who can provide the support and home environment needed to allow kids to excel academically.

The kids from SH getting into Deal are prepared to attend Deal. They aren't charity cases. But the proportion of SH's population who both wants to attend Walls AND has the academic ability to do well there is smaller than it is at Deal. However it is growing and is already twice what it was 5 or 6 years ago. The number of UMC families deciding to stick with SH goes up every year. If you live in the neighborhood you can see how it's nearing the critical mass needed to start to make SH a first choice (right now it still tends to be a 2nd or 3rd choice for many parents -- though even that is a huge improvement over a decade ago when it was the 4th or 5th choice or simply not on the table for a lot of Hill families).

As SH gentrifies you will likely see it sending more and more kids to Walls, Banneker, McKinley, especially since it appears that the gentrification of Eastern will lag behind the gentrification of its feeders.

The truth is that there is nothing inherently special about Deal or inherently inferior about SH. Academic outcomes for the average student are different because academic outcomes are strongly correlated to socioeconomic status. If you are a UMC family with two college-educated parents there is not reason to think Deal would prepare your child for a school like Walls any better than SH would.

There is absolutely something superior about Deal and inferior about SH: the high school feeder. We are a family that looked over SH because we didn’t want to have the high school problem in three years.

This is true. I’m not happy about not having a HS locked in.

If academic outcomes are strongly correlated to socioeconomic status, then why are Hill parents afraid to send their kids to Eastern?

There’s a tiny bit of momentum there, but I think it’s a bridge too far to go to a HS with little/no infrastructure to support college admissions and advanced classes. But we’re still going to the open house. it’s a chicken-egg problem and if every kid at SH and EH attended it would be fine.

Not surprised with the direction this thread took, but I will chime in for a second to say that I appreciate this prior poster is actually going to attend an open house at Eastern. I have been to one, and have spent time talking to families who are there. That's the way to actually learn about a school. Not saying they have the same programs as every other school, but they do have advanced classes, and in the last data point they shared, 88% of their students went onto a 4 year college. My impression of the school is there are some really strong rigorous options/tracks, and internships and university partnerships, for kids that take advantage of them. Question/goal is how many kids take advantage of them and how to increase numbers, but the foundation seems to be there, and leadership and teacher experience seems strong. And there is more buy in every year. So who knows, schools in DC are a crystal ball.

I hate this sort of post patronizing post. Oh, so the real problem is...lack of info about how great SH and Eastern are on the part of CH parents who reject these programs. Some of us have not only attended open houses, we've gone to talk to admins, dug deep into data, even volunteered at school events. The inconvenient truth is that Eastern's IB Diploma program remains weak as compared to suburban options in the DMV. The lack of an acceptable by-right high school after SH continues to make things tough for the middle school feed. With only a dozen SH students making the cut for Walls each year, the middle school remains a risky choice. When you point to more buy-in at Eastern every year, you're talking about 14 years since the renovation and reboot to attract, what, two dozen white kids in a catchment area that's become at least two-thirds white due to gentrification? At this rate, most of us won't touch Eastern not only for our children, but our grandchildren.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People are always posting about DC public middle schools as though we have a world of choice, as in why go with SH when BASIS, Latin, Hardy and Deal and the burbs are better?! OK, so they're better, but many of us just aren't in a great position to do better than SH. It's much easier, and cheaper, for some of us to bump up the social studies and science at SH ourselves than move to Upper NW, VA or MoCo after we struck out in the charter lotteries. Or maybe we didn't strike out but were turned off by the difficult commute to DCI from CH SE, or we got into BASIS and realized that our kid would be miserable there. My kid's round-trip commute to SH is less than five minutes on foot, vs. two hours by public transportation with DCI (my other option). This is a no-brainer, folks.

That’s fine if you want to prioritize convenience and saving money over your kids education.

Not it’s not a no brainer to choose SH. You absolutely have choices and have decided to put lower on the list your child’s education.

For us, it a no brainer to go private or move to a much better school if the lottery doesn’t work out.

Spare us this sort of super judgmental, holier than thou post.

We know a couple SH grads from five years ago, when the school obviously wasn't nearly as good as gentrified as it is now, who are undergrads at top 10 SLACs. That's right, they went from Walls to colleges admitting in the single digits. Maybe your kid needs a private middle school or a high-powered suburban school to reach for the stars academically. Every student and family doesn't. We know SH families without TVs: these families read like crazy. We know SH students whose parents who are engineers teaching the kids extra math as a matter of course. As far as I can tell, they prioritize their children's education like mad.

Come on, there are obviously students who attend OK middle schools who wind up a top colleges.

An independently motivated student can succeed at any school. The point of OP's post was that her child isn't independently motivated.

Any decent school, vs. any school. PP's have been advising OP not to send her kid who isn't independently motivated child to SH. She doesn't sound inclined to listen.

I appreciate all of the responses I’m reviewing. I am actually not sure whether my kid is independently motivated or enough. That’s part of the issue.

And you're not going to figure it out. You're going to try SH for 6th grade, or you're not going to try it. If you do well in the charter lottery, with a spot at one of the Latins waiting for you, case closed.

[Anonymous]

How advanced are the advanced classes? I remember taking (and acing) all the advanced classes at my middling high school, and when I got to college I still felt unprepared compared to my peers from privates and top high schools (think TJ). They had a level of understanding of the subjects (mainly humanities) that I just was never taught. I still feel like I’m playing catch up as an adult (even though I am successful in my field).