Another Brent question
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Anonymous
| 12:32. Thanks for the clarification. This begs the question: Are there any families clamoring to get into Brent in order to slot into Jefferson or Eliot-Hine or who could not otherwise attend either of those two schools through the lottery? |
Anonymous
To the best of my knowledge, the answer is no, there is currently little interest from Brent parents (or potential Brent parents) in enrolling at either EH or Jefferson Academy, and I am not aware of any Brent students enrolling at Eliot Hine or Jefferson Academy for the fall of 2012. (Last year about 8 kids went from Brent to Jefferson Academy, and none went to EH.) Additionally, both schools are under-enrolled, and therefore anyone from any part of the city is free to enroll and is virtually guaranteed a spot in Jefferson or EH. I can't see the lack of demand for Jefferson or EH abating in the near future as the gap widens between the perceived quality of the Brent experience and the reality of EH and Jefferson. To be sure, there are parents hoping (and working) towards Jefferson and EH becoming a viable option, but without radical changes (selective admission, new feeder patterns, etc.) I don’t see that naturally and incrementally happening for at least five years. The increasing gap in perceived quality will become harder to bridge each year. The same could be said for Stuart Hobson - as more in-bounds Brent students stay through the older grades at Brent, the more of a drop-off Stuart Hobson appears to be (SH's 2012 drop in DC CAS scores won’t help this situation). Additionally, if Stuart Hobson did markedly improve, it would be in greater demand and IB Brent students would have even less of a chance in the lottery of gaining admission to SH because even more students from across the city would also clamor to enroll. |
Anonymous
SH doesn't take many students from lottery (roughly 10% of rising 5th graders) -- the Ward 7 & 8 kids attend various feeder schools for SH, which are fed by Watkins (via Cluster), JO Wilson, Ludlow Taylor, and CH Montessori. Some Ward 6 kids may lottery into SH, but these feeder schools draw varying degrees of OOB students who feed to SH, especially in upper ES grades. |
Anonymous
We left SH for a private after 6th grade out of Watkins (although we're IB for Brent) for several reasons. Ward 7 and 8 kids, most coming out of the Hill feeders, were holding our son back academically, given that there was almost no ability grouping, teaching quality was highly uneven (better for 7th and 8th perhaps), and the atmosphere wasn't what we were looking for. Too many badly behaved kids allowed to run wild in the halls and act out in classes. In order for our kid to be prepped to be admitted to a private, we paid for 5-10 hours a week of tutoring for six months before he took admissions tests. Unless SH starts serious ability grouping within the next 2-3 years, and attracts a lot more middle-class families, we won't bother with the school for our second child, at Brent in a lower grade. We worry that, by the time our younger son tries to lottery into Latin or Basis, there won't be enough room. There is talk of setting up a selective admissions DCPS middle school with a city-wide draw. Perhaps that school will be the next Brent families turn to. One can only hope. |
Anonymous
This is totally not accurate. Not making any argument, I am just pointing out that people who don't really know things are posting things as fact here. There were exactly two inboundary students in the fourth grade in the 2010/11 school year. One was white and one was African American. Neither one stayed for 5th grade and their slots. Along with other slots opened by out of boundary students ( all African American ) were filled off the wait list. The 5th grade this year included two white students ( both OOB ). |
Anonymous
In 2011-2012 there were about six in-bounds fourth graders, and none of them (I believe) are returning to Brent for fifth grade - they are all headed to Latin and BASIS. Overall, there were about 48 fourth graders in 2011-2012, and 16-28 are returning for fifth grade. Of the 2011-2012 fourth and fifth grade students, about 25 are going to BASIS, about five are going to Latin, and a few are headed to Stuart Hobson/Watkins and Hardy. Many are leaving DC public schools altogether. And while we are auditing this thread . . . the PTA does not pay for specials at Brent, and has not done so since late 2011. The six specials at Brent (art, music, PE, Chinese, science, library) are all staffed by DCPS employees paid by Brent's DCPS budget. There is some Brent PTA financial support for the Brent DCPS budget, and that support allows the school to shift its DCPS funds around and fund six specials (instead of five) - but the PTA has not directly supported specials at Brent since last year. In 2012-2013 the Brent PTA will fund a part-time math teacher for the upper grades, and DCPS is paying for a part-time math teacher for the lower grades. PTA support allows for this extra math support. Brent's DCPS budget (like JKLMMs) is also helped by a fully enrolled school with a smaller demand for special ed and remedial services when compared to most other DC schools (although Brent’s special ed capacity is still robust). As one who follows Brent budget issues, I have few problems with amount of money DCPS provides Brent, despite Brent receiving lower than average per-pupil funding. Certainly PTA cash helps a lot, but I can't say that DCPS underfunds Brent or that Brent squanders its funds. The LSAT at Brent is very engaged, and the community gets almost all the juice out of the lemon. A more significant weak spot than DCPS funding for Brent is DCPS district-wide policies. While greater leeway is given to JKLMM and a few schools like Brent, and that helps a lot, DCPS policies nevertheless hamstring the school, specifically with respect to advanced studies. And, IMHO the most significant factor holding down Brent (and perhaps all DC public schools) is our city-wide culture. It's not the presence of out of bounds students bringing down Brent, it's not the school’s diversity, and it's certainly not the presence of poor black kids in the upper grades. It’s a culture that would rather everyone be equal (see the DCPS Hopes and Dreams campaign results) even if everyone is in a crappy school. It’s a culture that crushes ability grouping at the altar of differentiated learning. It's a culture that won't allow a strong middle school to be created immediately, but rather wants to hold onto a flawed system of three mediocre (at best) underutilized middle schools in Ward Six with the futile hope that gentrification and activism will breathe life into them. It’s a culture that won’t allow radical solutions, only incremental changes. It’s a culture that chooses to use guilt, and to twist the arms of middle class families so they will sacrifice their children as agents of change, instead of enticing and incentivizing them to stay. It's a culture that relentlessly attacks the Chancellor and never gives her the room she needs or the credit she deserves. And despite the desperate need to fund new initiatives, the dominant culture fights against eliminating unused capacity (closing schools), fights to keep librarians in under-enrolled schools, and so on. Granted, it’s glib to assert that one can simply sit at a drafting table and in one afternoon completely redesign a massive system with a long complicated history. It’s not nearly that easy. But often it seems the fights our city’s culture chooses to undertake can provide only pyrrhic victories, instead of embracing more progressive policies that are more immediately impactful and more viable over the long-term. Come to think of it, it's not just a city-wide thing, it's what our culture is doing in many ways on a national level. Oops, a crying kid out of bed and so we now return you to your regularly schedule programming. |
Anonymous
| Above shoudl read "and 16-18 are returning for fifth grade." |
Anonymous
| Pp. Please write an op ed piece for the Post. |
Anonymous
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Some good points 22:41, but the budget part doesn't tell the whole picture. Rhee made sure Brent got more than it's fair share. While that was nice for Brent, other students got shorted. Budgets are more equalized under Kaya, but saying Brent gets lower than average spending per pupil is deceptive. Brent doesn't get a large premium for low income and ESL students, because it has a highly affluent student body. When you add the money the parents raise, Brent is doing just fine and students at Brent get much, much more than their counterparts at, say, Stanton Elementary.
I do find your blind support of the previous and present Chancellor puzzling. Rhee, while making sure Brent got a fatter budget, ultimately didn't do Brent much good. The Rhee promises on Jefferson never materialized and Kaya doesn't have the depth of experience in terms of curriculum, implementation and teacher retention. Finally, as long as Kaya sticks around, there will be no GT and no magnet middle schools. I would argue that our unqualified Chancellor and the one preceding her will continue to hamper positive growth in public education in DC. Oh, and the poverty. But nobody wants to fix that. |
Anonymous
I wouldn't be too concerned. A lot can and will change in the next 3-5 years, and there will be new and expanded PCS options if DCPS continues to overlook the MS market of middle class families. And if Basis lives up to its promises for a rigorous advanced academic curriculum it may not be a good fit for the many proficient but not advanced learners DCPS seems to be largely content to serve. That said, a lot can change at SH in that time frame as well, although I do understand the concerns that it may not reach its potential. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
Is Jefferson Academy selective admissions? If not, why not? Why not have a selective admissions middle school co-locate within a regular school? Isn't that what Wilson has with its Academies? Many thanks to 22.41 for your insightful analysis. Do get an op-ed piece in somewhere. Go for the Wash Times if the Post spurns you. What do you think is to be done? Is Tommy Wells a DC Council Member who should go or stay in regard to going to bat for middle-class Hill families seeking appropriate course offerings for advanced learners at the middle school level? You hear the same tiresome stories about SH year after year, and Latin doesn't differentiate nearly enough for some either. Should the younger generation of Brent families (including us) be organizing with the Maury PTA gang to get him voted out, or at least call attention to ES challenge and MS feeder issues by shaking him up during his next race (I'm picturing "BRENT & MAURY PARENTS SEEKING A STRONG MS FEEDER FOR CANDIDATE X" signs in yards). I'm new to politics of MS feeders, but the 4-5th grade exodus numbers at Brent speak for themselves. Are parents being overly polite in using them to challenge politicians? As for the question above, doesn't Jefferson Academy use some sort of lame admissions test? Or only admit students scoring proficient on the 5th grade DC-CAS? It can't be at all difficult for kids to enter the Academy, not with the proficiency rate just 2-3 points higher than that of the traditional program (in the low 40s). I was disappointed by the way Henderson behaved at the Ward 6 State of the Schools meeting last month. She didn't seem remotely tuned in or gutsy on gentrification issues. Just did a lot of glad handing and tooting DCPS' horn. |
Anonymous
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. So I recommend trying to work with Tommy rather than giving up on him. Let's see what he does when the scores for ward 6 schools come out with more detail. Plus, he seems like he considering running for mayor, so there may yet be an opening for ward 6 without impolitic campaigning against Tommy.
Anonymous
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Jefferson Academy never ever had any sort of selective admissions in its plan. The students who wanted to go there were supposed to write some lame essay about themselves and that was it. I think very few wrote it and were let in anyway. They came in at about the same proficiency that they have scored in the CAS.
Dcps absolutely refused to do any sort of feeder pattern adjustment or selctive admissions situation or seed program or anything that would have gotten that entering proficiency level up to a point where largish numbers of proficient/advanced students would choose the school. Brent parents let them know what it would take to get some buy in before during and after Jefferson Academy was set up and they ignored it and wrote off our feedback as being whiny. Good for the students attending Jefferson Academy because it is an improvement over the regular Jefferson Program but it is a long way from capturing the attention of lots of students who are coming from a solid primary program. Tommy Wells needs significant poliical backing from a majority of Ward 6 to tackle these issues. Somebody organize loudly and let him know there is a large enough group across all the Capitol Hill to have his back. |
Anonymous
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12:40 here-- thanks for the update regarding Jefferson admission. Given the scores are only slightly higher than regular Jefferson, I'm really not sure what value is getting added with the Academy! What a wasted opportunity! |