Kaya Henderson has Undermined her own Leadership

[Anonymous]

Pp here and you have it all wrong. I am more likely to complain about CHPSPO than you are, and I not a Maury parent. I simply keep a close eye on EH and would like to support it when I can.

How rich do you need a family before you would want them counted as " high SES"? And then I will check their tax returns

[Anonymous]

Ok, I'll take middle class and white. Got a number?

[Anonymous]

1 middle class and white that I know of. Not sure about AA who would have gone elsewhere before the new principal/ IB MYP.

And before I get blasted for discussing this child on DCUM, the parents themselves published a letter in THe Hill Rag announcing their enrollment there so....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1 middle class and white that I know of. Not sure about AA who would have gone elsewhere before the new principal/ IB MYP.

And before I get blasted for discussing this child on DCUM, the parents themselves published a letter in THe Hill Rag announcing their enrollment there so....

I'm looking for this article and can't find it, was it recent?

[Anonymous]

Eliot-Hine has a twitter feed,website, Facebook page and the rest. You may get some updated information there. They also have many open houses where you can look around and meet the teachers. Again, I am not affiliated with the school, just an interested neighbor

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your optimism pp, I wish Eliot Hine the best here, but one kid, ONE kid and you act like there has been some sort of massive wellspring of cultural change at the school. THIS is exactly what I'm talking about... Everyone should just shut up about it and send their kids there already right? "Great" things are happening. Guess what, I'm a neighbor too, and I don't like what I see and hear from these kids, and I flat out hate the the DC-CAS scores. Only 34% of the school can read at their grade level. And a full 20% CAN BARELY READ. There's a family on the hill who was willing to send their kid off to the school for whatever reasons, it's not what most families on the hill are going to choose to do, and you can't keep pretending like they are.

[Anonymous]

Not every family leaves the system’s middle schools, and many of those who stay are happy with their choice.

Capitol Hill mother Heather Schoell said she entered the lottery for charter schools — and got her daughter into one well-regarded school — before deciding to send her to the neighborhood middle school, Eliot-Hine.

Her initial concerns about safety and discipline were unfounded, she said.

“We have been really happy with Eliot-Hine!” Schoell wrote in an e-mail. “I feel like we wasted a lot of time and effort fretting for a year on the pros and cons of the schools we considered. We could’ve focused that energy on the school!”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/middle-schools-present-vexing-problem-for-dc-leaders-as-parents-choose-other-options/2014/02/17/29b95e24-93ef-11e3-83b9-1f024193bb84_story.html

[Anonymous]

We know Heather. She's a hippy and something of a nutter and we pity her kid. I'd bet a lot of money the arrangement doesn't last through 8th grade. Outliers mean nothing here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^^ I am afraid you are behind the times on Eliot-Hine. I take your main point: that Eliot Hine is a ways off from being a first choice of many middle class families ( black OR white ). BUT please recognize that at least a few families from Maury who would fit that description already have their children at EH for the second year and the principal is working with inboundary families to shape the program and do outreach at its feeder schools. Not sure where it stands now, but EH is also on its way to International Baccalaureate accreditation. Pieces are slowly coming into place. The puzzle is still unfinished and it may never be the Deal II we all dream of. But it also isn't fair to write it off as completely as pp did above

Thanks CHPSPO rep. How many families made the jump again? That are high-SES...Can you quantify "a few" for me?

And of those how many were IB for Maury?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We know Heather. She's a hippy and something of a nutter and we pity her kid. I'd bet a lot of money the arrangement doesn't last through 8th grade. Outliers mean nothing here.

Ha! You described everyone I know who lives in Capitol Hill with kids over age 10. It's a fun bunch. If DCPS can't get us in the middle schools, Goddess help them with the next wave who are even harder to please!

[Anonymous]

Eliot-Hine can only aspire to mediocrity without buy-in from a critical mass of high-SES families across a broad swath of the Hill and Abby and Kaya have done their best to ensure this won't happen. Van Ness and Brent will now feed exclusively to Jefferson. Watkins and Ludlow-Taylor, each only a handful of blocks from Brent, will continue to feed to Stuart-Hobson. Tyler, which is a stone's throw from Watkins, and has a Spanish immersion track, has been flipped from Eliot-Hine to Jefferson, while Maury continues to feed to Eliot-Hine. This Balkanization results in a virtual clusterf*#*.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Not the PP, but my take on Jefferson...

Jefferson was a good school in the recent past largely due to a strong Principal who attracted/recruited strong students. The principal retired and the school's quality fell. Rhee asked Capitol Hill parents what they would like in a middle school. There was not a consensus opinion, but one request was for a stronger academic program at Jefferson. Rhee created Jefferson academy at the school in response to the ask, but it was less than the parents wanted, and it wasn't fully funded to make it successful. Jefferson has a new strong principal who has had some success with discipline and test scores, but still no/few middle class Capitol Hill kids attend Jefferson.

Much of what would be good for Unicorn Middle School would be good for Jefferson. The biggest necessary improvement would be more academic rigor. The school serves students with a wide range in academic preparedness, and offering a more demanding academic track for those who are able would help to attract more CH families. The physical campus for Jefferson is great, but the school is need of modernization.

Things related to Jefferson that may or may not be important factors for Unicorn Middle School, Stuart Hobson is nearby and attracts many of the potential students (to an inferior campus). An even bigger factor luring students away is Basis and to some degree Latin.

Thanks. Have the Jefferson folks had any discussion with Hardy parents or closely reviewed developments there? What you are facing is the classic "chicken and egg" dilemma that exists all over the city. It seems that Hardy has come closer than anyone to cracking the code on this. At a very high-level, as I understand things, this was basically an agreement among families to attend combined with an agreement with the principal to provide programming they desired.

I think part of the challenge is that there really aren't a lot of "Jefferson folks." They don't have an active PTA. The principal is pretty busy running the school and dealing with IB certification. There's some community involvement/support, but not a lot of folks at feeder schools who are really pushing for it to feel like a better option to middle class and/or white families. Amidon has a small PTA of mostly families with younger kids. There's enough work to do there without getting involved in the middle school too. Van Ness is similar--they're almost all parents of kids under age 5 and I think many are unsure what their plans will be for middle school. They are working on opening their school first (plus, when you read stuff like the GGE article and threads on this website, you might also get the feeling that some families in Navy Yard aren't very interested in their kids mingling with poor or black folks....). Tyler and Brent are totally disconnected from Jefferson geographically and ideologically. With Eliot-Hine having so many open seats, I think many of them are focusing there.

In contrast, many of the families currently at the school or hoping to go are understandably content with the school being a "hidden gem"--a place where mostly black, mostly low-income kids do pretty well. Jefferson is significantly better than Eliot-Hine on test scores, and is approaching Hardy on some metrics, especially for 8th graders (whose test scores are arguably the best reflection of what the school can do, while 6th grade scores are more influenced by elementary education) and if you compare apples-to-apples by comparing economically disadvantaged students at each school. Learndc has all this data. So not everyone agrees the school needs to be doing more to reach out and woo more families (especially families they fear might look down on them!).

One last point to note: the school is scheduled for substantial renovations starting Summer 2016. I don't trust DCPS on everything, but after seeing Dunbar, Cardozo, etc. I think they do a beautiful job on construction.

Brent parent here. No one from Brent has been focused on Eliot-Hine and none will ever do so IMHO. In any event, the DME just took away the Brent "feed" to Eliot-Hine, as if this actually means anything when the school is significantly underenrolled and NO IB student has ever found a reason to attend. I can't see anyone from our cohort attending Jefferson either. We are continuing to assess options, including moving IB for Deal or Montgomery County after 4th Grade as Latin has become nearly impossible to get into and the Basis model may not be a good fit for our DC. We might have given Stuart-Hobson a shot but DCPS and the DME have no interest in finding a way to push that school to the next level by ensuring that it becomes a true neighborhood school. Truly disappointing.

This reads like every option except one that creates a high ses enclave at SH is off the table for Brent parents. You did realize this is a city, right?

Said the smug asshole who lives IB for Janeey/Deal no doubt.

[Anonymous]

For chrissakes, quit trying to dismiss every opinion you disagree with by claiming the other person must be biased. If you disagree, try addressing the substance, not just trying to deflect.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For chrissakes, quit trying to dismiss every opinion you disagree with by claiming the other person must be biased. If you disagree, try addressing the substance, not just trying to deflect.

Alrighty then.
How about having one neighborhood/community feed into one middle school and create one feeder pattern with one economy of scale for students of all abilities to benefit from. Because SH cannot accommodate this we need to look at either EH or Jefferson Academy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's most likely to give is the determination of many high SES families to stay on the Hill past elementary, at least once BASIS stops making it through their WLs by September. DCPS clearly doesn't give a damn if we stay.

so maybe Henerson's gaffes are meant to urge CH parents into charters?

Maybe it's time to confront her directly on these issues. "have you given up on a CH middle school? Are you hoping for a charter to come in? Do you hope to work for the charter system when you leave DCPS? Do you care whether current residents stay in the district or are you waiting for a new batch of babies? How does this any of this fit with being chancellor of DCPS?"

Isn't there also a question of lack of unity among high-SES people on Capitol Hill? I read elsewhere on DCUM that there is/was a vocal group of parents who are more liberal/in favor of diversity and they oppose this idea of consolidating high-SES in one school. And they have been politically successful? Is this true or not? If it's true then you may need to resolve this disagreement within the community before you can get govt to change.

Well, there is this. Consolidation or test-in is something that 90% of hill parents would rejoice over, but the old gaurd, namely CHPSO, is pretty crunchy about it and it's hard to nave a candid, realistic conversation about all of this with them in the room. It's also a tough thing to discuss in-person, without sounding like a total self-serving asshole. Which is unfortunate, because all it means is the folks at Maury are "committed" and SH "is a perfectly fine option" until they lottery out, or move, or find ANY OTHER option. It'll be interesting to see what actually happens but my money is on no high-SES kids landing at Hine within the next 5 years, and same for Jefferson. SH will be a catch all for the kids that don't get in elsewhere, and in 6 years it won't have the capacity to take it all on. Even then, the OOB kids feeding up from JO and LT will continue to make it a school that doesn't completely "flip." Which may be good or bad, but their size alone limits he kind of programming they can offer.

It's tough, I don't want to push kids out, I want them to have access to great schools and programming as well, but no one in their right mind is going to send their kid off to be one of the few in class that can read at grade level... It's just not going to happen and I'm so tired of this "dig in and make it work" crap that people toss around. If you made EH a test-in and gave it a principal that wanted the parents' support in creating world class programming, it would have all the resources and motivation thrown behind it you can imagine. And guess what, many low SES kids would benefit.

Thanks PP, for responding to my post. yes, this issue, it sounds to me like this needs resolving somehow. Other places where people have managed to rally around a school, there has been some unity IB and only then do you push the govt. Otherwise the govt will just point out the disagreement and say they can't please everyone. There is a different issue going on at Hardy now, where the IB and OOB have different interests and are sometimes at odds. The IB mostly agree, they just can't organize, for whatever unfathomable reason. But it seems that on the Hill you need to get unity around a single MS among IB and then push for it.