Lee Montessori for Black Children

[Anonymous]

It is a weird location. The new Ida B Wells is not even full, and CMI has some middle school seats too. Why is a middle school needed up there?

I get that people dislike CHML, but part of the problem is that not a lot of people want a Montessori middle school, especially if it backfills by lottery. Those problems will exist at a new school too.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Lee parent here. The test scores don’t reflect the amazing work the kids are doing at this school, regardless of race. It’s also a very small testing cohort. VERY small esp in grades 4 and 5. There are many educated, professional, involved black parents at Lee (as with white parents) but less so in the upper grades. When you have less than ten kids taking a test and a couple of them have learning difficulties or special ed challenges AND the school does not teach to the test, the percentiles are meaningless. Lee parents can look at how engaged their kids are and what they are learning and how they are learning to gauge the success of the school.

I’d also recommend looking at other measures. There are other tests the younger kids take and much more data. Are racial breakdowns available? If so, I’d wager they show a different picture. The PARCC is a flawed test that has been dropped in almost every other state. If you can’t type well and aren’t taught the tricks, you aren’t going to score as well as kids who are.

Why so few kids in the cohort?

Lee made 61 first grade offers this year. Do you know why so many?

They are the leading grades. The school started about five years ago with about 10 or so kids in each of K and 1st kids who were in 4th and 5th last year. They typically have not added kids lost due to moving away, though a couple of kids have joined in higher grades due to being staff member’s kids. Not sure about the numbers of third graders (now 4th) but only 15 took the test. The current third graders are the first cohort to have started at Lee in PK3 and been there all the way through primary and now in their last year in lower el, but they have yet to take PARCC.

For first grade, they opened a new lower el class this year so that might account for the number of offers. There are now 4 lower el classes. Plus if offers are made late in the game it can take several offers to get a taker, esp if people apply without much interest in Montessori or if they are largely happy where they are.

Oh wow. I bet a lot of SSMA kids came over.

Or CHML.

I don't really get how a middle school in addition to CHML is needed when SSMA can't even fill up and Lee is making so many offers. I know people leave in the upper grades due to lack of a middle school, but that's not aj excuse for Primary.

This is not just meant for feeders but it is a different model of middle school. If done well it could serve the needs of many kinds of kids in an arena where there are so few good middle schools. I have not heard great things about CHML middle, especially whether it does Montessori well. I know also, LAMB folks are looking at it closely. Middle school is a good time to use experimental or alternative education models, in my view, since often times so little learning happens and kids are just distracted by their new adolescence.

I had not thought of it this way. But you make a good point middle school is a crazy time for most kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And then there are several stable charters in the city that have consistently delivered strong results for 10+ years but are pooh-pooh'd by liberal gentrifiers because those schools lack a trendy educational gimmick and have "less desirable" demographics. It seems that the education of the actual child is secondary to parents' networking and socializing via listservs, playdates, events. The poor test results of black children at Lee is very unfortunate and I hope all Lee parents are called to action to make improvements and/or fully explore other school options in the area that may be better suited to the individual child's needs/learning style.

Sadly I am not seeing much better results from many other charters. Kipp I know does well. But cmi, itds, any of the Lee, lamb, breakthrough.. None doing great educating brown and black kids.. Even though a lot of the minority kids at those school are higher income and have well educated parent. Which is supposed to be a great determination of out come than race alone. And yet they are still showing lower scores with minority kids that have the advantages.