I am confused between Stuart Hobson Middle School vs. Deal Middle School

[Anonymous]

SH is a dead end.

[Anonymous]

a dead end due to eastern? in addition to the application high schools, you can now if willing to do the commute potentially lottery into and attend the new high school on macarthur (without a long middle school commute)?

[Anonymous]

The reality is that the commute from the Hill to MacArthur is a real drag during rush hour. The future campus is nowhere near near a Metro stop or a bus route that goes from the Hill. I live near Union Station but used to work near the future campus, where free parking was available to me. Many mornings, it took me nearly an hour to get to work through traffic. Also, Walls is not the safe bet for strong Hill students it once was, now that the entrance exam and PARCC scores have both been dropped in the admissions process. Think twice about a DCPS middle school EotP. Might be better to move.

[Anonymous]

D6 bus can take almost an hour from Stanton Park to MacArthur Blvd during rush hour.

[Anonymous]

point made. but a lot of ppl are telling the op you dont give up deal/JR for SH even if you live near SH and deal is 40+ minutes away (or whatever). i wouldnt do that middle school commute just for the hs feed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that the commute from the Hill to MacArthur is a real drag during rush hour. The future campus is nowhere near near a Metro stop or a bus route that goes from the Hill. I live near Union Station but used to work near the future campus, where free parking was available to me. Many mornings, it took me nearly an hour to get to work through traffic. Also, Walls is not the safe bet for strong Hill students it once was, now that the entrance exam and PARCC scores have both been dropped in the admissions process. Think twice about a DCPS middle school EotP. Might be better to move.

When was Walls ever a safe bet with waitlist of 100+ kids?

[Anonymous]

It was a relatively safe bet if you had a strong student. Now it is practically a lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that the commute from the Hill to MacArthur is a real drag during rush hour. The future campus is nowhere near near a Metro stop or a bus route that goes from the Hill. I live near Union Station but used to work near the future campus, where free parking was available to me. Many mornings, it took me nearly an hour to get to work through traffic. Also, Walls is not the safe bet for strong Hill students it once was, now that the entrance exam and PARCC scores have both been dropped in the admissions process. Think twice about a DCPS middle school EotP. Might be better to move.

When was Walls ever a safe bet with waitlist of 100+ kids?

Pre Covid, Walls was quite a safe bet for the strongest 8th graders EotP, coming out of both public and private schools. Before Bowser began pressuring DCPS to admit more low-SES minority students from over the River, and to ditch the entrance exam and standardized test scores requirements (DC-CAS, then PARCC or PSAT or SAT score) the academically able would get in. I've lived on the Hill for 30 years and saw this phenomenon play out over and over, particularly for teens who were very good at math, regardless of race. The Walls entrance exams emphasized fairly tough algebra and geometry. No longer. Admission to Walls has essentially become a lottery in the last several years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that the commute from the Hill to MacArthur is a real drag during rush hour. The future campus is nowhere near near a Metro stop or a bus route that goes from the Hill. I live near Union Station but used to work near the future campus, where free parking was available to me. Many mornings, it took me nearly an hour to get to work through traffic. Also, Walls is not the safe bet for strong Hill students it once was, now that the entrance exam and PARCC scores have both been dropped in the admissions process. Think twice about a DCPS middle school EotP. Might be better to move.

When was Walls ever a safe bet with waitlist of 100+ kids?

Pre Covid, Walls was quite a safe bet for the strongest 8th graders EotP, coming out of both public and private schools. Before Bowser began pressuring DCPS to admit more low-SES minority students from over the River, and to ditch the entrance exam and standardized test scores requirements (DC-CAS, then PARCC or PSAT or SAT score) the academically able would get in. I've lived on the Hill for 30 years and saw this phenomenon play out over and over, particularly for teens who were very good at math, regardless of race. The Walls entrance exams emphasized fairly tough algebra and geometry. No longer. Admission to Walls has essentially become a lottery in the last several years.

This is correct. Walls cleared the waitlist (ie, made offers to 100% of students deemed eligible) as recently as 2017. In 2020, the last pre-COVID year, they made offers to 236 eligible students (145 on count day and 91 waitlist offers by October) and left only 10 on the waitlist. That’s a pretty safe bet.

But I’d push back on the idea that the change is just because they eliminated the test. The fact is the number of highly-qualified 8th graders in DC is rising, rapidly, and enrollment at Walls cannot increase. If they’d kept the test, they would have had to keep raising the cut score. And that also would have excluded kids who reliably would have been admitted just a few years ago.

[Anonymous]

PP above asserted that Walls used to be a safe bet for the "strongest" 8th graders applying, not the average 8th graders. Who could argue with that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP above asserted that Walls used to be a safe bet for the "strongest" 8th graders applying, not the average 8th graders. Who could argue with that?

When Walls was based on testing, it was a safe bet for the strongest students. Now many of the strongest students are not admitted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It was a relatively safe bet if you had a strong student. Now it is practically a lottery.

There's no connection with Walls admission and academic indicators aside from a VERY low GPA bar. It's a crap shoot. Plan accordingly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that the commute from the Hill to MacArthur is a real drag during rush hour. The future campus is nowhere near near a Metro stop or a bus route that goes from the Hill. I live near Union Station but used to work near the future campus, where free parking was available to me. Many mornings, it took me nearly an hour to get to work through traffic. Also, Walls is not the safe bet for strong Hill students it once was, now that the entrance exam and PARCC scores have both been dropped in the admissions process. Think twice about a DCPS middle school EotP. Might be better to move.

When was Walls ever a safe bet with waitlist of 100+ kids?

Pre Covid, Walls was quite a safe bet for the strongest 8th graders EotP, coming out of both public and private schools. Before Bowser began pressuring DCPS to admit more low-SES minority students from over the River, and to ditch the entrance exam and standardized test scores requirements (DC-CAS, then PARCC or PSAT or SAT score) the academically able would get in. I've lived on the Hill for 30 years and saw this phenomenon play out over and over, particularly for teens who were very good at math, regardless of race. The Walls entrance exams emphasized fairly tough algebra and geometry. No longer. Admission to Walls has essentially become a lottery in the last several years.

That's a false assumption. There may have been intent to attract more diverse students to Walls, including from EotP, but the school remains overwhelmingly white and/or higher SES and enrolls an extremely small number of students from EotP. Dropping the entrance exam had no impact on the demographics

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that the commute from the Hill to MacArthur is a real drag during rush hour. The future campus is nowhere near near a Metro stop or a bus route that goes from the Hill. I live near Union Station but used to work near the future campus, where free parking was available to me. Many mornings, it took me nearly an hour to get to work through traffic. Also, Walls is not the safe bet for strong Hill students it once was, now that the entrance exam and PARCC scores have both been dropped in the admissions process. Think twice about a DCPS middle school EotP. Might be better to move.

When was Walls ever a safe bet with waitlist of 100+ kids?

Pre Covid, Walls was quite a safe bet for the strongest 8th graders EotP, coming out of both public and private schools. Before Bowser began pressuring DCPS to admit more low-SES minority students from over the River, and to ditch the entrance exam and standardized test scores requirements (DC-CAS, then PARCC or PSAT or SAT score) the academically able would get in. I've lived on the Hill for 30 years and saw this phenomenon play out over and over, particularly for teens who were very good at math, regardless of race. The Walls entrance exams emphasized fairly tough algebra and geometry. No longer. Admission to Walls has essentially become a lottery in the last several years.

That's a false assumption. There may have been intent to attract more diverse students to Walls, including from EotP, but the school remains overwhelmingly white and/or higher SES and enrolls an extremely small number of students from EotP. Dropping the entrance exam had no impact on the demographics

Exactly, at the end of the day SWW is just difficult to get to from parts of the city. Maintaining a GPA requires a level of consistency and is a better indicator of the caliber of student than test scores. This is even true with all the grade inflation everywhere. None of it is perfect but the thought process seems to be that "my kid is a great test taker" so they deserve to be at Walls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that the commute from the Hill to MacArthur is a real drag during rush hour. The future campus is nowhere near near a Metro stop or a bus route that goes from the Hill. I live near Union Station but used to work near the future campus, where free parking was available to me. Many mornings, it took me nearly an hour to get to work through traffic. Also, Walls is not the safe bet for strong Hill students it once was, now that the entrance exam and PARCC scores have both been dropped in the admissions process. Think twice about a DCPS middle school EotP. Might be better to move.

When was Walls ever a safe bet with waitlist of 100+ kids?

Pre Covid, Walls was quite a safe bet for the strongest 8th graders EotP, coming out of both public and private schools. Before Bowser began pressuring DCPS to admit more low-SES minority students from over the River, and to ditch the entrance exam and standardized test scores requirements (DC-CAS, then PARCC or PSAT or SAT score) the academically able would get in. I've lived on the Hill for 30 years and saw this phenomenon play out over and over, particularly for teens who were very good at math, regardless of race. The Walls entrance exams emphasized fairly tough algebra and geometry. No longer. Admission to Walls has essentially become a lottery in the last several years.

That's a false assumption. There may have been intent to attract more diverse students to Walls, including from EotP, but the school remains overwhelmingly white and/or higher SES and enrolls an extremely small number of students from EotP. Dropping the entrance exam had no impact on the demographics

Dropping the entrance exam has in fact had a small impact on demographics and a larger impact on rigor. Now Walls admits plenty of white kids who are B students, along with those of other races. Sad.