HARDY MIDDLE SCHOOL: Record numbers from feeder schools for 2014-2015

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It would be helpful then if more people described students as "feeder school students" versus "non-feeder school students."

One problem is that Dcps doesn't make that information available. It's easy to look at the dcps profiles website and see the IB/OOB split for a school, the feeder school percentage -- as well as the "capture rate" -- seem to be state secrets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anybody have up to date data on IB enrollment at Hardy 6th grade 2014-2015? How can a prospective and interested parent know?

2013-2014 data was just put on the DCPS website this week so it may be a while...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regardless, it is doubtful it has changed by more than 25 or 30% IB form what it is now in one school year, and is therefore mostly OOB

What stake do you have in this,PP? Seem to be trolling here. Literally just trying to flame a discussion.

hate when people misuse the word "literally"

It makes me figuratively crazy.

Thank you for lightening up a very intense post!

[Anonymous]

DCPS is focused on middle school improvement at the same time as this push for more local involvement in Hardy - and from hearing Patricia Pride and other DCPS staff speak about this, the goal is that ALL DC middle schools should get better. A rising tide lifts all ships, etc. So much of the snarkiness found in DCUM forums is related to a fear that "if you get more, I get less" (as well as the fact that anonymous posts allows the bitch to come out). A post that celebrates more people moving into DCPS should not draw the ire of those who are in - either IB or OOB, you can (and should) have better options. It only takes a few motivated families in any area to start the process of strong local involvement in schools (Deal 1st, then Hardy, and the rest, I hope).

I am from the Midwest, where everyone just went to their own local public school (or Catholic school); it meant that there was "skin in the game" for schools to serve their clients. When well-intentioned, motivated parents from other wards send their kids to an OOB school, it weakens their community school. I am not blaming those parents; everyone must do what they think is best for their child. It's just an unfortunate unintended consequence.

[Anonymous]

The truth is that Principals and admin. officers of nearby private school are freaking out in front of a rising Hardy, as this it is already turning into lower enrollment starting from this year, as it happened for Deal and Wilson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The truth is that Principals and admin. officers of nearby private school are freaking out in front of a rising Hardy, as this it is already turning into lower enrollment starting from this year, as it happened for Deal and Wilson.

So glad to hear this. Public school should be great enough to be the first choice for everyone!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The truth is that Principals and admin. officers of nearby private school are freaking out in front of a rising Hardy, as this it is already turning into lower enrollment starting from this year, as it happened for Deal and Wilson.

what school could you possibly be talking about? private schools are overenrolled in almost all cases, they have their choice of 6th graders to accept.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The truth is that Principals and admin. officers of nearby private school are freaking out in front of a rising Hardy, as this it is already turning into lower enrollment starting from this year, as it happened for Deal and Wilson.

There are more than enough students from fabulously wealthy families to fill all of NW DC's private schools many times over.

[Anonymous]

Private schools do not report any meaningful statistics regarding their acceptance ratios (they could say 10 out of 100 get in, but maybe they offer 70 spots in order to get 10 kids in). Our daughter - who is going to Hardy - was admitted to the only local private school she applied to (meant to be very hard to get in) and so were all her classmates (something like 9 out of 9 were accepted). My sense is when you pay 30/40K a year getting in is not terribly hard, except perhaps at two or three top schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The truth is that Principals and admin. officers of nearby private school are freaking out in front of a rising Hardy, as this it is already turning into lower enrollment starting from this year, as it happened for Deal and Wilson.

There are more than enough students from fabulously wealthy families to fill all of NW DC's private schools many times over.

This just proves your ignorance. Many families from NW DC send their kids to private schools because they just don't have options, not because they have money to throw away. Every family I talk to who sends their kids to private schools would be superhappy to send them to public school, if public schools were better. Our household makes 350k a year combined and still we hate having to drive a new car off a cliff every year just to pay 40K a year someone who has to teach algebra and the rules of grammar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The truth is that Principals and admin. officers of nearby private school are freaking out in front of a rising Hardy, as this it is already turning into lower enrollment starting from this year, as it happened for Deal and Wilson.

what school could you possibly be talking about? private schools are overenrolled in almost all cases, they have their choice of 6th graders to accept.

How naive!! Lobbying by the powerful NW private school establishment is everywhere.

Look at the legacy of M. Rhee's tenure (read more about her at the bottom of my post): just to make an example, the introduction of the "feeder school rights" (a total nonsense if you ask education scientists: you basically inject randomly - based on a random lottery - a cohort of OB kids into an out-of-boundary pipeline of schools, isolating them from any spill-over effects that they might generate into their IB schools) while this is not generating any measurable positive outcomes if you consider the system as a whole, for sure it is forcing a measurable hundreds of kids from Ward 3-South/West away from Deal and feeding into neighborhood private schools (as Hardy, until this year, was not considered a viable option by most. This year, thanks also to the advent of Principal Pride, things have changed). Previously, before Rhee, once the IB quota was filled, all OBs including kids from Ward 3 South/West - Palisades, Foxhall, Wesley Heights, Spring Valley West , etc as well as Georgetown - had chances through the lottery. We are talking about some 300 slots a year. Now lottery spots at Deal are not opened, as the school is now 30% OBs from feeder schools. If you assume that 25% of these 300 slots would be instead assigned by lottery to kids who turn to private instead, you would easily see that we are talking about $2 million equivalent in private school fees. Do the numbers yourself.

The same can be said for Wilson. Wilson huge size and rising standards are fucking scary for the private schools, as the rate of substitution private/public is very elastic and as public school performance goes up, IB families are delighted to save on the 35K+/year per kid. The most obvious solution for Wilson overcrowding , i.e. introduce limits to the OB feeder school "rights", is being rejected . The official excuse is the racial/social integration (you pursue social integration by shipping thousand of kids through town every morning and evening.. Huh?? ). The real reason is that limiting OB feeder rights would turn , in just one year, into a drain of hundreds of applications from private HSs.

The recently debated proposal of opening a new DCPS HS on Foxhall, to ease pressure from Wilson, goes along the same line: pretending they do not know how the parents of that neighborhood would go once their access to Wilson was blocked and turned to this new/old creature (IB enrollment in the first few years would be near zero, it would generate a decade or more of "Hardy-type" situation), the end result, fully foreseeable, is a solid and guarantee rent for the private HSs for no less than 10 years!! Again, run the number to realize how huge the stakes are.

The truth is that if "feeder rights" where eliminated from this year, and lottery was re-introduced at each step for access to middle and high schools, this would translate immediately into a significant reduced number of applications to the neighborhood private schools.

Look at what Catania is saying: vertical educational systems (i.e. feeder rights) are the future. Of course, he is an ex-Republican. His dogmatic statement, presented in the name of enhance opportunities, hides an agenda of support to the NW powerful private school establishment.

Please note that this is not fantasy, this is already happening: St Ann Academy in Tenleytown has just announced that it will shut down in June after 150 years due to the decreased enrollment (St Ann is in Tenleytown...please connect the dots...). If you were not aware of this, please read it here: http://www.currentnewspapers.com/admin/uploadfiles/NW%2003-12-2014.pdf .

To know more, see also coverage in the Washington Post on the powerful dynamics in support of private education, and look who's there , Michelle Rhee (by the way, I was a huge supporter of her, until I looked more deeply into her outcomes, beyond the propaganda and the short term):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/11/how-billionaire-funded-ed-reform-groups-push-charters-vouchers/?tid=up_next

Seen from the other city quadrant, the truth is also that the migration to the NW schools of the "best families" and kids, is determining what will soon become the Great Missed Opportunity by neighborhood communities to demand and pursue change for the local schools. Longer term residents would have now a unique opportunity to join forces with the "newcomers" (from the "gentrification" process) to achieve improvements. Instead, all are shipping kids to NW. A magnificent school such as the Takoma Educational Campus (huge facilities, sport camps, football, baseball, pool, tennis courts..) in a thriving and rising neighborhood... What a missed opportunity seeing all those families and kids at 8:00 am embarking on their twice-a-day commute to west of the Park.. I am saying this because , while this posting is more about the powerful lobbies of the NW private schools and the fact that the vertical feeder rights so dear to Rhee (and I recently heard to the ex-Republican Catania too) are being a generous gift to the NW private schools, a robbery to the middle-class South/West Ward 3 families, I am truly convinced that the worse outcome is being paid by the disadvantaged communities. This will be for another posting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The truth is that Principals and admin. officers of nearby private school are freaking out in front of a rising Hardy, as this it is already turning into lower enrollment starting from this year, as it happened for Deal and Wilson.

There are more than enough students from fabulously wealthy families to fill all of NW DC's private schools many times over.

This just proves your ignorance. Many families from NW DC send their kids to private schools because they just don't have options, not because they have money to throw away. Every family I talk to who sends their kids to private schools would be superhappy to send them to public school, if public schools were better. Our household makes 350k a year combined and still we hate having to drive a new car off a cliff every year just to pay 40K a year someone who has to teach algebra and the rules of grammar.

I remember this same thing was said about BASIS: private schools are shivering in their boots! It's nonsense, sorry. Sure, there are a handful of middle class (at your stated salary, I won't include you) families in NW private schools who are looking for great public or charter options. I count myself among them and will possibly switch my child to public or charter at some point. But for most private school families, tuition is a drop in the bucket, and they'll see no need to move on. No one at my child's school even knows that BASIS or Hardy or DCI or whatever exist. (They have sometimes heard of Deal, and I do even know of a family whose children left private school when their parents rented an efficiency apartment in Tenleytown just to establish "residency." Cheaper than 2 tuitions, apparently.) But who cares? Hardy is clearly strengthening its academic credentials, and one hopes that this will serve all comers well and also start to raise the bar for all public middle schools in DC.

[Anonymous]

I remember this same thing was said about BASIS: private schools are shivering in their boots! It's nonsense, sorry. Sure, there are a handful of middle class (at your stated salary, I won't include you) families in NW private schools who are looking for great public or charter options. I count myself among them and will possibly switch my child to public or charter at some point. But for most private school families, tuition is a drop in the bucket, and they'll see no need to move on. No one at my child's school even knows that BASIS or Hardy or DCI or whatever exist. (They have sometimes heard of Deal, and I do even know of a family whose children left private school when their parents rented an efficiency apartment in Tenleytown just to establish "residency." Cheaper than 2 tuitions, apparently.) But who cares? Hardy is clearly strengthening its academic credentials, and one hopes that this will serve all comers well and also start to raise the bar for all public middle schools in DC.

Amen. +1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is focused on middle school improvement at the same time as this push for more local involvement in Hardy - and from hearing Patricia Pride and other DCPS staff speak about this, the goal is that ALL DC middle schools should get better. A rising tide lifts all ships, etc. So much of the snarkiness found in DCUM forums is related to a fear that "if you get more, I get less" (as well as the fact that anonymous posts allows the bitch to come out). A post that celebrates more people moving into DCPS should not draw the ire of those who are in - either IB or OOB, you can (and should) have better options. It only takes a few motivated families in any area to start the process of strong local involvement in schools (Deal 1st, then Hardy, and the rest, I hope).

I am from the Midwest, where everyone just went to their own local public school (or Catholic school); it meant that there was "skin in the game" for schools to serve their clients. When well-intentioned, motivated parents from other wards send their kids to an OOB school, it weakens their community school. I am not blaming those parents; everyone must do what they think is best for their child. It's just an unfortunate unintended consequence.

I think the snarkiness is simply due to the fact that anybody can post anonymously and some people do not have anything better to do than post snarky posts here, not to "if you get more I get less". my kids are in elementary, but will go to Deal. I have been following recently Hardy and I am only excited to see the school become more and more appealing to kids zoned for Hardy. frankly, I can't wait to see many more strong DCPS schools at all levels and in all areas of town. Deal is overcrowded and simply cannot be "the option" for public middle school. I am fairly sure a lot of parents zoned for Deal feel happy to see other schools emerge as strong middle schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is focused on middle school improvement at the same time as this push for more local involvement in Hardy - and from hearing Patricia Pride and other DCPS staff speak about this, the goal is that ALL DC middle schools should get better. A rising tide lifts all ships, etc. So much of the snarkiness found in DCUM forums is related to a fear that "if you get more, I get less" (as well as the fact that anonymous posts allows the bitch to come out). A post that celebrates more people moving into DCPS should not draw the ire of those who are in - either IB or OOB, you can (and should) have better options. It only takes a few motivated families in any area to start the process of strong local involvement in schools (Deal 1st, then Hardy, and the rest, I hope).

I am from the Midwest, where everyone just went to their own local public school (or Catholic school); it meant that there was "skin in the game" for schools to serve their clients. When well-intentioned, motivated parents from other wards send their kids to an OOB school, it weakens their community school. I am not blaming those parents; everyone must do what they think is best for their child. It's just an unfortunate unintended consequence.

I think the snarkiness is simply due to the fact that anybody can post anonymously and some people do not have anything better to do than post snarky posts here, not to "if you get more I get less". my kids are in elementary, but will go to Deal. I have been following recently Hardy and I am only excited to see the school become more and more appealing to kids zoned for Hardy. frankly, I can't wait to see many more strong DCPS schools at all levels and in all areas of town. Deal is overcrowded and simply cannot be "the option" for public middle school. I am fairly sure a lot of parents zoned for Deal feel happy to see other schools emerge as strong middle schools.

+1