Jefferson Academy Kool-Aid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really hate that we're talking about "shitty" schools. I really don't know that the test scores reflect how good or bad a school is in DC. Rather it reflects the social and economic capital of the families that send their children there. Median Growth Percentile has been suggested to do a much better job at reflecting the performance of a school. Jefferson's scores there are a little better than Brent's, although by this metric, all our kids should go to DC Prep Edgewood's middle school.

I wish people would stop talking about not sending their kids to bad schools when what they should be saying is they don't want to send their kids to schools with a lot of poor kids who aren't performing at grade level. Which is fair enough.

But they are shitty schools. It's not just the kids, but the fact that being poor means you have fewer access to resources, and hence shitty schools (no matter who enrolls there.) Bad teachers, bad administration, bad facilities. It's not true that your kid will do fine there just by dint of being high SES - that's your white privilege speaking. Your kid will have to go to a crappy school, because poor people get crappy things (the definition of being poor) and may suffer, just like the poor kids. Not as badly (because again, privilege) but to pretend like their mere presence is what changes a bad school into a good school is pretty offensive. It's a product of income inequality plus gentrification that makes this self-evident. In the same way that moving into a run-down house doesn't make it a nice house just because you're rich, sending your rich kid to a shitty, poor school doesn't turn it into a good school.

How do you reach that conclusion about the teachers and administrators? Because they haven't solved poverty? For as much as DC gripes about facilities deficiencies there's little evidence that modernized facilities improve learning. The teachers and administrators can only serve the families that enroll. If that happens to be predominantly at risk and/FARM students then your common core standards for quality assessment are largely irrelevant.

You're the one speaking from a position of profound entitlement.

I'm not the shitty schools poster, but more power to her. Profound entitlement? Knock off the holier-than-thou shaming already. A school in which 12% of 6th graders test proficient is shitty by any measure of course, and not necessarily because teachers and admins there aren't doing a good job.

a school as affluent and low at risk at Brent only has 12% advanced. That doesn't impress me all that much

Right! And if a school in Brent's situation isn't cranking out advanced students then how can we hope that Jefferson will be able to do it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, in the interests of fairness, I don't think anyone last night said Jefferson was the next Deal or that any of this would be easy. But they did let people know that the enrollment situation at Jefferson is improving, albeit it doesn't have nearly the demand as Basis or Latin. But demand is there which it isn't for Eliot-Hine or many other DCPS middle schools.

So you have done your due diligence in adding skepticism to the discussion. That is duly noted. Now how can we make a better middle school pathway for advanced/proficient students at Brent? I'm with the optimists who are working to improve Jefferson rather than throwing their hands up and getting a realtor or paying for private.

I would add that, yes, Hardy and Stuart-Hobson's test scores may improve faster than Jefferson's. But they are in demand now. So if Brent families would consider those schools now and the Hardy/SH aren't an option in the future, why not consider Jefferson if it gets to or could get to quickly the point Hardy is at now? It is my understanding that the proficient/advanced students at SH generally feel pretty good about their experience.

The fact that a school which has an enrollment of about 50 percent of its capacity has engineered a "waitlist" in order to create the perception that it is now "in demand" is too clever by half.

There's a lot of misconception about why schools offer OOB spots. Schools only offer OOB spaces with total confidence that the spaces will be filled and generate at least some waitlist. In the budgeting process the schools project enrollment and request budget accordingly. There's a strong disincentive to overestimating student enrollment because if the numbers don't materialize the schools lose the resources late in the process. Conversely, the principals are better served projecting realistically and almost conservatively because they can gain additional resources if the numbers demand it. They'd rather add if necessary late instead of completing their annual planning and subtracting resources at the beginning of the school year.

Unless something has drastically changed, that is not true at all. Historically DCPS principals have had a strong incentive to over-estimate their incoming classes. They could claim it was for students who might move into the school during the year, and no-one ever asked them to return any funds when those students never materialized.

You are incorrect. If enrollment targets are not met in June (before school starts), July and the start of school, positions are either frozen or even eliminated. Principals have to be conservative with enrollment forecasts.

When a grade level ends up with 28 students-- not room as no single classroom projects 32 students -- the principal has to determine how to allocate the budgeted resource. It might mean splitting teachers into multiple roles, but the teaching positions are assigned based on the total enrollment. If a school has to provide 2 teachers for classrooms of 14 the school will cut elsewhere. . . or add students to the other classes where feasible. Not optimal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No doubt, there are many potential reasons kids arrive at schools with below grade level skills. However, for parents considering sending their kids to Jefferson, the question is can Jefferson adequately teach my child given their resources and the cohort of students entering. Jefferson's response is differentiation in the classroom.

Maybe more than differentiation in the classroom. At a Brent PTA meeting several months ago, the Jefferson Academy vice principal did say that they'd be glad to offer "advanced classes," e.g. 7th grade algebra, if they had a cohort of students ready for them.

Henderson, Grosso, Allen and company don't seem to have their heads around the problem of funding pricey if-you-build-it-they-will-come renovations without also funding instructors/resources for honors classes (better than the at-grade level variant you find at Stuart Hobson), creating false narratives. The problem is quite simple: DCPS leaders and politicians aren't providing incentives to middle school principals to allocate funds for the advanced instruction needed to attract and retain cohorts of in-boundary students in gentrifying zones.

OK, so academic tracking along race lines was a serious problem in previous generations. This time around, tracking could be done thoughtfully, with the sort of "flex tracking" with strong after-hours support you see at BASIS and Deal for math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

As you seem to be familiar with the acievement gap at Brent you must have heard that the gap correlates with students admitted to Brent at First Grade and above. Brent can't remediate its way out of a situation where students admitted to fill seats via the lottery find themselves unprepared by the schools they left.

I'll fix this for you. Unprepared by ...

... by the prenatal care they didn't get
... by the poverty-driven cortisol that crossed the placenta when they were in utero
... by the relative lack of high-nutrient foods (DHA, EPA) they didn't get ages 0-3 as their brains developed critical neuro pathways
... by the 30 million words they didn't hear by age 3, a result that will follow them at Watkins, SH and for the rest of their entire lives [ http://literacy.rice.edu/thirty-million-word-gap ]
... by the comparatively ad hoc, likely low-quality and unstable child care they received prior to school
... by the books they weren't read, the art classes they didn't have as 2 year olds, the Please Touch Museum they didn't visit at age 4
.... by the slapping around they received throughout early childhood for getting on mama's last nerve

It's really time to reframe "the gap" and stop making "shitty teachers" and "shitty administrators" and "David Grosso" the absolute and only scapegoats.

-- not a teacher or a Grosso staffer

^^ this ... but hey, let's blame teachers for not being the panacea to ending child poverty. it's just another example of our kick down culture of "accountability". For all the data being generated around education we still blame teachers for the failings of children taking tests with odds profoundly stacked against them.

I really admire the small number of children who test both proficient and advanced in very challenging school environments. For all the talk about test-in schools these are the children who would really benefit from the opportunity. I don't worry about the Hill children landing softly -- it's kind of how many live anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

As you seem to be familiar with the acievement gap at Brent you must have heard that the gap correlates with students admitted to Brent at First Grade and above. Brent can't remediate its way out of a situation where students admitted to fill seats via the lottery find themselves unprepared by the schools they left.

I'll fix this for you. Unprepared by ...

... by the prenatal care they didn't get
... by the poverty-driven cortisol that crossed the placenta when they were in utero
... by the relative lack of high-nutrient foods (DHA, EPA) they didn't get ages 0-3 as their brains developed critical neuro pathways
... by the 30 million words they didn't hear by age 3, a result that will follow them at Watkins, SH and for the rest of their entire lives [ http://literacy.rice.edu/thirty-million-word-gap ]
... by the comparatively ad hoc, likely low-quality and unstable child care they received prior to school
... by the books they weren't read, the art classes they didn't have as 2 year olds, the Please Touch Museum they didn't visit at age 4
.... by the slapping around they received throughout early childhood for getting on mama's last nerve

It's really time to reframe "the gap" and stop making "shitty teachers" and "shitty administrators" and "David Grosso" the absolute and only scapegoats.

-- not a teacher or a Grosso staffer

I don't understand how you can detail the systemic, institutionally embedded causes of poverty, and then somehow exempt public schools from that list? Public schools are the next thing in that list that fail kids, in many cases.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No doubt, there are many potential reasons kids arrive at schools with below grade level skills. However, for parents considering sending their kids to Jefferson, the question is can Jefferson adequately teach my child given their resources and the cohort of students entering. Jefferson's response is differentiation in the classroom.

Maybe more than differentiation in the classroom. At a Brent PTA meeting several months ago, the Jefferson Academy vice principal did say that they'd be glad to offer "advanced classes," e.g. 7th grade algebra, if they had a cohort of students ready for them.

Henderson, Grosso, Allen and company don't seem to have their heads around the problem of funding pricey if-you-build-it-they-will-come renovations without also funding instructors/resources for honors classes (better than the at-grade level variant you find at Stuart Hobson), creating false narratives. The problem is quite simple: DCPS leaders and politicians aren't providing incentives to middle school principals to allocate funds for the advanced instruction needed to attract and retain cohorts of in-boundary students in gentrifying zones.

OK, so academic tracking along race lines was a serious problem in previous generations. This time around, tracking could be done thoughtfully, with the sort of "flex tracking" with strong after-hours support you see at BASIS and Deal for math.

There is definitely a "chicken and egg" dilemma at work here. Hill parents don't trust DCPS to provide an adequate path for their kids. And after the Eastern debacle, where DCPS moved mountains to reconstitute, renovate and install IB at the "stroller brigade's" request, and they still didn't show up, Hill parents don't have much credibility with downtown either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No doubt, there are many potential reasons kids arrive at schools with below grade level skills. However, for parents considering sending their kids to Jefferson, the question is can Jefferson adequately teach my child given their resources and the cohort of students entering. Jefferson's response is differentiation in the classroom.

Maybe more than differentiation in the classroom. At a Brent PTA meeting several months ago, the Jefferson Academy vice principal did say that they'd be glad to offer "advanced classes," e.g. 7th grade algebra, if they had a cohort of students ready for them.

Henderson, Grosso, Allen and company don't seem to have their heads around the problem of funding pricey if-you-build-it-they-will-come renovations without also funding instructors/resources for honors classes (better than the at-grade level variant you find at Stuart Hobson), creating false narratives. The problem is quite simple: DCPS leaders and politicians aren't providing incentives to middle school principals to allocate funds for the advanced instruction needed to attract and retain cohorts of in-boundary students in gentrifying zones.

OK, so academic tracking along race lines was a serious problem in previous generations. This time around, tracking could be done thoughtfully, with the sort of "flex tracking" with strong after-hours support you see at BASIS and Deal for math.

There is definitely a "chicken and egg" dilemma at work here. Hill parents don't trust DCPS to provide an adequate path for their kids. And after the Eastern debacle, where DCPS moved mountains to reconstitute, renovate and install IB at the "stroller brigade's" request, and they still didn't show up, Hill parents don't have much credibility with downtown either.

+1. And that lesson learned by the folks 'downtown' is having spillover effects on Ward 4, as DCPS is rejecting requests to do some of those things at the new MacFarland.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No doubt, there are many potential reasons kids arrive at schools with below grade level skills. However, for parents considering sending their kids to Jefferson, the question is can Jefferson adequately teach my child given their resources and the cohort of students entering. Jefferson's response is differentiation in the classroom.

Maybe more than differentiation in the classroom. At a Brent PTA meeting several months ago, the Jefferson Academy vice principal did say that they'd be glad to offer "advanced classes," e.g. 7th grade algebra, if they had a cohort of students ready for them.

Henderson, Grosso, Allen and company don't seem to have their heads around the problem of funding pricey if-you-build-it-they-will-come renovations without also funding instructors/resources for honors classes (better than the at-grade level variant you find at Stuart Hobson), creating false narratives. The problem is quite simple: DCPS leaders and politicians aren't providing incentives to middle school principals to allocate funds for the advanced instruction needed to attract and retain cohorts of in-boundary students in gentrifying zones.

OK, so academic tracking along race lines was a serious problem in previous generations. This time around, tracking could be done thoughtfully, with the sort of "flex tracking" with strong after-hours support you see at BASIS and Deal for math.

There is definitely a "chicken and egg" dilemma at work here. Hill parents don't trust DCPS to provide an adequate path for their kids. And after the Eastern debacle, where DCPS moved mountains to reconstitute, renovate and install IB at the "stroller brigade's" request, and they still didn't show up, Hill parents don't have much credibility with downtown either.

Show me one school system in the past 25 years where significant numbers of non economically disadvantaged families enrolled children in schools that were majority econ disadvantaged. The only ones I can find are when the school used a magnet program or a school within a school model. To fault non econ disadvantaged Hill families for not enrolling their kids is to ask them to do something that has no recent precedent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No doubt, there are many potential reasons kids arrive at schools with below grade level skills. However, for parents considering sending their kids to Jefferson, the question is can Jefferson adequately teach my child given their resources and the cohort of students entering. Jefferson's response is differentiation in the classroom.

Maybe more than differentiation in the classroom. At a Brent PTA meeting several months ago, the Jefferson Academy vice principal did say that they'd be glad to offer "advanced classes," e.g. 7th grade algebra, if they had a cohort of students ready for them.

Henderson, Grosso, Allen and company don't seem to have their heads around the problem of funding pricey if-you-build-it-they-will-come renovations without also funding instructors/resources for honors classes (better than the at-grade level variant you find at Stuart Hobson), creating false narratives. The problem is quite simple: DCPS leaders and politicians aren't providing incentives to middle school principals to allocate funds for the advanced instruction needed to attract and retain cohorts of in-boundary students in gentrifying zones.

OK, so academic tracking along race lines was a serious problem in previous generations. This time around, tracking could be done thoughtfully, with the sort of "flex tracking" with strong after-hours support you see at BASIS and Deal for math.

There is definitely a "chicken and egg" dilemma at work here. Hill parents don't trust DCPS to provide an adequate path for their kids. And after the Eastern debacle, where DCPS moved mountains to reconstitute, renovate and install IB at the "stroller brigade's" request, and they still didn't show up, Hill parents don't have much credibility with downtown either.

Perhaps because "downtown" isn't smart enough to understand that families aren't going to seriously think about attending Eastern when shitty middle schools remain an impediment and charters siphon off a good chunk of the cohort. More evidence of magical unicorn thinking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No doubt, there are many potential reasons kids arrive at schools with below grade level skills. However, for parents considering sending their kids to Jefferson, the question is can Jefferson adequately teach my child given their resources and the cohort of students entering. Jefferson's response is differentiation in the classroom.

Maybe more than differentiation in the classroom. At a Brent PTA meeting several months ago, the Jefferson Academy vice principal did say that they'd be glad to offer "advanced classes," e.g. 7th grade algebra, if they had a cohort of students ready for them.

Henderson, Grosso, Allen and company don't seem to have their heads around the problem of funding pricey if-you-build-it-they-will-come renovations without also funding instructors/resources for honors classes (better than the at-grade level variant you find at Stuart Hobson), creating false narratives. The problem is quite simple: DCPS leaders and politicians aren't providing incentives to middle school principals to allocate funds for the advanced instruction needed to attract and retain cohorts of in-boundary students in gentrifying zones.

OK, so academic tracking along race lines was a serious problem in previous generations. This time around, tracking could be done thoughtfully, with the sort of "flex tracking" with strong after-hours support you see at BASIS and Deal for math.

There is definitely a "chicken and egg" dilemma at work here. Hill parents don't trust DCPS to provide an adequate path for their kids. And after the Eastern debacle, where DCPS moved mountains to reconstitute, renovate and install IB at the "stroller brigade's" request, and they still didn't show up, Hill parents don't have much credibility with downtown either.

Show me one school system in the past 25 years where significant numbers of non economically disadvantaged families enrolled children in schools that were majority econ disadvantaged. The only ones I can find are when the school used a magnet program or a school within a school model. To fault non econ disadvantaged Hill families for not enrolling their kids is to ask them to do something that has no recent precedent.

+100. Henderson and Grosso are incompetent leaders and ridiculous bleeding heart liberals. Plain and simple.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

As you seem to be familiar with the acievement gap at Brent you must have heard that the gap correlates with students admitted to Brent at First Grade and above. Brent can't remediate its way out of a situation where students admitted to fill seats via the lottery find themselves unprepared by the schools they left.

I'll fix this for you. Unprepared by ...

... by the prenatal care they didn't get
... by the poverty-driven cortisol that crossed the placenta when they were in utero
... by the relative lack of high-nutrient foods (DHA, EPA) they didn't get ages 0-3 as their brains developed critical neuro pathways
... by the 30 million words they didn't hear by age 3, a result that will follow them at Watkins, SH and for the rest of their entire lives [ http://literacy.rice.edu/thirty-million-word-gap ]
... by the comparatively ad hoc, likely low-quality and unstable child care they received prior to school
... by the books they weren't read, the art classes they didn't have as 2 year olds, the Please Touch Museum they didn't visit at age 4
.... by the slapping around they received throughout early childhood for getting on mama's last nerve

It's really time to reframe "the gap" and stop making "shitty teachers" and "shitty administrators" and "David Grosso" the absolute and only scapegoats.

-- not a teacher or a Grosso staffer

I don't understand how you can detail the systemic, institutionally embedded causes of poverty, and then somehow exempt public schools from that list? Public schools are the next thing in that list that fail kids, in many cases.

the children reach school age far behind their peers, thus the achievement gap. even if schooling helps improve, their higher SES cohorts are also improving and more dramatically at that. You may not see much of a difference in a 3 yr old classroom but by 1st grade the differences are obvious. It happens if in high performing schools with highly effective teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No doubt, there are many potential reasons kids arrive at schools with below grade level skills. However, for parents considering sending their kids to Jefferson, the question is can Jefferson adequately teach my child given their resources and the cohort of students entering. Jefferson's response is differentiation in the classroom.

Maybe more than differentiation in the classroom. At a Brent PTA meeting several months ago, the Jefferson Academy vice principal did say that they'd be glad to offer "advanced classes," e.g. 7th grade algebra, if they had a cohort of students ready for them.

Henderson, Grosso, Allen and company don't seem to have their heads around the problem of funding pricey if-you-build-it-they-will-come renovations without also funding instructors/resources for honors classes (better than the at-grade level variant you find at Stuart Hobson), creating false narratives. The problem is quite simple: DCPS leaders and politicians aren't providing incentives to middle school principals to allocate funds for the advanced instruction needed to attract and retain cohorts of in-boundary students in gentrifying zones.

OK, so academic tracking along race lines was a serious problem in previous generations. This time around, tracking could be done thoughtfully, with the sort of "flex tracking" with strong after-hours support you see at BASIS and Deal for math.

There is definitely a "chicken and egg" dilemma at work here. Hill parents don't trust DCPS to provide an adequate path for their kids. And after the Eastern debacle, where DCPS moved mountains to reconstitute, renovate and install IB at the "stroller brigade's" request, and they still didn't show up, Hill parents don't have much credibility with downtown either.

Your story has holes. It wasn't the "stroller brigade" pushing for Eastern. If anything the stroller brigade wanted a viable comprehensive neighborhood middle school option that doesn't require lottery luck

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No doubt, there are many potential reasons kids arrive at schools with below grade level skills. However, for parents considering sending their kids to Jefferson, the question is can Jefferson adequately teach my child given their resources and the cohort of students entering. Jefferson's response is differentiation in the classroom.

Maybe more than differentiation in the classroom. At a Brent PTA meeting several months ago, the Jefferson Academy vice principal did say that they'd be glad to offer "advanced classes," e.g. 7th grade algebra, if they had a cohort of students ready for them.

Henderson, Grosso, Allen and company don't seem to have their heads around the problem of funding pricey if-you-build-it-they-will-come renovations without also funding instructors/resources for honors classes (better than the at-grade level variant you find at Stuart Hobson), creating false narratives. The problem is quite simple: DCPS leaders and politicians aren't providing incentives to middle school principals to allocate funds for the advanced instruction needed to attract and retain cohorts of in-boundary students in gentrifying zones.

OK, so academic tracking along race lines was a serious problem in previous generations. This time around, tracking could be done thoughtfully, with the sort of "flex tracking" with strong after-hours support you see at BASIS and Deal for math.

There is definitely a "chicken and egg" dilemma at work here. Hill parents don't trust DCPS to provide an adequate path for their kids. And after the Eastern debacle, where DCPS moved mountains to reconstitute, renovate and install IB at the "stroller brigade's" request, and they still didn't show up, Hill parents don't have much credibility with downtown either.

Show me one school system in the past 25 years where significant numbers of non economically disadvantaged families enrolled children in schools that were majority econ disadvantaged. The only ones I can find are when the school used a magnet program or a school within a school model. To fault non econ disadvantaged Hill families for not enrolling their kids is to ask them to do something that has no recent precedent.

The Hartford, CT (magnet-like) schools are the only ones that I know about where it has been somewhat successful. The state basically drowned the inner city schools in amenities (planetarium, Lego labs, etc) and worked their ass off to get suburban families to buy in.

I am not blaming anyone as I might make the same decision in that situation. Hopefully, maybe, possibly (doubtfully), hashing it out will lead someone to come up with an idea that works for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No doubt, there are many potential reasons kids arrive at schools with below grade level skills. However, for parents considering sending their kids to Jefferson, the question is can Jefferson adequately teach my child given their resources and the cohort of students entering. Jefferson's response is differentiation in the classroom.

Maybe more than differentiation in the classroom. At a Brent PTA meeting several months ago, the Jefferson Academy vice principal did say that they'd be glad to offer "advanced classes," e.g. 7th grade algebra, if they had a cohort of students ready for them.

Henderson, Grosso, Allen and company don't seem to have their heads around the problem of funding pricey if-you-build-it-they-will-come renovations without also funding instructors/resources for honors classes (better than the at-grade level variant you find at Stuart Hobson), creating false narratives. The problem is quite simple: DCPS leaders and politicians aren't providing incentives to middle school principals to allocate funds for the advanced instruction needed to attract and retain cohorts of in-boundary students in gentrifying zones.

OK, so academic tracking along race lines was a serious problem in previous generations. This time around, tracking could be done thoughtfully, with the sort of "flex tracking" with strong after-hours support you see at BASIS and Deal for math.

There is definitely a "chicken and egg" dilemma at work here. Hill parents don't trust DCPS to provide an adequate path for their kids. And after the Eastern debacle, where DCPS moved mountains to reconstitute, renovate and install IB at the "stroller brigade's" request, and they still didn't show up, Hill parents don't have much credibility with downtown either.

Your story has holes. It wasn't the "stroller brigade" pushing for Eastern. If anything the stroller brigade wanted a viable comprehensive neighborhood middle school option that doesn't require lottery luck

That's fair; fixing the high school before the middle schools didn't make much sense to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No doubt, there are many potential reasons kids arrive at schools with below grade level skills. However, for parents considering sending their kids to Jefferson, the question is can Jefferson adequately teach my child given their resources and the cohort of students entering. Jefferson's response is differentiation in the classroom.

Maybe more than differentiation in the classroom. At a Brent PTA meeting several months ago, the Jefferson Academy vice principal did say that they'd be glad to offer "advanced classes," e.g. 7th grade algebra, if they had a cohort of students ready for them.

Henderson, Grosso, Allen and company don't seem to have their heads around the problem of funding pricey if-you-build-it-they-will-come renovations without also funding instructors/resources for honors classes (better than the at-grade level variant you find at Stuart Hobson), creating false narratives. The problem is quite simple: DCPS leaders and politicians aren't providing incentives to middle school principals to allocate funds for the advanced instruction needed to attract and retain cohorts of in-boundary students in gentrifying zones.

OK, so academic tracking along race lines was a serious problem in previous generations. This time around, tracking could be done thoughtfully, with the sort of "flex tracking" with strong after-hours support you see at BASIS and Deal for math.

There is definitely a "chicken and egg" dilemma at work here. Hill parents don't trust DCPS to provide an adequate path for their kids. And after the Eastern debacle, where DCPS moved mountains to reconstitute, renovate and install IB at the "stroller brigade's" request, and they still didn't show up, Hill parents don't have much credibility with downtown either.

Eastern is a fully articulated high school that was renovated for the students who attend and who will attend. It was the right thing to do and the renovation is beautiful.