MacFarland - am I missing something?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:IMO the MacFarland language immersion program should have a beginners track for IB students who have not attended an immersion ES program, but also a language proficiency test-in track for students from all over the city who have completed a bilingual ES program or who have achieved bi-literacy by another route. It's important that students in all of our DCPS immersion ES have a shot at continuing their immersion experience if they have achieved a certain level of proficiency by the end of ES. If it wasn't their thing and they didn't really get it, as can often be the case even in immersion programs, then presumably they wouldn't pass the second-language placement test and would not be allowed into the program. IBs would be guaranteed a spot no matter what, although placed with the beginners if their immersion experience had not led to proficiency, and there would, at least in the early years, be OOB spots available for beginners as well via lottery. Proficiency testing could be structured the way Walls does their placement, ie students results are ranked and school accepts the top X number of students per their available slots in the fluent speakers track.

That sounds great. Is there a group we can join to support the school?

[Anonymous]

I think MacFarland was under enrolled but not because of demographics. Parents at our Ward 4 school petitioned to extend it to 5th because they didn't want to send their kids there. It fit the profile of an urban school with low test scores, a dated facility, a lack of diversity that middle class parents couldn't see past. It was the kind of place that drives parents to move to MoCo. Hoping that will will change, along with the attitudes of the parents of high performing students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IMO the MacFarland language immersion program should have a beginners track for IB students who have not attended an immersion ES program, but also a language proficiency test-in track for students from all over the city who have completed a bilingual ES program or who have achieved bi-literacy by another route. It's important that students in all of our DCPS immersion ES have a shot at continuing their immersion experience if they have achieved a certain level of proficiency by the end of ES. If it wasn't their thing and they didn't really get it, as can often be the case even in immersion programs, then presumably they wouldn't pass the second-language placement test and would not be allowed into the program. IBs would be guaranteed a spot no matter what, although placed with the beginners if their immersion experience had not led to proficiency, and there would, at least in the early years, be OOB spots available for beginners as well via lottery. Proficiency testing could be structured the way Walls does their placement, ie students results are ranked and school accepts the top X number of students per their available slots in the fluent speakers track.

That sounds great. Is there a group we can join to support the school?

Start with the Ward 4 Education Alliance (email is ward4edalliance at gmail), and tell them you'd like to get involved.

[Anonymous]

The school is set to open in 2018-2019. DCPS is currently putting together a community cabinet, which serves as an advisory committee to make recommendations to the Chancellor to help plan the opening of the school.

I appears to be other efforts taken place, but not sure if they will overlap one another.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the above posters. We are IB for one of the feeder schools to the new middle school but not an immersion program. We would loive for that to be an option for our DC if we never lottery into an immersion program. It would be a great addition to the community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the above posters. We are IB for one of the feeder schools to the new middle school but not an immersion program. We would loive for that to be an option for our DC if we never lottery into an immersion program. It would be a great addition to the community.

What are the feeder schools may I ask? Raymond, Powell and West?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the above posters. We are IB for one of the feeder schools to the new middle school but not an immersion program. We would loive for that to be an option for our DC if we never lottery into an immersion program. It would be a great addition to the community.

What are the feeder schools may I ask? Raymond, Powell and West?

From the final recommendation:
http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/Files/downloads/COMMUNITY/Final%20proposal%20and%20boundaries%202014/MacFarland.pdf

Geographic Feeder Pathway: Anyone living in the new attendance zones for Barnard ES, Truesdell ES, Powell ES, Bruce-
Monroe ES, Raymond ES, or West ES is zoned for and has a right to attend MacFarland MS and Roosevelt HS. Any student
attending a feeder elementary school out-of-boundary has the right to continue in the feeder pathway to MacFarland. Feeder
pathway changes were made to better align school building capacity with population and with boundary participation rates,
and to support racial/ethnic and socioeconomic diversity, where possible.

Programmatic Feeder Pathway: Powell ES, Bruce-Monroe ES, Bancroft ES, Cleveland ES, Marie Reed ES, and Tyler ES
all have dual-language programs. Fifth grade students in these dual-language programs will have a right to attend the duallanguage
program at MacFarland MS. Eighth grade students in the MacFarland MS dual-language program will have a right
to attend the dual-language program at Roosevelt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the above posters. We are IB for one of the feeder schools to the new middle school but not an immersion program. We would loive for that to be an option for our DC if we never lottery into an immersion program. It would be a great addition to the community.

What are the feeder schools may I ask? Raymond, Powell and West?

I'm not the PP. We are in bounds for Raymond but send DD to a school that feeds to CHEC. Given the choice between them, provided that at least some of the hype holds up to reality, we would prefer to send DD to MacFarland.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the above posters. We are IB for one of the feeder schools to the new middle school but not an immersion program. We would loive for that to be an option for our DC if we never lottery into an immersion program. It would be a great addition to the community.

What are the feeder schools may I ask? Raymond, Powell and West?

I'm not the PP. We are in bounds for Raymond but send DD to a school that feeds to CHEC. Given the choice between them, provided that at least some of the hype holds up to reality, we would prefer to send DD to MacFarland.

Reality will be somewhere between the trash talkers and the boosters. I think that with feeders like those, it's going to be an easier start than Brookland Middle School, so it'll be interesting to see how Brookland starts off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We do need a bilingual program at MacFarland. Columbia Heights EC has a bilingual program designed to serve students who are just starting out in Spanish, not students who will be graduating after 5-7 years of language immersion at Powell, BMPV, Bancroft, and other DCPS bilingual schools.

Why not put the bilingual program at the hypothetical re-opened Shaw? in terms of DCPS bilingual programs, Shaw middle school only has Marie Reed in its feeder. Bancroft goes to Deal (although some parents at Bancroft are pushing for a strong DCPS bilingual option this side of the park and would attend MacFarland if other factors were right). Oyster has its own middle school, and Tyler is all by itself on Capitol Hill. Am I missing any? Powell and BMPV will both go to the New MacFarland, so that is actually the highest concentration of bilingual elementary schools for any middle school in the city.

In addition, MacFarland will feed into Roosevelt, which is currently being re-envisioned as the DCPS flagship school for international studies. Powell, MacFarland, and Roosevelt are literally right next door to each other, so you would have a thriving internationally-focused campus with opportunities for cross-pollination and coordination (older students tutoring younger students, teachers collaborating, and the ability to build on specialized skills and programs as students grow).

Perhaps most importantly, there is strong community support for re-opening MacFarland. By contrast, Shaw parents are not really organizing or pushing for a stand-alone middle school in their neighborhood. This may be because many of the Shaw feeder schools currently feed into Deal, while a number of the MacFarland schools currently feed into under-funded education campuses, so parents can see a clear benefit to re-opening MacFarland, which they may not see for Shaw.

Why didn't all these factors stop MacFarland from closing? Part of it is the community was a blind-sided by the MacFarland closure. Parents from different feeder schools were not well-networked at the time and while individuals (including myself) did attempt to reach out to express our concerns about closing the school, the whole process moved very quickly with few opportunities for public input.

MacFarland was under-enrolled, but Wards 4 and 1 are in the midst of an epic baby boom, and most elementary schools have pyramid-shaped populations, with huge enrollment in early childhood petering off in the upper grades. We are all looking for a reliable middle school option, and the sheer level of interest will do much to address the collective action problem that led to the closure in the first place. Had these parents with young children been better organized, I don't think the closure would have happened.

Which of the Shaw feeder schools currently feed to Deal?