How does a 'safety" school turn into a highly regarded one?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

We've certainly seen a ton at SWW Francis-Stevens. They make up at least 1/4 of the PK cohorts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think some of the churn is innocent. People move, people leave town, and when people move to the suburbs for a better school they may be moving a preschooler as a younger sibling. But it is a problem.

But people changing schools for a better opportunity are guilty. LMAO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

It's quite a bit more than $10K/year to get the full-time preschool that public PK is, which makes it even more outrageous for the PP to suggest that the few families WOTP who may actually lottery for PK3 should be ineligible for doing so just because they have a guaranteed good option starting in K. Even so, you are right that they are so rare as to not have any impact on the "improvement" or lack thereof of EOTP schools, which is entirely driven by the lottery carousel in which most EOTP parents participate. The only WOTP family I have ever met who sent their kid to PK3 EOTP was at Appletree. I bet the actual data, if anyone has it, would support this anecdotal impression that it's a non-factor. It's a myth fueled by resentment against WOTP families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

We've certainly seen a ton at SWW Francis-Stevens. They make up at least 1/4 of the PK cohorts.

Funny, I wonder how they all got in, considering that SWWFS didn't admit any OOB students for PK3 in last year's lottery. See PP's link on the previous page.

[Anonymous]

There are quite a few WTOP PK3/PK4 dip-inners at all the charters in Ward 5 + CMI. Many many Oyster families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are quite a few WTOP PK3/PK4 dip-inners at all the charters in Ward 5 + CMI. Many many Oyster families.

Those are not the schools that need to turn from "safeties" to "highly regarded" ones that OP is asking about, and that are supposedly held back by what you call the "dip-inners" (what a word creation!). Face it, this is a transient city, there will always be people leaving at all schools, and the strong schools can weather such turnover.

[Anonymous]

you can see the maps at http://www.dcpcsb.org/report/student-location-maps

There are plenty of WOTP kids in charters and presumably also in OOB DCPS schools. That's not the only factor causing churn (personally, the way I'd start trying to reduce it is by ending OOB feeder rights to middle and high schools) but it's one of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are quite a few WTOP PK3/PK4 dip-inners at all the charters in Ward 5 + CMI. Many many Oyster families.

You do realize that charters are citywide, right? Do you know what that means? They aren't your own publicly funded private neighborhood school that is meant to function as your escape hatch when you deem your IB school unacceptable.

[Anonymous]

16 of the kids at Appletree CH are from WOTP. That's 10% of the student body. If a bunch of those kids leave after PK3 to go back to their IB schools, it creates a PK4 class with less cohesion.

Same issue with people pulling kids out of BASIS to go to Deal (or, more often, Wilson). Except there the issue is even bigger since the school won't take new 9th graders to fill the vacated seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Be careful, OP. Last year's safety schools are probably much less safe now. It really can change quite a bit in a year if there is a change in leadership or if it's on the cusp of being considered acceptable. If a few families give it a chance and they are pleased with it, you can expect an influx of kids. They will still leave by 1st grade, but the school will be fine for preschool and will gradually make progress until it hits the Wall of No Middle School Options in 3rd-4th-5th.

You can look at some of last year's data here: https://public.tableau.com/profile/ceyde#!/vizhome/FINALYr2R1ResultsDashboards_3-31-15/CountsDashboard This is just Round 1 data so it doesn't reflect waitlist movement over the summer, which at safety schools may be considerable.

I think any school that had more than 50% OOB students is a school you could consider safe this year.

Depends. Some schools with a high OOB % are actually all IB at the PK3 level.

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of the most recent PPs don't actually know what "WOTP" means geographically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Be careful, OP. Last year's safety schools are probably much less safe now. It really can change quite a bit in a year if there is a change in leadership or if it's on the cusp of being considered acceptable. If a few families give it a chance and they are pleased with it, you can expect an influx of kids. They will still leave by 1st grade, but the school will be fine for preschool and will gradually make progress until it hits the Wall of No Middle School Options in 3rd-4th-5th.

You can look at some of last year's data here: https://public.tableau.com/profile/ceyde#!/vizhome/FINALYr2R1ResultsDashboards_3-31-15/CountsDashboard This is just Round 1 data so it doesn't reflect waitlist movement over the summer, which at safety schools may be considerable.

I think any school that had more than 50% OOB students is a school you could consider safe this year.

Depends. Some schools with a high OOB % are actually all IB at the PK3 level.

You can look at the data by grade in that table. But I would second the recommendation to be careful. A lot can change in a year if there is a change of administration or the public opinion reaches a tipping point. We saw that with Seaton a few years ago and it is happening at Langley now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:16 of the kids at Appletree CH are from WOTP. That's 10% of the student body. If a bunch of those kids leave after PK3 to go back to their IB schools, it creates a PK4 class with less cohesion.

Same issue with people pulling kids out of BASIS to go to Deal (or, more often, Wilson). Except there the issue is even bigger since the school won't take new 9th graders to fill the vacated seats.

Please there are posters EOTP everywhere giving advice like "don't worry about Noyes test scores, they don't test you get grades" or "XYZ school is just fine for pk3 then you can lottery again." This happens throughout the city, not just WOTP. In fact it happens more often EOTP as there are many families that lottery well throughout older elementary grades.

[Anonymous]

To be 'highly regarded' on this board it seems a school needs good test scores for the testing grades and/or a model that appeals to your average DCUM person. A decent number of white students (20-30%) helps too.

That's why the moniker is mostly applied to charters who have more variety (Montessori, expeditionary learning, dual Lang immersion, etc).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

One of those reasons: JKLM (and Stoddert) parents squatting in EOTP schools until they get by-right entry to K. Let's just stop that.


Oh, you just stop that. You know full well that Ward 3 parents are a tiny fraction of the churn. The vast majority are EOTP parents who play the lottery again and again until they get into one of the few highly regarded schools, and if not, they move. Very few plan on staying at their IB school beyond PreK, unless it happens to be one of the few desirable ones.

+1

For one, we can afford to actually pay for one of our many excellent neighborhood nursery schools. I can't think of a single household in which the parents said, You know what? Let's drive from 39th and Fessenden over to Woodridge every day, twice a day, and then back to our jobs at Farragut North so we can save the $10K we'd spend on PS3.

It's quite a bit more than $10K/year to get the full-time preschool that public PK is, which makes it even more outrageous for the PP to suggest that the few families WOTP who may actually lottery for PK3 should be ineligible for doing so just because they have a guaranteed good option starting in K. Even so, you are right that they are so rare as to not have any impact on the "improvement" or lack thereof of EOTP schools, which is entirely driven by the lottery carousel in which most EOTP parents participate. The only WOTP family I have ever met who sent their kid to PK3 EOTP was at Appletree. I bet the actual data, if anyone has it, would support this anecdotal impression that it's a non-factor. It's a myth fueled by resentment against WOTP families.

We will gladly GTFO your pk3 programs over yonder, as soon as Ward 3 is granted the boon of One. SINGLE. DCPS pk3 class, or charter school (at any grade). You cannot, in the meantime, tell us to go back to Ward 3 when there is no there there. If we had these programs in our neighborhoods, we would not invade the ones in yours.