Ward 6 Needs to Boot Joe Weedon

[Anonymous]

^^ Yet many Hill parents would give their right arm to get their kids into Washington Latin, where there is no advanced math or science or history or English.

Just not convinced it's all about curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

Your school capacity totals are right for the three schools but the breakdown is off (EH 850, Jefferson 900, SH 460). You've also omitted CH Montessori and Walker Jones (admittedly small) which are education campuses. Keep in mind that's total seats 6-8 and a 4th grade total could only be expected to occupy a third of that capacity and not the entire school. That would represent a 6th grade need of ~ 750 seats. of course Jefferson and Eliot Hine are both severely underenrolled with fewer students enrolled than SH, and EH having less than 1/2 of SH enrollment. EH and Jefferson combined only have 482 compared to 424 at SH

You also forgot Seaton. Lets face it, this is all Hill talk, not Ward 6 talk.

[Anonymous]

I've always thought that if there was a Ward 6 (yes, the entire Ward) MS, it would become the model for the city. It would have the diversity that some people want as well as a number of advanced students to allow them to offer more Deal type things. I think the issue is it would not be able to serve as many OOB students.

While I think it would serve more than Deal, and the catchment area is certainly more diverse, that would still be the major stumbling block. The fact of the matter is SH and Jefferson are already tied for the third best MSs in the city according to PARCC. A lot of OOB parents are happy that Ward 6 kids are bailing and to take those spots.

So instead we are stuck with what we have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

no, that's my exact point. Ward 6 parents are chosing not to use their neighborhood schools in general, opening up those seats to OOB students who then feed to SH. You can't blame the OOB students.

So blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to use their neighborhood school (when only around 1/3 of them are in-boundary for SH), rather than incentivizing them to use it by offering the sort of program they're looking for? Granted, you can't blame OOB students for using Hobson, but you can certainly blame DCPS for failing to offer the challenge and rich curricular and extra-curricular offerings most high SES Ward 6 parents are looking for. E.g. Deal is offering Mandarin, Arabic, French, 7th grade algebra and 8th grade geometry while Hobson is offering none of these classes. BASIS is offering 5th and 6th grade algebra to students who can test in, 7th grade algebra to the rest, and AP World History to 8th graders. The several strongest Ward 6 elementary schools--Brent, Maury and SWS-don't feed into SH, leaving most high parents coming out of the other Hobson feeders (really just Watkins for the time being) reluctant to use the school.

When I asked how my mildly math gifted child would be served at SH, I was told that DC would be put in front of a computer during math classes. Sorry, eleven year olds don't learn math well without a teacher or tutor on hand to teach it to them. What we're going to see in the next decade are slightly increases in the percentage of high SES and white students using Hobson year on year, from under 20% to maybe one-third. Not a bad result, but nothing to cheer about in a catchment area that's overwhelmingly high SES and white. Without a strong Ward 6 MS on the horizon, most of the current parents of babies and toddlers will hit the road by MS. Ward 6 could do a lot better. At least Joe Weedon gets it.

Yes, absolutely I blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to invest in their neighborhood schools. These things are not going to be handed to you on a silver platter; there's no reason for DCPS to go out if its way to "incentivize" a certain, very privileged group of parents who vocally and hostilely turn up their noses at mixing with the hoi polloi. Enroll your kid and ask them to be skipped into 8th grade algebra if you feel they are ready, then ask to send them to Eastern to take advanced math later on. Truly advanced math students have always had to come up with solutions like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've always thought that if there was a Ward 6 (yes, the entire Ward) MS, it would become the model for the city. It would have the diversity that some people want as well as a number of advanced students to allow them to offer more Deal type things. I think the issue is it would not be able to serve as many OOB students.

While I think it would serve more than Deal, and the catchment area is certainly more diverse, that would still be the major stumbling block. The fact of the matter is SH and Jefferson are already tied for the third best MSs in the city according to PARCC. A lot of OOB parents are happy that Ward 6 kids are bailing and to take those spots.

So instead we are stuck with what we have.

I don't think it's fair to blame OOB students. I also think it's very unwise to call diversity a "stumbling block." If you authentically want DCPS to listen to you you need to stop talking like that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

I can't argue that there might be more seats than needed. And I would also like to have a "Deal" in Ward 6. I just can't support solving that problem by closing the single middle school that seems to be the best performing school in an area with a very low bar. I feel the same about tinkering with Maury. Along with Brent, it is a bright spot in an otherwise mediocre landscape of ES's. Why risk damaging this by engineering an ill-thought-out cluster model?

Isn't one cluster on the Hill too much already?

SWS outperformed both of them on PARCC last year

But SWS is just a straight lottery that happens to attract more Hill kids due to location. (Previously there was a priority for kids who were close by, but that's gone now... so any remaining effects of it are just the result of sibling priority.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've always thought that if there was a Ward 6 (yes, the entire Ward) MS, it would become the model for the city. It would have the diversity that some people want as well as a number of advanced students to allow them to offer more Deal type things. I think the issue is it would not be able to serve as many OOB students.

While I think it would serve more than Deal, and the catchment area is certainly more diverse, that would still be the major stumbling block. The fact of the matter is SH and Jefferson are already tied for the third best MSs in the city according to PARCC. A lot of OOB parents are happy that Ward 6 kids are bailing and to take those spots.

So instead we are stuck with what we have.

I don't think it's fair to blame OOB students. I also think it's very unwise to call diversity a "stumbling block." If you authentically want DCPS to listen to you you need to stop talking like that.

While I didn't say diversity is a stumbling block, I did suggest the reduction of OOB students would be so point taken. But I have already given up hope on DCPS listening in the next 20 years. Too many special interest groups concerned about their little piece instead of the big picture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

no, that's my exact point. Ward 6 parents are chosing not to use their neighborhood schools in general, opening up those seats to OOB students who then feed to SH. You can't blame the OOB students.

So blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to use their neighborhood school (when only around 1/3 of them are in-boundary for SH), rather than incentivizing them to use it by offering the sort of program they're looking for? Granted, you can't blame OOB students for using Hobson, but you can certainly blame DCPS for failing to offer the challenge and rich curricular and extra-curricular offerings most high SES Ward 6 parents are looking for. E.g. Deal is offering Mandarin, Arabic, French, 7th grade algebra and 8th grade geometry while Hobson is offering none of these classes. BASIS is offering 5th and 6th grade algebra to students who can test in, 7th grade algebra to the rest, and AP World History to 8th graders. The several strongest Ward 6 elementary schools--Brent, Maury and SWS-don't feed into SH, leaving most high parents coming out of the other Hobson feeders (really just Watkins for the time being) reluctant to use the school.

When I asked how my mildly math gifted child would be served at SH, I was told that DC would be put in front of a computer during math classes. Sorry, eleven year olds don't learn math well without a teacher or tutor on hand to teach it to them. What we're going to see in the next decade are slightly increases in the percentage of high SES and white students using Hobson year on year, from under 20% to maybe one-third. Not a bad result, but nothing to cheer about in a catchment area that's overwhelmingly high SES and white. Without a strong Ward 6 MS on the horizon, most of the current parents of babies and toddlers will hit the road by MS. Ward 6 could do a lot better. At least Joe Weedon gets it.

Yes, absolutely I blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to invest in their neighborhood schools. These things are not going to be handed to you on a silver platter; there's no reason for DCPS to go out if its way to "incentivize" a certain, very privileged group of parents who vocally and hostilely turn up their noses at mixing with the hoi polloi. Enroll your kid and ask them to be skipped into 8th grade algebra if you feel they are ready, then ask to send them to Eastern to take advanced math later on. Truly advanced math students have always had to come up with solutions like that.

Holier than though, self righteous crap. So you've enrolled your white kid at Jefferson Academy? No, you haven't, as there's only one white kid enrolled now, and the family is far too sweet to slam the rest of us as you have. Incentivizing well-educated parents to come on board benefits poor kids in a big way. So do it already.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^ Yet many Hill parents would give their right arm to get their kids into Washington Latin, where there is no advanced math or science or history or English.

Just not convinced it's all about curriculum.

You're right, it's not all about curriculum. It's about a curriculum, instruction, expectations, facilities, behavioral management nexus. But it is mostly about curriculum, helping explain why many parents of "advanced learners" (run of the mill kids whose parents have multiple graduate degrees) who rock into Latin get frustrated and don't stay for long. By HS, many are gone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

no, that's my exact point. Ward 6 parents are chosing not to use their neighborhood schools in general, opening up those seats to OOB students who then feed to SH. You can't blame the OOB students.

So blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to use their neighborhood school (when only around 1/3 of them are in-boundary for SH), rather than incentivizing them to use it by offering the sort of program they're looking for? Granted, you can't blame OOB students for using Hobson, but you can certainly blame DCPS for failing to offer the challenge and rich curricular and extra-curricular offerings most high SES Ward 6 parents are looking for. E.g. Deal is offering Mandarin, Arabic, French, 7th grade algebra and 8th grade geometry while Hobson is offering none of these classes. BASIS is offering 5th and 6th grade algebra to students who can test in, 7th grade algebra to the rest, and AP World History to 8th graders. The several strongest Ward 6 elementary schools--Brent, Maury and SWS-don't feed into SH, leaving most high parents coming out of the other Hobson feeders (really just Watkins for the time being) reluctant to use the school.

When I asked how my mildly math gifted child would be served at SH, I was told that DC would be put in front of a computer during math classes. Sorry, eleven year olds don't learn math well without a teacher or tutor on hand to teach it to them. What we're going to see in the next decade are slightly increases in the percentage of high SES and white students using Hobson year on year, from under 20% to maybe one-third. Not a bad result, but nothing to cheer about in a catchment area that's overwhelmingly high SES and white. Without a strong Ward 6 MS on the horizon, most of the current parents of babies and toddlers will hit the road by MS. Ward 6 could do a lot better. At least Joe Weedon gets it.

Yes, absolutely I blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to invest in their neighborhood schools. These things are not going to be handed to you on a silver platter; there's no reason for DCPS to go out if its way to "incentivize" a certain, very privileged group of parents who vocally and hostilely turn up their noses at mixing with the hoi polloi. Enroll your kid and ask them to be skipped into 8th grade algebra if you feel they are ready, then ask to send them to Eastern to take advanced math later on. Truly advanced math students have always had to come up with solutions like that.

Holier than though, self righteous crap. So you've enrolled your white kid at Jefferson Academy? No, you haven't, as there's only one white kid enrolled now, and the family is far too sweet to slam the rest of us as you have. Incentivizing well-educated parents to come on board benefits poor kids in a big way. So do it already.

I'll consider the neighborhood middle schools when it's time. But my point is -- don't come here and blame OOB students for coming to the Hill, when it's Hill parents that don't use Hill schools. And don't expect good will from DCPS when you speak in a derogatory manner about the majority of DC students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

no, that's my exact point. Ward 6 parents are chosing not to use their neighborhood schools in general, opening up those seats to OOB students who then feed to SH. You can't blame the OOB students.

So blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to use their neighborhood school (when only around 1/3 of them are in-boundary for SH), rather than incentivizing them to use it by offering the sort of program they're looking for? Granted, you can't blame OOB students for using Hobson, but you can certainly blame DCPS for failing to offer the challenge and rich curricular and extra-curricular offerings most high SES Ward 6 parents are looking for. E.g. Deal is offering Mandarin, Arabic, French, 7th grade algebra and 8th grade geometry while Hobson is offering none of these classes. BASIS is offering 5th and 6th grade algebra to students who can test in, 7th grade algebra to the rest, and AP World History to 8th graders. The several strongest Ward 6 elementary schools--Brent, Maury and SWS-don't feed into SH, leaving most high parents coming out of the other Hobson feeders (really just Watkins for the time being) reluctant to use the school.

When I asked how my mildly math gifted child would be served at SH, I was told that DC would be put in front of a computer during math classes. Sorry, eleven year olds don't learn math well without a teacher or tutor on hand to teach it to them. What we're going to see in the next decade are slightly increases in the percentage of high SES and white students using Hobson year on year, from under 20% to maybe one-third. Not a bad result, but nothing to cheer about in a catchment area that's overwhelmingly high SES and white. Without a strong Ward 6 MS on the horizon, most of the current parents of babies and toddlers will hit the road by MS. Ward 6 could do a lot better. At least Joe Weedon gets it.

Where are you getting your information? SH offers both Algebra and Geometry. This is flatly wrong. SH also offers Spanish. It's 1/3 the size of Deal and its budget reflects that

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

no, that's my exact point. Ward 6 parents are chosing not to use their neighborhood schools in general, opening up those seats to OOB students who then feed to SH. You can't blame the OOB students.

So blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to use their neighborhood school (when only around 1/3 of them are in-boundary for SH), rather than incentivizing them to use it by offering the sort of program they're looking for? Granted, you can't blame OOB students for using Hobson, but you can certainly blame DCPS for failing to offer the challenge and rich curricular and extra-curricular offerings most high SES Ward 6 parents are looking for. E.g. Deal is offering Mandarin, Arabic, French, 7th grade algebra and 8th grade geometry while Hobson is offering none of these classes. BASIS is offering 5th and 6th grade algebra to students who can test in, 7th grade algebra to the rest, and AP World History to 8th graders. The several strongest Ward 6 elementary schools--Brent, Maury and SWS-don't feed into SH, leaving most high parents coming out of the other Hobson feeders (really just Watkins for the time being) reluctant to use the school.

When I asked how my mildly math gifted child would be served at SH, I was told that DC would be put in front of a computer during math classes. Sorry, eleven year olds don't learn math well without a teacher or tutor on hand to teach it to them. What we're going to see in the next decade are slightly increases in the percentage of high SES and white students using Hobson year on year, from under 20% to maybe one-third. Not a bad result, but nothing to cheer about in a catchment area that's overwhelmingly high SES and white. Without a strong Ward 6 MS on the horizon, most of the current parents of babies and toddlers will hit the road by MS. Ward 6 could do a lot better. At least Joe Weedon gets it.

Yes, absolutely I blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to invest in their neighborhood schools. These things are not going to be handed to you on a silver platter; there's no reason for DCPS to go out if its way to "incentivize" a certain, very privileged group of parents who vocally and hostilely turn up their noses at mixing with the hoi polloi. Enroll your kid and ask them to be skipped into 8th grade algebra if you feel they are ready, then ask to send them to Eastern to take advanced math later on. Truly advanced math students have always had to come up with solutions like that.

Holier than though, self righteous crap. So you've enrolled your white kid at Jefferson Academy? No, you haven't, as there's only one white kid enrolled now, and the family is far too sweet to slam the rest of us as you have. Incentivizing well-educated parents to come on board benefits poor kids in a big way. So do it already.

I'll consider the neighborhood middle schools when it's time. But my point is -- don't come here and blame OOB students for coming to the Hill, when it's Hill parents that don't use Hill schools. And don't expect good will from DCPS when you speak in a derogatory manner about the majority of DC students.

For the record, I think you can point out that less seats for OOB kids could be a political issue without "blaming" them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

I can't argue that there might be more seats than needed. And I would also like to have a "Deal" in Ward 6. I just can't support solving that problem by closing the single middle school that seems to be the best performing school in an area with a very low bar. I feel the same about tinkering with Maury. Along with Brent, it is a bright spot in an otherwise mediocre landscape of ES's. Why risk damaging this by engineering an ill-thought-out cluster model?

Isn't one cluster on the Hill too much already?

SWS outperformed both of them on PARCC last year

But SWS is just a straight lottery that happens to attract more Hill kids due to location. (Previously there was a priority for kids who were close by, but that's gone now... so any remaining effects of it are just the result of sibling priority.)

Didn't that end only a year ago?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

no, that's my exact point. Ward 6 parents are chosing not to use their neighborhood schools in general, opening up those seats to OOB students who then feed to SH. You can't blame the OOB students.

So blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to use their neighborhood school (when only around 1/3 of them are in-boundary for SH), rather than incentivizing them to use it by offering the sort of program they're looking for? Granted, you can't blame OOB students for using Hobson, but you can certainly blame DCPS for failing to offer the challenge and rich curricular and extra-curricular offerings most high SES Ward 6 parents are looking for. E.g. Deal is offering Mandarin, Arabic, French, 7th grade algebra and 8th grade geometry while Hobson is offering none of these classes. BASIS is offering 5th and 6th grade algebra to students who can test in, 7th grade algebra to the rest, and AP World History to 8th graders. The several strongest Ward 6 elementary schools--Brent, Maury and SWS-don't feed into SH, leaving most high parents coming out of the other Hobson feeders (really just Watkins for the time being) reluctant to use the school.

When I asked how my mildly math gifted child would be served at SH, I was told that DC would be put in front of a computer during math classes. Sorry, eleven year olds don't learn math well without a teacher or tutor on hand to teach it to them. What we're going to see in the next decade are slightly increases in the percentage of high SES and white students using Hobson year on year, from under 20% to maybe one-third. Not a bad result, but nothing to cheer about in a catchment area that's overwhelmingly high SES and white. Without a strong Ward 6 MS on the horizon, most of the current parents of babies and toddlers will hit the road by MS. Ward 6 could do a lot better. At least Joe Weedon gets it.

Yes, absolutely I blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to invest in their neighborhood schools. These things are not going to be handed to you on a silver platter; there's no reason for DCPS to go out if its way to "incentivize" a certain, very privileged group of parents who vocally and hostilely turn up their noses at mixing with the hoi polloi. Enroll your kid and ask them to be skipped into 8th grade algebra if you feel they are ready, then ask to send them to Eastern to take advanced math later on. Truly advanced math students have always had to come up with solutions like that.

Holier than though, self righteous crap. So you've enrolled your white kid at Jefferson Academy? No, you haven't, as there's only one white kid enrolled now, and the family is far too sweet to slam the rest of us as you have. Incentivizing well-educated parents to come on board benefits poor kids in a big way. So do it already.

I'll consider the neighborhood middle schools when it's time. But my point is -- don't come here and blame OOB students for coming to the Hill, when it's Hill parents that don't use Hill schools. And don't expect good will from DCPS when you speak in a derogatory manner about the majority of DC students.

yes and no. the OOB numbers speak for themselves and I agree that the OOB students aren't to blame. But public MS landscape has been divide and conquer for years on the Hill, with charters providing an additional path on top of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

Your school capacity totals are right for the three schools but the breakdown is off (EH 850, Jefferson 900, SH 460). You've also omitted CH Montessori and Walker Jones (admittedly small) which are education campuses. Keep in mind that's total seats 6-8 and a 4th grade total could only be expected to occupy a third of that capacity and not the entire school. That would represent a 6th grade need of ~ 750 seats. of course Jefferson and Eliot Hine are both severely underenrolled with fewer students enrolled than SH, and EH having less than 1/2 of SH enrollment. EH and Jefferson combined only have 482 compared to 424 at SH

You also forgot Seaton. Lets face it, this is all Hill talk, not Ward 6 talk.

I didn't forget Seaton -- I was describing MIDDLE SCHOOl feeds in Ward 6. There are lots of other Ward 6 elementary schools not mentioned here. Plus Seaton feeds CARDOZA -- WARD 1

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