5th grade -Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Will DCPS final tackle it’s middle school problem? So many Hill families are leaving their elementary schools for Latin and Basis in 5th grade, the ones that stay are sort of the left behinds, and the kids are now old enough to get that they didn’t win the lottery. All because there isn’t a middle school plan for DC. Is DCPS at all concerned about what this is doing to their middle schools?

What is plan Middle School plan for children who live East of the River?

This thread is about Capitol Hill. Start your own thread.

The Capitol Hill middle school situation has been discussed here to death. See this thread from January -- or the 100 others. http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/698733.page#12289147

Things have been continually changing, and this is worth discussing.

- Not the OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Will DCPS final tackle it’s middle school problem? So many Hill families are leaving their elementary schools for Latin and Basis in 5th grade, the ones that stay are sort of the left behinds, and the kids are now old enough to get that they didn’t win the lottery. All because there isn’t a middle school plan for DC. Is DCPS at all concerned about what this is doing to their middle schools?

What is plan Middle School plan for children who live East of the River?

No one cares about us.

Start your own thread. Or do you expect the rest of the city to do everything for you?

[Anonymous]

NP here. I agree that EOTR needs its own thread. Great idea!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS doesn't need a 'middle school plan.'

It offers good middle school academics and programming at all of its schools. Parents need to get over their fear and enroll.

This is hilarious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS doesn't need a 'middle school plan.'

It offers good middle school academics and programming at all of its schools. Parents need to get over their fear and enroll.

Tee hee!

There are more public MIDDLE school students in charters than in DCPS traditional schools. The Mayor was surprisingly frank about admitting that DCPS "doesn't do middle school as well as charters" and this was in addition to her "Deal for All!" platform. So far, Deal is the size of a small town and growing.

Hill families choose (in no particular order): Latin, DCI, Basis, Hardy, private, (not Stuart Hobson, because that's Ward 9) 2 Rivers, Cap City, and parochial.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Will DCPS final tackle it’s middle school problem? So many Hill families are leaving their elementary schools for Latin and Basis in 5th grade, the ones that stay are sort of the left behinds, and the kids are now old enough to get that they didn’t win the lottery. All because there isn’t a middle school plan for DC. Is DCPS at all concerned about what this is doing to their middle schools?

Huh?

There is a pretty large cohort of Brent students headed to Jefferson this fall. Students from the Hill attend Stuart Hobson.

Before Latin and BASIS Hill students went OOB to Deal, Hardy and private school.

Give us a break, a dozen Brent students are heading to Jefferson this fall, if that (parents who get off the Washington Latin or BASIS waitlists over the summer are unlikely to feel solidarity bound).

It's hardly a "large cohort," especially when considering that almost half the 4th graders never made it to 5th grade at Brent. This coming fall, 2/3 of the 4th graders won't be returning to the school, little better than two or three years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Will DCPS final tackle it’s middle school problem? So many Hill families are leaving their elementary schools for Latin and Basis in 5th grade, the ones that stay are sort of the left behinds, and the kids are now old enough to get that they didn’t win the lottery. All because there isn’t a middle school plan for DC. Is DCPS at all concerned about what this is doing to their middle schools?

1) We do need a middle school plan but I'd happily send my child to Stuart-Hobson. The other middle schools need a lot more TLC than they're getting.

2) Consider that Latin and BASIS are providing high school as well and that may be the real issue.

3) I don't know when they'll tackle it. Do you have a plan for some activism that you would like to share?

It's interesting to see the parents for whom 10% white seems to be a threshold and they feel good about SH but not Jefferson. The schools have pretty equal math scores, with JA outperforming SH with several subgroups, including 6th graders. At SH, only about a third of the NON economically disadvantaged kids are on grade level in math. SH has a median growth percentile below the district average for math too. Clearly both schools have room to improve but it's not clear to me that one is substantially better than the other. Teachers are more likely to leave SH than JA.

I don’t disagree that there’s no racial element to the JA v SH debate, but I do genuinely think part of it is that JA isn’t on the Hill. Parents are Moreno inclined to give SH a chance because it’s convenient and in the part of the neighborhood they walk around. For a Brent kid that lives in the central “old” Hill — say near Seward Square? JA is nowhere near them or near anywhere they’d ever go or near anything they’d ever identify as their neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I don’t disagree that there’s *some* racial element...

[Anonymous]

We're one of the families leaving for 5th grade at a charter- but it's primarily to avoid 5th grade at our current elementary, not Stuart Hobson. We've heard good things from parents there, where they have honors classes, but the academics have been declining with each grade, and even parents who love SH say 5th grade was something they had to tolerate to get to SH. We might come back for 6th, but if our child is happy at the charter, we probably won't. So that's one of the barriers to attracting in boundary families to SH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you took Sidwell Friends and plunked it inbthe middle of the Hill, and enrolled all the current students at Jefferson an SH, the results would be about what they are now.

It isn’t the schools it is the students. If the IB parents hose to enroll in their assigned middle schools they would change rapidly and dramatically. But they have never been willing to do that.

This is such utter cockamamie idiocy. DCPS has admitted that they don’t know how to do middle school. Middle school in DC in terms of breadth and depth of academics is a joke compared to suburban school systems. Students take the PARCC test in all three middle school years and that is ALL most middle schools care about. Your cheerleading does little good for anyone. How about some activism and demanding a decent education and facilities for our kids instead?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We're one of the families leaving for 5th grade at a charter- but it's primarily to avoid 5th grade at our current elementary, not Stuart Hobson. We've heard good things from parents there, where they have honors classes, but the academics have been declining with each grade, and even parents who love SH say 5th grade was something they had to tolerate to get to SH. We might come back for 6th, but if our child is happy at the charter, we probably won't. So that's one of the barriers to attracting in boundary families to SH.

+1000 we didn’t lottery out to avoid SH but our elementary- 4th grade was a disaster and have no hope for 5th with our current leadership

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're one of the families leaving for 5th grade at a charter- but it's primarily to avoid 5th grade at our current elementary, not Stuart Hobson. We've heard good things from parents there, where they have honors classes, but the academics have been declining with each grade, and even parents who love SH say 5th grade was something they had to tolerate to get to SH. We might come back for 6th, but if our child is happy at the charter, we probably won't. So that's one of the barriers to attracting in boundary families to SH.

+1000 we didn’t lottery out to avoid SH but our elementary- 4th grade was a disaster and have no hope for 5th with our current leadership

Which school is this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you took Sidwell Friends and plunked it inbthe middle of the Hill, and enrolled all the current students at Jefferson an SH, the results would be about what they are now.

It isn’t the schools it is the students. If the IB parents hose to enroll in their assigned middle schools they would change rapidly and dramatically. But they have never been willing to do that.

This is such utter cockamamie idiocy. DCPS has admitted that they don’t know how to do middle school. Middle school in DC in terms of breadth and depth of academics is a joke compared to suburban school systems. Students take the PARCC test in all three middle school years and that is ALL most middle schools care about. Your cheerleading does little good for anyone. How about some activism and demanding a decent education and facilities for our kids instead?

+100. Couldn't agree more.

[Anonymous]

If Brent, Maury and Watkins each lose at least half of their kids in 5th grade, one idea is to move to two middle schools, one for 5th and 6th, the other 7th and 8th and have all Hill schools feed into the two schools (yes, I know, there are more than those three schools), but it strikes me that there is a serious feeder problem with those schools in particular, and also SWS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If Brent, Maury and Watkins each lose at least half of their kids in 5th grade, one idea is to move to two middle schools, one for 5th and 6th, the other 7th and 8th and have all Hill schools feed into the two schools (yes, I know, there are more than those three schools), but it strikes me that there is a serious feeder problem with those schools in particular, and also SWS.

I understand that over 3/4 of SWS’ rising 5th is going elsewhere—that something like only 10 kids enrolled for 5th. (And SWS is definitely not the school cited above that people are fleeing in upper grades.)