Expectations for Future MS Differentiation EOTP

[Anonymous]

DCPS doesn’t do differentiation in English/Language Arts. I have kids at Deal and there is nothing for English. DCPS is uninterestedin serving kids at the upper end of the bell curve.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS doesn’t do differentiation in English/Language Arts. I have kids at Deal and there is nothing for English. DCPS is uninterestedin serving kids at the upper end of the bell curve.

They don't at Deal - and that is consistent with the IB MYP curriculum. IBO schools do not track until high school. Deal did get permission to do the DCPS math sequence, rather than the IB-standard integrated math.

Other MS have offered some differentiation in humanities and social studies (Hardy, Stuart Hobson).

[Anonymous]

I’d recommend that you you look at affordable privates. Charter, DCPS, etc. all teach to the middle. There is nothing more disappointing than having advanced kids being stymied because a teacher is trying to kid the rest of the class to grade level. You can’t supplement an entire curriculum no matter what you do. DC’s lack of a magnet program is just sad. Just real advice from someone that just hit middle school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS doesn’t do differentiation in English/Language Arts. I have kids at Deal and there is nothing for English. DCPS is uninterestedin serving kids at the upper end of the bell curve.

They don't at Deal - and that is consistent with the IB MYP curriculum. IBO schools do not track until high school. Deal did get permission to do the DCPS math sequence, rather than the IB-standard integrated math.

Other MS have offered some differentiation in humanities and social studies (Hardy, Stuart Hobson).

It's a myth that IBD schools following the MYP curriculum "don't track until high school." You've made this point on other threads and it's always nonsense. Where are you getting this from?

Five years ago, I taught at a public school following the MYP which offered two or three different levels of IBD classes in several subjects - English, math and science. The school is in NYC and is accredited by Geneva IB. There are private schools in DC offering MYP that track, including WIS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’d recommend that you you look at affordable privates. Charter, DCPS, etc. all teach to the middle. There is nothing more disappointing than having advanced kids being stymied because a teacher is trying to kid the rest of the class to grade level. You can’t supplement an entire curriculum no matter what you do. DC’s lack of a magnet program is just sad. Just real advice from someone that just hit middle school.

Oh sure, all those affordable privates. We're Jewish and work for non-profits. We wouldn't be comfortable at "affordable" parochial schools running families around 20K a year, even if we could afford that kind of dough for two kids. We'll probably just move to the burbs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d recommend that you you look at affordable privates. Charter, DCPS, etc. all teach to the middle. There is nothing more disappointing than having advanced kids being stymied because a teacher is trying to kid the rest of the class to grade level. You can’t supplement an entire curriculum no matter what you do. DC’s lack of a magnet program is just sad. Just real advice from someone that just hit middle school.

Oh sure, all those affordable privates. We're Jewish and work for non-profits. We wouldn't be comfortable at "affordable" parochial schools running families around 20K a year, even if we could afford that kind of dough for two kids. We'll probably just move to the burbs.

Well I can save you time! Privatedont offer much differentiation either. We left private school because of this. Why pay a lot of money to have your child bored and working on unchallenging material?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS doesn’t do differentiation in English/Language Arts. I have kids at Deal and there is nothing for English. DCPS is uninterestedin serving kids at the upper end of the bell curve.

They don't at Deal - and that is consistent with the IB MYP curriculum. IBO schools do not track until high school. Deal did get permission to do the DCPS math sequence, rather than the IB-standard integrated math.

Other MS have offered some differentiation in humanities and social studies (Hardy, Stuart Hobson).

It's a myth that IBD schools following the MYP curriculum "don't track until high school." You've made this point on other threads and it's always nonsense. Where are you getting this from?

Five years ago, I taught at a public school following the MYP which offered two or three different levels of IBD classes in several subjects - English, math and science. The school is in NYC and is accredited by Geneva IB. There are private schools in DC offering MYP that track, including WIS.

DCPS has never tracked much in middle schools much because of racial politics, period. Now they're wising up and letting Hardy and Hobson track because they scandal-plagued leadership is eager (desperate?) to attract stronger students. Higher ups are driven to stem the exodus to charters. Again, this is happening for political reasons.

Parents hire tutors to work with advanced students in neighborhood middle schools to help provide the sort of education the schools do not. The arrangement can work well for determined families who can afford to hire help, with kids going on to great high schools and highly competitive colleges.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand the effectiveness of hundreds of dollars worth of tutoring a month. The time for learning and studying is during the day at school. What do kids testing well above the taught level do during the day, and how is it not harmful to them to cruise all day and wait for their private tutor to challenge them after school? Beyond the money that I don't have, I'm concerned about the balance, and the odd experience of school that kids would acquire this way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d recommend that you you look at affordable privates. Charter, DCPS, etc. all teach to the middle. There is nothing more disappointing than having advanced kids being stymied because a teacher is trying to kid the rest of the class to grade level. You can’t supplement an entire curriculum no matter what you do. DC’s lack of a magnet program is just sad. Just real advice from someone that just hit middle school.

Oh sure, all those affordable privates. We're Jewish and work for non-profits. We wouldn't be comfortable at "affordable" parochial schools running families around 20K a year, even if we could afford that kind of dough for two kids. We'll probably just move to the burbs.

Well I can save you time! Privatedont offer much differentiation either. We left private school because of this. Why pay a lot of money to have your child bored and working on unchallenging material?!

I'm not an advocate of private schools by any means. But you must have picked the wrong one. It is night and day in comparison to DCPS and the Charter we experienced. Like the previous poster, we are in middle school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’d recommend that you you look at affordable privates. Charter, DCPS, etc. all teach to the middle. There is nothing more disappointing than having advanced kids being stymied because a teacher is trying to kid the rest of the class to grade level. You can’t supplement an entire curriculum no matter what you do. DC’s lack of a magnet program is just sad. Just real advice from someone that just hit middle school.

Oh sure, all those affordable privates. We're Jewish and work for non-profits. We wouldn't be comfortable at "affordable" parochial schools running families around 20K a year, even if we could afford that kind of dough for two kids. We'll probably just move to the burbs.

Well you have your answer...sorry for giving real advice and options

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand the effectiveness of hundreds of dollars worth of tutoring a month. The time for learning and studying is during the day at school. What do kids testing well above the taught level do during the day, and how is it not harmful to them to cruise all day and wait for their private tutor to challenge them after school? Beyond the money that I don't have, I'm concerned about the balance, and the odd experience of school that kids would acquire this way.

An OK educational experience is available just around the corner, saving us a 1-1.5 hour school day commute to, say, BASIS, Washington Latin or DCI.

DC really likes attending the neighborhood middle school with pals of many years. The program offers good facilities. Admins and teachers like to claim kid is pushed, obviously not the case.

We don't simply want grade-level academics stemming from the somewhat blah, American-centric DCPS curriculum. We want academics at least a year ahead of grade level across the board, a richer and more international curriculum in places, and more personalized attention supporting the kid's individual interests. Also, we speak a language not taught in DCPS at home, and some of the tutoring pays for literacy work in the language (which we can't teach ourselves).

Speaking this unusual language has made us odd from the get go, so we've given up worrying that we're weird. For us, the balance is found in the kid's enthusiasm for working with terrific tutors after days spent sitting in classes that are a little too big and a little too easy. Happy to spend the money on an arrangement that's essentially providing us with a GT program we can afford, in a neighborhood that we've loved for two decades, without moving to Fairfax, or breaking the bank going private for middle school.

[Anonymous]

Fascinating. Times they are a changin' if this type of parent is enrolling at what sounds like Hobson or Hardy. A good sign.

[Anonymous]

The person who writes "just consider Basis, Latin, or DC" in response to your question never took the time to look more closely. That is understandable, if the goal is to place your bets on something that, on average, produces well educated and rounded kids, mostly because that's already who they have in the building. I recommend to go with what the first respondent said, namely to take a close look at the PARCC scores (not the averages but the details, advanced and how many and who) and then take those numbers and - blind as a bat - visit with schools to ask questions that are specific to your child, not arrogantly but factually ("what if a child"). Let them lay out to you how your child may progress through middle school making the best of it and how the methods they are using to differentiate in the classroom will be applied to your specific child.
Our child is at a Title I DCPS middle school, where only a few others are above level. After 3 weeks, based on baseline tests, the school called us and said, our child tested out of the math class and proposed to find a solution, just as they called the kids at the other end of the spectrum to put support in place. That's the kind of middle school you should look for. Note, we did not call and pester everyone, they called us. They did so based on test, metrics and data, not based on us telling them what a whip-smart kid we have. They found a solution that is working very well.

The lesson here is that you may be better off at a school with wide-ranging abilities than one that serves a more homogeneous body of students. The poster who says "look for private" may well have experienced that. This lazily teaching to the middle is more common in NW schools as well as in "popular" charter schools. Title I schools are just about never homogeneous, certainly not in middle school but they aren't all as good at differentiating as what we're experiencing, hence the importance of asking for details, from the principal, the instructional coaches, teachers.

[Anonymous]

I believe that MacFarland is growing up into its full grade range so it's possible that they will have more classes than they have now in a couple of years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The person who writes "just consider Basis, Latin, or DC" in response to your question never took the time to look more closely. That is understandable, if the goal is to place your bets on something that, on average, produces well educated and rounded kids, mostly because that's already who they have in the building. I recommend to go with what the first respondent said, namely to take a close look at the PARCC scores (not the averages but the details, advanced and how many and who) and then take those numbers and - blind as a bat - visit with schools to ask questions that are specific to your child, not arrogantly but factually ("what if a child"). Let them lay out to you how your child may progress through middle school making the best of it and how the methods they are using to differentiate in the classroom will be applied to your specific child.
Our child is at a Title I DCPS middle school, where only a few others are above level. After 3 weeks, based on baseline tests, the school called us and said, our child tested out of the math class and proposed to find a solution, just as they called the kids at the other end of the spectrum to put support in place. That's the kind of middle school you should look for. Note, we did not call and pester everyone, they called us. They did so based on test, metrics and data, not based on us telling them what a whip-smart kid we have. They found a solution that is working very well.

The lesson here is that you may be better off at a school with wide-ranging abilities than one that serves a more homogeneous body of students. The poster who says "look for private" may well have experienced that. This lazily teaching to the middle is more common in NW schools as well as in "popular" charter schools. Title I schools are just about never homogeneous, certainly not in middle school but they aren't all as good at differentiating as what we're experiencing, hence the importance of asking for details, from the principal, the instructional coaches, teachers.

Really curious what the solution is. Independent Study? skip a grade?

Look here's the issue most of us are looking for a cohort of bright kids. That means an actual class or at least enough to have real pullouts and differentiation in a group setting.

That's why most people end up leaving DCPS. The whole supplementing on your own is a strange things for most of us.