Capitol Hill Middle School and High School situation
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Anonymous
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OP, you will come to understand. After so many years trying to improve Hill elementary schools, many parents are just burnt out and disillusioned when it is time for middle school. The schools have a lot of high-needs kids, yes, but also DCPS itself is profoundly corrupt, secretive, hostile, and generally f*cked-up in its culture at the central office and in the schools. It's not just the kids or the demographics. This thread is a great example: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/210/801530.page
Add to that low academic performance, problematic behaviors, and the concern of parents about getting into selective high schools and colleges and of their children being happy and enjoying school and being engaged and challenged, and it's a lot. DCPS will tell you that teachers can differentiate instruction for students of many levels, but there are kids in high school classes working at the elementary level and frankly nobody believes that much differentiation can be done effectively. The test scores at Eastern are alarmingly low and it's very very hard to believe the teachers and the instruction are solid when so few kids are even scoring on grade level. Is progress possible? Sure. Stuart-Hobson is a great example of a school people were once unwilling to attend but now many families choose it. But it took about 20 years of effort to get there. Don't think this stuff is easy, it's not, and DCPS is often its own worst enemy. |
Anonymous
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OP, I think there are a few reasons. Yes, some of the elementaries feeding into the middle schools are good, but the higher performing kids are not choosing the middle schools. And some of the elementaries feeding in are not as good, and then there are kids from other elementaries who may be less prepared. Strong feeder elementaries matter but they are not enough.
DCPS is basically unwilling to commit to providing challenging coursework to advanced kids. They will tell you that they do, but in these schools "advanced" really just means on grade level-- that is the top group. For schools that are struggling to adequately serve the kids that they do have, it's hard for some to believe that they can also take on a group with different needs and expectations in addition to what they have. DCPS just cannot get it together to handle basic functionality, and no amount of "if everyone would enroll together" is going to change that fundamental incompetence. There was an article in the Post a while back about Joe Weedon's daughter's experience at Eliot-Hine. Basically the school was inadequately staffed and she had substitutes and played cards a lot. High teacher and admin turnover meant instability and no clear direction. He had been a huge proponent of Maury and DCPS generally, so his words carried a lot of weight. . Also, OP, don't think for a second that low-income or AA residents generally attend DCPS. Often they are the first to advise new parents to look at charters and private schools. |
Anonymous
| OP, others have implied this but let me make it crystal clear for you. What BASIS and Latin and some other charters get you is a good middle school AND a guaranteed spot at an acceptable high school. So sometimes people who would be okay with SH or Eliot-Hine choose charters for the high school access. There's nothing dumb about wanting some predictability and security that you have access to an adequate school. And there's nothing dumb about having low confidence in DCPS. The sooner you wrap your head around the idea that DCPS' management is the problem, the faster you'll get it. It's not like demographics and academic cohort and racism etc aren't present here, but the *adults* who operate DCPS are a big reason people don't attend. Not just because of the demographics or the behaviors or kids being academically behind. It's the management and their decisions and their incompetence and dishonesty. |
Anonymous
Can someone elaborate. I have no clue what you guys are talking about. Specific examples please. |
Anonymous
Here are just a few. I'm sure there is more that I don't know about. Antwan Wison and his lottery cheating. And the amount of residency and boundary cheaters who are DCPS employees. It's on the attorney general of DC website. The cheating at Ellington alone was astonishing and went on for years. The insane thing with the teachers at JO Wilson, link up thread. The principal of Miner getting fired for slapping a child in front of multiple adult witnesses. Ellington renovations running massively over budget. City Paper article about a whistleblower and school lunch contract procurement I forget which school but they let CPS pick up the wrong kid from school. Cleveland elementary teacher charged with assaulting a 4th grader. $200,000 contractor fraud in 2018 for falsely claiming to provide special needs services. |
Anonymous
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Ferebee firing the principal of JO Wilson and trying to make it seem like he resigned.
Firing the principal of Walls for not following the party line on COVID and trying to make it seem like he did some.minor bad thing years ago that justified it. Basically 90% of the people I dealt with at the central office were morons or just didn't come to work at all. And a lot of the admin staff at our school. |
Anonymous
| OP, it’s not a huge mystery: look at the test scores. Would you send your kid to a school where ZERO percent of the kids passed the Math proficiency PARCC tests? No matter what you think now, you won’t be willing to do that in the future most likely. SH is probably the only non-elementary Hill school with a small core of kids who pass PARCC. |
Anonymous
55% get 4s and 5s on ELA and 24% in math at Jefferson, it's 37% and 21% In math, many subgroups do better at Jefferson. ELA obviously has room for improvement. But either school has "a small core of kids who pass parcc." Eliot-Hine is 23% and 14%. Smaller, but kids scoring 4s and 5s will not be the only ones in their classes. At Eastern, it's 26% and 2%. Pretty terrible for math. I wonder which tests they are giving--algebra, geometry, etc. |
Anonymous
The number of kids who get 5s on PARCC math at Deal is more than the entire number of kids in the entire Eliot Hine student body. Some of that obviously has to do with overcrowding at Deal, but it indicates overall a completely different academic environment. I actually have a lot of unique concerns about my DS that outweigh academics, but I think it's not really being honest to claim not to see the difference. |
Anonymous
+100. When you have seen the machinations of DCPS Central Office and the political maelstrom that is public education in DC, you realize that even the finest administrators and teachers in the schools must be heroic to withstand the steaming pile of non-sensical crap and outright abuse that is all around them. The good ones burn out fast and anything good that pops up as a result of their efforts gets dragged down by the larger system. Usually in the name of equity or political expediency. AND the number one tactic and also the result of the incompetence of DCPS is to pit parent communities against one another ( by race, socio-economic status, degree of “wokeness” ) rather than bring them together. To answer you bluntly: There are many Capitol Hill/Ward 6 families who stay and raise their kids through high school. But you, as the parent, can never really take your eye off the ball. I’ll have three students graduating from DC Public schools and headed to top notch colleges for which they are extremely well prepared. It hasn’t been luck, it’s been constant focus and attention on researching options, visiting schools, understanding the best way to lottery in, staying nimble, looking down the road and supporting the schools once my kids are there. It’s kind of another full-time job depending on how many kids you have. Don’t despair. We are proof that you can raise your kids on Capitol Hill and use public schools ( neighborhood, charter and magnet ) to get a very good education. We don’t regret staying for a second. Please be encouraged to stay—your tools will be patience, perseverance, good friends and neighbors and school communities and many glasses of wine. If you want to identify yourself somehow, I’d be happy to hang out in person and talk you through some of the specifics. |
Anonymous
| Some Brent parents (white ones!) gave Jefferson a try and quietly left before year was over due to crazy behavioral disruptions in classe, lack of real academic rigor, kids in classes that are on a third grade level. Stop vilifying parents for choosing better for their kids. |
Anonymous
When was this? May be old news since Jefferson hasn’t had in-person instruction since last March. What about the Brent students who started this year? |
Anonymous
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RE: OPs questions about how Charters fit in to all of this.
Charters are fairly new to the party, but very important. They here in 1996 after the School Reform Act passed in 1995. Prior to Charter schools being legalized in DC, parents of all races who were seeking an alternative to their assigned neighborhood school practiced "school choice" in other ways. What did this look like?: It looked like many families using the Out of Boundary lottery to gain spots into a feeder system from elementary--->middle--->High School. It looked like students heading to the upper northwest school that fed into Hardy or Deal and then to Wilson. It looked like families from east of the Anacostia River ( and Maryland, don't forget Maryland ) using all the unused spots at Capitol Hill Elementary Schools or at Eastern High School, all considered better than their assigned schools and convenient to federal jobs downtown. It looked like white and black Capitol Hill Parents forming the Cluster Schools here on Ward 6: Peabody--->Watkins---->Stuart Hobson---->Magnet HS or private It looked like families forming a magnet Montessori program called Capitol Hill Montessori It looked like families forming a Reggio Emilia early childhood program within Peabody called "School within a School" It looked like families starting the Spanish Immersion Program at Tyler Elementary It looked like a de-facto STEM magnet program at Jefferson Middle School that was extremely well-regarded by many Black families in the city and was eventually peeled off its normal feeder system to feed to....Wilson HS ( crazy, but it was only recently changed to Eastern). It looked like a number of White and Black Capitol Hill families sending their children through Out of Boundary slots to Key Elementary in Georgetown which fed to Hardy MS and then Wilson HS. It looked like the excellent magnet High Schools Ellington, SWW and Banneker. So families in DC who had the interest and where-with-all to navigate it, there was always a degree of school choice within the DCPS system before charters. During the 2000's a number of things happened at the same time: 1)the demographics on Capitol Hill began to shift toward more young families moving in and hoping to use the public schools 2) The School Reform movement gained steam including -- the ability to form Charter Schools --Universal free PK3 and PK4 began --Michelle Rhee arrived with her broom --many school closings Suddenly, it was more difficult for families living outside the zone to get a spot at the Cluster Schools, or at Key Elementary. Suddenly, there was free, full-time childcare for 3 and 4 year-olds at the neighborhood DCPS schools---a real draw for dual-income families in houses that were beginning to become ridiculously expensive. With these pressures on the system, Capitol Hill parents simultaneously formed Brent Neighbors to build a bridge for in-boundary families to attend Brent ES AND many Capitol Hill families became involved on the ground floor of forming Two Rivers Public Charter School. So the school choice options widened for Cap Hill parents beyond just the Cluster Schools or Key ES and this momentum built on itself as more Charter Schools appeared on the scene and more movements started at Maury, Ludlow-Taylor, Payne and JO Wilson for families living in those zones to use their in-boundary schools. The momentum kept building, like a dialectic--more parents found options for educating their children in the public schools ( including Charter Schools ) so more families decided to stay and more families decided they could move in. Now, city-wide, around 43% of public school children attend Charter Schools, and a larger percentage of children attend their in-boundary school ( at least in Ward 6/Capitol Hill). How does this look at the Middle School level and High School level vis-a-vis Charters? Well, as those in-boundary little kids using Brent and Maury began to approach 3rd, 4th, 5th grade, parents began to wonder what the next step would be: Stuart Hobson? maybe--but slots weren't guaranteed, and maybe there was a better option out there somehow. Parents began looking at Eliot-Hine and Jefferson, wondering if those were or could become good options for middle school, since they were the feeder middle schools for Maury and Brent, respectively. Groups formed and began discussions with DCPS and Michelle Rhee about these feeder patterns and how these schools could "reform" to become desireable pulls for in-boundary families. ( That's a whole other story--but perhaps a digression ) At the same time as parents were sizing up Eliot-Hine and Jefferson with questions about Eastern HS ( which had a major reboot in that era ) on the high school horizon, parents began to look at Washington Latin--in Northwest as a promising option that would include middle AND high school solutions in one move. Lots ( not all--Stuart Hobson was also drawing some---even Brent parents who hopped over to Watkins for the upper elementary grades to guarantee access in the feeder system) of Capitol Hill parents opted for Washington Latin, and soon after, BASIS opened downtown--so convenient--which also gave options for middle school and high school. Then came DCI and Inspired Teaching and Montessori Bilingual... many of these Charter Schools began in 5th grade, so pulled those in-boundary fifth graders at the Capitol Hill Elementary Schools away before they considered seriously using Eliot-Hine or Jefferson. Meanwhile--Two Rivers Charter School had a good hold on many Capitol Hill families and expanded through middle school. Now has opened a second campus. And Washington Latin is set to open a second campus. For sure, I've missed a lot of nuance and details and perspectives that others can fill in. It's not a neat, easy linear story and so difficult to sum up. But here's the rub: Charter Schools have supplemented an informal school choice scenario that already existed and added to the positive momentum around public schooling in DC. The neighborhood schools are doing better than ever, and public school population in general has far better rates of success on measures like graduation rates, PARCC scores and NAEP scores. All of this continues to evolve, and we have yet to see how the cataclysm of the pandemic will affect the public school landscape. It will have impacts, it's just unknowable at the moment what they will be. |
Anonymous
| Not going to quote the PP, but that's right. Charters HELPED, not hurt, DCPS schools by allowing people to stay in their neighborhood schools longer. That many UMC kids peel off to charters in upper grades may seem dismal, but really those kids would never have stuck around for as long as they did without those charters available. |
Anonymous
In terms of enrollment in DCPS neighborhood schools, a good indication of the health of the school system/parent confidence: School Year 2011-12: 45,191 School Year 2019-20: 51,036 Any growth in the Charter sector is in addition to that. It's hard to argue that Charter Schools have damaged the traditional DCPS sector. |