Middle and high school on Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS doesn't care a whit about neighborhood schools. They care about capacity management system wide. As a matter of fact, they're fine with any particular by-right school being 0% in-boundary, as Brent had become by the early 2000s. DCPS principals are not evaluated on their ability to attract or retain in-boundary families. Note that DCPS won't buy or build any new elementary schools in Upper NW, although several of the JKLM schools are at close to 200% capacity, following the logic that there are DCPS elementary school buildings in Wards 7 and 8 standing two-thirds empty.

As long as voters aren't canning their city council members over neighborhood school issues, the city government isn't accountable to neighborhood parents shunning schools. If you want to get DCPS' attention, you can vote Allen out, though that's unlikely to do any good.

Vote out Grosso while you're at it. He doesn't have kids and has no clue what we're going through.

[Anonymous]

Grosso claims he does have a clue, as somebody who grew up in DC (he's from Petworth). He just started his new term as at at-large candidate in January, so we're probably stuck with him for years. His agenda as Chair of the City Council Committee on Ed has been in reducing suspensions and expulsions in schools and opposing vouchers. He's shown scant interest in meeting the education needs of a neglected but fast-rising demographic - high SES families EotP. However, he only got 20% of the vote, and isn't terribly popular with either high SES white parents or low SES AA parents, so will likely be vulnerable when facing reelection, regardless of Bowser's fate.

In the burbs, parents commonly use these boards to organize to back local candidates advancing an education agenda they support, e.g. improving neighborhood middle and high schools and expanding test-in options. Ward 6 DCPS parents could follow suit by organizing to dump Grosso and Allen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, we know - we go on SchoolDigger.com, visit schools, talk to old friends who've moved to MD. We are aware that MoCo is in the grip of a social upheaval. But at least MoCo offers test-in GT at the MS level to a select few, and doesn't seem to fight high SES parents amalgamating around high-performing schools across the board.

The test in Montgomery County elementary GT programs took 477 kids out of 12000 3rd graders, I.e. 4%. Most of the lawyers' kids will have trouble competing with the scientists' kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stuart Hobson may be the shiniest toy but its low capacity presents some inherent limitations. The only change variable is the composition of students coming from Watkins, LT, and JO Wilson and that leave out a large chunk of Hill families. It's comparable to Hardy in that regard and doesn't scale well with comprehensive middle schools. SH has 1/2 the capacity of either EH or Jefferson.

In hindsight it would have made more sense to sell it off before renovating and use the windfall to pump up Eliot Hine as a school with the capacity for comprehensive MS. That ship has long since sailed.

Brent families crack me up! Let me get this straight, EH is too far for your kids so your solution is to close SH and send the kids at LT and JO way farther away than your snowflakes have to travel to EH? Wait, I forgot, the center of the educational universe is Brent and nothing else matters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Grosso claims he does have a clue, as somebody who grew up in DC (he's from Petworth). He just started his new term as at at-large candidate in January, so we're probably stuck with him for years. His agenda as Chair of the City Council Committee on Ed has been in reducing suspensions and expulsions in schools and opposing vouchers. He's shown scant interest in meeting the education needs of a neglected but fast-rising demographic - high SES families EotP. However, he only got 20% of the vote, and isn't terribly popular with either high SES white parents or low SES AA parents, so will likely be vulnerable when facing reelection, regardless of Bowser's fate.

In the burbs, parents commonly use these boards to organize to back local candidates advancing an education agenda they support, e.g. improving neighborhood middle and high schools and expanding test-in options. Ward 6 DCPS parents could follow suit by organizing to dump Grosso and Allen.

Grosso's Wiki site says he grew up in rural Virginia and only went to high school when in Petworth. So what high school did he attend? Roosevelt??? Or private? My guess is the latter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, we know - we go on SchoolDigger.com, visit schools, talk to old friends who've moved to MD. We are aware that MoCo is in the grip of a social upheaval. But at least MoCo offers test-in GT at the MS level to a select few, and doesn't seem to fight high SES parents amalgamating around high-performing schools across the board.

The test in Montgomery County elementary GT programs took 477 kids out of 12000 3rd graders, I.e. 4%. Most of the lawyers' kids will have trouble competing with the scientists' kids.

There are several MS test-in programs on the eastern side of MoCo. My sibling has one child at the Takoma Park magnet (math and science, child got a seat set aside for a Takoma Park resident) and the other at Eastern MS in Silver Spring (humanities). Neither child tested into elementary GT. All kids in the MS magnets perform at least two years above grade level. They're academic paradise for advanced kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stuart Hobson may be the shiniest toy but its low capacity presents some inherent limitations. The only change variable is the composition of students coming from Watkins, LT, and JO Wilson and that leave out a large chunk of Hill families. It's comparable to Hardy in that regard and doesn't scale well with comprehensive middle schools. SH has 1/2 the capacity of either EH or Jefferson.

In hindsight it would have made more sense to sell it off before renovating and use the windfall to pump up Eliot Hine as a school with the capacity for comprehensive MS. That ship has long since sailed.

Brent families crack me up! Let me get this straight, EH is too far for your kids so your solution is to close SH and send the kids at LT and JO way farther away than your snowflakes have to travel to EH? Wait, I forgot, the center of the educational universe is Brent and nothing else matters.

Snowflakes? My adopted Brent kid is of Asian descent (er, black hair, dark brown eyes, honey-colored skin). Where should s/he go to school in your books? What a jerk you are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Stuart Hobson may be the shiniest toy but its low capacity presents some inherent limitations. The only change variable is the composition of students coming from Watkins, LT, and JO Wilson and that leave out a large chunk of Hill families. It's comparable to Hardy in that regard and doesn't scale well with comprehensive middle schools. SH has 1/2 the capacity of either EH or Jefferson.

In hindsight it would have made more sense to sell it off before renovating and use the windfall to pump up Eliot Hine as a school with the capacity for comprehensive MS. That ship has long since sailed.

Brent families crack me up! Let me get this straight, EH is too far for your kids so your solution is to close SH and send the kids at LT and JO way farther away than your snowflakes have to travel to EH? Wait, I forgot, the center of the educational universe is Brent and nothing else matters.

Um... I don't think that's what this person said. They said it had the smallest capacity of the 3 MSs that serve neighborhoods on the Hill. Many people think over capacity is one of the issues facing these schools so it would have made sense to close the smallest school and use that money to fix the 2 bigger schools. Not really unreasonable but as the poster said, it won't happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS doesn't care a whit about neighborhood schools. They care about capacity management system wide. As a matter of fact, they're fine with any particular by-right school being 0% in-boundary, as Brent had become by the early 2000s. DCPS principals are not evaluated on their ability to attract or retain in-boundary families. Note that DCPS won't buy or build any new elementary schools in Upper NW, although several of the JKLM schools are at close to 200% capacity, following the logic that there are DCPS elementary school buildings in Wards 7 and 8 standing two-thirds empty.

As long as voters aren't canning their city council members over neighborhood school issues, the city government isn't accountable to neighborhood parents shunning schools. If you want to get DCPS' attention, you can vote Allen out, though that's unlikely to do any good.

with the exception of Janney and Lafayette, virtually all of the NW schools have some OOB population. Until these schools are filled with IB students there's little reason to build new capacity. The better solution and the one upper NW roundly rejected is to alter the boundaries and use the existing capacity as a safety valve. . . but that's a non-starter for the eastern part of Lafayette or Janney to move to Shepherd or Hearst

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS doesn't care a whit about neighborhood schools. They care about capacity management system wide. As a matter of fact, they're fine with any particular by-right school being 0% in-boundary, as Brent had become by the early 2000s. DCPS principals are not evaluated on their ability to attract or retain in-boundary families. Note that DCPS won't buy or build any new elementary schools in Upper NW, although several of the JKLM schools are at close to 200% capacity, following the logic that there are DCPS elementary school buildings in Wards 7 and 8 standing two-thirds empty.

As long as voters aren't canning their city council members over neighborhood school issues, the city government isn't accountable to neighborhood parents shunning schools. If you want to get DCPS' attention, you can vote Allen out, though that's unlikely to do any good.

with the exception of Janney and Lafayette, virtually all of the NW schools have some OOB population. Until these schools are filled with IB students there's little reason to build new capacity. The better solution and the one upper NW roundly rejected is to alter the boundaries and use the existing capacity as a safety valve. . . but that's a non-starter for the eastern part of Lafayette or Janney to move to Shepherd or Hearst

Janney is 7% OOB; Lafayette is 15% OOB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, we know - we go on SchoolDigger.com, visit schools, talk to old friends who've moved to MD. We are aware that MoCo is in the grip of a social upheaval. But at least MoCo offers test-in GT at the MS level to a select few, and doesn't seem to fight high SES parents amalgamating around high-performing schools across the board.

The test in Montgomery County elementary GT programs took 477 kids out of 12000 3rd graders, I.e. 4%. Most of the lawyers' kids will have trouble competing with the scientists' kids.

There are several MS test-in programs on the eastern side of MoCo. My sibling has one child at the Takoma Park magnet (math and science, child got a seat set aside for a Takoma Park resident) and the other at Eastern MS in Silver Spring (humanities). Neither child tested into elementary GT. All kids in the MS magnets perform at least two years above grade level. They're academic paradise for advanced kids.

The test in programs have 325 seats among the 4 of them at the middle school level. That's less than 3% of MCPS fifth graders that can be accommodated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS doesn't care a whit about neighborhood schools. They care about capacity management system wide. As a matter of fact, they're fine with any particular by-right school being 0% in-boundary, as Brent had become by the early 2000s. DCPS principals are not evaluated on their ability to attract or retain in-boundary families. Note that DCPS won't buy or build any new elementary schools in Upper NW, although several of the JKLM schools are at close to 200% capacity, following the logic that there are DCPS elementary school buildings in Wards 7 and 8 standing two-thirds empty.

As long as voters aren't canning their city council members over neighborhood school issues, the city government isn't accountable to neighborhood parents shunning schools. If you want to get DCPS' attention, you can vote Allen out, though that's unlikely to do any good.

with the exception of Janney and Lafayette, virtually all of the NW schools have some OOB population. Until these schools are filled with IB students there's little reason to build new capacity. The better solution and the one upper NW roundly rejected is to alter the boundaries and use the existing capacity as a safety valve. . . but that's a non-starter for the eastern part of Lafayette or Janney to move to Shepherd or Hearst

Hearst, Janney, and Stoddert no longer take OOB kids. Mann, Murch, Eaton, and Key only take a few at K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS doesn't care a whit about neighborhood schools. They care about capacity management system wide. As a matter of fact, they're fine with any particular by-right school being 0% in-boundary, as Brent had become by the early 2000s. DCPS principals are not evaluated on their ability to attract or retain in-boundary families. Note that DCPS won't buy or build any new elementary schools in Upper NW, although several of the JKLM schools are at close to 200% capacity, following the logic that there are DCPS elementary school buildings in Wards 7 and 8 standing two-thirds empty.

As long as voters aren't canning their city council members over neighborhood school issues, the city government isn't accountable to neighborhood parents shunning schools. If you want to get DCPS' attention, you can vote Allen out, though that's unlikely to do any good.

with the exception of Janney and Lafayette, virtually all of the NW schools have some OOB population. Until these schools are filled with IB students there's little reason to build new capacity. The better solution and the one upper NW roundly rejected is to alter the boundaries and use the existing capacity as a safety valve. . . but that's a non-starter for the eastern part of Lafayette or Janney to move to Shepherd or Hearst

Hearst, Janney, and Stoddert no longer take OOB kids. Mann, Murch, Eaton, and Key only take a few at K.

Right on Hearst, Janney and Stoddert (at least for 2016-17)

But for 2016-17

Mann took 4 K, 1 1st, 3 2nd, 3 3rd, 2 4th, 2 5th;
Murch 3 K, 1 3rd;
Eaton 4 K, 2 1st, 3 2nd, 3 3rd, 2 4th, 2 5th;
Key 8 K, 7 1st and 2 2nd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS doesn't care a whit about neighborhood schools. They care about capacity management system wide. As a matter of fact, they're fine with any particular by-right school being 0% in-boundary, as Brent had become by the early 2000s. DCPS principals are not evaluated on their ability to attract or retain in-boundary families. Note that DCPS won't buy or build any new elementary schools in Upper NW, although several of the JKLM schools are at close to 200% capacity, following the logic that there are DCPS elementary school buildings in Wards 7 and 8 standing two-thirds empty.

As long as voters aren't canning their city council members over neighborhood school issues, the city government isn't accountable to neighborhood parents shunning schools. If you want to get DCPS' attention, you can vote Allen out, though that's unlikely to do any good.

with the exception of Janney and Lafayette, virtually all of the NW schools have some OOB population. Until these schools are filled with IB students there's little reason to build new capacity. The better solution and the one upper NW roundly rejected is to alter the boundaries and use the existing capacity as a safety valve. . . but that's a non-starter for the eastern part of Lafayette or Janney to move to Shepherd or Hearst

Hearst is 2/3 OOB students. Seems like they must have let some OOB students in. Even Stoddert is %25 OOB

Hearst, Janney, and Stoddert no longer take OOB kids. Mann, Murch, Eaton, and Key only take a few at K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, we know - we go on SchoolDigger.com, visit schools, talk to old friends who've moved to MD. We are aware that MoCo is in the grip of a social upheaval. But at least MoCo offers test-in GT at the MS level to a select few, and doesn't seem to fight high SES parents amalgamating around high-performing schools across the board.

The test in Montgomery County elementary GT programs took 477 kids out of 12000 3rd graders, I.e. 4%. Most of the lawyers' kids will have trouble competing with the scientists' kids.

There are several MS test-in programs on the eastern side of MoCo. My sibling has one child at the Takoma Park magnet (math and science, child got a seat set aside for a Takoma Park resident) and the other at Eastern MS in Silver Spring (humanities). Neither child tested into elementary GT. All kids in the MS magnets perform at least two years above grade level. They're academic paradise for advanced kids.

The test in programs have 325 seats among the 4 of them at the middle school level. That's less than 3% of MCPS fifth graders that can be accommodated.

Most parents of advanced students are satisfied with the neighborhood programs (generally on the West side of the county) and don't seek seats in the several MS test-in programs in the Downcounty Consortium. The commute can be an hour one way. But for the kids who test in whose families are willing to brave the commute (on school buses) like my niece/nephew, these programs are a godsend. The programs aren't designed to help somewhat advanced kids, like in Fairfax and Arlington, they're geared toward really advanced kids who'd be bored out of their skulls in MS programs where "differentiation within the classroom" BS is the norm.