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best in-boundary potential for improvement?
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Anonymous
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What public schools would see the most improvement if most families in the neighborhood collectively decided to send their kids to their in-boundary schools?
Bancroft in Mt. Pleasant? Reed in Adams Morgan? Some school on the Hill? |
Anonymous
| Hardy in Georgetown. |
Anonymous
| Eliot-Hine Middle School on Capitol Hill |
Anonymous
| cooke, bancroft, and reed could all be great candidates. |
Anonymous
| Payne and Miner on the Hill. Amidon in Southwest. |
Anonymous
No, none of the schools in Adams Morgan or Mt. Pleasant have the demographics. The best candidates would be those that are in middle-class to upper-middle class neighborhoods, without any large pockets of poverty in their catchment area, and which are mostly serving OOB students right now (no poor students who are there because they have a right to be). A big wave of wealthier families would force out some of the OOBs and make them vie for fewer spaces, and all the newly filled spots would be advantaged children. Attractive sounding dynamic, isn't it? Blech. It hasn't been successful at Hardy, btw. |
Anonymous
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My goodness this ^attitude is nihilistic. Could any theoretical improvement have anything to do with neighborhood families having a commitment to the school and local community? Local businesses wanting to contribute to a school where their local clientele send their kids? A sense of duty to support the neighborhood school ( volunteering, financially, engaging with kids education). Maybe a "we're all in this together" feel that permeates the school in a way that would be harder with kids coming from scattered neighborhoods?
Any chance that the out of boundary kids who have spots in a school like that would also benefit from the changes? Any chance that the families that could no longer win out of boundary spots would then have inspiration and critical mass to pull off a similar transformation in their neighborhood? |
Anonymous
Not true for Mount Pleasant. See latest census data (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pleasant,_Washington,_D.C.) 1990 2000 2005-2009 white non-Hispanic 35% 35% 51% black non-Hispanic 36% 27% 17% Hispanic 26% 31% 20% Asian/Pacific Islander 3.0% 6.3% 11% Presumably most of the whites are not poor. However, Bancroft is (and presumably will remain) dual language, and not all neighborhood families will want that. Also agree with previous poster's suggestion that a complete takeover is not appealing. More diversity would be good, though (for the dual language program too--50/50 English/Spanish speaking would be preferable to current 58% English learners.) |
Anonymous
Eaton Hearst |
Anonymous
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15:18, I wrote "Hardy" in absolute bitterness over the mess that Rhee brought to the school. I agree, you will see quick improvement in schools that have no poor kids in their boundaries.
Brent is a perfect example. They are just waiting for their affluent kids to dominate the testing grades. In the meantime, their test scores are an embarrassment, given that it has such a low poverty rate. Whatever. |
Anonymous
What makes you think the OOB students are poor? |
Anonymous
| Cooke. Demographics have radically shifted in the neighborhoods feeding Cooke, and if local parents all came to the school, things could really improve. |
Anonymous
Still an extremely high poverty school. 90% or so FARMS. Those children aren't leaving for greener pastures - nor should anyone be trying to make them leave. It's a nice new building and it's their neighborhood school too! |
Anonymous
If all of the in-bounds kids with a right to go to Cooke went, the school would not be 90% FARMS, it probably wouldn't be even 30% FARMS. There are a lot of OOB kids at Cooke in the upper grades. An influx of neighborhood 3 year olds would not drive them out, but it would change the demographics. Just look at the younger grades at Cooke, they are no 90% FARMS. And, I really do believe that a good mix of SES is important for a kids education. My privileged kid needs to know there are less fortunate people in the world, and a school with a higher percentage of kids from educated middle class parents is probably going to do a better job educating ALL kids, including the poor kids -- look at the good charters, they do it. You don't need to drive out the poor families to "improve" the school, you just need to integrate the school (racially and economically). Cooke probably has the most potential in the immediate term b/c the ball is rolling there and the new building is a draw for neighborhood parents. But, based on sheer numbers, I'd think Bancroft would be the school that could experience the most dramatic demographic shift, it is the in-boundary school for a largely well-off, educated, committed population that could easily make it into a model urban school. But, no one has ever attempted to make that move... |
Anonymous
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WAY too early for Bancroft or Cooke! That's wishful thinking from the Cooke booster.
Shepherd has a much better shot than either of those (better test scores and history even in upper grades, wealthier neighborhood, history of supportive PTA, IB and language efforts, etc.) though I'm not sure I would even bet on Shepherd for the near term. (Let's say the near term is putting your child in Pre-K now, would you want to be there after 2nd or 3rd grade). Hardy could be. Hearst could be. Brent could be. Francis-Stevens might be some sort of wild card. There's definitely no concentrated poverty in West End. It's a wealthy enough area, but there can't be many families with young children. There's a lot of kool-aid drinking on this forum though. |