Experience with Macfarland?
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Anonymous
Sometimes people just have to use the best information available. Even if it isn't 100% reliable, it can be worth having, if only to inform other research. |
Anonymous
Do you think the school would tell the truth, or do you think it would be an acronym-riddled salad of gobbledygook with a side of "equity" scolding that doesn't provide the information the parent actually wants? I know what I would expect. |
Anonymous
I think they'd tell the truth. But I think its funny how little you think of DCPS yet still find the need to post on the board so much. |
Anonymous
Is this board only for people who think highly of DCPS? To me, since I don't believe anything DCPS says, this board is highly valuable as a somewhat credible source of information. Some of it is wrong, but some of it is true and some of it is things DCPS is unwilling to say. |
Anonymous
It's absolutely circular: That's why you hear about tipping points, where there are enough kids from UMC families to provide a peer group of academically on-grade students. Part of it is a coordination issue, which schools can't affect. But there are often a few inbound/UMC students who schools can retain by 1) actively recruiting, and 2) having a school culture that encourages behavior. We moved back and forth between a couple of EOTP schools. We left one (more than 10 years ago) when the principal said explicitly to a group of pre-K parents who were deciding whether to stay, "Your kids are not my priority. There are other kids with much great needs." Which is absolutely true. We moved to another, which had behavioral problems AND a principal who said almost exactly the same thing (in an all-school meeting) about prioritizing kids who were struggling academically. We moved back to school 1, which had much fewer behavioral problems and therefore had attracted a lot more inbounds, UMC (and yes, predominantly white) families. Our kids were happier with less chair throwing in the classroom. School 1 is now predominantly UMC and inbounds; school 2 is still struggling. |
Anonymous
Sorry, forgot to mention a critical fact: School 1 had gone through several new principals, who didn't think it was necessary to neglect kids who were on grade level to help those who weren't. |
Anonymous
DP. If you don’t believe anything DCPS says, then why are you contemplating putting your kid in a school run by DCPS? Relatedly, what is it about McFarland in particular that makes you so interested in it? If you are asking questions out of a sincere desire to learn more, then there must be something about McFarland that you like. Otherwise, it presumably wouldn’t even be on your radar. So what do you see as the positives of the school, if any? |
Anonymous
Generally, I think my kid who is on/above grade level at MacFarland is not neglected. They are especially above grade level in one particular subject and that teacher has reached out to our family multiple times to discuss ways to give them additional academic support. Not every teacher is good at this, but my student has gotten enough unique attention that I am fairly confident that my kid is able to access appropriate grade level content (and sometimes beyond) even while many of their classmates are below grade level. I don't know for certain, but I think this is similar to the majority of public DC middle schools that do not track students in most classes - and even when they are tracked like in "advanced math" many of the students are not able to access the content. I agree with other posters that it's not a great a system and there are very likely other things DCPS could be doing in middle school to improve academic access for many of their students. But that said, for my kid that is on or above grade level, the fact that many of their classmates are not performing on grade level has not prevented my kid from seeing grade-level content. I think DCPS should be investing in ways to help the majority of their middle grade students who are not currently on grade level - which would very likely involve schools having a lot more staff than they currently do - but our Mayor would have to want to pay for that and she does not. |
Anonymous
But there is an easy way to help grade level students: put them together in one class. DCPS will not do that for *reasons*. |
Anonymous
1) Because DCPS might still be our best option. I'm just not a credulous person, I don't tend to unquestioningly believe what I'm told and that would be true of any school. I like where I live and I don't want to move, and I'm not someone who's always seeking the very best tippy top school of all. I just want it to be adequate. 2) I like the Spanish program, I like that it's our feeder school so we'd have a lot of continuity of classmates, and I like its location because it's near my house. I think that some of MacFarland's feeders are already strong elementary schools, and others are becoming stronger and, I hope, sending their graduates into 6th grade better prepared. MacFarland's test scores are not great, but they are not terrible (when viewed in light of demographics and of COVID's impact). So I think that with a concerted effort, MacFarland can be a really strong school for students of all levels and all backgrounds. But the only way to get there is to be honest about the challenges, and to communicate clearly with parents about all of MacFarland's offerings at every level. |
Anonymous
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Exhibit A reading thru todays post. Definite defensiveness from people with anyone asking about grade level or accelerated classes. Not a good sign. The people repeatedly telling posters to ask the school ad nauseum is also not a good sign. The poster who says they can’t believe everything DCPS admin tells you is correct. Go to an open house and ask about accelerated classes, honors classes and many times you get vague answers, not straightforward. Ask about what is the criteria for these classes and again vague, non-descript answers. The one thing is clear is that there is no accelerated math class from the sole person on here with kid there says his kid is in the accelerated math class and will be taking Algebra in 8th grade. In fact, DCPS is notorious, as someone mentioned, of pushing kids into Algebra who are not even on grade level or ready for it which is true. So I am not confident that it’s even taught on grade level. Any class can be labeled whatever you want. Accelerated does not always mean accelerated and that is a big fact in DCPS. |
Anonymous
This. Defensiveness is not the answer! The right answer is to explain what offerings are available and how to obtain them. The only way forward for a school is quality and transparency. Scolding people for asking, blaming demographics, saying that academic quality isn't a priority for your family, directing them to ask an unreliable source (the school), or anything else, is not going to help. The. Only. Way. Forward. is to provide the highest quality student experience you possibly can, and to tell people about it. It isn't that complicated! |
Anonymous
OK I'm the parent with a kid in the 7th grade 'accelerated' math class. I can't tell you a ton about it. It's not Algebra. My kid likes the math teacher a lot and has anecdotes to share about him and class that make it sound positive. The kid gets good grades in math. I mean . . . I expect they cover the DCPS curriculum. So this isn't trying to be defensive - a discriminating parent would want to know if they really do more than just normal 7th grade math maybe? I don't go into my kid's class or ask other students how they are doing in class, so I lack direct input from the teacher or longitudinal information regarding other students, i.e., I only hear from my own kid. I expect that's normal and would be impressed by people who know more . . . I guess you can look at public test information, and that probably shows many students not succeeding, which is not a positive for any parent, right, and many here believe that there is some kind of spiral toward success if kids are surrounded by kids succeeding at a peer level on testing. Ahead of PARCC my kid told me that some peers said they don't care about PARCC because it doesn't really count for anything, and you can take that as dispiriting or a clear-eyed understanding of priorities, cf. posts on this forum. So - I don't meant to be overly defensive, but it's hard to be that omniscient informer when you mostly hear about what's going on at school from a remove, based on anecdotes shared by a teenager. |
Anonymous
Thank you for your candid report. How did your kid get placed in the class? For a parent coming in with a 6th grader, how do they decide each kid's class schedule? Honestly I don't really care about PARCC because in most years it doesn't count for anything for the individual student. As my DD said "It's not like they're going to give you candy if you get a 5". I don't know why we would expect a kid to care about a test that isn't connected to any specific outcome. |
Anonymous
Look, there’s no sugar coating this: ZERO students at the school scored above grade level in math in ‘21-‘22 and only four percent were even AT grade level. These are not mediocre scores. They are TERRIBLE. And I don’t buy that it’s because the kids don’t care, because if it’s one thing that school administrators do in schools with terrible test scores is try to impress upon their students as much a humanely possible that the scores DO matter because the administrators are desperate to bring them up. My kid at a Macfarland feeder has had this drilled into his head since day one. Test scores are not the be all and end all, far from it - but you need a cohort, even a small one, of high achieving students at any school. This school has none. I cannot in good conscience send my son there. |