Proposal Implications: Loss of Proximity, Forced to go to Lowest Performing School, Concerns OOB

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:11:14, that you for sharing that story. It certainly challenges and corrects many of my own biases.

Keep in mind that that story is from long ago. I'm not a defender of the current system, but I will point out that now all teachers have to be credentialed and that many schools in all parts of town have recently been renovated or rebuilt -- so some of the problems pp cited no longer exist.

What happens no si that the "worse" schools get the least experienced teachers -- and there is a high-turnover rate as teachers move on the better school (more well-behaved students) so there is continuing instability at the school where kids are already likely to experience instability at home.

DCPS could fix this by incentivizing experienced teachers to stay at those schools, but they do the opposite.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If OP really is talking about Murch and Hearst then that is absolutely the epitome of 3rd ward problems. Is a child's life going to be negatively impacted by going from Hearst to Deal to Wilson instead of Murch to Deal to Wilson? Please someone make that argument to me because I'd love to hear it.

I am an OOB Hearst parent and what the previous poster described about the community at Hearst is absolutely true. I've only been at Hearst a short time and have found it incredibly welcoming. And kids manage to have playdates and class parties despite coming from all over the city. Before coming to Hearst I had read the negative comments on DCUM and from the moment we've been there I've been scratching my head trying to figure out what is so objectionable about the school.

+1 The idea that kids have different long range outcomes from, for example, Murch compared to Hearst when all those kids go on to Deal and Wilson does not make a lot of sense. I agree with you completely PP.

I would be interested in hearing about private school acceptance rates from Hearst. We are an international family and will likely have to go private for the upper grades because our child may need to move. How do Hearst families fare with private school acceptances?

I am a Hearst parent and I can't answer that because I don't know of many students that apply to private schools. I know a kid who went on to Edmund Burke for middle school. Most others go on to Deal or Latin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If OP really is talking about Murch and Hearst then that is absolutely the epitome of 3rd ward problems. Is a child's life going to be negatively impacted by going from Hearst to Deal to Wilson instead of Murch to Deal to Wilson? Please someone make that argument to me because I'd love to hear it.

I am an OOB Hearst parent and what the previous poster described about the community at Hearst is absolutely true. I've only been at Hearst a short time and have found it incredibly welcoming. And kids manage to have playdates and class parties despite coming from all over the city. Before coming to Hearst I had read the negative comments on DCUM and from the moment we've been there I've been scratching my head trying to figure out what is so objectionable about the school.

+1 The idea that kids have different long range outcomes from, for example, Murch compared to Hearst when all those kids go on to Deal and Wilson does not make a lot of sense. I agree with you completely PP.

I would be interested in hearing about private school acceptance rates from Hearst. We are an international family and will likely have to go private for the upper grades because our child may need to move. How do Hearst families fare with private school acceptances?

There isn't much data on this simply because up until approximately 4 years ago, Hearst was an early childhood center that only went through the 3rd grade. Honestly, I believe that the only reason Hearst now lags slightly behind other Ward 3 schools with regard to test scores (IMO everything else is even), is because we recently stretched from a PK-3 to a PK-5. Moreover, in the midst of that change we had principal turnover. Dr. B provided us with three years of stability (test scores have been steadily rising) and our new principal is grounded in DC so I fully expect the stability to continue.

Out of the 35 kids that graduated this year, two are headed to Burke. However, I don't think very many applied to private. As another poster indicated Deal, Latin and Basis are where they are headed. To be honest, because there are three pretty good middle school options in DC, these days, more and more parents are waiting until high school to apply for private (myself included).

[Anonymous]

^^thanks PP for the input!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If OP really is talking about Murch and Hearst then that is absolutely the epitome of 3rd ward problems. Is a child's life going to be negatively impacted by going from Hearst to Deal to Wilson instead of Murch to Deal to Wilson? Please someone make that argument to me because I'd love to hear it.

I am an OOB Hearst parent and what the previous poster described about the community at Hearst is absolutely true. I've only been at Hearst a short time and have found it incredibly welcoming. And kids manage to have playdates and class parties despite coming from all over the city. Before coming to Hearst I had read the negative comments on DCUM and from the moment we've been there I've been scratching my head trying to figure out what is so objectionable about the school.

+1 The idea that kids have different long range outcomes from, for example, Murch compared to Hearst when all those kids go on to Deal and Wilson does not make a lot of sense. I agree with you completely PP.

I would be interested in hearing about private school acceptance rates from Hearst. We are an international family and will likely have to go private for the upper grades because our child may need to move. How do Hearst families fare with private school acceptances?

There isn't much data on this simply because up until approximately 4 years ago, Hearst was an early childhood center that only went through the 3rd grade. Honestly, I believe that the only reason Hearst now lags slightly behind other Ward 3 schools with regard to test scores (IMO everything else is even), is because we recently stretched from a PK-3 to a PK-5. Moreover, in the midst of that change we had principal turnover. Dr. B provided us with three years of stability (test scores have been steadily rising) and our new principal is grounded in DC so I fully expect the stability to continue.

Out of the 35 kids that graduated this year, two are headed to Burke. However, I don't think very many applied to private. As another poster indicated Deal, Latin and Basis are where they are headed. To be honest, because there are three pretty good middle school options in DC, these days, more and more parents are waiting until high school to apply for private (myself included).

+1 I see a trend of people IB for Deal being less and less interested in private MS. Still some mixed opinions about Wilson for HS. (This is among people IB. Opinions of Wilson tend to be positive for those OOB, because it is all relative!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+2 I grew up in ward 3 but would never live there now. We'll inherit my parents' house someday, Lord
willing, but we certainly won't move back.

So, no one wants to live there, but everyone wants to send their kids to school there.

I'm the pp who's lived in w3 since 1994. I love many many things about my address and I am pretty sure i could not recreate this coveted PACKAGE of features anywhere else in the city. One of these features is lack of crime, so no one needs to respond to this particular post and try to refute this --our district has lower overall crime than anywhere else. Then there are all the other factors in this package which I'll spare you.

That said, I stay here DESPITE the growing share of unfortunate people. The trade off is currently worth it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+2 I grew up in ward 3 but would never live there now. We'll inherit my parents' house someday, Lord
willing, but we certainly won't move back.

So, no one wants to live there, but everyone wants to send their kids to school there.

I'm the pp who's lived in w3 since 1994. I love many many things about my address and I am pretty sure i could not recreate this coveted PACKAGE of features anywhere else in the city. One of these features is lack of crime, so no one needs to respond to this particular post and try to refute this --our district has lower overall crime than anywhere else. Then there are all the other factors in this package which I'll spare you.

That said, I stay here DESPITE the growing share of unfortunate people. The trade off is currently worth it

The value of the package is relative and individual. I moved out in 1999 because it was so homogeneous and boring, it didn't even feel like living in the city.

[Anonymous]

Where did you move to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+2 I grew up in ward 3 but would never live there now. We'll inherit my parents' house someday, Lord
willing, but we certainly won't move back.

So, no one wants to live there, but everyone wants to send their kids to school there.

I'm the pp who's lived in w3 since 1994. I love many many things about my address and I am pretty sure i could not recreate this coveted PACKAGE of features anywhere else in the city. One of these features is lack of crime, so no one needs to respond to this particular post and try to refute this --our district has lower overall crime than anywhere else. Then there are all the other factors in this package which I'll spare you.

That said, I stay here DESPITE the growing share of unfortunate people. The trade off is currently worth it

The value of the package is relative and individual. I moved out in 1999 because it was so homogeneous and boring, it didn't even feel like living in the city.

Again, it is about trade offs. I love going out in Columbia Heights, Shaw, Petworth, etc. It takes me 10-15 to drive there. I do it often, maybe 5 or so times/month. However, my kids go to school 5 days/week. They walk to a great school and will continue to do so through high school. It is more important to me to have the school convenience 200 (or whatever) days/year for 18 years than it is to have convenience to cool restaurants a couple times a month.

[Anonymous]

At least the DMW proposal doesn't rezone your child to the school whose playground in which a 6 year old was hit by a stray bullet a month ago. Bruce Monroe.
Thanks DME,
Sincerely, Ward 4

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+2 I grew up in ward 3 but would never live there now. We'll inherit my parents' house someday, Lord
willing, but we certainly won't move back.

So, no one wants to live there, but everyone wants to send their kids to school there.

I'm the pp who's lived in w3 since 1994. I love many many things about my address and I am pretty sure i could not recreate this coveted PACKAGE of features anywhere else in the city. One of these features is lack of crime, so no one needs to respond to this particular post and try to refute this --our district has lower overall crime than anywhere else. Then there are all the other factors in this package which I'll spare you.

That said, I stay here DESPITE the growing share of unfortunate people. The trade off is currently worth it

The value of the package is relative and individual. I moved out in 1999 because it was so homogeneous and boring, it didn't even feel like living in the city.

If "city" means mainly minority, then ward 3 doesn't fit, but if it means good public transportation, entertainment, walkable parks and schools, then it does.

Also it's the most popular place in the city for people in other parts of the city to want their children to be educated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+2 I grew up in ward 3 but would never live there now. We'll inherit my parents' house someday, Lord
willing, but we certainly won't move back.

So, no one wants to live there, but everyone wants to send their kids to school there.

I'm the pp who's lived in w3 since 1994. I love many many things about my address and I am pretty sure i could not recreate this coveted PACKAGE of features anywhere else in the city. One of these features is lack of crime, so no one needs to respond to this particular post and try to refute this --our district has lower overall crime than anywhere else. Then there are all the other factors in this package which I'll spare you.

That said, I stay here DESPITE the growing share of unfortunate people. The trade off is currently worth it

The value of the package is relative and individual. I moved out in 1999 because it was so homogeneous and boring, it didn't even feel like living in the city.

Again, it is about trade offs. I love going out in Columbia Heights, Shaw, Petworth, etc. It takes me 10-15 to drive there. I do it often, maybe 5 or so times/month. However, my kids go to school 5 days/week. They walk to a great school and will continue to do so through high school. It is more important to me to have the school convenience 200 (or whatever) days/year for 18 years than it is to have convenience to cool restaurants a couple times a month.

This is a good point. I wonder how many parents have thought of it this way when making their home and school choices. I wish more people who live in cool neighborhoods could also have cool schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:+2 I grew up in ward 3 but would never live there now. We'll inherit my parents' house someday, Lord
willing, but we certainly won't move back.

So, no one wants to live there, but everyone wants to send their kids to school there.

I'm the pp who's lived in w3 since 1994. I love many many things about my address and I am pretty sure i could not recreate this coveted PACKAGE of features anywhere else in the city. One of these features is lack of crime, so no one needs to respond to this particular post and try to refute this --our district has lower overall crime than anywhere else. Then there are all the other factors in this package which I'll spare you.

That said, I stay here DESPITE the growing share of unfortunate people. The trade off is currently worth it

The value of the package is relative and individual. I moved out in 1999 because it was so homogeneous and boring, it didn't even feel like living in the city.

Again, it is about trade offs. I love going out in Columbia Heights, Shaw, Petworth, etc. It takes me 10-15 to drive there. I do it often, maybe 5 or so times/month. However, my kids go to school 5 days/week. They walk to a great school and will continue to do so through high school. It is more important to me to have the school convenience 200 (or whatever) days/year for 18 years than it is to have convenience to cool restaurants a couple times a month.

This is a good point. I wonder how many parents have thought of it this way when making their home and school choices. I wish more people who live in cool neighborhoods could also have cool schools.

I am the PP you quoted, and believe me, I wish cool neighborhoods had good schools too. I really do. In my case, I work in Virginia so most of the cool neighborhoods were not ideal for my commute either, but if I had a different work situation I would love to live in an area that offered more interesting commerce (I mean, I love Guapo's but how many times a month can we go there??), a more diverse population, etc. But school walkability was really my #1 criteria and since my kids are in school now, I had to go with a good option today. On the plus side, my kids happen to go to a very diverse Ward 3 school so I was at least intentional on where I would live and the type of school they would attend. But I truly wish everyone had the option of a strong neighborhood school. The intent of my post was just to point out that not everyone who lives in Ward 3 does so because we are rich, snobby, and only want to live near white people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:11:14, that you for sharing that story. It certainly challenges and corrects many of my own biases.

Keep in mind that that story is from long ago. I'm not a defender of the current system, but I will point out that now all teachers have to be credentialed and that many schools in all parts of town have recently been renovated or rebuilt -- so some of the problems pp cited no longer exist.

What happens no si that the "worse" schools get the least experienced teachers -- and there is a high-turnover rate as teachers move on the better school (more well-behaved students) so there is continuing instability at the school where kids are already likely to experience instability at home.

DCPS could fix this by incentivizing experienced teachers to stay at those schools, but they do the opposite.

They do incentivize staying at title 1 schools - with a giant bonus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:11:14, that you for sharing that story. It certainly challenges and corrects many of my own biases.

Keep in mind that that story is from long ago. I'm not a defender of the current system, but I will point out that now all teachers have to be credentialed and that many schools in all parts of town have recently been renovated or rebuilt -- so some of the problems pp cited no longer exist.

What happens no si that the "worse" schools get the least experienced teachers -- and there is a high-turnover rate as teachers move on the better school (more well-behaved students) so there is continuing instability at the school where kids are already likely to experience instability at home.

DCPS could fix this by incentivizing experienced teachers to stay at those schools, but they do the opposite.

They do incentivize staying at title 1 schools - with a giant bonus.

If the teacher is "highly effective" which is hard to achieve at a title one school, especially if student scores are factored in. The majority of HE teachers are in ward 3.