WCP article on Watkins

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Or give 'em vouchers. Good charter or voucher, and maybe they'll stay in the city versus moving to the 'burbs.

funny. I wouldn't be caught dead enrolling my child at a DC private that touches vouchers with a 10 foot pole. Your outcomes would be on par with random neighborhood school

Have you seen the list of schools that accept the vouchers? http://servingourchildrendc.org/our-program/find-a-school/

Lowell School
St. John's College High School
Georgetown Day School
Sidwell Friends School
Edmund Burke School
Beavoir-National Cathedral School
Natl Presbyterian School
Aidan Montessori
Visitation
Holy Trinity
St. Albans
Gonzaga
St Anselm's

http://servingourchildrendc.org/our-program/find-a-school/

Interesting. I wonder if they each take a token voucher or two, or a significant percentage of students via vouchers? In other words, is this a real option for parents, or not really if a tiny tiny fraction of applicants benefit?

That isn't disclosed -- and certainly any student who qualifies for the voucher is going to need an addl financial aid award from most of these schools to be able to afford it. And, they have to have the smarts to get in.

that was my original point. good luck using that voucher at Sidwell. Schools with tuition from 35-40K are nonstarters for any student who is not capable of getting in on merit and likely also able to get more serious financial aid. The school ecosystem which feeds on vouchers is lower performing parochial schools with lower costs in general. As I said, not an improvement over many public options.

The disadvantaged kid with this voucher, who can meet the admissions criteria at Sidwell and the other elite schools, will absolutely be given enough financial aid to cover the gap. These schools need and want these kids -- it helps them meet their public benefit test to justify their non profit status.

[Anonymous]

The schools have to make up the difference in FA between the voucher amount and the full tuition. Schools are thrilled to get a motivated family who seek out the vouchers, apply to high quality schools, and come to the table with a chunk of money toward tuition.

I'm not a voucher fan, but I do know that many schools help kids use the voucher there, not just parochial schools and certainly many that are high quality.

[Anonymous]

Can we get back to the topic at hand-- is this principal actually horrific or is this a case of affluenza?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we get back to the topic at hand-- is this principal actually horrific or is this a case of affluenza?

Oh that, yeah she's bad.....lots of families leaving

[Anonymous]

She seems to be focusing on the wrong things to get the results she wants. Like she says she wants children to achieve to their full potential, but she sets a culture of low expectations.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like affluenza. This isn't a neighborhood school, and the teaching is geared toward the majority of the student body. You want your high SES kid to be challenged; I understand. Oh well ..... There's always daydreaming and counting ceiling tiles.

[Anonymous]

How are things going?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are things going?

Well between her cancelling things that made the school great like student/principal advisory board, loss of more teachers than I can count including budgeting out the dean of students, decrease in PARCC scores and families leaving in droves - not well.

Those parents in the original group took a lot of flack but it turns out they were right.

[Anonymous]

Was surprised to find several Watkins IB families at LT. That suggests a big problem, since those are clearly families who want to use their IB. And the demographics, test scores, etc are similar, so those are just parents fleeing a school...

[Anonymous]

And there are a whole lot of them at BASIS, so the improvements at SH aren’t enough for them to deal with Watkins for 5th grade. Same as it ever was. . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And there are a whole lot of them at BASIS, so the improvements at SH aren’t enough for them to deal with Watkins for 5th grade. Same as it ever was. . .

I don’t think this is necessarily true... Anyone IB for Watkins can go to SH in 6th if they want to, so trying BASIS if they’re not sure which they’d prefer is just the prudent approach.

[Anonymous]

Watkins should close and be reopened as a neighborhood middle school. Only 30% of the students are in-boundary -- they can be redistributed to Payne, Brent, and Tyler. Watkins Middle School should serve Miner, Maury, Payne and Brent; Stuart should serve Ludlow, JO, and Tyler non-Spanish. Or something like that.

[Anonymous]

My kid is at Watkins and there are still plenty of families from his Peabody days in the fourth grade with him. I volunteer regularly in the classroom, and I’d say it’s like many other schools with a large student body— some kids are doing exceptionally well, others struggle to learn. The good thing is that there still is a large enough group of kids that can push each other academically even in the fourth grade, so it’s not as dire as some of these others posters want to make it seem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Watkins should close and be reopened as a neighborhood middle school. Only 30% of the students are in-boundary -- they can be redistributed to Payne, Brent, and Tyler. Watkins Middle School should serve Miner, Maury, Payne and Brent; Stuart should serve Ludlow, JO, and Tyler non-Spanish. Or something like that.

Huh? Miner, Payne and Maury already feed into their own middle school - Eliot Hine. Are you saying close it and turn Watkins into a middle school? That doesn't make any sense even from someone who lives in the E-H boundary and would love a different middle school option.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is at Watkins and there are still plenty of families from his Peabody days in the fourth grade with him. I volunteer regularly in the classroom, and I’d say it’s like many other schools with a large student body— some kids are doing exceptionally well, others struggle to learn. The good thing is that there still is a large enough group of kids that can push each other academically even in the fourth grade, so it’s not as dire as some of these others posters want to make it seem.

That’s good to hear. All of the families of that I know have left the city or gone to charter schools. It’s good to know some IB families are staying.