What’s going on at DCI?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We can always exercise common sense in analyzing data based on our observations.

It's clear to me that the strongest students from our feeder (not just from cap hill) have an unfortunate tendency not to turn up, or stay if they do. This is particularly true of the math gifted and high SES native speakers of the languages taught.

No, don't start claiming that advanced Chinese track is jammed with kids who mainly speak Chinese at home. I don't know of one and I've known these kids for 5,6 even 7 years.

Honestly, some of this is expected. We are going to try the lottery in fifth for BASIS for our math whiz. We know others that are planning on private school for middle or high school, regardless of what happens at DCI. Some high SES and gifted kids are always going to bail on feeder patterns for specialized schools or more rigor, even those who feed to Hardy and Deal, or the burbs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCI's overall re-enrollment rate is 92% (students who start the school in Sept and are gone by the next September). This includes students who leave mid-year.

The student group with the lowest re-enrollment rate is English-language learners (84%).

https://dcschoolreportcard.org/schools/181-0248/star-metric-ms/reenrollment?lang=en

I don't trust the re-enrollment data. We re-enrolled in the spring and didn't turn up after we got off a WL, and we certainly weren't alone. I'd bet money we were counted.

Yes I'm sure they made up fake enrollment paperwork to show to OSSE that your child was still there. Not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We can always exercise common sense in analyzing data based on our observations.

It's clear to me that the strongest students from our feeder (not just from cap hill) have an unfortunate tendency not to turn up, or stay if they do. This is particularly true of the math gifted and high SES native speakers of the languages taught.

No, don't start claiming that advanced Chinese track is jammed with kids who mainly speak Chinese at home. I don't know of one and I've known these kids for 5,6 even 7 years.

Honestly, some of this is expected. We are going to try the lottery in fifth for BASIS for our math whiz. We know others that are planning on private school for middle or high school, regardless of what happens at DCI. Some high SES and gifted kids are always going to bail on feeder patterns for specialized schools or more rigor, even those who feed to Hardy and Deal, or the burbs.

"more rigor" but this is supposed to be IB which is supposed to be high in rigor - even the highest.

starting to hope we're no longer in DC by the time we require middle school...

[Anonymous]

You can't ensure high rigor with the DCI set up, regardless of curriculum. DCI doesn't track in middle school for any subject but math, and then not all that much, with parent leaders buying into total BS about IB Middle Years now permitting tracking (commonly done in IB-MP programs). Language instruction in the feeders isn't of consistently good quality and YY and Stokes enroll very few students who mainly speak the language of instruction at home. If you want IB diploma level rigor, you need to be wary of social experiments. You need to provide the sort of education providing a path to high IB diploma points totals in the 30s and 40s by replicating structures at schools that pull this off. You can offer IB with students scraping by with totals in the 20s (Banneker, Eastern) but not much point. Better to stick with AP classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't ensure high rigor with the DCI set up, regardless of curriculum. DCI doesn't track in middle school for any subject but math, and then not all that much, with parent leaders buying into total BS about IB Middle Years now permitting tracking (commonly done in IB-MP programs). Language instruction in the feeders isn't of consistently good quality and YY and Stokes enroll very few students who mainly speak the language of instruction at home. If you want IB diploma level rigor, you need to be wary of social experiments. You need to provide the sort of education providing a path to high IB diploma points totals in the 30s and 40s by replicating structures at schools that pull this off. You can offer IB with students scraping by with totals in the 20s (Banneker, Eastern) but not much point. Better to stick with AP classes.

Meh. I think DCI will do a lot better than Eastern and Banneker eventually, just due to the demographics. Obviously not there yet. It's the same handwringing we saw over at Hardy.

[Anonymous]

Prediction:

The first few graduating class' college admission results and IB exam results will be dissected, scrutinized and criticized -- as has happened for the graduates at Latin and BASIS.

There will be boosters and detractors on both sides.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The new DC STAR report cards have discipline data for DCI.

The suspension rate is 17%; the DC average is 7% (13% of students have had in school suspension and 9% out of school suspension.

21% of Black, 20% of Latino, 5% of White and 3% of Asian students were suspended.

The suspension rates for at-risk students is 28%, ELLs 28% and students with disabilities is 35% (of course a student can be in more than one of these categories).

Hopefully this is the link to the subpage of the report card https://dcschoolreportcard.org/schools/181-0248/metric/suspensions?lang=en

There are a few data issues here. The 7% is for all of DC, not comparable grades; it's extremely unusual to suspend elementary school kids, which are almost half of all DC students. A grade-by-grade comparison would tell much more. In the previous year (OSSE discontinued this particular report), DCI had a far lower suspension rate than the city as a whole for comparable grades: https://osse.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/osse/publication/attachments/2017_Equity_Report_Public%20Charter%20School_District%20of%20Columbia%20International%20School.pdf

Second, DCI suspends more students in-school (which means they're still at school, getting some instruction etc.) than out-of-school - 13% vs. 9%. It looks like they're almost alone in actually reporting in-school suspensions. The overall DC in-school suspension rate is actually listed as 0% (https://dcschoolreportcard.org/state/99999-0000/metric/suspensions?lang=en) - which is ridiculous; most middle and high schools in DC use in-school suspension, they just aren't reporting it.

In other words, DCI comes off as much more comparatively suspension-happy than it is.

Also, you can't add the suspension rate across both categories, since In-school suspension comes before out-of-school suspension (i.e., the students who receive out of school suspension are a subset of those who receive in-school). You would be double counting suspended students this way.

[Anonymous]

DCI tracks across languages and Math. When students are in the diploma program they are "tracked" by HL or SL classes (higher level/standard level). There are currently over a thousand 6-11th graders at DCI making it the second largest middle and high school in the city. All this in 4.5 years. It is the MOST diverse secondary school in DC. It offers partial immersion in 3 languages where kids can take over a third of their classes in another language. It received both IB MYP and DP and CP Authorization in this time period. Unbelievable accomplishment. Not all hires are a good fit and I applaud them for helping staff realize this and move on for everyone's sake.
So easy to be a critic and an armchair quarterback. You all are crabs in a bucket.

[Anonymous]

Right, crabs in a bucket because we see easily identifiable problems. DCI is just OK. Tracking junior and senior years in HS is much too little too late at DCI. The program suffers from tossing kids who work one, two, even three grade levels behind in middle school into the very same academic classes with kids who work one, two, even three grade levels ahead.

Students don't truly take over a third of their classes in another language because few can speak, read, write or understand nearly well enough for that to be true, especially for French and Chinese. The result is that a good deal of English creeps into the classes supposedly in another language, and much of the content gets lost in the language of instruction for most of the students. Sorry, but it all sounds much better than it is.

[Anonymous]

And you know this how, Crabby? My child takes highest level Chinese, Social Studies, and an elective all in Mandarin. That's 3 out of 8 classes, which is actually more than a third of his classes. Quit hating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Right, crabs in a bucket because we see easily identifiable problems. DCI is just OK. Tracking junior and senior years in HS is much too little too late at DCI. The program suffers from tossing kids who work one, two, even three grade levels behind in middle school into the very same academic classes with kids who work one, two, even three grade levels ahead.

Students don't truly take over a third of their classes in another language because few can speak, read, write or understand nearly well enough for that to be true, especially for French and Chinese. The result is that a good deal of English creeps into the classes supposedly in another language, and much of the content gets lost in the language of instruction for most of the students. Sorry, but it all sounds much better than it is.

I posted a few pages back....

Yes, truth to this. Kids who struggle are in class w/advanced students. Many students in immersion electives can't really cope w/ms level subject material. They aren't fluent and content gets dumbed down. Admins and parents ride with the problems./

[Anonymous]

some of us in the upper grade sin feeders would have more confidence in dci if what we were hearing was that the administration recognizes x, y and z problems and is moving to address them.

the impression you get on these boards and you visit dci is that admins, parent leaders and boosters mostly deny issues.

[Anonymous]

Did DCI admin ever fix the issue regarding having tryouts for teams in middle school, as opposed to allowing kids to join?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:some of us in the upper grade sin feeders would have more confidence in dci if what we were hearing was that the administration recognizes x, y and z problems and is moving to address them.

the impression you get on these boards and you visit dci is that admins, parent leaders and boosters mostly deny issues.

Yup, just like at our feeder . . .

[Anonymous]

Where's the INCENTIVE for admins in the feeders and at DCI to address thje concerns of high SES parents?? Parents who can't afford Upper NW and Cap Hill real estate generally take Tier 1 charter spots, go private or leave the Distric.

I thought that my kid's Chinese was good after 6 yrs of yy til we enrolled him in a weekend program inMD. Same with math when we sent him to Johns Hopkins CTY in VA. He was the worst in the class both times.

Not sure if we will move on to DCI. Losing faith here.