DME Kicks Off DCPS Boundary Review; Changes Expected for 2015-16 School Year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, let's be clear on something. JKLMM and Deal/Janney were not always awesome. In fact, not so long ago, they were failing. But then the parents zoned for those schools dug their heels in, got engaged, and turned things around. Now it's time for parents EofTP to do the same. That's the only fair solution.

This x 1 million! Parents will have to step it up EofP like families WofP did way back when. People move here knowing what they're getting into and then want to cry to their politicians to prevent them from doing what needs to be done. The system just can't support this bandaid gerrymandering approach any more. Obvious borderlines exist and people who live beyond those obvious borders will need to go EofP. This is a reality. It will be hard on many, but as numbers of high SES families continue to rise, the children will not be lone pioneers. In my own failing EofP IB school families banded together and sent their kids to Prek 3. Guess what, they love it! They themselves state how shocked they were that it was actually a really good thing. Powell, Shepherd, West are all great up and comers. CHEC and other middle and high school options have all of the ingredients to continue this desperately needed trend. We as parents should be focused on supporting them.

+1. Time to step up.

[Anonymous]

I love all these "urban pioneers". They move to Shaw, Logan, Bloomy, Trux and hang out at the cool bars, ride their bikes, do lots of unpermitted renovations to their row house. They think they are making a difference. Could not imagine living in boring upper NW. THEN the babies come along and look out! God forbid they do some real pioneering and do the dirty work. No, that's too much work. Besides, there is that new beer garden opening up soon. Instead, they impose on the grownups west of the park to come bail them out with the good schools. How very millennial of you! But it's not for them they say, it's really about the poor kids. So. Awesome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Lottery for all will only destroy what gains have been made in DC schools.

JKLM school, Brent and similar schools improve based on parent effort in the PTA and at home with their kids. Making every school in DC look like the average school in DC will drive people out. People invest in their neighborhood school in large part because they are vested in the neighborhood. Without a strong connection why bother.

I am OOB at a JKLM and I would not want to see IB preference eliminated. I would rather a few OOB slots held while the other schools in the city improve slowly as they are (i.e. Brent, Shepard Park etc etc.)

I suppose its silly to even respond to the idea since it is such a non starter.

In DC only the poor suffer with bad schools. The poor are also predominantly AA/black. Why should they get stuck with the craptastic aspects of DCPS? And by "they" I mean the kids who didn't have a say in who their parents are.

I think they should go for it. Force everyone into the same boat.

You mean the Montgomery County boat? The Arlington boat? The Fairfax boat? Because what will happen is that there will be a renewed push for entry into charters, and then a flood of moving vans departing DC. No, not everyone will be able to move (especially because property values in close-in suburbs will skyrocket) - but many of those who can, will. JKLM and other schools are not good because of magic DCPS fairy dust that they only hand out to WotP principals - they're good because there is a critical mass of highly educated, engaged parents. Remove that critical mass, and a lot of the magic disappears. And assuming that people who take their kids' educations seriously will not bat an eyelash when their kid is transferred to an underperforming school is beyond idiocy.

People who stay and aren't happy will go private like they've always done.

Are you under the impression that the IB kids at the JKLMM schools come from families that could easily afford the extra $$ to send their kids to private? Sorry to disillusion you, but that's not the case. For many, the only viable option will be to move. Sure, some will go private. And some won;t be able to move. But for many, they'll be outta here.

And as for the "let them go private, they'll be subsidizing DCPS" argument - once again, money isn't enough. A sufficient cadre of high performing students and engaged families to anchor a turn-around. Sure can be done without those families, but it's a lot harder. If it were just throwing money at the problem, schools in Wards 7 and 8 would be the showpieces of the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP, let's be clear on something. JKLMM and Deal/Janney were not always awesome. In fact, not so long ago, they were failing. But then the parents zoned for those schools dug their heels in, got engaged, and turned things around. Now it's time for parents EofTP to do the same. That's the only fair solution.

It is not about digging in your heels and getting engaged. It is about the resources, financial and otherwise, that high SES families bring to the table in a largely dysfunctional school system. Powell, West and Amidon do not have PTA largesse to fill in all the obvious gaps.

[Anonymous]

You cannot just move boundaries and expect families to send their kids to sub par schools to fix the larger dcps problems. You have got to create a quality reason for people to want to send their kids. Create an actual magnet middle schools for the arts and another for stem and another for something else. Make them GT or test in. Build great facilities. Locate them centrally. If they are solid programs, people with the attributes that contribute to a high performing school will go. Look at Latin, look at Basis. Families want rigor for their children. Give it to them and not plunked in the middle of a failing school with crime problems that make parents fearful.

Redistrict my kids and try to tell me they have to attend a failing school and IF enough high SES families to it may succeed and I will call the moving vans. Build a program that offers something interesting, like say many charters do, and I will consider it carefully.

[Anonymous]

Let's be clear---there is a single, enormous difference between EofthePark and West of the Park when it comes to improving schools. West of the Park ALWAYS had a majority IB population of high income, highly educated professional parents---both before and after the JKLMM schools "turned around". So change, when it came---could come quickly. Plus, the OOB population of the JKLMM was largely comprised of educated and motivated east of the park parents (of all races) who wanted to escape their neighborhood schools. So you already had an OOB parent population that was at least motivated enough to lottery their kids into west of the park schools.

East of the Park does not have a critical mass of middle class, highly educated parents in any one elementary, high school, or middle school district. If you gerrymandered solely east of the park---and combined MtP, Capitol Hill, Adams Morgan, Dupont, Logan, Shepard Park, Crestwood and 16th Street Heights together, into 5 elementary schools, 1 middle school and 1 high school---then you might have a chance of keeping higher income East of the Park parents in the DCPS system. But even then, given the proliferation of charters---such a strategy wouldn't work. As an East of the Park parent, I would much rather invest my time and money into a charter school with a motivated and responsive faculty/staff---unencumbered by DCPS union strictures---than I would in trying to reverse the provincial attitudes of the teachers and parents in a lot of failing EoftheP schools. And if I don't get into a charter I like, then I move. You cannot force middle class parents to send their kids to schools which are majority FARMs. They just will not do it.

[Anonymous]

Sorry---I should have qualified the comment about not enough critical mass. Clearly, there is a critical mass of motivated, educated parents at some of the Hill elementary schools, and at Ross.

[Anonymous]

PP, so let me get this straight. We fix the DCPS by forcing half the SES students from NW to commute to low inc

[Anonymous]

Inc

[Anonymous]

Income neighborhoods? Then, ship half the kids from low income neighborhoods to upper NW? Really, that's a good idea?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP, let's be clear on something. JKLMM and Deal/Janney were not always awesome. In fact, not so long ago, they were failing. But then the parents zoned for those schools dug their heels in, got engaged, and turned things around. Now it's time for parents EofTP to do the same. That's the only fair solution.

This x 1 million! Parents will have to step it up EofP like families WofP did way back when.

+1. Time to step up.

This is completely UNTRUE. Has anyone else pointed this out? J,m and L have been solid schools since 1970. Full to the brim with white kids with highly educated Washington wonky parents.

I went to Murch in the 1970s, and I have all my class photos in a file. Don't bother trying to contradict me. Lafayette was the same as Murch. Exactly. There was no "rolling up of sleeves to 'rebuild' a school in ashes. There were no ashes up here and Never were.

Many of my classmates did go private for high school. Many of us went to ivy league schools, SLACs and then law or business school -- just like our parents who still live in Chevy chase and forest hills.

Your entitled to your own opinion on the future of dcps, but not your own facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I love all these "urban pioneers". They move to Shaw, Logan, Bloomy, Trux and hang out at the cool bars, ride their bikes, do lots of unpermitted renovations to their row house. They think they are making a difference. Could not imagine living in boring upper NW. THEN the babies come along and look out! God forbid they do some real pioneering and do the dirty work. No, that's too much work. Besides, there is that new beer garden opening up soon. Instead, they impose on the grownups west of the park to come bail them out with the good schools. How very millennial of you! But it's not for them they say, it's really about the poor kids. So. Awesome.

Oh, please. I live in this area and know only one family who sends their kids WOTP for school (and it's not a JKLM). Most of the kids we know here go to charter schools or (gasp!) EoTP DCPS.

Until the pressure on charters reaches a certain point (could be sooner than later), you will continue to see parents abandoning their local schools at the first opportunity. There is no incentive to "pioneer" at a crappy DCPS when decent or good charters provide an escape hatch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Let's be clear---there is a single, enormous difference between EofthePark and West of the Park when it comes to improving schools. West of the Park ALWAYS had a majority IB population of high income, highly educated professional parents---both before and after the JKLMM schools "turned around". So change, when it came---could come quickly. Plus, the OOB population of the JKLMM was largely comprised of educated and motivated east of the park parents (of all races) who wanted to escape their neighborhood schools. So you already had an OOB parent population that was at least motivated enough to lottery their kids into west of the park schools.

East of the Park does not have a critical mass of middle class, highly educated parents in any one elementary, high school, or middle school district. If you gerrymandered solely east of the park---and combined MtP, Capitol Hill, Adams Morgan, Dupont, Logan, Shepard Park, Crestwood and 16th Street Heights together, into 5 elementary schools, 1 middle school and 1 high school---then you might have a chance of keeping higher income East of the Park parents in the DCPS system. But even then, given the proliferation of charters---such a strategy wouldn't work. As an East of the Park parent, I would much rather invest my time and money into a charter school with a motivated and responsive faculty/staff---unencumbered by DCPS union strictures---than I would in trying to reverse the provincial attitudes of the teachers and parents in a lot of failing EoftheP schools. And if I don't get into a charter I like, then I move. You cannot force middle class parents to send their kids to schools which are majority FARMs. They just will not do it.

Capitol Hill alone has Brent, Peabody, Watkins, Ludlow-Taylor, Wilson, Miner, Payne, and Tyler, not to mention Stuart-Hobson and Eliot-Hine. How exactly does this dovetail with your 5 elementary and 1 middle school paradigm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's be clear---there is a single, enormous difference between EofthePark and West of the Park when it comes to improving schools. West of the Park ALWAYS had a majority IB population of high income, highly educated professional parents---both before and after the JKLMM schools "turned around". So change, when it came---could come quickly. Plus, the OOB population of the JKLMM was largely comprised of educated and motivated east of the park parents (of all races) who wanted to escape their neighborhood schools. So you already had an OOB parent population that was at least motivated enough to lottery their kids into west of the park schools.

East of the Park does not have a critical mass of middle class, highly educated parents in any one elementary, high school, or middle school district. If you gerrymandered solely east of the park---and combined MtP, Capitol Hill, Adams Morgan, Dupont, Logan, Shepard Park, Crestwood and 16th Street Heights together, into 5 elementary schools, 1 middle school and 1 high school---then you might have a chance of keeping higher income East of the Park parents in the DCPS system. But even then, given the proliferation of charters---such a strategy wouldn't work. As an East of the Park parent, I would much rather invest my time and money into a charter school with a motivated and responsive faculty/staff---unencumbered by DCPS union strictures---than I would in trying to reverse the provincial attitudes of the teachers and parents in a lot of failing EoftheP schools. And if I don't get into a charter I like, then I move. You cannot force middle class parents to send their kids to schools which are majority FARMs. They just will not do it.

Capitol Hill alone has Brent, Peabody, Watkins, Ludlow-Taylor, Wilson, Miner, Payne, and Tyler, not to mention Stuart-Hobson and Eliot-Hine. How exactly does this dovetail with your 5 elementary and 1 middle school paradigm.

Yeah, well, even if this one imaginary middle school didn't have several thousand students, geographically Capitol Hill and 16th Street Heights are pretty far apart. PP obviously doesn't leave their WotP bubble very often.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let's be clear---there is a single, enormous difference between EofthePark and West of the Park when it comes to improving schools. West of the Park ALWAYS had a majority IB population of high income, highly educated professional parents---both before and after the JKLMM schools "turned around". So change, when it came---could come quickly. Plus, the OOB population of the JKLMM was largely comprised of educated and motivated east of the park parents (of all races) who wanted to escape their neighborhood schools. So you already had an OOB parent population that was at least motivated enough to lottery their kids into west of the park schools.

East of the Park does not have a critical mass of middle class, highly educated parents in any one elementary, high school, or middle school district. If you gerrymandered solely east of the park---and combined MtP, Capitol Hill, Adams Morgan, Dupont, Logan, Shepard Park, Crestwood and 16th Street Heights together, into 5 elementary schools, 1 middle school and 1 high school---then you might have a chance of keeping higher income East of the Park parents in the DCPS system. But even then, given the proliferation of charters---such a strategy wouldn't work. As an East of the Park parent, I would much rather invest my time and money into a charter school with a motivated and responsive faculty/staff---unencumbered by DCPS union strictures---than I would in trying to reverse the provincial attitudes of the teachers and parents in a lot of failing EoftheP schools. And if I don't get into a charter I like, then I move. You cannot force middle class parents to send their kids to schools which are majority FARMs. They just will not do it.

Capitol Hill alone has Brent, Peabody, Watkins, Ludlow-Taylor, Wilson, Miner, Payne, and Tyler, not to mention Stuart-Hobson and Eliot-Hine. How exactly does this dovetail with your 5 elementary and 1 middle school paradigm.

Well, most of those schools are filled with a huge percentage of OOB students. Perhaps if that program disappeared, the number of schools described might be adequate?