Overcrowding at Wilson

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does honors for all mean in practice?

All kids no matter where they are academically are placed in the “honors” classes. Kids can be 3-4 levels apart, maybe more.

It’s true that it’s honors for none. The course is dumb down for the lower performing kids and the higher performing kids are bored to death.

Why don’t you ask the Wilson parents whose kids have gone thru 9th grade with it. To many, it’s a wasted year. Now 10th grade is honors for all....

Math is leveled. Foreign language is leveled. And 73% of Wilson students scored 3/4/5 on PARCC ELA. I'm fine w/honors for all for the introductory high school classes. By 11th most of the 'honors' students will be in virtually all APs anyway. They can also pursue dual-enrollment courses at Georgetown or Catholic University.

This is not strictly true. Dual enrollment at Wilson is only an option in 12th grade except maybe you can do a class at UDC CC in 11th. Also, dual enrollment has limited seats and you can only do 1 course a semester through it. Finally it is a real pain to leave school in the middle of the day and head over to GW, Georgetown, Catholic or Howard.

Then go to an application school. You can't have it all, and you should have known that when decided to live in the city with children.

That is not an answer and you know it. Why would you say Wilson should just leave all of its problems unresolved? Why would you want motivated students to leave the school? How does that help anyone? What you just said is that people who live in DC and want a comprehensive public high school should have low standards and not work toward improvement of our pubic schools. Why would anyone espouse such a position?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does honors for all mean in practice?

All kids no matter where they are academically are placed in the “honors” classes. Kids can be 3-4 levels apart, maybe more.

It’s true that it’s honors for none. The course is dumb down for the lower performing kids and the higher performing kids are bored to death.

Why don’t you ask the Wilson parents whose kids have gone thru 9th grade with it. To many, it’s a wasted year. Now 10th grade is honors for all....

Math is leveled. Foreign language is leveled. And 73% of Wilson students scored 3/4/5 on PARCC ELA. I'm fine w/honors for all for the introductory high school classes. By 11th most of the 'honors' students will be in virtually all APs anyway. They can also pursue dual-enrollment courses at Georgetown or Catholic University.

This is not strictly true. Dual enrollment at Wilson is only an option in 12th grade except maybe you can do a class at UDC CC in 11th. Also, dual enrollment has limited seats and you can only do 1 course a semester through it. Finally it is a real pain to leave school in the middle of the day and head over to GW, Georgetown, Catholic or Howard.

Then go to an application school. You can't have it all, and you should have known that when decided to live in the city with children.

Wow. Way to totally miss the point. I would say most of us that have kids at Wilson are aware of that and we understand that their will be disadvantages to be had. That doesn't mean that we can't continue to work for ways to make it work better. Not just for our advantaged/smart kids but for ALL of the kids who go there. And hopefully, all DCPS students. Anything that improves DCPS can be good for all the kids. I personally would love to get rid of all the Charter/application schools except for a few special instances. Can you imagine what would happen if all those high maintenance parents and motivated kids were in DCPS?? It could lift the entire system.

Finally...love living in the city with children and never regret it but I will continue to bitch about Wilson and the idiocies of DCPS Central office as long as I like!

Then you are a unicorn. Most of your neighbors are interested in further segregating the dwindling number of at-risk and lower SES students at Wilson; it's all over this thread and it comes up every single time there is a discussion about overcrowded, changing boundaries, ending feeder rights, and ending OOB enrollment.

The students are Wilson, at least so far as you can tell by coverage in the Beacon and talking to them, are very concerned about the quickly changing demographics in their school. The problem is the Wilson student body reflects the lack of economic diversity in their neighborhoods.

You are truly just wrong about this. You are reading into people's desire to end crowding and improve the schools what you seem to want to see there. Your own lens is just as tainted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does honors for all mean in practice?

All kids no matter where they are academically are placed in the “honors” classes. Kids can be 3-4 levels apart, maybe more.

It’s true that it’s honors for none. The course is dumb down for the lower performing kids and the higher performing kids are bored to death.

Why don’t you ask the Wilson parents whose kids have gone thru 9th grade with it. To many, it’s a wasted year. Now 10th grade is honors for all....

Math is leveled. Foreign language is leveled. And 73% of Wilson students scored 3/4/5 on PARCC ELA. I'm fine w/honors for all for the introductory high school classes. By 11th most of the 'honors' students will be in virtually all APs anyway. They can also pursue dual-enrollment courses at Georgetown or Catholic University.

This is not strictly true. Dual enrollment at Wilson is only an option in 12th grade except maybe you can do a class at UDC CC in 11th. Also, dual enrollment has limited seats and you can only do 1 course a semester through it. Finally it is a real pain to leave school in the middle of the day and head over to GW, Georgetown, Catholic or Howard.

Then go to an application school. You can't have it all, and you should have known that when decided to live in the city with children.

That is not an answer and you know it. Why would you say Wilson should just leave all of its problems unresolved? Why would you want motivated students to leave the school? How does that help anyone? What you just said is that people who live in DC and want a comprehensive public high school should have low standards and not work toward improvement of our pubic schools. Why would anyone espouse such a position?

Because the demographics are changing. Within 3-4 years there be virtually no students below grade level and 'honors for all; will simply reflect the needs of the IB population needs. If your kids are caught in the transition, you can ride it out of make another choice.

Wilson is changing fast and will never go back to being the truly comprehensive, diverse in all ways, school it has been.

[Anonymous]

you say further segregating, you mean, having those students go somewhere that's not Wilson, right?

I certainly would appreciate those students being in my Ward 4 schools.

I know that due to residential segregation the only diversity without very high household income in Ward 3 comes from outside Ward 3, but if there are going to be geographic boundaries at all there has to be some systemic planning here.

A "plan" that lets everyone into Deal and Wilson has led to massive overcrowding and problems for equity and clear segregation in the rest of DCPS. If not everyone getting in, who should go there and why, and who should go elsewhere? We can come to better solutions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:you say further segregating, you mean, having those students go somewhere that's not Wilson, right?

I certainly would appreciate those students being in my Ward 4 schools.

I know that due to residential segregation the only diversity without very high household income in Ward 3 comes from outside Ward 3, but if there are going to be geographic boundaries at all there has to be some systemic planning here.

A "plan" that lets everyone into Deal and Wilson has led to massive overcrowding and problems for equity and clear segregation in the rest of DCPS. If not everyone getting in, who should go there and why, and who should go elsewhere? We can come to better solutions.

We really don't have a neighborhood school system though, but no one in charge seems to acknowledge it.

More than 70% of families choose not to attend their neighborhood school (just under 50% choose charters, and half of all DCPS students don't go to their IB school). People in the Wilson feeder pattern seem to sometimes lose sight of that. A large number of us who live outside your boundaries just don't have a lot of sympathy for your complaints about overcrowding and lack of 'differentiation' for your bright, but probably not actually gifted, kids. First world problems, as the saying goes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does honors for all mean in practice?

All kids no matter where they are academically are placed in the “honors” classes. Kids can be 3-4 levels apart, maybe more.

It’s true that it’s honors for none. The course is dumb down for the lower performing kids and the higher performing kids are bored to death.

Why don’t you ask the Wilson parents whose kids have gone thru 9th grade with it. To many, it’s a wasted year. Now 10th grade is honors for all....

Math is leveled. Foreign language is leveled. And 73% of Wilson students scored 3/4/5 on PARCC ELA. I'm fine w/honors for all for the introductory high school classes. By 11th most of the 'honors' students will be in virtually all APs anyway. They can also pursue dual-enrollment courses at Georgetown or Catholic University.

This is not strictly true. Dual enrollment at Wilson is only an option in 12th grade except maybe you can do a class at UDC CC in 11th. Also, dual enrollment has limited seats and you can only do 1 course a semester through it. Finally it is a real pain to leave school in the middle of the day and head over to GW, Georgetown, Catholic or Howard.

Then go to an application school. You can't have it all, and you should have known that when decided to live in the city with children.

Wow. Way to totally miss the point. I would say most of us that have kids at Wilson are aware of that and we understand that their will be disadvantages to be had. That doesn't mean that we can't continue to work for ways to make it work better. Not just for our advantaged/smart kids but for ALL of the kids who go there. And hopefully, all DCPS students. Anything that improves DCPS can be good for all the kids. I personally would love to get rid of all the Charter/application schools except for a few special instances. Can you imagine what would happen if all those high maintenance parents and motivated kids were in DCPS?? It could lift the entire system.

Finally...love living in the city with children and never regret it but I will continue to bitch about Wilson and the idiocies of DCPS Central office as long as I like!

Then you are a unicorn. Most of your neighbors are interested in further segregating the dwindling number of at-risk and lower SES students at Wilson; it's all over this thread and it comes up every single time there is a discussion about overcrowded, changing boundaries, ending feeder rights, and ending OOB enrollment.

The students are Wilson, at least so far as you can tell by coverage in the Beacon and talking to them, are very concerned about the quickly changing demographics in their school. The problem is the Wilson student body reflects the lack of economic diversity in their neighborhoods.

You are truly just wrong about this. You are reading into people's desire to end crowding and improve the schools what you seem to want to see there. Your own lens is just as tainted.

NP. Disagree. If you have been to the meetings, there are parents who stated they do not want their children to attend school with “those” kids. It was extremely clear what she meant.

[Anonymous]

You can argue about semantics but driving out high performing students from Wilson into suburbs or privates is not the answer. DCPS needs to be looking at creative and innovative solutions to the problem that there is one functioning comprehensive high school in DC. Maybe they should try tracking at Eastern to attract in-boundary students. There are many students at Wilson who schlepp all the way from Capitol Hill and even further. This is not great as these kids are late much more often and also miss more school. The city does not provide enough resources for Wilson to function effectively. This hurts both the low achieving and high achieving kids. Maybe some of you think this is fine because then more $ are left for other schools. I think you should realize that simply pouring money into schools such as a brand new school building and spending extra money on academy directors and fancy blazers for academy students hardly moves the needle. DCPS wastes a lot of money on shiny bells and whistles and in the end there are no winners, only losers.

[Anonymous]

Being really cynical here - you seriously could start tracking in several DCPS middle and high schools and gifted whatever to draw upper class families that are widespread in Wards 1, 4, and 6 but not in DCPS MS/HS.

Then when similarly situated politicized parents say they don't want the tracking BUT AFTER these demographics have joined these schools in numbers similar to their proportions in their neighborhoods you end the tracking in say 5 years.

I expect that at that point you could get a lot of the classes in these schools that these families want - math through calculus, humanities, AP classes, etc., that will disproportionately draw prepared students even if actually available to all (the choice will just be that unprepared students won't succeed in those classes without a lot of help, the class just won't be AP-as-taught-to-remedial-level students, e.g., what they have at CHEC).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does honors for all mean in practice?

All kids no matter where they are academically are placed in the “honors” classes. Kids can be 3-4 levels apart, maybe more.

It’s true that it’s honors for none. The course is dumb down for the lower performing kids and the higher performing kids are bored to death.

Why don’t you ask the Wilson parents whose kids have gone thru 9th grade with it. To many, it’s a wasted year. Now 10th grade is honors for all....

Math is leveled. Foreign language is leveled. And 73% of Wilson students scored 3/4/5 on PARCC ELA. I'm fine w/honors for all for the introductory high school classes. By 11th most of the 'honors' students will be in virtually all APs anyway. They can also pursue dual-enrollment courses at Georgetown or Catholic University.

This is not strictly true. Dual enrollment at Wilson is only an option in 12th grade except maybe you can do a class at UDC CC in 11th. Also, dual enrollment has limited seats and you can only do 1 course a semester through it. Finally it is a real pain to leave school in the middle of the day and head over to GW, Georgetown, Catholic or Howard.

Then go to an application school. You can't have it all, and you should have known that when decided to live in the city with children.

Wow. Way to totally miss the point. I would say most of us that have kids at Wilson are aware of that and we understand that their will be disadvantages to be had. That doesn't mean that we can't continue to work for ways to make it work better. Not just for our advantaged/smart kids but for ALL of the kids who go there. And hopefully, all DCPS students. Anything that improves DCPS can be good for all the kids. I personally would love to get rid of all the Charter/application schools except for a few special instances. Can you imagine what would happen if all those high maintenance parents and motivated kids were in DCPS?? It could lift the entire system.

Finally...love living in the city with children and never regret it but I will continue to bitch about Wilson and the idiocies of DCPS Central office as long as I like!

Then you are a unicorn. Most of your neighbors are interested in further segregating the dwindling number of at-risk and lower SES students at Wilson; it's all over this thread and it comes up every single time there is a discussion about overcrowded, changing boundaries, ending feeder rights, and ending OOB enrollment.

The students are Wilson, at least so far as you can tell by coverage in the Beacon and talking to them, are very concerned about the quickly changing demographics in their school. The problem is the Wilson student body reflects the lack of economic diversity in their neighborhoods.

You are truly just wrong about this. You are reading into people's desire to end crowding and improve the schools what you seem to want to see there. Your own lens is just as tainted.

NP. Disagree. If you have been to the meetings, there are parents who stated they do not want their children to attend school with “those” kids. It was extremely clear what she meant.

So you are generalizing based on what one person said?

[Anonymous]

I don't see any clear indication that Wilson is actually overcrowded. Do we finally have the number of students in the entering 9th grade class? What's the average size of AP classes, for example?

Without real data, the concern about overcrowding is just bluster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does honors for all mean in practice?

All kids no matter where they are academically are placed in the “honors” classes. Kids can be 3-4 levels apart, maybe more.

It’s true that it’s honors for none. The course is dumb down for the lower performing kids and the higher performing kids are bored to death.

Why don’t you ask the Wilson parents whose kids have gone thru 9th grade with it. To many, it’s a wasted year. Now 10th grade is honors for all....

Math is leveled. Foreign language is leveled. And 73% of Wilson students scored 3/4/5 on PARCC ELA. I'm fine w/honors for all for the introductory high school classes. By 11th most of the 'honors' students will be in virtually all APs anyway. They can also pursue dual-enrollment courses at Georgetown or Catholic University.

This is not strictly true. Dual enrollment at Wilson is only an option in 12th grade except maybe you can do a class at UDC CC in 11th. Also, dual enrollment has limited seats and you can only do 1 course a semester through it. Finally it is a real pain to leave school in the middle of the day and head over to GW, Georgetown, Catholic or Howard.

Then go to an application school. You can't have it all, and you should have known that when decided to live in the city with children.

That is not an answer and you know it. Why would you say Wilson should just leave all of its problems unresolved? Why would you want motivated students to leave the school? How does that help anyone? What you just said is that people who live in DC and want a comprehensive public high school should have low standards and not work toward improvement of our pubic schools. Why would anyone espouse such a position?

Because the demographics are changing. Within 3-4 years there be virtually no students below grade level and 'honors for all; will simply reflect the needs of the IB population needs. If your kids are caught in the transition, you can ride it out of make another choice.

Wilson is changing fast and will never go back to being the truly comprehensive, diverse in all ways, school it has been.

Then it will become the high school for upper Northwest. In a system of locally-based schools, I'm fine with that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does honors for all mean in practice?

All kids no matter where they are academically are placed in the “honors” classes. Kids can be 3-4 levels apart, maybe more.

It’s true that it’s honors for none. The course is dumb down for the lower performing kids and the higher performing kids are bored to death.

Why don’t you ask the Wilson parents whose kids have gone thru 9th grade with it. To many, it’s a wasted year. Now 10th grade is honors for all....

Math is leveled. Foreign language is leveled. And 73% of Wilson students scored 3/4/5 on PARCC ELA. I'm fine w/honors for all for the introductory high school classes. By 11th most of the 'honors' students will be in virtually all APs anyway. They can also pursue dual-enrollment courses at Georgetown or Catholic University.

This is not strictly true. Dual enrollment at Wilson is only an option in 12th grade except maybe you can do a class at UDC CC in 11th. Also, dual enrollment has limited seats and you can only do 1 course a semester through it. Finally it is a real pain to leave school in the middle of the day and head over to GW, Georgetown, Catholic or Howard.

Then go to an application school. You can't have it all, and you should have known that when decided to live in the city with children.

Wow. Way to totally miss the point. I would say most of us that have kids at Wilson are aware of that and we understand that their will be disadvantages to be had. That doesn't mean that we can't continue to work for ways to make it work better. Not just for our advantaged/smart kids but for ALL of the kids who go there. And hopefully, all DCPS students. Anything that improves DCPS can be good for all the kids. I personally would love to get rid of all the Charter/application schools except for a few special instances. Can you imagine what would happen if all those high maintenance parents and motivated kids were in DCPS?? It could lift the entire system.

Finally...love living in the city with children and never regret it but I will continue to bitch about Wilson and the idiocies of DCPS Central office as long as I like!

Then you are a unicorn. Most of your neighbors are interested in further segregating the dwindling number of at-risk and lower SES students at Wilson; it's all over this thread and it comes up every single time there is a discussion about overcrowded, changing boundaries, ending feeder rights, and ending OOB enrollment.

The students are Wilson, at least so far as you can tell by coverage in the Beacon and talking to them, are very concerned about the quickly changing demographics in their school. The problem is the Wilson student body reflects the lack of economic diversity in their neighborhoods.

You are truly just wrong about this. You are reading into people's desire to end crowding and improve the schools what you seem to want to see there. Your own lens is just as tainted.

NP. Disagree. If you have been to the meetings, there are parents who stated they do not want their children to attend school with “those” kids. It was extremely clear what she meant.

So you are generalizing based on what one person said?

NP. There are many parents at Wilson that don't want their kids to attend school with "those" kids as PP asserts. It is a statement of fact. As a family of color I'm glad this our final year and we will be done with the subtle racism that exists there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:you say further segregating, you mean, having those students go somewhere that's not Wilson, right?

I certainly would appreciate those students being in my Ward 4 schools.

I know that due to residential segregation the only diversity without very high household income in Ward 3 comes from outside Ward 3, but if there are gong to be geographic boundaries at all there has to be some systemic planning here.

A "plan" that lets everyone into Deal and Wilson has led to massive overcrowding and problems for equity and clear segregation in the rest of DCPS. If not everyone getting in, who should go there and why, and who should go elsewhere? We can come to better solutions.

I’m the PP you responded to. I meant segregating within Wilson (pretty clear no one is being kicked out right now). They want any students who is not advanced in different classes at Wilson away from their ‘high achievers’.

[Anonymous]

Gotcha. Separate problem and not a good one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does honors for all mean in practice?

All kids no matter where they are academically are placed in the “honors” classes. Kids can be 3-4 levels apart, maybe more.

It’s true that it’s honors for none. The course is dumb down for the lower performing kids and the higher performing kids are bored to death.

Why don’t you ask the Wilson parents whose kids have gone thru 9th grade with it. To many, it’s a wasted year. Now 10th grade is honors for all....

Math is leveled. Foreign language is leveled. And 73% of Wilson students scored 3/4/5 on PARCC ELA. I'm fine w/honors for all for the introductory high school classes. By 11th most of the 'honors' students will be in virtually all APs anyway. They can also pursue dual-enrollment courses at Georgetown or Catholic University.

This is not strictly true. Dual enrollment at Wilson is only an option in 12th grade except maybe you can do a class at UDC CC in 11th. Also, dual enrollment has limited seats and you can only do 1 course a semester through it. Finally it is a real pain to leave school in the middle of the day and head over to GW, Georgetown, Catholic or Howard.

Then go to an application school. You can't have it all, and you should have known that when decided to live in the city with children.

That is not an answer and you know it. Why would you say Wilson should just leave all of its problems unresolved? Why would you want motivated students to leave the school? How does that help anyone? What you just said is that people who live in DC and want a comprehensive public high school should have low standards and not work toward improvement of our pubic schools. Why would anyone espouse such a position?

Because the demographics are changing. Within 3-4 years there be virtually no students below grade level and 'honors for all; will simply reflect the needs of the IB population needs. If your kids are caught in the transition, you can ride it out of make another choice.

Wilson is changing fast and will never go back to being the truly comprehensive, diverse in all ways, school it has been.

No students below grade level? Even rich kids can be below grade level, believe it or not. It’s Lake Woebegone over there!