Maury Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Data point: Payne is doing overall really well recently. It is 34% at-risk.

Imagine if Payne continued this trajectory and a Miner-Maury cluster got it's at risk percentage to 30% or less. Then imagine EH gets its at risk percentage down to 30% or less. Now look at the trajectory of LT, and the potential for JOW to capitalize on the decline of Two Rivers and its new building to follow suit, and the impact this could have on SH. Now consider that Amidon-Bowen has also received increased neighborhood buy-in recently and is ALSO slated for an upcoming renovation, and it feeds to Jefferson along with Brent.

Now remember all of this happens and what the impact could be on Eastern High School.

But it requires families in Ward 6 to work together, instead of being pitted against each other. It means acting in collective interest instead of individual self-interest. Which is the entire premise behind public education.

I love the idyllic picture you have painted of a world in which we have managed to get rid of most of the poors.

Alternatively -- a world in which poor people who live in Ward 6 are better served by Ward 6 schools because they are good across the board instead of becoming landing places for poor children from the entire East side.

We're not talking about getting the at risk percentage to zero, we're talking about getting it down to a manageable percentage that actually allows schools to serve both at risk and non-at-risk at the same time.

The borders of Ward 6 are every bit as arbitrary as the borders of the Maury and Miner zones.

While we're at it, by my reckoning the at-risk percentage across CH schools is about 25%, so the proposed cluster overcorrects Maury by quite a bit. If we correct SWS, Peabody, LT, CHMS, and most of all Brent up to 25%, that would be much more fair.

Agree. A Miner-SWS cluster actually makes the most sense. Give Miner IB rights to SWS and fill the rest of the seats in the lottery.

LT families tried to get IB rights to SWS 10 years ago and DCPS refused.

I think it was actually going to be a proximity preference that would mostly apply to LT students (since SWS is in the LT IB), but actually (ironically) likely would have applied to some Miner families as well given the distance discussions.

I'm glad DCPS said no, given the enormous improvement in IB buy-in LT has made since then. 10 years ago, LT was 297 students; this year it has 487. It was 77% Black, 12% white & only 23% IB; I can't find the at risk percentage, because everything from the time just reports it as 99% FARMS because of its T1 status. It had a principal who was extremely antagonistic to IB parents and told them it was not their school during an open house. However, the metrics of student performance & growth and teacher retention, discipline, etc were actually incredibly solid. When a new principal came in a few years later and aggressively courted IB families while maintaining teacher support, everything started to change fast because the fundamentals for a good school were in place. Last year (so 9 years later), it was 34% Black, 49% white, 60% IB & 17% at risk; given the 50 additional students LT added this school year, I think these trends will only accelerate. The point is, change can actually come from within if the building blocks are in place. Yes, the LT IB demographics are different than the Miner demographics (although note that Miner already has a higher percentage of white kids than LT did only 9 years ago), but LT had solid test scores and school fundamentals before IB families came when it was heavily minority, OOB and at-risk. The school was never failing even if it was unpopular with IB families. The IB families followed a very good & welcoming principal and solid fundamentals; if Miner gets those pieces in place, IB families will come. 9 years is nothing in DCPS land, it's one single boundary review. Just think: When these conversations were happening 10 years ago, LT demographically (which is what DME is focused on) was very similar to Miner now only with LESS IB buy-in.

The problem is that the bolded cannot currently be said for Miner. LT was able to rapidly get IB buy in when it got a principal who was not openly hostile to IB families because LT already had proven it could educate kids -- it had and still has phenomenal staff who get results with kids from all backgrounds.

Miner can't say the same, and that will stand in the way of IB buy in even if they get a principal who focuses on welcoming IB families, which by itself is hard because politically things are different now than they were 9 years ago and it's actually harder to openly welcoming IB, UMC white families to a title 1 school today than it was back then.

I agree with you that Miner now is not what LT was then in terms of school quality. That is my point. DCPS could focus on improving Miner and make it into a solid school just like LT always has been. THAT would lead to the demographic changes they want. LT was a solid school when it was heavily minority, OOB and at risk. It isn't actually the white/SES parents that made it into a solid school despite DCPS' apparent thinking. Now, obviously, when those parents started picking LT and staying, it made more attractive to other IB parents, so once the momentum starts you don't need to do much for it to continue. LT now has all of the extras that attract UMC parents; so much so that it has continued to succeed despite the pandemic and shaky admin/rapid admin turnover. So rather than create a Cluster that will have a bunch of problems inherently built into it, DCPS could focus on actually improving Miner by parachuting in an excellent principal (perfect timing since there is no incumbent to turf out) and giving it the high quality interventions/supports it needs. I don't know exactly what those are, but they could certainly find out if they listened to Miner teachers and families.

[Anonymous]

I want to address the suggestion that that the boundary between Maury and Miner be redrawn to balance populations between the schools, as opposed to a cluster. I am curious as to whether there is genuinely support for that plan from Maury families.

The DME has said that they can't find a way to redraw the boundary to do this, but that simply cannot be correct. I'm guessing what they really mean is the the only way to do it is to create two severely gerrymandered boundaries. I think what they looked at was drawing the boundary vertically instead of horizontally, as it is now, and the reason this probably didn't work is because Maury is to the west of Miner and the demographics of this neighborhood get whiter and wealthier as you go west and south, and blacker and poorer as you go north and east. Due to the position of the schools, this means that if you draw fairly straight, logical boundaries, you wind up with lopsided demographics whether you draw them N-S or E-W.

So what if instead, they created gerrymandered zones, where they specifically carved out some of the low-income housing now zoned for Miner and assigned it to Maury (this might even require creating a zone that is not contiguous, I'm not sure), and then carved out some of the high-income housing now zoned for Maury and assigned it to Miner.

My question is: how would Maury families feel about this proposal, and does their opinion changed depending on whether their home would be assigned to Miner (and if it wouldn't change, please state whether you have children who would be zoned to Miner as a result of this change, as I know some people on this thread had kids at Maury but no longer have elementary kids).

Follow up question: If they did this, wouldn't this essentially be busing? It was argued up thread that the cluster idea is "essential" busing, but wouldn't gerrymandered zones designed to assign low-SES kids to Maury and high-SES kids to Miner be actual busing?

I am asking this question because I don't think at risk set asides will meaningfully increase the number of at risk kids at Maury, so I am looking for a way to actually increase that percentage without a cluster.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think there is a subset of current families at Maury who very specifically and intentionally moved into the boundary in order to attend one of the “best” public elementary schools in DC. It's maybe contributing to the NIMBYism.

Yes, that's what parents do all over the country. Move to a specific neighborhood for the schools.

Yes but there's a difference between moving somewhere for a specific school district, or even a specific school triangle, and moving somewhere for a specific elementary. Especially in DC where elementary schools are small and boundaries often cut through neighborhoods, as is the case with Maury and Miner.

The NIMBYism in this situation is extra strange to me because these two elementaries feed to the same MS, which families at Maury are currently actively trying to improve. Moving into the Maury boundary while KNOWING that there is an elementary school a half mile away with essentially the opposite demographics and outcomes, and then being surprised when the suggested solutions for this problem impact the school you bought in-boundary for, reflects some ignorance about how school districts work. Districts are always seeking to balance populations, whether it's moving kids around to address overcrowding, balancing demographics, or trying to create feeder patterns that make sense.

In any case, there is a version of this cluster idea that could actually be an opportunity for Maury and Miner IB families to join forces and create two great schools that then feed to the same middle school. But it sounds like the vision for greatness at Maury is as much about who they keep out (poor kids, SpEd kids, at risk kids) as what they actually do at the school, so they do not feel up to that taks with a much more racially and socioeconomically diverse population.

Can you in any way demonstrate or provide anything other than vibes a feels that the Maury and Miner could "join forces and create two great schools"?

Maury parents would be for it! Spoiler: There's nothing but vibes and feels.

Premise #1: If Miner could get it's at risk percentage under 40%, it could more easily gear programming and resources towards a socioeconomically diverse student body.

Premise #2: If Miner could get its at risk percentage under 40%, it could more easily attract IB families who currently avoid the school because of the belief that most resources and programming at the school will be geared towards its large at risk population.

Premise #3: If Miner and Maury combined and Maury retained its current family composition, even before increasing IB buy-in for Miner, the at risk percentage for the combined school would be 33%.

Premise #4: The willingness of Maury families to stay at the combined school would attract IB Miner families the school, further dropping the at risk percentage and increasing programming and resources that could be aimed at non-at-risk students at both schools.

Permise #5: As the largest feeder to EH, families from the Miner-Maury cluster would have more influence over the culture and programming at EH, and be able to more effectively advocate for tracking that would further better serve students by meeting them where they were at.

Conclusion: A Miner-Maury cluster with buy in from both school's boundaries could not only produce two elementary schools with a favorable demographic balance, but could also help produce a MS with the same. While the cluster would initially change demographics at Maury in a way that would present challenges, the majority of students would still be high SES, and if the schools could retain existing families and build IB buy-n a the Miner zone, the benefits to both school communities in the form of a larger community of committed, IB, high SES families supporting multiple strong elementary schools and a strong neighborhood, by-right middle school would ultimately benefit Maury families more than the present situation, in which they have a very strong elementary that feeds to a struggling MS and HS, forcing many Maury families to turn to charters and other non-neighborhood options for MS and HS.

But the whole thing would hinge on Maury families being on board and Miner IB families being willing to buy in. I think the latter is likely if you get the former, but the former is unlikely based on what we've heard from the Maury community thus far.

the problem with your analysis is that #1 and #2 are completely theoretical and yes “vibes” based, with the exception of a handful of shaky studies with a million confounders. There’s no good evidence that merely reducing the concentration of low-SES students improves their education, and that a single classroom with such big gaps can be taught to the needs of all students. Meanwhile DCPS discourages or forbids methods that would allow for tracking and fails to examine what the lower SES kids actually need in terms of instruction. The theory is literally ALL VIBES.

#1 and #2 are not theoretical.

Look at test scores in DCPS schools based on percent of at risk students. It's a direct correlation.

Look at the test scores of the at-risk students in those schools - is there really a difference? If so, how do you demonstrate the difference is due to reducing the concentration of at-risk kids, and how much is other factors like more engaged parents lotterying in and figuring out transport? Or is the difference due to something instructional the schools are doing that has nothing to do with the concentration of at-risk students? Even if reducing the concentration has some impact it’s likely to be FAR less than direct supports, like doubling up on math classes and high-dose tutoring. Pretending that reducing the numbers fixes everything is just a fairy tale as far as I can tell.

So your argument is that lowering at risk percents doesn't help at risk kids, but also even if it turns out it does, that must be due to some other factor. You don't know what factor but you just know that reducing the percent of at risk kids at a school dies not improve test scores or educational experience for at risk students. You have no data to back this up, you just know.

Meanwhile, you are sure that a school with 65% at risk students, like Miner, would improve if they just doubled up on math classes and I creased tutoring. Can you provide an example of a school with greater than 50% at risk students that was able to boost test scores with this approach? The answer is no, but do go look.

We'll wait.

Langdon Elementary School has the same at-risk numbers as Miner. Their median student is scoring a 3 on ELA and math, relative to a 2 in math and 1 in ELA at Miner, and they have significant numbers of at-grade-level students. I don't know that it's extra math and tutoring, but they're doing something other schools could learn from.

PP who started this argument. Good find. But tbh we actually do not know if the kids at Langdon are the same as the kids at Miner, but certainly seems like a good example to look at.

What on earth does this mean?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Data point: Payne is doing overall really well recently. It is 34% at-risk.

Imagine if Payne continued this trajectory and a Miner-Maury cluster got it's at risk percentage to 30% or less. Then imagine EH gets its at risk percentage down to 30% or less. Now look at the trajectory of LT, and the potential for JOW to capitalize on the decline of Two Rivers and its new building to follow suit, and the impact this could have on SH. Now consider that Amidon-Bowen has also received increased neighborhood buy-in recently and is ALSO slated for an upcoming renovation, and it feeds to Jefferson along with Brent.

Now remember all of this happens and what the impact could be on Eastern High School.

But it requires families in Ward 6 to work together, instead of being pitted against each other. It means acting in collective interest instead of individual self-interest. Which is the entire premise behind public education.

I love the idyllic picture you have painted of a world in which we have managed to get rid of most of the poors.

Alternatively -- a world in which poor people who live in Ward 6 are better served by Ward 6 schools because they are good across the board instead of becoming landing places for poor children from the entire East side.

We're not talking about getting the at risk percentage to zero, we're talking about getting it down to a manageable percentage that actually allows schools to serve both at risk and non-at-risk at the same time.

The borders of Ward 6 are every bit as arbitrary as the borders of the Maury and Miner zones.

While we're at it, by my reckoning the at-risk percentage across CH schools is about 25%, so the proposed cluster overcorrects Maury by quite a bit. If we correct SWS, Peabody, LT, CHMS, and most of all Brent up to 25%, that would be much more fair.

Agree. A Miner-SWS cluster actually makes the most sense. Give Miner IB rights to SWS and fill the rest of the seats in the lottery.

LT families tried to get IB rights to SWS 10 years ago and DCPS refused.

I think it was actually going to be a proximity preference that would mostly apply to LT students (since SWS is in the LT IB), but actually (ironically) likely would have applied to some Miner families as well given the distance discussions.

I'm glad DCPS said no, given the enormous improvement in IB buy-in LT has made since then. 10 years ago, LT was 297 students; this year it has 487. It was 77% Black, 12% white & only 23% IB; I can't find the at risk percentage, because everything from the time just reports it as 99% FARMS because of its T1 status. It had a principal who was extremely antagonistic to IB parents and told them it was not their school during an open house. However, the metrics of student performance & growth and teacher retention, discipline, etc were actually incredibly solid. When a new principal came in a few years later and aggressively courted IB families while maintaining teacher support, everything started to change fast because the fundamentals for a good school were in place. Last year (so 9 years later), it was 34% Black, 49% white, 60% IB & 17% at risk; given the 50 additional students LT added this school year, I think these trends will only accelerate. The point is, change can actually come from within if the building blocks are in place. Yes, the LT IB demographics are different than the Miner demographics (although note that Miner already has a higher percentage of white kids than LT did only 9 years ago), but LT had solid test scores and school fundamentals before IB families came when it was heavily minority, OOB and at-risk. The school was never failing even if it was unpopular with IB families. The IB families followed a very good & welcoming principal and solid fundamentals; if Miner gets those pieces in place, IB families will come. 9 years is nothing in DCPS land, it's one single boundary review. Just think: When these conversations were happening 10 years ago, LT demographically (which is what DME is focused on) was very similar to Miner now only with LESS IB buy-in.

The problem is that the bolded cannot currently be said for Miner. LT was able to rapidly get IB buy in when it got a principal who was not openly hostile to IB families because LT already had proven it could educate kids -- it had and still has phenomenal staff who get results with kids from all backgrounds.

Miner can't say the same, and that will stand in the way of IB buy in even if they get a principal who focuses on welcoming IB families, which by itself is hard because politically things are different now than they were 9 years ago and it's actually harder to openly welcoming IB, UMC white families to a title 1 school today than it was back then.

I agree with you that Miner now is not what LT was then in terms of school quality. That is my point. DCPS could focus on improving Miner and make it into a solid school just like LT always has been. THAT would lead to the demographic changes they want. LT was a solid school when it was heavily minority, OOB and at risk. It isn't actually the white/SES parents that made it into a solid school despite DCPS' apparent thinking. Now, obviously, when those parents started picking LT and staying, it made more attractive to other IB parents, so once the momentum starts you don't need to do much for it to continue. LT now has all of the extras that attract UMC parents; so much so that it has continued to succeed despite the pandemic and shaky admin/rapid admin turnover. So rather than create a Cluster that will have a bunch of problems inherently built into it, DCPS could focus on actually improving Miner by parachuting in an excellent principal (perfect timing since there is no incumbent to turf out) and giving it the high quality interventions/supports it needs. I don't know exactly what those are, but they could certainly find out if they listened to Miner teachers and families.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I think there are issues at Miner you are overlooking.

The reason LT was a solid school well before it got IB buy in is because LT developed a strong reputation as, essentially, a commuter school for MC Ward 7 and 8 families. It was openly described this way by staff at the school and the OOB families who attended. Even among the at risk population, you had a lot of kids who received that designation because they had parents with low incomes, but many of those kids had MC grandparents who were heavily involved in their lives (and in many cases were the driving force to getting them into LT, and were essentially the primary caregiver).

By definition, the OOB families sending their kids to LT had to have it together enough to lottery them in (or submit enrollment paperwork under the in-zone family member who lived near LT, another common way kids came to the school back then). While the principal who openly told IB families the school was not "theirs" was antagonistic to IB white families, the clear implication is that the school was "ours" for someone -- and that someone was a pretty committed group of MC black families who had adopted the school as their own.

I simply do not see the same dynamics at Miner and I'm not sure if that experience can be replicated. Especially if the longterm goal is to take the school away from those committed MC black families and give it instead to high income white families IB for Miner.

While I too am impressed with what LT has accomplished in the last 10 years, I am not convinced that it is replicable at Miner today. That doesn't mean I think the solution is a cluster with Maury, but I think it might be naive to think that you can "parachute" in a principal who can solve what currently ails the school. You need more invested families at Miner, period. Whether they come from the current Maury zone, the existing Miner zone, or somewhere else. I don't think a principal can fix it before that investment takes place. You need a reason for families invested in education to send their kids to Miner and keep them there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Data point: Payne is doing overall really well recently. It is 34% at-risk.

Imagine if Payne continued this trajectory and a Miner-Maury cluster got it's at risk percentage to 30% or less. Then imagine EH gets its at risk percentage down to 30% or less. Now look at the trajectory of LT, and the potential for JOW to capitalize on the decline of Two Rivers and its new building to follow suit, and the impact this could have on SH. Now consider that Amidon-Bowen has also received increased neighborhood buy-in recently and is ALSO slated for an upcoming renovation, and it feeds to Jefferson along with Brent.

Now remember all of this happens and what the impact could be on Eastern High School.

But it requires families in Ward 6 to work together, instead of being pitted against each other. It means acting in collective interest instead of individual self-interest. Which is the entire premise behind public education.

I love the idyllic picture you have painted of a world in which we have managed to get rid of most of the poors.

Alternatively -- a world in which poor people who live in Ward 6 are better served by Ward 6 schools because they are good across the board instead of becoming landing places for poor children from the entire East side.

We're not talking about getting the at risk percentage to zero, we're talking about getting it down to a manageable percentage that actually allows schools to serve both at risk and non-at-risk at the same time.

The borders of Ward 6 are every bit as arbitrary as the borders of the Maury and Miner zones.

While we're at it, by my reckoning the at-risk percentage across CH schools is about 25%, so the proposed cluster overcorrects Maury by quite a bit. If we correct SWS, Peabody, LT, CHMS, and most of all Brent up to 25%, that would be much more fair.

Agree. A Miner-SWS cluster actually makes the most sense. Give Miner IB rights to SWS and fill the rest of the seats in the lottery.

LT families tried to get IB rights to SWS 10 years ago and DCPS refused.

I think it was actually going to be a proximity preference that would mostly apply to LT students (since SWS is in the LT IB), but actually (ironically) likely would have applied to some Miner families as well given the distance discussions.

I'm glad DCPS said no, given the enormous improvement in IB buy-in LT has made since then. 10 years ago, LT was 297 students; this year it has 487. It was 77% Black, 12% white & only 23% IB; I can't find the at risk percentage, because everything from the time just reports it as 99% FARMS because of its T1 status. It had a principal who was extremely antagonistic to IB parents and told them it was not their school during an open house. However, the metrics of student performance & growth and teacher retention, discipline, etc were actually incredibly solid. When a new principal came in a few years later and aggressively courted IB families while maintaining teacher support, everything started to change fast because the fundamentals for a good school were in place. Last year (so 9 years later), it was 34% Black, 49% white, 60% IB & 17% at risk; given the 50 additional students LT added this school year, I think these trends will only accelerate. The point is, change can actually come from within if the building blocks are in place. Yes, the LT IB demographics are different than the Miner demographics (although note that Miner already has a higher percentage of white kids than LT did only 9 years ago), but LT had solid test scores and school fundamentals before IB families came when it was heavily minority, OOB and at-risk. The school was never failing even if it was unpopular with IB families. The IB families followed a very good & welcoming principal and solid fundamentals; if Miner gets those pieces in place, IB families will come. 9 years is nothing in DCPS land, it's one single boundary review. Just think: When these conversations were happening 10 years ago, LT demographically (which is what DME is focused on) was very similar to Miner now only with LESS IB buy-in.

The problem is that the bolded cannot currently be said for Miner. LT was able to rapidly get IB buy in when it got a principal who was not openly hostile to IB families because LT already had proven it could educate kids -- it had and still has phenomenal staff who get results with kids from all backgrounds.

Miner can't say the same, and that will stand in the way of IB buy in even if they get a principal who focuses on welcoming IB families, which by itself is hard because politically things are different now than they were 9 years ago and it's actually harder to openly welcoming IB, UMC white families to a title 1 school today than it was back then.

I don't know anything about the Miner staffs' ability to educate kids, so I'm just responding to this assertion -- but if true, doesn't this remain a problem in the proposed cluster? How does the proposed cluster fix this?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think there is a subset of current families at Maury who very specifically and intentionally moved into the boundary in order to attend one of the “best” public elementary schools in DC. It's maybe contributing to the NIMBYism.

Yes, that's what parents do all over the country. Move to a specific neighborhood for the schools.

Yes but there's a difference between moving somewhere for a specific school district, or even a specific school triangle, and moving somewhere for a specific elementary. Especially in DC where elementary schools are small and boundaries often cut through neighborhoods, as is the case with Maury and Miner.

The NIMBYism in this situation is extra strange to me because these two elementaries feed to the same MS, which families at Maury are currently actively trying to improve. Moving into the Maury boundary while KNOWING that there is an elementary school a half mile away with essentially the opposite demographics and outcomes, and then being surprised when the suggested solutions for this problem impact the school you bought in-boundary for, reflects some ignorance about how school districts work. Districts are always seeking to balance populations, whether it's moving kids around to address overcrowding, balancing demographics, or trying to create feeder patterns that make sense.

In any case, there is a version of this cluster idea that could actually be an opportunity for Maury and Miner IB families to join forces and create two great schools that then feed to the same middle school. But it sounds like the vision for greatness at Maury is as much about who they keep out (poor kids, SpEd kids, at risk kids) as what they actually do at the school, so they do not feel up to that taks with a much more racially and socioeconomically diverse population.

Can you in any way demonstrate or provide anything other than vibes a feels that the Maury and Miner could "join forces and create two great schools"?

Maury parents would be for it! Spoiler: There's nothing but vibes and feels.

Premise #1: If Miner could get it's at risk percentage under 40%, it could more easily gear programming and resources towards a socioeconomically diverse student body.

Premise #2: If Miner could get its at risk percentage under 40%, it could more easily attract IB families who currently avoid the school because of the belief that most resources and programming at the school will be geared towards its large at risk population.

Premise #3: If Miner and Maury combined and Maury retained its current family composition, even before increasing IB buy-in for Miner, the at risk percentage for the combined school would be 33%.

Premise #4: The willingness of Maury families to stay at the combined school would attract IB Miner families the school, further dropping the at risk percentage and increasing programming and resources that could be aimed at non-at-risk students at both schools.

Permise #5: As the largest feeder to EH, families from the Miner-Maury cluster would have more influence over the culture and programming at EH, and be able to more effectively advocate for tracking that would further better serve students by meeting them where they were at.

Conclusion: A Miner-Maury cluster with buy in from both school's boundaries could not only produce two elementary schools with a favorable demographic balance, but could also help produce a MS with the same. While the cluster would initially change demographics at Maury in a way that would present challenges, the majority of students would still be high SES, and if the schools could retain existing families and build IB buy-n a the Miner zone, the benefits to both school communities in the form of a larger community of committed, IB, high SES families supporting multiple strong elementary schools and a strong neighborhood, by-right middle school would ultimately benefit Maury families more than the present situation, in which they have a very strong elementary that feeds to a struggling MS and HS, forcing many Maury families to turn to charters and other non-neighborhood options for MS and HS.

But the whole thing would hinge on Maury families being on board and Miner IB families being willing to buy in. I think the latter is likely if you get the former, but the former is unlikely based on what we've heard from the Maury community thus far.

the problem with your analysis is that #1 and #2 are completely theoretical and yes “vibes” based, with the exception of a handful of shaky studies with a million confounders. There’s no good evidence that merely reducing the concentration of low-SES students improves their education, and that a single classroom with such big gaps can be taught to the needs of all students. Meanwhile DCPS discourages or forbids methods that would allow for tracking and fails to examine what the lower SES kids actually need in terms of instruction. The theory is literally ALL VIBES.

#1 and #2 are not theoretical.

Look at test scores in DCPS schools based on percent of at risk students. It's a direct correlation.

Look at the test scores of the at-risk students in those schools - is there really a difference? If so, how do you demonstrate the difference is due to reducing the concentration of at-risk kids, and how much is other factors like more engaged parents lotterying in and figuring out transport? Or is the difference due to something instructional the schools are doing that has nothing to do with the concentration of at-risk students? Even if reducing the concentration has some impact it’s likely to be FAR less than direct supports, like doubling up on math classes and high-dose tutoring. Pretending that reducing the numbers fixes everything is just a fairy tale as far as I can tell.

So your argument is that lowering at risk percents doesn't help at risk kids, but also even if it turns out it does, that must be due to some other factor. You don't know what factor but you just know that reducing the percent of at risk kids at a school dies not improve test scores or educational experience for at risk students. You have no data to back this up, you just know.

Meanwhile, you are sure that a school with 65% at risk students, like Miner, would improve if they just doubled up on math classes and I creased tutoring. Can you provide an example of a school with greater than 50% at risk students that was able to boost test scores with this approach? The answer is no, but do go look.

We'll wait.

Langdon Elementary School has the same at-risk numbers as Miner. Their median student is scoring a 3 on ELA and math, relative to a 2 in math and 1 in ELA at Miner, and they have significant numbers of at-grade-level students. I don't know that it's extra math and tutoring, but they're doing something other schools could learn from.

PP who started this argument. Good find. But tbh we actually do not know if the kids at Langdon are the same as the kids at Miner, but certainly seems like a good example to look at.

What on earth does this mean?

DP, but one thing this conversation should be making clear is that you can't lump all at risk kids together. It's not a mold, "generic at risk student."

Just as an example I'm familiar with, Wheatley Education Campus in Trinidad has a high at risk percentage, and this is in part because Wheatley is the by-right school for two homeless shelters. Now, there are unhoused kids at many schools in the district, but being the designated school for shelters is something else, because not only do kids in shelters have a host of specific needs that a child in stable housing situation (even if that child is designated at risk for other reasons) does not have. Plus serving as the by-right school for shelters means that Wheatley's at risk population sees a lot of turn over over time, creating challenges that other schools with large at risk populations do not have.

So yes, it actually matters what the at risk population at a school looks like, why they are designated at risk, and how they came to be at that school. It can make a huge difference in what approaches will work (or NOT work) in addressing their needs, whether generally or specific to education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To me it's clear something needs to be done to lower the at risk percentage at Miner. I understand the objections to the cluster, but you can make similar objections to any proposal.

It feels like a lot of people are basically arguing for the status quo, which means Miner remains a school with a lot of at risk kids who it ultimately fails.

It feels like no matter what is proposed, it will be rejected as infeasible, and nothing will change.

How about DC actually figure out how to teach at-risk kids? Moving them from one school to another is NOT an instructional strategy!!! The status quo id terrible but moving kids around does ZERO to fix it.

Are you a Maury parent? Then you are a DCPS parent. If you don't think DC does a good job educating the 46% of DCPS students who are at risk, then why do you live here and send your kid to a DSPS school? Especially one that feeds to a MS and HS that are majority at risk.

Maury parents want it both ways. Please leave us alone to run our school with a 12% at risk percentage and don't you dare interfere in any way, but also the fact that DCPS, the school system we participate in and pay taxes into, is crap at educating at risk kids (heck we can't even handle the 12% at risk kids at our school and are demanding more resources to handle them in upper grades when the non-at-risk families bail for charters or private anyway because, again, our MS/HS feed is majority at risk) is someone else's problem, please deal with it but not in a way that impacts our school at all.

This is the reality of being in DCPS. You don't want to deal with at risk kids, high percentages of SpEd kids, administrative challenges, etc.? MOVE. And before you cry "But Ward 3!!!" at me, guess what -- Ward 3 has problems, too. Go talk to families with kids at Deal, Hardy, and JR about behavior, discipline, drug use, etc. We have friends with kids at Deal and JR who simply do not use the bathroom at school because it feels dangerous to them. These are inner-city schools. They have the problems of inner city schools.

As for Brent and LT, I would absolutely support at risk set asides for them and exploring cluster options. An LT-JOW cluster does have certain synergies, though I understand why Maury-Miner was selected first because of the more dramatic differences in demographics. I don't know that Brent lends itself as well to a cluster. Maybe with Van Ness, though being on either side of the freeway makes that less appealing, IMO. I actually think some kind of program that unites Brent with Amidon-Bowen could be beneficial -- the Jefferson Middle triangle is weirdly disjointed geographically, and finding ways to build community across the triangle could have real benefits for Jefferson as well as the participating elementary schools.

No. Watkins parent here. I am completely against half-baked experiments that will inevitably cause a functioning school - that mere years ago NOBODY WOULD ATTEND - to turn it into another Peabody/Watkins cluster, with its abysmal 30% IB buy-in (propped up almost entirely by Peabody). That is not good for the DCPS educational landscape, as a whole. It is not good for the Hill, as a whole, which people are already increasingly nervous to invest in due to spiking crime. Taking a successful school and blowing it up to make your own stats look good is incredibly short sighted.

How are you a Watkins parent if you don't realize that 30% reflects the IB population Watkins, not Peabody?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To me it's clear something needs to be done to lower the at risk percentage at Miner. I understand the objections to the cluster, but you can make similar objections to any proposal.

It feels like a lot of people are basically arguing for the status quo, which means Miner remains a school with a lot of at risk kids who it ultimately fails.

It feels like no matter what is proposed, it will be rejected as infeasible, and nothing will change.

How about DC actually figure out how to teach at-risk kids? Moving them from one school to another is NOT an instructional strategy!!! The status quo id terrible but moving kids around does ZERO to fix it.

Are you a Maury parent? Then you are a DCPS parent. If you don't think DC does a good job educating the 46% of DCPS students who are at risk, then why do you live here and send your kid to a DSPS school? Especially one that feeds to a MS and HS that are majority at risk.

Maury parents want it both ways. Please leave us alone to run our school with a 12% at risk percentage and don't you dare interfere in any way, but also the fact that DCPS, the school system we participate in and pay taxes into, is crap at educating at risk kids (heck we can't even handle the 12% at risk kids at our school and are demanding more resources to handle them in upper grades when the non-at-risk families bail for charters or private anyway because, again, our MS/HS feed is majority at risk) is someone else's problem, please deal with it but not in a way that impacts our school at all.

This is the reality of being in DCPS. You don't want to deal with at risk kids, high percentages of SpEd kids, administrative challenges, etc.? MOVE. And before you cry "But Ward 3!!!" at me, guess what -- Ward 3 has problems, too. Go talk to families with kids at Deal, Hardy, and JR about behavior, discipline, drug use, etc. We have friends with kids at Deal and JR who simply do not use the bathroom at school because it feels dangerous to them. These are inner-city schools. They have the problems of inner city schools.

As for Brent and LT, I would absolutely support at risk set asides for them and exploring cluster options. An LT-JOW cluster does have certain synergies, though I understand why Maury-Miner was selected first because of the more dramatic differences in demographics. I don't know that Brent lends itself as well to a cluster. Maybe with Van Ness, though being on either side of the freeway makes that less appealing, IMO. I actually think some kind of program that unites Brent with Amidon-Bowen could be beneficial -- the Jefferson Middle triangle is weirdly disjointed geographically, and finding ways to build community across the triangle could have real benefits for Jefferson as well as the participating elementary schools.

No. Watkins parent here. I am completely against half-baked experiments that will inevitably cause a functioning school - that mere years ago NOBODY WOULD ATTEND - to turn it into another Peabody/Watkins cluster, with its abysmal 30% IB buy-in (propped up almost entirely by Peabody). That is not good for the DCPS educational landscape, as a whole. It is not good for the Hill, as a whole, which people are already increasingly nervous to invest in due to spiking crime. Taking a successful school and blowing it up to make your own stats look good is incredibly short sighted.

How are you a Watkins parent if you don't realize that 30% reflects the IB population Watkins, not Peabody?

at Watkins.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Data point: Payne is doing overall really well recently. It is 34% at-risk.

Imagine if Payne continued this trajectory and a Miner-Maury cluster got it's at risk percentage to 30% or less. Then imagine EH gets its at risk percentage down to 30% or less. Now look at the trajectory of LT, and the potential for JOW to capitalize on the decline of Two Rivers and its new building to follow suit, and the impact this could have on SH. Now consider that Amidon-Bowen has also received increased neighborhood buy-in recently and is ALSO slated for an upcoming renovation, and it feeds to Jefferson along with Brent.

Now remember all of this happens and what the impact could be on Eastern High School.

But it requires families in Ward 6 to work together, instead of being pitted against each other. It means acting in collective interest instead of individual self-interest. Which is the entire premise behind public education.

I love the idyllic picture you have painted of a world in which we have managed to get rid of most of the poors.

Alternatively -- a world in which poor people who live in Ward 6 are better served by Ward 6 schools because they are good across the board instead of becoming landing places for poor children from the entire East side.

We're not talking about getting the at risk percentage to zero, we're talking about getting it down to a manageable percentage that actually allows schools to serve both at risk and non-at-risk at the same time.

The borders of Ward 6 are every bit as arbitrary as the borders of the Maury and Miner zones.

While we're at it, by my reckoning the at-risk percentage across CH schools is about 25%, so the proposed cluster overcorrects Maury by quite a bit. If we correct SWS, Peabody, LT, CHMS, and most of all Brent up to 25%, that would be much more fair.

Agree. A Miner-SWS cluster actually makes the most sense. Give Miner IB rights to SWS and fill the rest of the seats in the lottery.

LT families tried to get IB rights to SWS 10 years ago and DCPS refused.

I think it was actually going to be a proximity preference that would mostly apply to LT students (since SWS is in the LT IB), but actually (ironically) likely would have applied to some Miner families as well given the distance discussions.

I'm glad DCPS said no, given the enormous improvement in IB buy-in LT has made since then. 10 years ago, LT was 297 students; this year it has 487. It was 77% Black, 12% white & only 23% IB; I can't find the at risk percentage, because everything from the time just reports it as 99% FARMS because of its T1 status. It had a principal who was extremely antagonistic to IB parents and told them it was not their school during an open house. However, the metrics of student performance & growth and teacher retention, discipline, etc were actually incredibly solid. When a new principal came in a few years later and aggressively courted IB families while maintaining teacher support, everything started to change fast because the fundamentals for a good school were in place. Last year (so 9 years later), it was 34% Black, 49% white, 60% IB & 17% at risk; given the 50 additional students LT added this school year, I think these trends will only accelerate. The point is, change can actually come from within if the building blocks are in place. Yes, the LT IB demographics are different than the Miner demographics (although note that Miner already has a higher percentage of white kids than LT did only 9 years ago), but LT had solid test scores and school fundamentals before IB families came when it was heavily minority, OOB and at-risk. The school was never failing even if it was unpopular with IB families. The IB families followed a very good & welcoming principal and solid fundamentals; if Miner gets those pieces in place, IB families will come. 9 years is nothing in DCPS land, it's one single boundary review. Just think: When these conversations were happening 10 years ago, LT demographically (which is what DME is focused on) was very similar to Miner now only with LESS IB buy-in.

The problem is that the bolded cannot currently be said for Miner. LT was able to rapidly get IB buy in when it got a principal who was not openly hostile to IB families because LT already had proven it could educate kids -- it had and still has phenomenal staff who get results with kids from all backgrounds.

Miner can't say the same, and that will stand in the way of IB buy in even if they get a principal who focuses on welcoming IB families, which by itself is hard because politically things are different now than they were 9 years ago and it's actually harder to openly welcoming IB, UMC white families to a title 1 school today than it was back then.

I don't know anything about the Miner staffs' ability to educate kids, so I'm just responding to this assertion -- but if true, doesn't this remain a problem in the proposed cluster? How does the proposed cluster fix this?

I never said it would. I'm just saying that the argument that Miner needs to just do what Maury or LT have already done, and the assertion that it's achievable solely with DCPS assigning the right principal, may not be correct.

[Anonymous]

There is research that socioeconomic integration even at lower funding levels is lots more effective for disadvantaged students than increasing/high funding levels at schools with concentrated poverty. You can Google it.

The current cluster partly just has this problem: Some people zoned for it live closer to another school that is as good (or arguably better). If you are zoned for school X, but you live closer to Y, why would you not prefer school Y? It is not clear that this problem would be as pronounced at Maury-Miner. One option no one is pursuing is maybe get on-board with the combined school but advocated for it to be sufficiently size restricted so its (almost) fully IB.

DCPS lets current students stay at a school through the terminal grade. Elementary schools span 8 years. Any demographic changes associated w simply reworking boundaries will be slow and probably short term leave Miner worse off (if some families rezoned move to Maury while rezoned current or sibling priority Maury families largely stay at Maury).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To me it's clear something needs to be done to lower the at risk percentage at Miner. I understand the objections to the cluster, but you can make similar objections to any proposal.

It feels like a lot of people are basically arguing for the status quo, which means Miner remains a school with a lot of at risk kids who it ultimately fails.

It feels like no matter what is proposed, it will be rejected as infeasible, and nothing will change.

How about DC actually figure out how to teach at-risk kids? Moving them from one school to another is NOT an instructional strategy!!! The status quo id terrible but moving kids around does ZERO to fix it.

Are you a Maury parent? Then you are a DCPS parent. If you don't think DC does a good job educating the 46% of DCPS students who are at risk, then why do you live here and send your kid to a DSPS school? Especially one that feeds to a MS and HS that are majority at risk.

Maury parents want it both ways. Please leave us alone to run our school with a 12% at risk percentage and don't you dare interfere in any way, but also the fact that DCPS, the school system we participate in and pay taxes into, is crap at educating at risk kids (heck we can't even handle the 12% at risk kids at our school and are demanding more resources to handle them in upper grades when the non-at-risk families bail for charters or private anyway because, again, our MS/HS feed is majority at risk) is someone else's problem, please deal with it but not in a way that impacts our school at all.

This is the reality of being in DCPS. You don't want to deal with at risk kids, high percentages of SpEd kids, administrative challenges, etc.? MOVE. And before you cry "But Ward 3!!!" at me, guess what -- Ward 3 has problems, too. Go talk to families with kids at Deal, Hardy, and JR about behavior, discipline, drug use, etc. We have friends with kids at Deal and JR who simply do not use the bathroom at school because it feels dangerous to them. These are inner-city schools. They have the problems of inner city schools.

As for Brent and LT, I would absolutely support at risk set asides for them and exploring cluster options. An LT-JOW cluster does have certain synergies, though I understand why Maury-Miner was selected first because of the more dramatic differences in demographics. I don't know that Brent lends itself as well to a cluster. Maybe with Van Ness, though being on either side of the freeway makes that less appealing, IMO. I actually think some kind of program that unites Brent with Amidon-Bowen could be beneficial -- the Jefferson Middle triangle is weirdly disjointed geographically, and finding ways to build community across the triangle could have real benefits for Jefferson as well as the participating elementary schools.

No. Watkins parent here. I am completely against half-baked experiments that will inevitably cause a functioning school - that mere years ago NOBODY WOULD ATTEND - to turn it into another Peabody/Watkins cluster, with its abysmal 30% IB buy-in (propped up almost entirely by Peabody). That is not good for the DCPS educational landscape, as a whole. It is not good for the Hill, as a whole, which people are already increasingly nervous to invest in due to spiking crime. Taking a successful school and blowing it up to make your own stats look good is incredibly short sighted.

Surely you must know this is offensive, right? It wasn't an empty building - absolutely people were attending. Even on purpose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Love the people who believe the status quo, in which we have three high performing elementary schools and a host of low performing elementary schools on the hill, three middle schools with weak IB buy in as many families choose to lottery for charters or move, and a high school with 75% of students at risk and 0% of students scoring at or above grade level in math (not a typo, you read that right).

There are such a weird number of parents on here who are like "Yes that is fine as long as my kids attend one of the three high performing elementaries, I will just lottery for Latin and Basis and if that doesn't work, pay for private or move. All good, this is normal and it should stay this way."

Bananas.

I don't agree with this summary. It's not "a host of low performing elementary schools" -- there are several elementaries that are on a clear trajectory toward emerging as new high performing schools. Because these things do take time; even if everything went as well as possible in the proposed cluster, it would be years before it was a high performing elementary.

I also fundamentally disagree with you on what will help improve EH and eventually Eastern. I think families from a high performing elementary where they've seen how well their solid cohort of above–grade level kids can perform, and where they can organize with other families to band together to give EH a try are much more likely to give EH a try, which would then spread to other ES boundaries, than families whose kids have struggled in class with resources focused on the 30%-50%+ of higher needs students. Those families are much more likely to have left the school by 5th grade, and they're not coming back. Maury isn't even there yet -- there's a lot of attrition going into 5th -- but it's on an upward trajectory that has a chance to make a real difference at EH. The proposed cluster would set EH back many years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Data point: Payne is doing overall really well recently. It is 34% at-risk.

Imagine if Payne continued this trajectory and a Miner-Maury cluster got it's at risk percentage to 30% or less. Then imagine EH gets its at risk percentage down to 30% or less. Now look at the trajectory of LT, and the potential for JOW to capitalize on the decline of Two Rivers and its new building to follow suit, and the impact this could have on SH. Now consider that Amidon-Bowen has also received increased neighborhood buy-in recently and is ALSO slated for an upcoming renovation, and it feeds to Jefferson along with Brent.

Now remember all of this happens and what the impact could be on Eastern High School.

But it requires families in Ward 6 to work together, instead of being pitted against each other. It means acting in collective interest instead of individual self-interest. Which is the entire premise behind public education.

I love the idyllic picture you have painted of a world in which we have managed to get rid of most of the poors.

Alternatively -- a world in which poor people who live in Ward 6 are better served by Ward 6 schools because they are good across the board instead of becoming landing places for poor children from the entire East side.

We're not talking about getting the at risk percentage to zero, we're talking about getting it down to a manageable percentage that actually allows schools to serve both at risk and non-at-risk at the same time.

The borders of Ward 6 are every bit as arbitrary as the borders of the Maury and Miner zones.

While we're at it, by my reckoning the at-risk percentage across CH schools is about 25%, so the proposed cluster overcorrects Maury by quite a bit. If we correct SWS, Peabody, LT, CHMS, and most of all Brent up to 25%, that would be much more fair.

Agree. A Miner-SWS cluster actually makes the most sense. Give Miner IB rights to SWS and fill the rest of the seats in the lottery.

LT families tried to get IB rights to SWS 10 years ago and DCPS refused.

I think it was actually going to be a proximity preference that would mostly apply to LT students (since SWS is in the LT IB), but actually (ironically) likely would have applied to some Miner families as well given the distance discussions.

I'm glad DCPS said no, given the enormous improvement in IB buy-in LT has made since then. 10 years ago, LT was 297 students; this year it has 487. It was 77% Black, 12% white & only 23% IB; I can't find the at risk percentage, because everything from the time just reports it as 99% FARMS because of its T1 status. It had a principal who was extremely antagonistic to IB parents and told them it was not their school during an open house. However, the metrics of student performance & growth and teacher retention, discipline, etc were actually incredibly solid. When a new principal came in a few years later and aggressively courted IB families while maintaining teacher support, everything started to change fast because the fundamentals for a good school were in place. Last year (so 9 years later), it was 34% Black, 49% white, 60% IB & 17% at risk; given the 50 additional students LT added this school year, I think these trends will only accelerate. The point is, change can actually come from within if the building blocks are in place. Yes, the LT IB demographics are different than the Miner demographics (although note that Miner already has a higher percentage of white kids than LT did only 9 years ago), but LT had solid test scores and school fundamentals before IB families came when it was heavily minority, OOB and at-risk. The school was never failing even if it was unpopular with IB families. The IB families followed a very good & welcoming principal and solid fundamentals; if Miner gets those pieces in place, IB families will come. 9 years is nothing in DCPS land, it's one single boundary review. Just think: When these conversations were happening 10 years ago, LT demographically (which is what DME is focused on) was very similar to Miner now only with LESS IB buy-in.

The problem is that the bolded cannot currently be said for Miner. LT was able to rapidly get IB buy in when it got a principal who was not openly hostile to IB families because LT already had proven it could educate kids -- it had and still has phenomenal staff who get results with kids from all backgrounds.

Miner can't say the same, and that will stand in the way of IB buy in even if they get a principal who focuses on welcoming IB families, which by itself is hard because politically things are different now than they were 9 years ago and it's actually harder to openly welcoming IB, UMC white families to a title 1 school today than it was back then.

I agree with you that Miner now is not what LT was then in terms of school quality. That is my point. DCPS could focus on improving Miner and make it into a solid school just like LT always has been. THAT would lead to the demographic changes they want. LT was a solid school when it was heavily minority, OOB and at risk. It isn't actually the white/SES parents that made it into a solid school despite DCPS' apparent thinking. Now, obviously, when those parents started picking LT and staying, it made more attractive to other IB parents, so once the momentum starts you don't need to do much for it to continue. LT now has all of the extras that attract UMC parents; so much so that it has continued to succeed despite the pandemic and shaky admin/rapid admin turnover. So rather than create a Cluster that will have a bunch of problems inherently built into it, DCPS could focus on actually improving Miner by parachuting in an excellent principal (perfect timing since there is no incumbent to turf out) and giving it the high quality interventions/supports it needs. I don't know exactly what those are, but they could certainly find out if they listened to Miner teachers and families.

DC could and should also focus on addressing crime rates, and especially the starburst. If Miner builds a solid school and DC offers support to the area, MC families will follow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is research that socioeconomic integration even at lower funding levels is lots more effective for disadvantaged students than increasing/high funding levels at schools with concentrated poverty. You can Google it.

The current cluster partly just has this problem: Some people zoned for it live closer to another school that is as good (or arguably better). If you are zoned for school X, but you live closer to Y, why would you not prefer school Y? It is not clear that this problem would be as pronounced at Maury-Miner. One option no one is pursuing is maybe get on-board with the combined school but advocated for it to be sufficiently size restricted so its (almost) fully IB.

DCPS lets current students stay at a school through the terminal grade. Elementary schools span 8 years. Any demographic changes associated w simply reworking boundaries will be slow and probably short term leave Miner worse off (if some families rezoned move to Maury while rezoned current or sibling priority Maury families largely stay at Maury).

Regarding the impact of reworking boundaries, you skip over the fact that if some of the low-income housing now IB for Miner was re-zoned for Maury, those families could send their kids to Maury immediately. There is a question as to whether they would (personally this conversation might make me a bit reluctant to send my kid to Maury in this scenario as a low-income, probably black parent, even if it was my by right school, for fear of being unwanted there), but if part of the goal here is to increase Maury's at risk percentage, since current boundaries keep it artificially low, then zoning some low-income housing to Maury could address that immediately.

And any low-income families who took their kids out of Miner to send them to Maury as their by right school would presumably lower Miner's at risk percentage, unless those spots were immediately occupied by OOB families who were also at risk. But Miner clears its waitlists annually, so there's no indication that demand for Miner among OOB at risk families is that high.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Love the people who believe the status quo, in which we have three high performing elementary schools and a host of low performing elementary schools on the hill, three middle schools with weak IB buy in as many families choose to lottery for charters or move, and a high school with 75% of students at risk and 0% of students scoring at or above grade level in math (not a typo, you read that right).

There are such a weird number of parents on here who are like "Yes that is fine as long as my kids attend one of the three high performing elementaries, I will just lottery for Latin and Basis and if that doesn't work, pay for private or move. All good, this is normal and it should stay this way."

Bananas.

I don't agree with this summary. It's not "a host of low performing elementary schools" -- there are several elementaries that are on a clear trajectory toward emerging as new high performing schools. Because these things do take time; even if everything went as well as possible in the proposed cluster, it would be years before it was a high performing elementary.

I also fundamentally disagree with you on what will help improve EH and eventually Eastern. I think families from a high performing elementary where they've seen how well their solid cohort of above–grade level kids can perform, and where they can organize with other families to band together to give EH a try are much more likely to give EH a try, which would then spread to other ES boundaries, than families whose kids have struggled in class with resources focused on the 30%-50%+ of higher needs students. Those families are much more likely to have left the school by 5th grade, and they're not coming back. Maury isn't even there yet -- there's a lot of attrition going into 5th -- but it's on an upward trajectory that has a chance to make a real difference at EH. The proposed cluster would set EH back many years.

But how do families zoned for EH work together to commit to attend EH when Miner has such low IB buy-in to begin with.

I question whether EH can ever truly improve without addressing issues at Miner. And so long as Miner has such low test scores and continues to send so many kids below grade level on to EH, we will see the problem of families at Maury ditching the triangle at 5th to go to Latin/BASIS, or otherwise making other plans for MS.

Improving Miner is essential for making EH a viable option for the majority of current Maury families, but the way many on here talk about it, the attitude is that Miner's problems don't personally concern them and whatever, we'll just lottery for a charter anyway. It was that attitude specifically that I was responding to (I am aware there are EH families on the thread, but it's clear there are also many Maury families who have no intention of sending kids to EH and are already planning to leave by 5th if they get a charter option they like).