Experience with Macfarland?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Exhibit A reading thru todays post.

Definite defensiveness from people with anyone asking about grade level or accelerated classes. Not a good sign. The people repeatedly telling posters to ask the school ad nauseum is also not a good sign.

The poster who says they can’t believe everything DCPS admin tells you is correct. Go to an open house and ask about accelerated classes, honors classes and many times you get vague answers, not straightforward. Ask about what is the criteria for these classes and again vague, non-descript answers.

The one thing is clear is that there is no accelerated math class from the sole person on here with kid there says his kid is in the accelerated math class and will be taking Algebra in 8th grade. In fact, DCPS is notorious, as someone mentioned, of pushing kids into Algebra who are not even on grade level or ready for it which is true. So I am not confident that it’s even taught on grade level.

Any class can be labeled whatever you want. Accelerated does not always mean accelerated and that is a big fact in DCPS.

OK I'm the parent with a kid in the 7th grade 'accelerated' math class. I can't tell you a ton about it. It's not Algebra. My kid likes the math teacher a lot and has anecdotes to share about him and class that make it sound positive. The kid gets good grades in math. I mean . . . I expect they cover the DCPS curriculum.

So this isn't trying to be defensive - a discriminating parent would want to know if they really do more than just normal 7th grade math maybe? I don't go into my kid's class or ask other students how they are doing in class, so I lack direct input from the teacher or longitudinal information regarding other students, i.e., I only hear from my own kid. I expect that's normal and would be impressed by people who know more . . . I guess you can look at public test information, and that probably shows many students not succeeding, which is not a positive for any parent, right, and many here believe that there is some kind of spiral toward success if kids are surrounded by kids succeeding at a peer level on testing. Ahead of PARCC my kid told me that some peers said they don't care about PARCC because it doesn't really count for anything, and you can take that as dispiriting or a clear-eyed understanding of priorities, cf. posts on this forum.

So - I don't meant to be overly defensive, but it's hard to be that omniscient informer when you mostly hear about what's going on at school from a remove, based on anecdotes shared by a teenager.

Thank you for your candid report. How did your kid get placed in the class? For a parent coming in with a 6th grader, how do they decide each kid's class schedule?

Honestly I don't really care about PARCC because in most years it doesn't count for anything for the individual student. As my DD said "It's not like they're going to give you candy if you get a 5". I don't know why we would expect a kid to care about a test that isn't connected to any specific outcome.

Because you teach your kid that it’s important to do your best so you, their teachers, and the school can assess how they are doing compared to their peers in DC

Because you as a parent teach your kid that not everything needs to come with a reward. There are things called internal motivation, doing your best no matter what, helping your teachers and school because this is very important to them and is a big factor in their assessment from higher ups.

Because it’s just the right thing to do and one lesson that just because you may not care doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it or try your best.

IMO, your mentality above does not help to give your daughter the skills that she needs to succeed in the real world. We do lots of things in life, at work, etc.. that isn’t connected to any specific outcomes but it’s the right thing to do.

Thank you for this condescending lecture! I certainly do teach my DD to work hard at things and to try her best. But I also believe that success requires us to discern and prioritize what is truly important, and the PARCC test does not make the cut.

If our city wants parents and kids to prioritize testing, they might consider changing to a test that provides results in less than 6 months so that the information is more useful, and a test that doesn't consume so much instructional time. Many states have dropped PARCC in favor of other tests that are better designed, and I hope that DCPS does the same.

In fact *all* states have dropped PARCC in favor of other tests. There are NO states left that use exclusively PARCC. It's only LA and MA that use some of PARCC in conjunction with other testing. There were originally 24 states in the partnership. DC, DoDEA, and BIE are all that are left in PARCC because it's not a great or useful test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARCC (We still use it because our local gov is beholden to education reformers, i.e. people who are grifting off our students and tax dollars.)

Using PARCC to judge a school to the exclusion of other metrics is pretty silly. Is JR a bad school because 0% of students got a 5 on math last SY? I'd argue no, since DC can't seem to sequence the HS test or run the tests correctly. https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/125

No DCPS middle schools look great if all you are looking at are PARCC scores (especially math). Even DCI's PARCC scores don't look great: https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/349

This thread started with someone asking about parents' actual experiences at MacFarland. As usual this viper pit website has taken us far afield into morass of global arguments about whether individual students can succeed despite systemic failures. Posters who are that worried are very likely to be unhappy at any middle school their kid is able to access through the lottery.

Everyone posting here should take a walk outside, myself included.

I’m one of the few apparently who actually finds PARCC useful because of the level of detail it provides, and because it actually focuses the school on teaching the kids concrete skills. I can’t say if there’s an assessment that would work better, but I absolutely think that setting standards, teaching to them, and assessing them is extremely important and unfortunately seems to be falling by they wayside due to “equity.”

My preference would be to switch to a different test that is similarly detailed and concrete, but where you get the results sooner. And a test that is computer adapted to kids' ability level so that it doesn't take so long. Between PARCC, MAP, iReady, and that other test that I forget the name of, it's a lot of testing time. There should be a way to do this more efficiently. And cost absolutely should be a factor for public contracts, not the only factor but it does matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Exhibit A reading thru todays post.

Definite defensiveness from people with anyone asking about grade level or accelerated classes. Not a good sign. The people repeatedly telling posters to ask the school ad nauseum is also not a good sign.

The poster who says they can’t believe everything DCPS admin tells you is correct. Go to an open house and ask about accelerated classes, honors classes and many times you get vague answers, not straightforward. Ask about what is the criteria for these classes and again vague, non-descript answers.

The one thing is clear is that there is no accelerated math class from the sole person on here with kid there says his kid is in the accelerated math class and will be taking Algebra in 8th grade. In fact, DCPS is notorious, as someone mentioned, of pushing kids into Algebra who are not even on grade level or ready for it which is true. So I am not confident that it’s even taught on grade level.

Any class can be labeled whatever you want. Accelerated does not always mean accelerated and that is a big fact in DCPS.

OK I'm the parent with a kid in the 7th grade 'accelerated' math class. I can't tell you a ton about it. It's not Algebra. My kid likes the math teacher a lot and has anecdotes to share about him and class that make it sound positive. The kid gets good grades in math. I mean . . . I expect they cover the DCPS curriculum.

So this isn't trying to be defensive - a discriminating parent would want to know if they really do more than just normal 7th grade math maybe? I don't go into my kid's class or ask other students how they are doing in class, so I lack direct input from the teacher or longitudinal information regarding other students, i.e., I only hear from my own kid. I expect that's normal and would be impressed by people who know more . . . I guess you can look at public test information, and that probably shows many students not succeeding, which is not a positive for any parent, right, and many here believe that there is some kind of spiral toward success if kids are surrounded by kids succeeding at a peer level on testing. Ahead of PARCC my kid told me that some peers said they don't care about PARCC because it doesn't really count for anything, and you can take that as dispiriting or a clear-eyed understanding of priorities, cf. posts on this forum.

So - I don't meant to be overly defensive, but it's hard to be that omniscient informer when you mostly hear about what's going on at school from a remove, based on anecdotes shared by a teenager.

Thank you for your candid report. How did your kid get placed in the class? For a parent coming in with a 6th grader, how do they decide each kid's class schedule?

Honestly I don't really care about PARCC because in most years it doesn't count for anything for the individual student. As my DD said "It's not like they're going to give you candy if you get a 5". I don't know why we would expect a kid to care about a test that isn't connected to any specific outcome.

Because you teach your kid that it’s important to do your best so you, their teachers, and the school can assess how they are doing compared to their peers in DC

Because you as a parent teach your kid that not everything needs to come with a reward. There are things called internal motivation, doing your best no matter what, helping your teachers and school because this is very important to them and is a big factor in their assessment from higher ups.

Because it’s just the right thing to do and one lesson that just because you may not care doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it or try your best.

IMO, your mentality above does not help to give your daughter the skills that she needs to succeed in the real world. We do lots of things in life, at work, etc.. that isn’t connected to any specific outcomes but it’s the right thing to do.

Thank you for this condescending lecture! I certainly do teach my DD to work hard at things and to try her best. But I also believe that success requires us to discern and prioritize what is truly important, and the PARCC test does not make the cut.

If our city wants parents and kids to prioritize testing, they might consider changing to a test that provides results in less than 6 months so that the information is more useful, and a test that doesn't consume so much instructional time. Many states have dropped PARCC in favor of other tests that are better designed, and I hope that DCPS does the same.

In fact *all* states have dropped PARCC in favor of other tests. There are NO states left that use exclusively PARCC. It's only LA and MA that use some of PARCC in conjunction with other testing. There were originally 24 states in the partnership. DC, DoDEA, and BIE are all that are left in PARCC because it's not a great or useful test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARCC (We still use it because our local gov is beholden to education reformers, i.e. people who are grifting off our students and tax dollars.)

Using PARCC to judge a school to the exclusion of other metrics is pretty silly. Is JR a bad school because 0% of students got a 5 on math last SY? I'd argue no, since DC can't seem to sequence the HS test or run the tests correctly. https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/125

No DCPS middle schools look great if all you are looking at are PARCC scores (especially math). Even DCI's PARCC scores don't look great: https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/349

This thread started with someone asking about parents' actual experiences at MacFarland. As usual this viper pit website has taken us far afield into morass of global arguments about whether individual students can succeed despite systemic failures. Posters who are that worried are very likely to be unhappy at any middle school their kid is able to access through the lottery.

Everyone posting here should take a walk outside, myself included.

I’m one of the few apparently who actually finds PARCC useful because of the level of detail it provides, and because it actually focuses the school on teaching the kids concrete skills. I can’t say if there’s an assessment that would work better, but I absolutely think that setting standards, teaching to them, and assessing them is extremely important and unfortunately seems to be falling by they wayside due to “equity.”

From what I gather having read the Wiki and associated news articles, withdrawing from PARCC was either politically motivated (Florida, NJ), due to poor results from the first few rounds of testing that made various stakeholders look bad (OH/MS etc) or cost (a majority of the rest). It did not have much to do with the test itself, which may be a reasonable assessment of the students' grasp of the material.

Of course, the way PARCC is administered in DC has no implications for the students, since their progress in class is judged by other tests (A-NET, IReady etc). That said, why are DC PARCC scores so abysmal in math? Other than Deal, no MS has more than 10% (I don't know whether the Oyster-Adams figures are separated out for Oyster and Adams) of the kids as proficient (score of 5) in math. Perhaps these numbers are somewhat obscured by the fact that MS has a wide range of kids taking Alg 1/Alg 2/Geo and are thus not counted in the proficiency figures for the Math section?

If you look at the OSSE spreadsheets you can see it by grade level.

Another problem with PARCC is it doesn't test many subjects for high school, and you don't know how old the kids are, so it's hard to make meaningful comparisons.

[Anonymous]

Math testing for PARCC in middle school is a little complicated, but I think it goes like this:

"Middle School Math" is considered Math 6, 7, and 8.

"High School Math" is considered Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II, etc.

Some kids are allowed to take High School Math in MS. For most kids, this means taking Math 7 in 6th, Math 8 in 7th, and Algebra I in 8th. So their first year taking "High School Math" is in 8th. A small number of kids at certain schools will start "High School Math" in 7th, or even 6th, grade.

The way DCPS has it set up is that if you are enrolled in "Middle School Math" you take the PARCC test for your grade level, regardless of what class you are in. So, for example, a 6th grader taking Math 7 will still take the Math 6 PARCC.

But if you are enrolled in "High School Math" then you take the PARCC for that course. So, for example, an 8th grader taking Algebra would take the Algebra PARCC and not the Math 8 PARCC.

The result of this is that you have a lot of accelerated kids in 6th and 7th grade taking the PARCC test based on their grade level, which might be one or two levels below the course they are enrolled in. So it would be fair to expect a lot of 5s on PARCC, especially from these accelerated kids.

By the time you get to 8th grade, all the accelerated kids are taking the PARCC that matches the course they are enrolled in, not their grade level. So the only kids left taking Math 8 PARCC are the non-accelerated kids. So we would expect fewer 5s and more 1s, 2s, and 3s from those kids. And this is why 8th grade math scores look comparatively grim across the board, even at schools like Deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Math testing for PARCC in middle school is a little complicated, but I think it goes like this:

"Middle School Math" is considered Math 6, 7, and 8.

"High School Math" is considered Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II, etc.

Some kids are allowed to take High School Math in MS. For most kids, this means taking Math 7 in 6th, Math 8 in 7th, and Algebra I in 8th. So their first year taking "High School Math" is in 8th. A small number of kids at certain schools will start "High School Math" in 7th, or even 6th, grade.

The way DCPS has it set up is that if you are enrolled in "Middle School Math" you take the PARCC test for your grade level, regardless of what class you are in. So, for example, a 6th grader taking Math 7 will still take the Math 6 PARCC.

But if you are enrolled in "High School Math" then you take the PARCC for that course. So, for example, an 8th grader taking Algebra would take the Algebra PARCC and not the Math 8 PARCC.

The result of this is that you have a lot of accelerated kids in 6th and 7th grade taking the PARCC test based on their grade level, which might be one or two levels below the course they are enrolled in. So it would be fair to expect a lot of 5s on PARCC, especially from these accelerated kids.

By the time you get to 8th grade, all the accelerated kids are taking the PARCC that matches the course they are enrolled in, not their grade level. So the only kids left taking Math 8 PARCC are the non-accelerated kids. So we would expect fewer 5s and more 1s, 2s, and 3s from those kids. And this is why 8th grade math scores look comparatively grim across the board, even at schools like Deal.

Thank you for this explanation! This is helpful!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Exhibit A reading thru todays post.

Definite defensiveness from people with anyone asking about grade level or accelerated classes. Not a good sign. The people repeatedly telling posters to ask the school ad nauseum is also not a good sign.

The poster who says they can’t believe everything DCPS admin tells you is correct. Go to an open house and ask about accelerated classes, honors classes and many times you get vague answers, not straightforward. Ask about what is the criteria for these classes and again vague, non-descript answers.

The one thing is clear is that there is no accelerated math class from the sole person on here with kid there says his kid is in the accelerated math class and will be taking Algebra in 8th grade. In fact, DCPS is notorious, as someone mentioned, of pushing kids into Algebra who are not even on grade level or ready for it which is true. So I am not confident that it’s even taught on grade level.

Any class can be labeled whatever you want. Accelerated does not always mean accelerated and that is a big fact in DCPS.

OK I'm the parent with a kid in the 7th grade 'accelerated' math class. I can't tell you a ton about it. It's not Algebra. My kid likes the math teacher a lot and has anecdotes to share about him and class that make it sound positive. The kid gets good grades in math. I mean . . . I expect they cover the DCPS curriculum.

So this isn't trying to be defensive - a discriminating parent would want to know if they really do more than just normal 7th grade math maybe? I don't go into my kid's class or ask other students how they are doing in class, so I lack direct input from the teacher or longitudinal information regarding other students, i.e., I only hear from my own kid. I expect that's normal and would be impressed by people who know more . . . I guess you can look at public test information, and that probably shows many students not succeeding, which is not a positive for any parent, right, and many here believe that there is some kind of spiral toward success if kids are surrounded by kids succeeding at a peer level on testing. Ahead of PARCC my kid told me that some peers said they don't care about PARCC because it doesn't really count for anything, and you can take that as dispiriting or a clear-eyed understanding of priorities, cf. posts on this forum.

So - I don't meant to be overly defensive, but it's hard to be that omniscient informer when you mostly hear about what's going on at school from a remove, based on anecdotes shared by a teenager.

Thank you for your candid report. How did your kid get placed in the class? For a parent coming in with a 6th grader, how do they decide each kid's class schedule?

Honestly I don't really care about PARCC because in most years it doesn't count for anything for the individual student. As my DD said "It's not like they're going to give you candy if you get a 5". I don't know why we would expect a kid to care about a test that isn't connected to any specific outcome.

Because you teach your kid that it’s important to do your best so you, their teachers, and the school can assess how they are doing compared to their peers in DC

Because you as a parent teach your kid that not everything needs to come with a reward. There are things called internal motivation, doing your best no matter what, helping your teachers and school because this is very important to them and is a big factor in their assessment from higher ups.

Because it’s just the right thing to do and one lesson that just because you may not care doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it or try your best.

IMO, your mentality above does not help to give your daughter the skills that she needs to succeed in the real world. We do lots of things in life, at work, etc.. that isn’t connected to any specific outcomes but it’s the right thing to do.

Thank you for this condescending lecture! I certainly do teach my DD to work hard at things and to try her best. But I also believe that success requires us to discern and prioritize what is truly important, and the PARCC test does not make the cut.

If our city wants parents and kids to prioritize testing, they might consider changing to a test that provides results in less than 6 months so that the information is more useful, and a test that doesn't consume so much instructional time. Many states have dropped PARCC in favor of other tests that are better designed, and I hope that DCPS does the same.

In fact *all* states have dropped PARCC in favor of other tests. There are NO states left that use exclusively PARCC. It's only LA and MA that use some of PARCC in conjunction with other testing. There were originally 24 states in the partnership. DC, DoDEA, and BIE are all that are left in PARCC because it's not a great or useful test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARCC (We still use it because our local gov is beholden to education reformers, i.e. people who are grifting off our students and tax dollars.)

Using PARCC to judge a school to the exclusion of other metrics is pretty silly. Is JR a bad school because 0% of students got a 5 on math last SY? I'd argue no, since DC can't seem to sequence the HS test or run the tests correctly. https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/125

No DCPS middle schools look great if all you are looking at are PARCC scores (especially math). Even DCI's PARCC scores don't look great: https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/349

This thread started with someone asking about parents' actual experiences at MacFarland. As usual this viper pit website has taken us far afield into morass of global arguments about whether individual students can succeed despite systemic failures. Posters who are that worried are very likely to be unhappy at any middle school their kid is able to access through the lottery.

Everyone posting here should take a walk outside, myself included.

I’m one of the few apparently who actually finds PARCC useful because of the level of detail it provides, and because it actually focuses the school on teaching the kids concrete skills. I can’t say if there’s an assessment that would work better, but I absolutely think that setting standards, teaching to them, and assessing them is extremely important and unfortunately seems to be falling by they wayside due to “equity.”

Concrete skills the kids had mastered five or six months ago when results are released to families. Ridiculous.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Math testing for PARCC in middle school is a little complicated, but I think it goes like this:

"Middle School Math" is considered Math 6, 7, and 8.

"High School Math" is considered Algebra, Geometry, Algebra II, etc.

Some kids are allowed to take High School Math in MS. For most kids, this means taking Math 7 in 6th, Math 8 in 7th, and Algebra I in 8th. So their first year taking "High School Math" is in 8th. A small number of kids at certain schools will start "High School Math" in 7th, or even 6th, grade.

The way DCPS has it set up is that if you are enrolled in "Middle School Math" you take the PARCC test for your grade level, regardless of what class you are in. So, for example, a 6th grader taking Math 7 will still take the Math 6 PARCC.

But if you are enrolled in "High School Math" then you take the PARCC for that course. So, for example, an 8th grader taking Algebra would take the Algebra PARCC and not the Math 8 PARCC.

The result of this is that you have a lot of accelerated kids in 6th and 7th grade taking the PARCC test based on their grade level, which might be one or two levels below the course they are enrolled in. So it would be fair to expect a lot of 5s on PARCC, especially from these accelerated kids.

By the time you get to 8th grade, all the accelerated kids are taking the PARCC that matches the course they are enrolled in, not their grade level. So the only kids left taking Math 8 PARCC are the non-accelerated kids. So we would expect fewer 5s and more 1s, 2s, and 3s from those kids. And this is why 8th grade math scores look comparatively grim across the board, even at schools like Deal.

You can look at the number of 6th vs 7th graders at Deal taking ELA vs. the grade level math test. There's a drop off for 7th grade math. Sure looks like they're taking the algebra test. I think the low 8th grade math scores are just because everyone puts all the at grade level kids in algebra (and at some schools, a lot of the not at grade level kids, too.)

[Anonymous]

Just came to see that we are on year 4 at MacFarland (two kids) and we've been quite happy. It's far from perfect, and there are some dynamics that can be intense (but I think that's the case at any DC middle school, if not any middle school most anywhere). I will say that the educators have been extraordinary -- talented, skilled and loving -- and we've been very happy with our kids' experiences, both academic and social/emotional. The family community is also becoming more cohesive -- there's a PTO that is growing and becoming more official this year, with more events to connect and bring in families and neighbours and feeder school kids, etc. Anyway, I really encourage anyone considering it to 1) go visit the school in person, 2) talk to families who have actually been enrolled recently and 3) not give much weight to test scores, for so many reasons that others have detailed. Hope that is helpful to some who come look here for input.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just came to see that we are on year 4 at MacFarland (two kids) and we've been quite happy. It's far from perfect, and there are some dynamics that can be intense (but I think that's the case at any DC middle school, if not any middle school most anywhere). I will say that the educators have been extraordinary -- talented, skilled and loving -- and we've been very happy with our kids' experiences, both academic and social/emotional. The family community is also becoming more cohesive -- there's a PTO that is growing and becoming more official this year, with more events to connect and bring in families and neighbours and feeder school kids, etc. Anyway, I really encourage anyone considering it to 1) go visit the school in person, 2) talk to families who have actually been enrolled recently and 3) not give much weight to test scores, for so many reasons that others have detailed. Hope that is helpful to some who come look here for input.

Can I ask where your older child is for HS?