26-27 Lottery data up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:6th grade OOB at SH is unquestionably a pretty difficult lottery draw. Part of why is that the school is otherwise enrolling ballpark 100 IB/feeder students each year. The Basis 5th grade lottery is so much more in the majority who list it (and do not match at Latin) will at least get offered a waitlist spot at Basis category. But lots of the students at Basis are IB for SH. The two schools are geographically pretty close together. Basis is niche enough it's mostly apples and oranges to compare the lottery difficulty - most people have clear preferences for one school over the other.

I think the key here is that the relationship between SH and BASIS is evolving, for SH-IB families.

Ten years ago, UMC families IB for SH were almost universally looking for other options and viewed BASIS as a better option. You would see a big exodus from any SH feeder (at the time Watkins was considered the "best" SH feeder, L-T was still Title 1 but had a growing reputation and increased neighborhood buy-in) in 5th grade to BASIS or Latin, but BASIS was considered especially desirable because of proximity. You saw the same with Brent and Maury -- virtually no buy in to feeder middle, lots of kids going to BASIS.

In the interim, people have refined their view of BASIS. It hasn't fallen in estimation, but people have realized it's not necessarily the right school for all kids. I think a LOT of the people who have decided that would prefer Latin, but Latin has become progressively harder to get into and in the last few years, there is a feeling like it's almost impossible to get a spot at either campus. Obviously some people still do, but if you don't have a sibling preference, people see it as a total crap shoot.

Which has led to more people giving SH a second look, and more IB families giving it a try. At first it was like "we'll try it for 6th" and some people would leave after 6th. That still happens sometimes. But other families have stayed, which means you hear more about IB kids going all the way through SH and then getting spots at application HSs. This has started to feel like a viable path for more families.

Which has changed how SH and BASIS are seen by prospective families. It's used to be that UMC families IB for SH who really valued strong education almost all wanted spots at BASIS (or Latin). Now it's more like families check out BASIS to see if it might be a fit for their kid, but also genuinely check out SH and consider that pathway. It's more like an actual choice. Now, plenty of parents actually decide they don't like either option and instead look at private school or moving (maybe after trying for Latin). But there's definitely a big shift from a decade ago when no one really saw SH as a viable choice. Now it's viewed as viable by a lot more people, with caveats. But BASIS also comes with caveats. So there's more comparability. And I see a similar thing happening at EH. So the middle school landscape on the Hill feels like there is more choice generally, even if many people (myself included) aren't super happy or excited about those choices. At least there *are* choices.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

What extracurriculars are you looking for that SH doesn't have that other public DC schools do? It's theater program is superb and award winning. It just got named the best middle school debate program in DC for the 3rd or 4th year in a row. It has a wide variety of sports -- certainly wider than the charters being discussed in this thread. It has a great marching band + orchestra and strings groups. It has a great History Day program. It has an active HOSA group. It has Geoplunge and Mock Trial. It has a choir. It has the 40 book challenge. They're just starting up a branch of Mathcounts (competitive math). It has a ton of lower key student-run clubs too. I understand many of the critiques -- though I don't agree with all of yours fully -- but bad extracurriculars seems extremely off the mark.

+1. We are an EH family but the extracurriculars at SH are solid - less so at EH but the plus at EH is easier access. And I think the huge motivation for many is that these are neighborhood schools - we want that for our kids, to be walkable and independent.

This is accurate. There's also some self-selection. SH is well known for its drama and music programs, so kids targeting Duke Ellington often fit better there. However EH has some other niche EC programming, like a strong cross country team, that would be a draw for a specific kid. I think the schools are pretty comparable in terms of academics despite SH's stronger reputation (if you compare scores and offerings 1:1, they are indistinguishable), so if a family is trying to decide between them, it's mostly a question of vibe and whether your kid cares about the specific programming. Neither school is considered stellar, but might be okay places for well-supported, self motivated students to spend MS assuming better options for HS (the biggest drawback of both schools is the Eastern feed).

Most recent CAPE scores are really the first time the schools have been comparable. I think this trend for EH will continue, but its (relative) academic success is newer than SH's and drives the difference in reputation.

I looked at the PARCC data several years ago and EH was as good or better than the “good” MS for high SES kids.

So you looked at white subscores?

I care more about overall cohort sizes by grade level: students taking and scoring 4+ in Algebra or Geometry, students scoring 4+ in ELA.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

What extracurriculars are you looking for that SH doesn't have that other public DC schools do? It's theater program is superb and award winning. It just got named the best middle school debate program in DC for the 3rd or 4th year in a row. It has a wide variety of sports -- certainly wider than the charters being discussed in this thread. It has a great marching band + orchestra and strings groups. It has a great History Day program. It has an active HOSA group. It has Geoplunge and Mock Trial. It has a choir. It has the 40 book challenge. They're just starting up a branch of Mathcounts (competitive math). It has a ton of lower key student-run clubs too. I understand many of the critiques -- though I don't agree with all of yours fully -- but bad extracurriculars seems extremely off the mark.

+1. We are an EH family but the extracurriculars at SH are solid - less so at EH but the plus at EH is easier access. And I think the huge motivation for many is that these are neighborhood schools - we want that for our kids, to be walkable and independent.

This is accurate. There's also some self-selection. SH is well known for its drama and music programs, so kids targeting Duke Ellington often fit better there. However EH has some other niche EC programming, like a strong cross country team, that would be a draw for a specific kid. I think the schools are pretty comparable in terms of academics despite SH's stronger reputation (if you compare scores and offerings 1:1, they are indistinguishable), so if a family is trying to decide between them, it's mostly a question of vibe and whether your kid cares about the specific programming. Neither school is considered stellar, but might be okay places for well-supported, self motivated students to spend MS assuming better options for HS (the biggest drawback of both schools is the Eastern feed).

Most recent CAPE scores are really the first time the schools have been comparable. I think this trend for EH will continue, but its (relative) academic success is newer than SH's and drives the difference in reputation.

I looked at the PARCC data several years ago and EH was as good or better than the “good” MS for high SES kids.

So you looked at white subscores?

I care more about overall cohort sizes by grade level: students taking and scoring 4+ in Algebra or Geometry, students scoring 4+ in ELA.

Any of the data heads on the thread able to pull those numbers for SH, EH, Latin, and BASIS? If no one else does it, I will try to do it tonight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

What extracurriculars are you looking for that SH doesn't have that other public DC schools do? It's theater program is superb and award winning. It just got named the best middle school debate program in DC for the 3rd or 4th year in a row. It has a wide variety of sports -- certainly wider than the charters being discussed in this thread. It has a great marching band + orchestra and strings groups. It has a great History Day program. It has an active HOSA group. It has Geoplunge and Mock Trial. It has a choir. It has the 40 book challenge. They're just starting up a branch of Mathcounts (competitive math). It has a ton of lower key student-run clubs too. I understand many of the critiques -- though I don't agree with all of yours fully -- but bad extracurriculars seems extremely off the mark.

+1. We are an EH family but the extracurriculars at SH are solid - less so at EH but the plus at EH is easier access. And I think the huge motivation for many is that these are neighborhood schools - we want that for our kids, to be walkable and independent.

This is accurate. There's also some self-selection. SH is well known for its drama and music programs, so kids targeting Duke Ellington often fit better there. However EH has some other niche EC programming, like a strong cross country team, that would be a draw for a specific kid. I think the schools are pretty comparable in terms of academics despite SH's stronger reputation (if you compare scores and offerings 1:1, they are indistinguishable), so if a family is trying to decide between them, it's mostly a question of vibe and whether your kid cares about the specific programming. Neither school is considered stellar, but might be okay places for well-supported, self motivated students to spend MS assuming better options for HS (the biggest drawback of both schools is the Eastern feed).

Most recent CAPE scores are really the first time the schools have been comparable. I think this trend for EH will continue, but its (relative) academic success is newer than SH's and drives the difference in reputation.

I looked at the PARCC data several years ago and EH was as good or better than the “good” MS for high SES kids.

So you looked at white subscores?

I care more about overall cohort sizes by grade level: students taking and scoring 4+ in Algebra or Geometry, students scoring 4+ in ELA.

+1. It’s silly to look at white scores when overwhelming majority are below grade level and that is where the teaching occurs.

Also you have families supplementing and such so you can’t control that variable.

I don’t care about race or SES. I care where the majority of kids are so that teaching in courses can be on grade level. This is because there is no tracking in many subjects.

Even if there is tracking such as math, you need to look closely at how that tracking is done and courses offered. Math at SH and all DCPS middle schools is just weak with low expectations and standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

I’m the PP- i see you noted that the curriculum problems you saw were “more of a dcps issue”. That is true although I thought Eliot Hine had better offerings. But at the end of the day, I am not going to force my kids to attend a school that is of objectively poor quality (TO ME) simply because it’s a dcps. And dcps needs to do better.

Now I'm even more confused because I don't understand what schools you are comparing it to.

To be clear, I am fully on board with the idea that SH is a mediocre middle school. I think it's improving but am not sure I'll be enthusiastic about it as an option in a couple years when my kid is in 6th. So this isn't some SH booster trying to claim it's the best school ever.

But to compare it on curriculum to EH and find it lacking... did you send your kid to EH? I'm really asking. Among Hill families who have looked closely at both schools, I've always been told they found SH to have an academic edge. The curriculum itself is the same, including amplify (which is DCPS wide) and an ELA curriculum that I feel does not emphasize writing and assigns too few full books. SH definitely seems to have a better math curriculum than EH because it genuinely tracks. Again, not saying it's stellar or compares to, say, BASIS. But most people I know who have looked closely say it's better than EH.

Now if you are comparing to Deal and Hardy, that's different. Deal is huge and has a lot of high achieving students, so can offer true tracking across multiple subjects and just push students harder. Hardy is smaller (which many people like) but considered stronger academically. But Deal and Hardy are not options for Hill families unless you move or lottery into a feeder in elementary, for the most part. If you stay in the Hill, the commute is hell.

BASIS is considered very strong academically but approach is not for everyone and is considered VERY weak on extra-curriculars, which is one of several reasons I don't understand criticizing SH on that front -- it's among the strongest east side MS for ECs. Jefferson might have better sports options but it has lower test scores and less IB buy in.

Latin is considered strong but not stellar all around. Biggest upside is HS path. Biggest downside is no one gets in anyway so who cares.

DCI generally requires a feeder, so parents shopping for MSs usually aren't looking at DCI -- you have to make that choice earlier.

And then privates are a whole other can of works, as are the suburbs.

I just find the fixation on "SH is bad" weird, especially when comparing to other realistic options for families living on the East side. Is it exceptional, no. But worse than EH or Jefferson? Weaker ECs than BASIS? I don't know anyone who takes this viewpoint, even the most cynical, anti-DCPS family.

Yeah I’m wondering where the person criticizing SH sends their middle schooler. Because if they’re in private or an adjacent district, they should know this is the landscape we’re dealing with in DC public schools.

Its less that SH is bad, but more that a booster is here repeatedly lying about the school and saying it’s of good quality when it is objectively not.

Go to any elementary feeder- you’ll see people straight up lying about the education at Hobson. I’m not okay with it. And we as parents need to ask for more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

What extracurriculars are you looking for that SH doesn't have that other public DC schools do? It's theater program is superb and award winning. It just got named the best middle school debate program in DC for the 3rd or 4th year in a row. It has a wide variety of sports -- certainly wider than the charters being discussed in this thread. It has a great marching band + orchestra and strings groups. It has a great History Day program. It has an active HOSA group. It has Geoplunge and Mock Trial. It has a choir. It has the 40 book challenge. They're just starting up a branch of Mathcounts (competitive math). It has a ton of lower key student-run clubs too. I understand many of the critiques -- though I don't agree with all of yours fully -- but bad extracurriculars seems extremely off the mark.

+1. We are an EH family but the extracurriculars at SH are solid - less so at EH but the plus at EH is easier access. And I think the huge motivation for many is that these are neighborhood schools - we want that for our kids, to be walkable and independent.

I feel the same. And I think it’s okay for my kid to be independent and take the metro to school. You might be happy with the EC offerings but we weren’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

I’m the PP- i see you noted that the curriculum problems you saw were “more of a dcps issue”. That is true although I thought Eliot Hine had better offerings. But at the end of the day, I am not going to force my kids to attend a school that is of objectively poor quality (TO ME) simply because it’s a dcps. And dcps needs to do better.

Now I'm even more confused because I don't understand what schools you are comparing it to.

To be clear, I am fully on board with the idea that SH is a mediocre middle school. I think it's improving but am not sure I'll be enthusiastic about it as an option in a couple years when my kid is in 6th. So this isn't some SH booster trying to claim it's the best school ever.

But to compare it on curriculum to EH and find it lacking... did you send your kid to EH? I'm really asking. Among Hill families who have looked closely at both schools, I've always been told they found SH to have an academic edge. The curriculum itself is the same, including amplify (which is DCPS wide) and an ELA curriculum that I feel does not emphasize writing and assigns too few full books. SH definitely seems to have a better math curriculum than EH because it genuinely tracks. Again, not saying it's stellar or compares to, say, BASIS. But most people I know who have looked closely say it's better than EH.

Now if you are comparing to Deal and Hardy, that's different. Deal is huge and has a lot of high achieving students, so can offer true tracking across multiple subjects and just push students harder. Hardy is smaller (which many people like) but considered stronger academically. But Deal and Hardy are not options for Hill families unless you move or lottery into a feeder in elementary, for the most part. If you stay in the Hill, the commute is hell.

BASIS is considered very strong academically but approach is not for everyone and is considered VERY weak on extra-curriculars, which is one of several reasons I don't understand criticizing SH on that front -- it's among the strongest east side MS for ECs. Jefferson might have better sports options but it has lower test scores and less IB buy in.

Latin is considered strong but not stellar all around. Biggest upside is HS path. Biggest downside is no one gets in anyway so who cares.

DCI generally requires a feeder, so parents shopping for MSs usually aren't looking at DCI -- you have to make that choice earlier.

And then privates are a whole other can of works, as are the suburbs.

I just find the fixation on "SH is bad" weird, especially when comparing to other realistic options for families living on the East side. Is it exceptional, no. But worse than EH or Jefferson? Weaker ECs than BASIS? I don't know anyone who takes this viewpoint, even the most cynical, anti-DCPS family.

The difference is there isn’t a poster repeatedly claiming Jefferson is so amazing and better than any charter school. No all the dcps middles are mediocre. Really really mediocre, even deal. It really bothers me that we are stuck with terrible high schools too! We should have access to good schools, whereas dcps is failing all students across the board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

I’m still waiting for this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

I’m the PP- i see you noted that the curriculum problems you saw were “more of a dcps issue”. That is true although I thought Eliot Hine had better offerings. But at the end of the day, I am not going to force my kids to attend a school that is of objectively poor quality (TO ME) simply because it’s a dcps. And dcps needs to do better.

Now I'm even more confused because I don't understand what schools you are comparing it to.

To be clear, I am fully on board with the idea that SH is a mediocre middle school. I think it's improving but am not sure I'll be enthusiastic about it as an option in a couple years when my kid is in 6th. So this isn't some SH booster trying to claim it's the best school ever.

But to compare it on curriculum to EH and find it lacking... did you send your kid to EH? I'm really asking. Among Hill families who have looked closely at both schools, I've always been told they found SH to have an academic edge. The curriculum itself is the same, including amplify (which is DCPS wide) and an ELA curriculum that I feel does not emphasize writing and assigns too few full books. SH definitely seems to have a better math curriculum than EH because it genuinely tracks. Again, not saying it's stellar or compares to, say, BASIS. But most people I know who have looked closely say it's better than EH.

Now if you are comparing to Deal and Hardy, that's different. Deal is huge and has a lot of high achieving students, so can offer true tracking across multiple subjects and just push students harder. Hardy is smaller (which many people like) but considered stronger academically. But Deal and Hardy are not options for Hill families unless you move or lottery into a feeder in elementary, for the most part. If you stay in the Hill, the commute is hell.

BASIS is considered very strong academically but approach is not for everyone and is considered VERY weak on extra-curriculars, which is one of several reasons I don't understand criticizing SH on that front -- it's among the strongest east side MS for ECs. Jefferson might have better sports options but it has lower test scores and less IB buy in.

Latin is considered strong but not stellar all around. Biggest upside is HS path. Biggest downside is no one gets in anyway so who cares.

DCI generally requires a feeder, so parents shopping for MSs usually aren't looking at DCI -- you have to make that choice earlier.

And then privates are a whole other can of works, as are the suburbs.

I just find the fixation on "SH is bad" weird, especially when comparing to other realistic options for families living on the East side. Is it exceptional, no. But worse than EH or Jefferson? Weaker ECs than BASIS? I don't know anyone who takes this viewpoint, even the most cynical, anti-DCPS family.

The difference is there isn’t a poster repeatedly claiming Jefferson is so amazing and better than any charter school. No all the dcps middles are mediocre. Really really mediocre, even deal. It really bothers me that we are stuck with terrible high schools too! We should have access to good schools, whereas dcps is failing all students across the board.

PP here. I sort of agree with you. I do agree with the sentiment that it's frustrating when people overstate the strength of a school like SH to try and induce people to go there, if in reality the school really can't deliver on that. I definitely felt this in elementary school, where we encountered several neighborhood boosters for our IB, who both overstated the strength of the school and also guilted anyone who didn't choose it. That aspect of DC's school culture is really obnoxious.

But most of the posts about SH don't really seem to overstate its quality. We've looked at the school. It really does have great EC options, this is probably one of the best things about the school. I am baffled by the posts in this thread saying it has bad ECs -- this seems demonstrably false, especially when you compare it to other schools on the east side. It also has been tracking for math longer than EH and has a larger cohort of high achieving kids (I think in part due to the strength of the ECs -- there are unquestionably some high achieving kids who have stuck with SH specifically because of the theater program, for instance). Again, this isn't overstating its quality. No one has suggested has a tougher or more advanced curriculum than BASIS for instance. That would be a lie. But it's also a lie to say its ECs suck or that EH has stronger academics, things that have actually been claimed on this thread for some reason.

Whatever, I don't think I even have a dog in this fight. The more I look at it, the more likely it becomes that we move out of DC for middle. Pretty much the only thing holding me back is knowing how disruptive it will be for my kids to have to change school systems and make new friends. But that fear lessens every time I talk about it to anyone, because it looks like they will wind up having to start over socially no matter what we do. If we get them into a charter, they'll have to start over in the charter. If we send them to SH, they'll have to start over for high school. If we move within DC, it's no different. The reality is that we don't have a solid public school path where we currently live, and our kids will have to adjust to new schools and new friends no matter what, so it just starts to seem obvious that the solution is to move somewhere with a MS and HS we actually feel ok about and call it a day.

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Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

What extracurriculars are you looking for that SH doesn't have that other public DC schools do? It's theater program is superb and award winning. It just got named the best middle school debate program in DC for the 3rd or 4th year in a row. It has a wide variety of sports -- certainly wider than the charters being discussed in this thread. It has a great marching band + orchestra and strings groups. It has a great History Day program. It has an active HOSA group. It has Geoplunge and Mock Trial. It has a choir. It has the 40 book challenge. They're just starting up a branch of Mathcounts (competitive math). It has a ton of lower key student-run clubs too. I understand many of the critiques -- though I don't agree with all of yours fully -- but bad extracurriculars seems extremely off the mark.

+1. We are an EH family but the extracurriculars at SH are solid - less so at EH but the plus at EH is easier access. And I think the huge motivation for many is that these are neighborhood schools - we want that for our kids, to be walkable and independent.

This is accurate. There's also some self-selection. SH is well known for its drama and music programs, so kids targeting Duke Ellington often fit better there. However EH has some other niche EC programming, like a strong cross country team, that would be a draw for a specific kid. I think the schools are pretty comparable in terms of academics despite SH's stronger reputation (if you compare scores and offerings 1:1, they are indistinguishable), so if a family is trying to decide between them, it's mostly a question of vibe and whether your kid cares about the specific programming. Neither school is considered stellar, but might be okay places for well-supported, self motivated students to spend MS assuming better options for HS (the biggest drawback of both schools is the Eastern feed).

Most recent CAPE scores are really the first time the schools have been comparable. I think this trend for EH will continue, but its (relative) academic success is newer than SH's and drives the difference in reputation.

I looked at the PARCC data several years ago and EH was as good or better than the “good” MS for high SES kids.

So you looked at white subscores?

I care more about overall cohort sizes by grade level: students taking and scoring 4+ in Algebra or Geometry, students scoring 4+ in ELA.

Sure but there are also benefits to a small school.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

What extracurriculars are you looking for that SH doesn't have that other public DC schools do? It's theater program is superb and award winning. It just got named the best middle school debate program in DC for the 3rd or 4th year in a row. It has a wide variety of sports -- certainly wider than the charters being discussed in this thread. It has a great marching band + orchestra and strings groups. It has a great History Day program. It has an active HOSA group. It has Geoplunge and Mock Trial. It has a choir. It has the 40 book challenge. They're just starting up a branch of Mathcounts (competitive math). It has a ton of lower key student-run clubs too. I understand many of the critiques -- though I don't agree with all of yours fully -- but bad extracurriculars seems extremely off the mark.

+1. We are an EH family but the extracurriculars at SH are solid - less so at EH but the plus at EH is easier access. And I think the huge motivation for many is that these are neighborhood schools - we want that for our kids, to be walkable and independent.

This is accurate. There's also some self-selection. SH is well known for its drama and music programs, so kids targeting Duke Ellington often fit better there. However EH has some other niche EC programming, like a strong cross country team, that would be a draw for a specific kid. I think the schools are pretty comparable in terms of academics despite SH's stronger reputation (if you compare scores and offerings 1:1, they are indistinguishable), so if a family is trying to decide between them, it's mostly a question of vibe and whether your kid cares about the specific programming. Neither school is considered stellar, but might be okay places for well-supported, self motivated students to spend MS assuming better options for HS (the biggest drawback of both schools is the Eastern feed).

Most recent CAPE scores are really the first time the schools have been comparable. I think this trend for EH will continue, but its (relative) academic success is newer than SH's and drives the difference in reputation.

Huh? You could also compare for PARCC.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

What extracurriculars are you looking for that SH doesn't have that other public DC schools do? It's theater program is superb and award winning. It just got named the best middle school debate program in DC for the 3rd or 4th year in a row. It has a wide variety of sports -- certainly wider than the charters being discussed in this thread. It has a great marching band + orchestra and strings groups. It has a great History Day program. It has an active HOSA group. It has Geoplunge and Mock Trial. It has a choir. It has the 40 book challenge. They're just starting up a branch of Mathcounts (competitive math). It has a ton of lower key student-run clubs too. I understand many of the critiques -- though I don't agree with all of yours fully -- but bad extracurriculars seems extremely off the mark.

+1. We are an EH family but the extracurriculars at SH are solid - less so at EH but the plus at EH is easier access. And I think the huge motivation for many is that these are neighborhood schools - we want that for our kids, to be walkable and independent.

This is accurate. There's also some self-selection. SH is well known for its drama and music programs, so kids targeting Duke Ellington often fit better there. However EH has some other niche EC programming, like a strong cross country team, that would be a draw for a specific kid. I think the schools are pretty comparable in terms of academics despite SH's stronger reputation (if you compare scores and offerings 1:1, they are indistinguishable), so if a family is trying to decide between them, it's mostly a question of vibe and whether your kid cares about the specific programming. Neither school is considered stellar, but might be okay places for well-supported, self motivated students to spend MS assuming better options for HS (the biggest drawback of both schools is the Eastern feed).

Most recent CAPE scores are really the first time the schools have been comparable. I think this trend for EH will continue, but its (relative) academic success is newer than SH's and drives the difference in reputation.

I looked at the PARCC data several years ago and EH was as good or better than the “good” MS for high SES kids.

So you looked at white subscores?

I care more about overall cohort sizes by grade level: students taking and scoring 4+ in Algebra or Geometry, students scoring 4+ in ELA.

+1. It’s silly to look at white scores when overwhelming majority are below grade level and that is where the teaching occurs.

Also you have families supplementing and such so you can’t control that variable.

I don’t care about race or SES. I care where the majority of kids are so that teaching in courses can be on grade level. This is because there is no tracking in many subjects.

Even if there is tracking such as math, you need to look closely at how that tracking is done and courses offered. Math at SH and all DCPS middle schools is just weak with low expectations and standards.

Cool. the suburbs are thataway.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

What extracurriculars are you looking for that SH doesn't have that other public DC schools do? It's theater program is superb and award winning. It just got named the best middle school debate program in DC for the 3rd or 4th year in a row. It has a wide variety of sports -- certainly wider than the charters being discussed in this thread. It has a great marching band + orchestra and strings groups. It has a great History Day program. It has an active HOSA group. It has Geoplunge and Mock Trial. It has a choir. It has the 40 book challenge. They're just starting up a branch of Mathcounts (competitive math). It has a ton of lower key student-run clubs too. I understand many of the critiques -- though I don't agree with all of yours fully -- but bad extracurriculars seems extremely off the mark.

+1. We are an EH family but the extracurriculars at SH are solid - less so at EH but the plus at EH is easier access. And I think the huge motivation for many is that these are neighborhood schools - we want that for our kids, to be walkable and independent.

I feel the same. And I think it’s okay for my kid to be independent and take the metro to school. You might be happy with the EC offerings but we weren’t.

Why the hostility? I don’t care where your kid goes to school. All I am saying is that I and others enjoy and affirmatively sought out the neighborhood school as a benefit in the overall decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

I’m still waiting for this.

DP. nobody needs to “defend” themselves to you. You clearly value very different things from parents satisfied with EH and SH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, charter elementary schools really have plummeted in demand.

For SY 19-20, there were 30 PCS with PK3 waitlists in the double digits (including LAMB even though they weren't in the common lottery, just cause, duh, they had huge waitlists back then).

This year? 13. The seven DCI feeders (DCB, MVP, MVC8, YY, LAMB, Stokes EE, Stokes BL), plus ITDS, Apple Tree Lincoln Park, EL Haynes, LEARN, Lee BL, and TR4.

And triple digit waitlists are basically an endangered species - just five and they're all DCI feeders (DCB, LAMB, Stokes BL, MVC8, YY). Back in SY 19-20 that was 14.

I would say overall, this is a great thing. Kids are getting spots they want. Way fewer kids settling for their 10th, 11th, 12th choice because they're shut out of so many options. Way more IB buy in for a wide variety of schools. This is waaaaay beyond what you'd expect with decreasing birth rates.

I had a PK3 kid in the years of insane waitlists and honestly the whole thing was pretty dumb. So much hype, so much stress, over a bunch of schools that aren't really that different from each other or from DCPS preschool.

There are fewer kids now, so some schools will have to shrink or close. It'll be interesting to see how it shakes out. But I'm so happy the days of waitlist craziness are behind us.

Using the OSSE enrollment audit spreadsheets from the current year and the 23-24 school year, so a two year comparison, it seems like total enrollment is down by 266 kids in PK3, 303 in PK4. Not a big difference in K and 1st but then 2nd grade is down by 270. 4th through 8th are up several hundred, but 6th is flat. 9 the is down the most, 408 kids. But the other high school grades are up-- 12th is up by 685!

It does seem like most of the preschool and lower elementary losses fell on the charter sector. Both sectors gained in upper elementary but in 6th DCPS gained and the charter sector shrank. The opposite for 9th grade, interestingly. So really a mixed bag, hard to make sense of.

PP here - yeah, this is interesting. I think a lot of what's happened is that back in the day, every UMC family just felt like they "needed" a HRCS, so no matter where they lived EOTP or what they actually thought of the specific schools, they put YY, DCB, MV, Stokes, ITDS, TR, Cap City, Haynes, CMI, Breakthrough, and then an Apple Tree and their IB as "backups." And a large number ended up at their IB and were disappointed, and all those folks were sitting on all the charter waitlists, making them so long.

But then, over time, hey, what do you know, it turns out our IB is actually not bad, and people in the neighborhood are now talking to people who are happy at their IB, and meanwhile the one neighbor who got into Cap City has got this long commute and what they have doesn't even sound all that much better? And now parents of younger kids are skipping all the HRCS (except for maybe a couple that are close by and/or have something they really like) and just putting their IB at/near the top of their list. Same number of kids (roughly) at the same schools, but they're not also sitting on the charter school waitlists driving the numbers sky high and feeling like they "lost".

Feels like a lot credit here is due to the unified lottery. When you just had to drive around and drop off a million applications, it feel like regular parenting due diligence, and if you got into an HRCS, you were psyched. Once you had to rank them ahead of time, people started actually evaluating them and realized they weren't worth the hype.

Totally this. But I do think some DCPS have genuinely improved. Stuart-Hobson in particular, and that's having a predictable effect on its feeders.

I think L-T gentrifying drove a lot of the new UMC kids at SH rather than the reverse.

I think it's both, but it only happens if the middle school is perceived to be acceptable or on an improving trajectory.

Stuart Hobson is objectively bad.

Based on increasing enrollment of in-boundary students and the length of their waitlist, it seems that your opinion of Stuart-Hobson is not shared by all.

There is one poster who is constantly posting that SH is not good. There was also a poster (maybe it’s the same person?) who claimed they were a tutor for a bunch of SH kids and that it’s not a good school. I think it’s the same person who is also constantly posting that DCPS has low standards. I kind of wish that Jeff forced handles on this particular forum so we could know. Or at least allow you to see post history for this form.

+1. It's not about silencing them; it's about acknowledging that it's one repeated poster with a huge chip on their shoulder who apparently hasn't had a kid at SH since the PARCC era.

Except not. You are literally calling for the manager because multiple people disagree with you.

Instead of touting your waitlist, which btw doesn’t really speak to school students quality but rather lack of options, why don’t you defend your opinion on Stuart Hobson?

Please defend amplify science. Defend the lack of tracking. Defend the lack of rigor in ELA. Defend the weak math curriculum. What about the lack of extracurriculars? People on Capitol Hill deserve better than Stuart Hobson and screaming for the moderator to silence me (and many others) because we think kids deserve more is not a good look.

NP. I was kind of with you but SH has pretty great extra curriculars. It's actually one of the biggest selling points of the school.

Agree on amplify science and lack of writing, though these are also issues at Deal and Hardy -- it's a DCPS issue. I am still unclear on the state of math at SH. It's clearly gotten better in recent years but it's hard to tell how much. I suspect the next few years will make that more clear, as I do know of several feeder kids with very high math scores who are planning to go. A test for me is if they stay past 6th.

I did a pretty through comparison with other schools (dcps and charter) and found that it had major deficits in the math program (lack of rigor and lack of offerings), science (truly bad but yes this is dcps), ELA (very poor), foreign language, and extracurriculars. I know the theater program was touted for its popularity but that wasn’t important to my kid. Neither were most of the sports offerings. I genuinely found it to be of much worse quality than expected. That’s MY OPINION though and everyone is free to say what they want without attacking other people.

What extracurriculars are you looking for that SH doesn't have that other public DC schools do? It's theater program is superb and award winning. It just got named the best middle school debate program in DC for the 3rd or 4th year in a row. It has a wide variety of sports -- certainly wider than the charters being discussed in this thread. It has a great marching band + orchestra and strings groups. It has a great History Day program. It has an active HOSA group. It has Geoplunge and Mock Trial. It has a choir. It has the 40 book challenge. They're just starting up a branch of Mathcounts (competitive math). It has a ton of lower key student-run clubs too. I understand many of the critiques -- though I don't agree with all of yours fully -- but bad extracurriculars seems extremely off the mark.

+1. We are an EH family but the extracurriculars at SH are solid - less so at EH but the plus at EH is easier access. And I think the huge motivation for many is that these are neighborhood schools - we want that for our kids, to be walkable and independent.

This is accurate. There's also some self-selection. SH is well known for its drama and music programs, so kids targeting Duke Ellington often fit better there. However EH has some other niche EC programming, like a strong cross country team, that would be a draw for a specific kid. I think the schools are pretty comparable in terms of academics despite SH's stronger reputation (if you compare scores and offerings 1:1, they are indistinguishable), so if a family is trying to decide between them, it's mostly a question of vibe and whether your kid cares about the specific programming. Neither school is considered stellar, but might be okay places for well-supported, self motivated students to spend MS assuming better options for HS (the biggest drawback of both schools is the Eastern feed).

Most recent CAPE scores are really the first time the schools have been comparable. I think this trend for EH will continue, but its (relative) academic success is newer than SH's and drives the difference in reputation.

I looked at the PARCC data several years ago and EH was as good or better than the “good” MS for high SES kids.

So you looked at white subscores?

I care more about overall cohort sizes by grade level: students taking and scoring 4+ in Algebra or Geometry, students scoring 4+ in ELA.

Any of the data heads on the thread able to pull those numbers for SH, EH, Latin, and BASIS? If no one else does it, I will try to do it tonight.

Comprating data is not the same as comparing the quality of the education. In middle school, you actually need to compare the content of the history classes, science classes, ELA syllabus, writing assignments in addition to the math acceleration (which is one thing that is actualyl pretty simple to compare.) All of the rest take a lot of time. I didn't really know what my kids would be learning in middle school until they got in and I could see them work through the courses week by week.

comparing math and ela CAPE scores will give you a vary narrow comparison of these schools. but if you do, don't forget science.