Shaw Middle School -- what's the plan?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A full cohort will not be "several" hundred.

Hardy or SH or jefferson or Mcfarland is the right comparator. Cohorts are about 140-150 at most.

The 'on grade level' numbers will change drastically with every year, too. Just look at what Pre-K looks like in each of these schools.

What? More brown kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A full cohort will not be "several" hundred.

Hardy or SH or jefferson or Mcfarland is the right comparator. Cohorts are about 140-150 at most.

The 'on grade level' numbers will change drastically with every year, too. Just look at what Pre-K looks like in each of these schools.

What? More brown kids

McFarland has been open just a couple of years. It has much higher capacity so its underenrolled. I think we need to discuss in terms of FULL cohort.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:PP nailed it. What would a Shaw middle school offer to make it different from Cardozo? You need a critical mass of high achieving students to turn a middle school around.

Shaw MS would have a different group of feeder schools than Cardozo that potentially do in fact have a critical mass of high achieving students. Right now this cluster of schools is divided for the temporary feeder system with two of the schools going to SWW.

The dual feed will be shut off soon, just like it was for Eaton. Especially since. the PK-8 models are being phased out.

what schools would feed to shaw that produce a consistent and large cohort of high achieving students?

If the SWW and Cardozo feeds were combined at Cardozo, you'd get a pretty good number. Using the grade audits from https://osse.dc.gov/page/2017-18-school-year-enrollment-audit-report-and-data and the results dc PARCC info (averaging the math and ELA scores of 4 or 5):

Cleveland: 31 5th graders, 33% proficiency = 10 proficient kids (note: some are in the dual-language program and also have rights to MacFarland)
Garrison: 24 5th graders, 13% proficiency = 3 proficient kids
Ross: 12 5th graders, 75% proficiency = 9 proficient kids (note: if Ross stopped being able to get away with not filling their testing-grades classes through the lottery, there might be a couple more here)
Seaton: 30 5th graders, 29% proficiency = 9 proficient kids
SWW: 44 5th graders, 49% proficiency = 22 proficient kids (note: if middle school left SWW, there'd be room for more 5th graders)
Thomson: 32 5th graders, 23 % proficiency = 7 proficient kids

60 proficient kids per grade with a right to attend is decent, even noting that some will choose charters, OOB, or private schools. I'm sure Deal and Hardy have more 5th graders at their feeder schools who are proficient, but this is a high enough number to offer advanced classes (especially given that my numbers average math and ELA...there may be may kids who'd qualify for advanced math but not ELA or vice versa) and for kids on or above grade level to have some peers. Is it going to work for a family that wants a Lake Wobegone school? No. But the families who send kids to these schools for 5th grade seem open to having a mix of kids.

There is the obvious problem that the proposed middle school would need to do tracking. And DCPS is anti-tracking. At least that is what failed Brookland middle.

Could you clarify what tracking means? I'm not familiar with that.

Not even close enough. 60 proficient kids is not a big enough cohort. Especially if a full cohort is closer to several hundred. that mean at least 2/3 of the total cohort is not at grade level.No thank, I don't want my kid in that class where over half are not even at grade level. And middle school is a lot more challenging than elem. The unprepared kids will keep getting promoted and by 8th grade its a disaster.

If you want a school with more than 50% proficient in math and reading, your options are BASIS, DC Prep-Edgewood Middle, or Deal (even there, 45% of kids are not proficient in math). There are not enough seats at those schools for every kid, so some families are going to need to try other options.

But what parent wants to test an unproven middle school, which are critical and challenging years for that age, for their kid. Every UMC parent I know either moved,went private if they didn't get into an acceptable DCPS or charter middle school. Not one took a chance or Brookland or McFarland, of course they all home those schools are successful but thats like 1-15 years off.

[Anonymous]

There it is:

https://twitter.com/PerryStein/status/1055882835595354112

"D.C. officials announced today that they would be moving Banneker High to the vacant Shaw Middle, increasing capacity by 300 students. They also said they would begin discussions for a new standalone middle school in Shaw."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There it is:

https://twitter.com/PerryStein/status/1055882835595354112

"D.C. officials announced today that they would be moving Banneker High to the vacant Shaw Middle, increasing capacity by 300 students. They also said they would begin discussions for a new standalone middle school in Shaw."

More detailed info:

https://thedcline.org/2018/10/26/city-announces-plan-to-use-vacant-shaw-site-for-banneker-expansion/

[Anonymous]

Good decision. The Shaw site is a great location for a city wide school. One block to the metro.

[Anonymous]

Wasn’t Shaw always too close to Cardozo to be a separate MS in a low-school population downtown area?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wasn’t Shaw always too close to Cardozo to be a separate MS in a low-school population downtown area?

The idea was to move those grades out of Cardozo's building, not to have two middle schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wasn’t Shaw always too close to Cardozo to be a separate MS in a low-school population downtown area?

yes. the idea that six elementary schools were going to feed to three different middle schools (SWW, Shaw, and Cardozo) was never going to work well--no way to get enough kids for things like sports, extracurriculars, specials, or cohorts of kids at different levels. Especially with half of one school (Cleveland) having programmatic feeder rights to MacFarland. I'm not saying all middle schools need to be Deal-sized, but DCPS should not be creating feeder patterns for middle schools with only a couple dozen students per grade.

[Anonymous]

But Cardozo’s underfilling the building

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But Cardozo’s underfilling the building

that's why the SWW middle schoolers should go there too. Then Cardozo would be more full and the classrooms at SWW could be used for PK and special ed and more elementary school classrooms (which would feed more kids to Cardozo...)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But Cardozo’s underfilling the building

The idea was that if it were not within Cardozo and other imrpovements were made, enrollment would go up. Now I dunno if DCPS can actually pull that off, but that was the long term idea.

[Anonymous]

If your planning premise is a illogical workaround of a school with the same grades a couple blocks away I’m not surprised it didn’t happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your planning premise is a illogical workaround of a school with the same grades a couple blocks away I’m not surprised it didn’t happen.

I don't think it's crazy. The system as a whole is planning for an increase in kids, and I do think that a middle school stands a better chance of success when it is not sited within a failing high school. Shaw Middle School was making some progress back when it was open, so why couldn't that continue?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your planning premise is a illogical workaround of a school with the same grades a couple blocks away I’m not surprised it didn’t happen.

I don't think it's crazy. The system as a whole is planning for an increase in kids, and I do think that a middle school stands a better chance of success when it is not sited within a failing high school. Shaw Middle School was making some progress back when it was open, so why couldn't that continue?

Takoma worked out fine for myself and friends. It wasn’t a problem at all.