Maury Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here are the at-risk proficiency numbers for Miner and Maury.

Miner (71% at risk)

ELA 15.9
Math 21

Maury (19% at risk)

ELA 55.3
Math 27.8

So, merging the two schools would probably improve ELA scores somewhat for Miner and lower them for Maury. The math scores are bad at both schools for at-risk, so there would be less change there

I'm confused why this is being evaluated on what the scores would look like on day 1. It seems the concerns being expressed have to do with how the school will be ranked as opposed to how it will impact the kids who need help the most. It's obvious that average scores would decline at Maury right off the bat but kids on or above grade level will still be on or above grade level.

There's actually research that injecting such a big at-risk cohort is likely to bring down high SES student outcomes more than it will raise low SES student outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Can you cite that research? I’ve been trying to read up on peer effects in education but it seems like there’s tons of confounding in most studies. Also seems like a pretty active debate over whether peer effects should be theorized/modeled to be symmetrical (e.g., high and low achievers converge on the mean) or asymmetrical (low achievers helped while high achievers unaffected or less affected).

[Anonymous]

There are many valid reasons to oppose the cluster but commute times are not one of them - the two schools are literally like 5 blocks apart straight down Tennessee Ave. 10 min walk, 3 min drive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here are the at-risk proficiency numbers for Miner and Maury.

Miner (71% at risk)

ELA 15.9
Math 21

Maury (19% at risk)

ELA 55.3
Math 27.8

So, merging the two schools would probably improve ELA scores somewhat for Miner and lower them for Maury. The math scores are bad at both schools for at-risk, so there would be less change there

Where did these numbers come from? The at restaurant so percentages do not match what I've seen for either school. Are they old?

Yes, these numbers have to be a few years old for Maury. Maury is 12% at risk, not 19%. But also, I think those proficiency scores are too high (perhaps including 3s). If you look at the just-released OSSE report cards, the % for ELA and Math proficiency for "Economically Disadvantaged" students (which is a slightly different, but actually slightly broader group typically when it comes to elementary schools) is:

For Maury: 23.7% and 8.3% proficient

For Miner: <5% and <5% proficient (https://schoolreportcard.dc.gov/lea/1/school/280/report)

Same overall picture. The merge would likely help some for ELA and not very much for Math. But overall, a much more grim picture of how much ED kids are being failed (though definitely not just by these two schools, the picture is similar at most other schools).

The other issue is that Maury’s success with at-risk kids has completely cratered since the pandemic and not recovered to the same extent as other kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here are the at-risk proficiency numbers for Miner and Maury.

Miner (71% at risk)

ELA 15.9
Math 21

Maury (19% at risk)

ELA 55.3
Math 27.8

So, merging the two schools would probably improve ELA scores somewhat for Miner and lower them for Maury. The math scores are bad at both schools for at-risk, so there would be less change there

I'm confused why this is being evaluated on what the scores would look like on day 1. It seems the concerns being expressed have to do with how the school will be ranked as opposed to how it will impact the kids who need help the most. It's obvious that average scores would decline at Maury right off the bat but kids on or above grade level will still be on or above grade level.

No, that’s not what we are talking about. We are talking about how Maury does currently with at-risk students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are many valid reasons to oppose the cluster but commute times are not one of them - the two schools are literally like 5 blocks apart straight down Tennessee Ave. 10 min walk, 3 min drive.

The fact you are conceiving of it as a drive is part of the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can you cite that research? I’ve been trying to read up on peer effects in education but it seems like there’s tons of confounding in most studies. Also seems like a pretty active debate over whether peer effects should be theorized/modeled to be symmetrical (e.g., high and low achievers converge on the mean) or asymmetrical (low achievers helped while high achievers unaffected or less affected).

Some was posted earlier -- check out p.97

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are many valid reasons to oppose the cluster but commute times are not one of them - the two schools are literally like 5 blocks apart straight down Tennessee Ave. 10 min walk, 3 min drive.

The fact you are conceiving of it as a drive is part of the problem.

Lol people like you are not helping the cause with trying to make dumb santic points. He said 10 min walk. It is also a 3min bike if you'd prefer to say that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are many valid reasons to oppose the cluster but commute times are not one of them - the two schools are literally like 5 blocks apart straight down Tennessee Ave. 10 min walk, 3 min drive.

The fact you are conceiving of it as a drive is part of the problem.

Lol people like you are not helping the cause with trying to make dumb semantic points. He said 10 min walk. It is also a 3min bike if you'd prefer to say that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are many valid reasons to oppose the cluster but commute times are not one of them - the two schools are literally like 5 blocks apart straight down Tennessee Ave. 10 min walk, 3 min drive.

The fact you are conceiving of it as a drive is part of the problem.

Lol people like you are not helping the cause with trying to make dumb semantic points. He said 10 min walk. It is also a 3min bike if you'd prefer to say that.

My point wasn’t semantic. Most Maury families drop off on foot. Yes, it’s not a long drive; no, most Maury families don’t want to drive to school nor could the infrastructure around Maury support that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are many valid reasons to oppose the cluster but commute times are not one of them - the two schools are literally like 5 blocks apart straight down Tennessee Ave. 10 min walk, 3 min drive.

The fact you are conceiving of it as a drive is part of the problem.

Lol people like you are not helping the cause with trying to make dumb semantic points. He said 10 min walk. It is also a 3min bike if you'd prefer to say that.

My point wasn’t semantic. Most Maury families drop off on foot. Yes, it’s not a long drive; no, most Maury families don’t want to drive to school nor could the infrastructure around Maury support that.

The drivers are already nuts at pick up and drop off. Anything that increases the number of families commuting by car is a big problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are many valid reasons to oppose the cluster but commute times are not one of them - the two schools are literally like 5 blocks apart straight down Tennessee Ave. 10 min walk, 3 min drive.

The fact you are conceiving of it as a drive is part of the problem.

Lol people like you are not helping the cause with trying to make dumb semantic points. He said 10 min walk. It is also a 3min bike if you'd prefer to say that.

My point wasn’t semantic. Most Maury families drop off on foot. Yes, it’s not a long drive; no, most Maury families don’t want to drive to school nor could the infrastructure around Maury support that.

The point is that people saying they can't be inconvenienced to walk 10 extra minutes (yeah I know, 10 minutes each way) are coming off as extremely entitled and are not helping the Maury cause by distracting from the real issues

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let Basis take over Miner and run it as an IB elementary. I am dead serious.

You can be as serious as you want, a charter LEA cannot run a neighborhood DCPS. Next suggestion.

sure it can. if they can close two schools and combine them into an US/LS cluster, they can appoint a turnaround operator to take over a failed school.

I know you are just being trollish but no, those aren't the same thing. Miner and Maury are both DCPS schools and DCPS is in charge of them and can do what it likes with them (or the mayor can, through DCPS). Legally, a charter company could not be brought in to run a DCPS. It would violate agreements with both the teachers and principals unions, as well as rules about how schools are governed and what curriculum they use.

It would be great if we could stick to good faith, plausible solutions to this problem instead of just engaging in nihilistic sarcasm.

Sure but the point stands that DCPS could fix Miner but instead wants to bury its problems by merging it with Maury.

Does DME want to fix Miner at all? All I heard is that it wants SES balance. Whether that actually improves educational outcomes for anyone has never been explained or shown in any DME meeting I attended. That's the entire problem here. People are assuming DME wants to improve educational outcomes, when DME has never actually said that.

For what it's worth, I believe the DME and the mayor want to improve education outcomes to the extent that any politician ever wants this. In their ideal world, I think they would successfully improve education in DC, everyone would be happy, and they'd be showered with accolades [and high paid consulting positions upon their retirement from DC government].

However, actually doing this in DC is hard, and as you can see from this thread, it is extremely hard to balance the competing interests of different constituencies in the schools. So I think if a pathway that doesn't actually improve outcomes at Miner is not presented, the DME and mayor would be fine doing something that simply hides the problem (i.e. force a cluster against the wishes of families at Maury, thus magically equalizing demographics and test scores between the two schools by making them one school.

Which is why I think if you oppose the cluster, it's actually worth it to engage seriously in considering alternative proposals that might actually improve Miner and/or address demographic inequities that Maury families could support or even participate in. Being sarcastic and throwing out proposals that will never happen (like a Miner/SWS cluster, having BASIS take over Miner, closing Miner and having it rezoned to a group of schools that have the same demographic inequities, etc.) doesn't actually do anything and may ultimately work against building a coalition to oppose the cluster. It also tends to antagonize Miner families who genuinely want solutions to this problem, when creating an alliance would be a better approach.

The viable alternatives that have been presented are (1) at-risk set-asides, (2) re-drawing the boundaries, and (3) choice sets.

Agreed. I think it would be worth it for Maury families opposed to the cluster to look at these options, think about how they would serve the goals the DME has outlined, consider how they would impact Maury and why they are preferable to a cluster, and finally: go to the town hall and make these arguments out loud to the DME.

I don't think we should discount (4) figuring out how to fix the issues at Miner. Fundamentally, options that draw kids (who have the resources/interest to attend elsewhere) away from the school make it harder to improve the school, and all of the kids in that boundary deserve a Miner that works a lot better than it does now. As someone pointed out earlier, Miner significantly underperforms expectations even considering its at-risk percentage, and there are DCPS schools right here in DC who have similar at-risk populations (albeit perhaps with other unknown differences) and much better outcomes. Nationwide, there are plenty of high-performing high-poverty schools. If we just throw up our hands and say, well the kids can go elsewhere if they don't like it, we will never get to the root of the problem.

Step 1: hire a principal who isn’t spending all day going to pound town with a staff member.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are many valid reasons to oppose the cluster but commute times are not one of them - the two schools are literally like 5 blocks apart straight down Tennessee Ave. 10 min walk, 3 min drive.

You do know that (1) during morning drop off it’s actually a shitshow in the neighborhood and (2) you don’t just have to drive there, you have to park, get your kid out, get their backpack out, walk them in, walk back to your car, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are many valid reasons to oppose the cluster but commute times are not one of them - the two schools are literally like 5 blocks apart straight down Tennessee Ave. 10 min walk, 3 min drive.

The fact you are conceiving of it as a drive is part of the problem.

Lol people like you are not helping the cause with trying to make dumb semantic points. He said 10 min walk. It is also a 3min bike if you'd prefer to say that.

My point wasn’t semantic. Most Maury families drop off on foot. Yes, it’s not a long drive; no, most Maury families don’t want to drive to school nor could the infrastructure around Maury support that.

The point is that people saying they can't be inconvenienced to walk 10 extra minutes (yeah I know, 10 minutes each way) are coming off as extremely entitled and are not helping the Maury cause by distracting from the real issues

It is more than 10 minutes to walk to Miner with my pre-k kid. Plus it's having to make two drop offs/pick ups instead of one for families with more than one kid. People have explained this over and over. But the actual point is that we've seen no evidence that the proposed cluster would improve academic outcomes such that it might justify these logistical burdens.