New to DCI-Anything we should know?

[Anonymous]

Different poster. You asked which DC public middle school provided rigor across the board. An answer was given: none (apparently, even BASIS offers lame English and language instruction). Reasonable answer.

If anybody's trolling it's you, mate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, this thread could give you the impression that nobody at DCI cares about students scoring high on IBD or being admitted to highly competitive colleges. That's not true. There's a group of us that does care and has since the feeder and middle school years. We support one another. It's just that we're low-key about our ambitions and extra prep to avoid becoming lightning rods for accusations of elitism and tiger parenting.

One thing some of us do is collect and share Oxford IB subject study guides and have kids get together to work with tutors with IB exam prep experience.

My eldest just returned from the UK where they attended a 10-day mid-IBD subject review program (post 11th grade) with Oxford Study Courses. We know a DCI family who did the same thing in Vienna with IBWise in conjunction w/a vacation. A few of the families are considering sending younger sibs to Sevenoaks school in Kent, England next summer for a couple weeks of intensive prep for Higher Level subjects. The program isn't all that expensive if the kids stay off campus w/a parent chaperone.

Just because we can't afford WIS and won't move to MoCo for IBD doesn't mean that we're not investing in aiming high. There will be more of us at DCI in the future. Good luck, OP.

Based on your post, I know a bunch of middle school parents, incoming and current, who would be interested in connecting with you to learn more.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:New executive director last year and new middle school principal this year. There has been lots of staff turnover. The new leadership is focused on making it more rigorous and working to improved instruction so that all kids are engaged.

If you step back far enough DCUM threads provide a pretty clear illustration of why public education is so hard and why DC does it so poorly. Here we have a number of families clamoring for more rigor and more true immersion. They want their kids challenged and in classes with other kids at or above grade level. On any BASIS thread (or any thread where it ultimately becomes about BASIS) people lob unfounded complaints about the school forcing kids out or failing to provide IEP supports. There's also the usual suspects chiming in to argue that BASIS and DCI and Latin should have to have demographics that match DC - a recipe for failing schools across the board. SH threads usually boil down to complaints about refusal to track, or some super secret tracking that exists but that SH doesn't openly talk about. Deal and JR threads seem at bottom to be wealthy folks who use public school as a social core and have means and desire to supplement and rise to their "real" station in life when college comes. The common thread throughout is the usual suspects who seem more interested in virtue signaling than educating children, or people who have come to grips with the fact that DC schools are not there to fully educate their kids.

I remain convinced that the majority of DC residents (black, white, brown, etc.) at all socioeconomic levels want their kids to receive a quality education. The challenge in DC is that the virtue signaling, SJW, apologists for bad parenting and bad behaviors consume a disproportionate amount of oxygen and use social media and access to uneducated Councilmembers (Trayon) to perpetuate the current system and win the day with dumb arguments about how social promotion and "graduating" kids with 6th grade educations is less harmful than alternatives.

If you look, around, "wealthy folks" in DC public schools with the "means and desire to supplement" to help their children achieve aren't confined to Upper NW these days. These folks amalgamate not only at Deal and JR but at Walls, BASIS, Latin I and to a lesser extent at Banneker and DCI. We know EotP families at Walls and BASIS who quietly team up to hire tutors to provide small group AP prep/review. Some of these parents send their children to pre-college AP summer programs on college campuses. The fact that this type of pricey supplementing is kicking in at DCI for IBD exam prep and language immersion, if just in a small way, shouldn't come as a surprise. Many UMC DC families with children in public middle and high schools can afford 5K, 10K, even 15K in academic enrichment per student annually, just not the 30-50K+ to cover tuition and fees at non-sectarian private schools in the area.

If DCI admins were more on the ball, they'd team up with OSSE to help low and moderate-income students access summer IBD programs abroad. OSSE has been providing grants to fund AP prep on college campuses for a small number of high-achieving low SES DCPS students for years. I tutor an excellent at-risk DCPS student who won a grant from OSSE to spend the month of July at an AP prep residential program on an Ivy League campus. She tells me that her family paid nothing for her to attend.

Here is the link for the OSSE summer study program:
https://osse.dc.gov/page/osse-scholars-summer-college-programs

These are general academic programs, not specifically tailored to APs. No reason they wouldn’t work for DCI students too. It’s not like IB requires some esoteric skill set that schools like Stanford, Yale and Chicago haven’t heard of.

Sort of. The dozen college partners for the OSSE summer study program mostly offer AP exam test prep. Click around on the pre-college summer programs for partners to see that this is true. As was noted earlier on this thread, DCI's college counselors don't encourage students to double up on AP exams with substantial crossover content with IBD exams, even though doubling up has long been standard practice in high-performing IBD programs in this country. Some IBD exams lend themselves much better to AP test prep than others, e.g. AP Human Geography, AP French, Spanish and Chinese, AP Chemistry, Biology and Physics. There's a reason that a few ambitious DCI families of means have started sending teens to the UK and Austria in the summer, or live-streaming Oxford Study Courses 5 hours behind DC time, for IBD-specific exam prep. Diploma exams are quite different from AP exams. There's no multiple choice on IBD exams; they're a lot like college blue book exams, and IBD math is mixed, like Singapore Math (vs. the College Board testing just for Calculus or Stats). This year, the IBD exams will start going on computers, meaning that typing answers fast will become key to success.

[Anonymous]

+1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Different poster. You asked which DC public middle school provided rigor across the board. An answer was given: none (apparently, even BASIS offers lame English and language instruction). Reasonable answer.

If anybody's trolling it's you, mate.

Clearly that must be a fact if someone posted it to DCUM.

[Anonymous]

It's all relative. Most of the DCI parents we got to know in the program seemed to think the school's language instruction was fantastic. We're Europeans who thought it was just OK, helping explain why we aren't returning in the fall.

The fact that BASIS won't allow students to study modern languages before 8th grade seems hopeless to. But I don't hear BASIS parents complaining about the policy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's all relative. Most of the DCI parents we got to know in the program seemed to think the school's language instruction was fantastic. We're Europeans who thought it was just OK, helping explain why we aren't returning in the fall.

The fact that BASIS won't allow students to study modern languages before 8th grade seems hopeless to. But I don't hear BASIS parents complaining about the policy.

BASIS parent here. I wish they started languages earlier but like every other parent at BASIS I knew what I was signing up for. The foreign language deficiency was compensated for many times over by the myriad other things BASIS does well, including the overall focus on academics above all else. As someone who took foreign languages (2) at an elite private boarding school as well as in college I also know that no one becomes fluent in a foreign language merely by taking a class in MS. This outsized focus about lack of foreign language in 6th and 7th is a red herring from people with bee in their bonnet.

No one who sends their kids to a public school in DC (DCPS or charter) is getting the best education. We are all making judgments about what we can afford and what our priorities are.

[Anonymous]

Wow. Fascinating that Basis parents troll DCI threads. Must feel threatened or something.....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. Fascinating that Basis parents troll DCI threads. Must feel threatened or something.....

And vice versa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's all relative. Most of the DCI parents we got to know in the program seemed to think the school's language instruction was fantastic. We're Europeans who thought it was just OK, helping explain why we aren't returning in the fall.

The fact that BASIS won't allow students to study modern languages before 8th grade seems hopeless to. But I don't hear BASIS parents complaining about the policy.

I’m a BASIS parent. The reason I don’t complain about the language policy is because my kid has already been learning a language (not taught at BASIS) outside of school. The lack of mandatory language at lower grades at BASIS is perfect for us, because he now has time to master this language, and then take on a new one in 8th grade.

I know other families like this, but haven’t asked them if this is the reason they don’t complain.

[Anonymous]

Wrong. Parents don’t complain about much at DC charter schools because there’s no point. You choose to check in your right to reasonable policies when you enroll your child. DCI’s refusal to track in core subjects, other than math, is as obtuse as BASIS’ insistence that all students study beginning languages and 7th grade algebra or even harder math. These aren’t good policies; they don’t represent best practices in middle school education in this country yet are immutable. Those with the means to leave public schools while staying in their District communities do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow. Fascinating that Basis parents troll DCI threads. Must feel threatened or something.....

You must be new here. Every DC middle school thread ends up discussing these schools regardless of what the original topic was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wrong. Parents don’t complain about much at DC charter schools because there’s no point. You choose to check in your right to reasonable policies when you enroll your child. DCI’s refusal to track in core subjects, other than math, is as obtuse as BASIS’ insistence that all students study beginning languages and 7th grade algebra or even harder math. These aren’t good policies; they don’t represent best practices in middle school education in this country yet are immutable. Those with the means to leave public schools while staying in their District communities do.

I love when the WTU chimes in with this tired old line. As if DCPS schools allow parents to design their own curriculum. Go away.
We have school choice. Parents choose BASIS or DCI with full knowledge of what they offer. The idea that anyone who works in a DCPS school would preach about "best practices" in education is laughable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wrong. Parents don’t complain about much at DC charter schools because there’s no point. You choose to check in your right to reasonable policies when you enroll your child. DCI’s refusal to track in core subjects, other than math, is as obtuse as BASIS’ insistence that all students study beginning languages and 7th grade algebra or even harder math. These aren’t good policies; they don’t represent best practices in middle school education in this country yet are immutable. Those with the means to leave public schools while staying in their District communities do.

I love when the WTU chimes in with this tired old line. As if DCPS schools allow parents to design their own curriculum. Go away.
We have school choice. Parents choose BASIS or DCI with full knowledge of what they offer. The idea that anyone who works in a DCPS school would preach about "best practices" in education is laughable.

The PP ended their comment by saying “Those with the means to leave public schools while staying in their District communities do.” They’re not a WTU supporter, they’re a private school supporter pointing out that despite early hopes within the movement, charters have not become competitive with privates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wrong. Parents don’t complain about much at DC charter schools because there’s no point. You choose to check in your right to reasonable policies when you enroll your child. DCI’s refusal to track in core subjects, other than math, is as obtuse as BASIS’ insistence that all students study beginning languages and 7th grade algebra or even harder math. These aren’t good policies; they don’t represent best practices in middle school education in this country yet are immutable. Those with the means to leave public schools while staying in their District communities do.

I love when the WTU chimes in with this tired old line. As if DCPS schools allow parents to design their own curriculum. Go away.
We have school choice. Parents choose BASIS or DCI with full knowledge of what they offer. The idea that anyone who works in a DCPS school would preach about "best practices" in education is laughable.

The PP ended their comment by saying “Those with the means to leave public schools while staying in their District communities do.” They’re not a WTU supporter, they’re a private school supporter pointing out that despite early hopes within the movement, charters have not become competitive with privates.

You might want to work on your reading comprehension. Poster specifically made reference to Charter schools (as opposed to DCPS).