New to looking at Capitol Hill DCPS. Any majority high SES schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not?

The demographics are not there. There is no critical mass of Hill families sufficient to fill an MS. Hence, the only path to a high-performing MS is a city-wide solution but G&T programs will not be implemented by DCPS, because the optics would be politically challenging (there would be too many white & asian kids). Ergo, the only way to do it is for charters to come in that are challenging enough, such that anyone who is not academically high-performing will drop out. Latin, Basis, DCI... but nothing from DCPS.

This is just silly. You're telling me that if Brent, Maury, and the Cluster were all feeders to the same middle school, they couldn't fill Stuart-Hobson? That's just objectively wrong.

That would work, but how?

If Brent, Watkins and Maury fed into SH it would be popular - too popular. In a few short years it would be a middle class school. But there is not enough room in SH for the grads from those schools. Watkins has over 100 fifth graders, Maury and Brent have (or would have) another 100 - more than SH can accommodate. And that doesn't include the other SH feeders . . .

And who wants to tell JO Wilson and Ludlow Taylor they no longer feed into SH? You? You Lieutenant Weinberg ?!?! (A Few Good Men reference).

Also, DCPS must justify spending lots of money for IB programs in Eliot Hine and Jefferson, only to have the target populations for these programs no longer feed into these schools?

How many affluent parents will risk keeping their kid in Brent or Maury or Watkins for fifth grade (or earlier) and risk it on a program at SH that might be good, when Latin has a great program and new building, and BASIS has an emerging program that looks promising, and/or they can afford privates or the suburbs? People buying expensive houses in-bounds for Brent, Watkins and Maury will increasingly demand strong options, and they will be increasingly intolerant with DCPS's mediocre offerings. Parents at Watkins and Brent are already uncomfortable with the strength of their elementary schools in the upper grades, and middle school is even more difficult to get right.

Demographics (not a DCPS plan) forced JKLMM schools to improve, and that in turn improved Deal and Wilson. Those schools all have no concentrations of poverty in their catchment areas. Hill schools have a different set of demographics to work with - and they are not favorable in the near to mid term for a middle school to emerge as a strong option for more affluent families. Ward Six has more public housing than any other Ward (per Tommy Wells) and with significant unused capacity in its three middle schools, it becomes difficult to establish a middle class school because there is so much poverty in DC and parents from Wards 8, 7, 5 and even 4 would send their kids to emerging strong middle schools in Ward 6 - just as Deal and Hardy and SH have large enrollments from those areas. Okay, there is a chance that a Hill school with the middle class as a minority might work if DCPS suddenly became an amazing organization that figured out how to do it right. But again, people buying million dollar homes don't want their kid to be the trial balloon in a DCPS competency test.

[Anonymous]

Ward 6 also has a huge amount of development and investment going on - at least $4 billion along the waterfront, ecodistrict and so on. That's bound to put some pressures on the demographic as well.

[Anonymous]

I hate to say it, but keeping middle and upper class families of all sorts through middle school on Capitol Hill is as simple ( and as complicated ) as dcps creating an academic magnet or test in middle school program. That's it. Done. No more losing kids to basis, Latin or suburbs.

When Hill parents told dcps that an IB middle years program would keep them from leaving the system, many also said there needed to also be a way to have a school with at least half the kids starting able to read and do math on grade level. DCPS went for the IB without the mechanism for creating a cohort that wasn't a majority of students needing remediation. That's gonna be a hard sell.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I hate to say it, but keeping middle and upper class families of all sorts through middle school on Capitol Hill is as simple ( and as complicated ) as dcps creating an academic magnet or test in middle school program. That's it. Done. No more losing kids to basis, Latin or suburbs.

When Hill parents told dcps that an IB middle years program would keep them from leaving the system, many also said there needed to also be a way to have a school with at least half the kids starting able to read and do math on grade level. DCPS went for the IB without the mechanism for creating a cohort that wasn't a majority of students needing remediation. That's gonna be a hard sell.

+1 But they lack the political will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not?

The demographics are not there. There is no critical mass of Hill families sufficient to fill an MS. Hence, the only path to a high-performing MS is a city-wide solution but G&T programs will not be implemented by DCPS, because the optics would be politically challenging (there would be too many white & asian kids). Ergo, the only way to do it is for charters to come in that are challenging enough, such that anyone who is not academically high-performing will drop out. Latin, Basis, DCI... but nothing from DCPS.

This is just silly. You're telling me that if Brent, Maury, and the Cluster were all feeders to the same middle school, they couldn't fill Stuart-Hobson? That's just objectively wrong.

They can't all have SH, it's that simple. There are other schools already filling SH, and it is full.

So, Brent gets Jefferson instead. Maury gets EH. the Cluster gets SH. There is no funnel in the DCPS system that gets the highest-performing ES students on the Hill into the same MS. And since neither EH nor Jefferson are at capacity there's certainly no perceived need (from DCPS's point of view) for a new MS.

If I'm the parent of a 4th grader at Brent, I'm going to jump to Latin or Basis next year. Without a critical mass of high-performing students it is very hard (not impossible - KIPP, but very, very hard) to have a high-performing school. The only mechanism to get the highest-performing students at the best ESs on the Hill into the same MS, is G&T. But DCPS is not interested in G&T. Hence the dilemma.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

They can't all have SH, it's that simple. There are other schools already filling SH, and it is full.

So, Brent gets Jefferson instead. Maury gets EH. the Cluster gets SH. There is no funnel in the DCPS system that gets the highest-performing ES students on the Hill into the same MS. And since neither EH nor Jefferson are at capacity there's certainly no perceived need (from DCPS's point of view) for a new MS.

If I'm the parent of a 4th grader at Brent, I'm going to jump to Latin or Basis next year. Without a critical mass of high-performing students it is very hard (not impossible - KIPP, but very, very hard) to have a high-performing school. The only mechanism to get the highest-performing students at the best ESs on the Hill into the same MS, is G&T. But DCPS is not interested in G&T. Hence the dilemma.

And hence, DCPS will continue to lose students to Basis and Latin and elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

What is a "FARM"? I can't handle all the acronyms on this site. I guess its because there are so many government workers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:here is the inside scoop for Brent.

the boundry actually includes a lot of low income housing, but the housing does not look like traditional "public housing." There is a soup kitchen just around the block from Brent and and two others within three blocks, that I know of. There is a homeless shelter and a home for battered women-- but again, they are not obvious from the outside. The neighborhood is generally appalled that it is becoming so difficult for working class people to afford to live in the neighborhood and is working very hard to ensure more low to moderate income housing stock is added to the area.

Off topic, but how do you propose adding more housing stock to the neighborhood? Are you advocating developing the Congressional parking lots?

You must be joking. NO ONE in the Brent boundary is "appalled" at how the neighborhood (and school) is developing/improving etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:here is the inside scoop for Brent.

the boundry actually includes a lot of low income housing, but the housing does not look like traditional "public housing." There is a soup kitchen just around the block from Brent and and two others within three blocks, that I know of. There is a homeless shelter and a home for battered women-- but again, they are not obvious from the outside. The neighborhood is generally appalled that it is becoming so difficult for working class people to afford to live in the neighborhood and is working very hard to ensure more low to moderate income housing stock is added to the area.

Off topic, but how do you propose adding more housing stock to the neighborhood? Are you advocating developing the Congressional parking lots?

You must be joking. NO ONE in the Brent boundary is "appalled" at how the neighborhood (and school) is developing/improving etc.

+1. That's a cuckoo post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is a "FARM"? I can't handle all the acronyms on this site. I guess its because there are so many government workers?

You resurrected a two year old thread to ask this question? Really?

FARM = Free And Reduced Meals. ie. poor kids.