Hill Middle Schools
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Anonymous
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LOL. So now the line is that we’re selfish people who care only about our own kids?
What happened to the above posters who suggested we don’t care enough about our own kids? Were they completely wrong? Also, which schools are upper-income parents supposed to send their kids to in order to avoid taking away opportunities from less-privileged kids?!? Is moving out of DC or going private the only acceptable option? |
Anonymous
NP. Yikes more than 60% of kids at SH are well below grade level in math. Only 2% scoring a 5 and only 12% scoring a 4. That’s ugly. |
Anonymous
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Spare us your OT yikes. Have you ever set foot in SH?
My kid tested out of 6th grade math at SH, took pre-algebra in 6th, algebra in 7th this year. That's BASIS level math. SH tracks extensively for math for the small number of kids who can handle acceleration. If your kid is advanced in math at SH they wind up in math classes with a dozen kids and great teachers. Really. |
Anonymous
Watch out. Now someone’s either going to tell you that the opportunities at SH aren’t good enough and that you’re depriving your kid — or that you’re being completely selfish by accepting the great opportunities that SH offers rather than letting someone else’s kid have them. Which one is it, people? Quick to it! |
Anonymous
12 students per teacher for privileged math classes does not sound very equitable. |
Anonymous
Actually, all children being appropriately challenged in math is equitable. |
Anonymous
Are they though, when most of the other kids are getting low results in math? This sounds more like resource hoarding by the few at the expense of everyone else. |
Anonymous
Are you joking? This is middle school. Some kids come in to SH 4-5 grade levels behind. Not getting them up to a 4 is not akin to resource hoarding. I actually believe there should be a remedial math track and that it would be more effective, but DCPS doesn't allow it. |
Anonymous
So why don't the kids who are behind get a special 1:12 teacher ratio? |
Anonymous
If they aren't being challenged, forbidding an advanced math class isn't going to fix it. If the advanced students have to be in with students who are getting lower results, that means the teacher of that classroom has to differentiate across a really wide range of grade levels, and the students at lower levels get less attention and focus than they would otherwise. Or the upper level kids just have to be bored, I guess, maybe that's what equity means to you but I don't think it's very good. Ideally each class would have a more cost-effective class size of 20-25 kids, and I have no doubt that Stuart-Hobson would like to build its math program to that level. But as long as kids are coming in way below grade level, it's going to be hard to get them up to "advanced" in the three years they spend at Stuart-Hobson. You can talk about "de-tracking" etc. and implement various improvements, but the bottom line is that three years is a very short time to catch up when some kids are at the 3rd grade level and others are already ready for pre-algebra or even Algebra 1. If you want an advanced math class to exist, so that students of all races and backgrounds can have their appropriate level of challenge, then there has to be an advanced math class, or at least a group within a class. Otherwise low-income kids just don't get to be in advanced math classes at all. Is that equitable? |
Anonymous
Sometimes they do. Sometimes the lowest-level class size is small because there aren't a lot of kids at that level. At some schools a co-teacher specializing in special education math joining the classroom so the student-teacher ratio is 1:12 or whatever, even if the class size is typical at 24 or so. I'm not sure if this is how Stuart-Hobson does it, but it's definitely a thing elsewhere. And the class size in self-contained classrooms is even lower. Maybe learn more about SPED and budgets before you get salty. The high-level kids have a small ratio because there aren't enough of them to fill up the class. But it's not because the school actually wants it to be that way. They would much prefer to have a full class, they don't have it right now but that's the goal, and if you destroy it for being small then it will never happen. Some kids will leave the school and others just won't get to have an advanced math class at all, even though they could have done the work. Is that what you want? There are lots of reasons a class size can be small. Sometimes elective classes are small because not as many kids opted in. Sometimes a non-classroom space isn't physically large enough for a lot of students to be allowed. And if we're going to talk costs, the kids who are behind likely have IEPs and get various services and accommodations and staff for their IEPs. So in general, at a school like Stuart-Hobson, they're probably spending more on kids who are below grade level, on average, even if small class size isn't how that is achieved. The research on small class sizes isn't super compelling, and adds a lot of cost, staffing need, and physical space need, so it isn't the intervention of choice. |
Anonymous
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I’m glad to hear SH is doing this with math.
That said- the objections here to having an advanced math class completely sum up why we moved off the hill. In no other part of America would you have UMC parents complaining that their kids were offered too many opportunities to succeed. |
Anonymous
So the most advanced math offered at SH is BASIS standard math classes? |
Anonymous
Why did more than a third of Basis students test below grade level on math on the latest PARCC? |
Anonymous
| Some of these posts are ridiculous. I think it would be inequitable if DCPS were to only try to offer advanced math at Deal. Washington Latin only has 5% of students getting 5s on PARCC math. |