By the numbers: A dispassioned evaluation of Hardy (compared to Deal and Wilson)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To OP -- if you haven't hung out on DCUM much, you wouldn't know (but might guess!) that 17:10 is using a typical tactic to try to enrage and insult you so that you'll leave in a huff and leave her alone in whatever fantasy she wants to construct.

Please don't go for it.

excuse me, I am asking him to stand by his truth telling, backed by statistics, that he moralized about above
FACT: I never referred to the white population at Basis because it was not a factor in my analysis
FACT: he quoted one stat from a profile from 2015 about our FARMS population NOW
and then quoted another directly below about the number of white students who took the DC CAS in 2013,
and implied he was referring to the same population, and that these statistics proved it had not changed over time

REALITY? based on real statistics? You can look them up

Basis DC took the DC CAS twice, hence my reference to the DC CAS of 2014 (which refers to the kids who were in 5th-8th grade in the school year of 2013-2014) which somehow, in his analysis, morphed into my denial of the composition of the Basis population in what he called "2014" which is actually the year 2014-2015 - who are taking the PARCC.

Since for me this was all about DC CAS scores and FARMS populations, I again challenge OP to prove me "unhinged"

cite one statistic from a reputable source (I get that the charter board is stating the population of 2013-2014 as 2014-2015, and so should everyone else) that proves that

Basis DC, in the only two years we ever took [/b]the DC CAS (2013 when we opened and 2014)
had a similar FARMS population to the other two in the top 3 - Alice Deal and Washington Latin

and the results were
2013
1) Deal (who I believe has a lot of white kids, but again this was not my focus - but very few FARMS kids
2) Washington Latin (much higher AA population, but again not a lot suffering from poverty)
3) Basis DC (I believe we were 37% FARMS that year but am not positive)
2014
1) Deal (whose population had not changed significantly)
2) Basis (this may have been the only year we were Title I - but we were Title I according to OSSE = 40% + FARMS
3) Washington Latin (again population did not change but for some reason charter board demoted them to Tier 2)

These are FACTS my friend, and when the IB people are talking about Hardy and then Latin and Basis and saying it clearly is not about race but some perception of inferiority is it about FARMS? I have no clue.

Perhaps you should investigate instead of calling me names and letting my ex husband pile on (I recognize him)

This ought to be right up your alley, as an adult, as an economist, and as a member of the population of DC
Where everyone says the only way that non-white FARMS kids can succeed is at KIPP or DC Prep

[Anonymous]

sorry BASIS DC had a completely dissimilar FARMS population to the populations at Deal and Washington Latin
First we were told that with that population we would flail on the DC CAS b/c of our population
that the DC CAS would prove the emperor had clothes in Arizona but not in DC which was not full of white people
then once the scores came out in 2013 we were told it had to do with self selection
and in 2014? Dead silence

and now all these people are crowing about how we have shifted in one year from being a Title I school (which means over 40% FARMS and extra help from OSSE) to 27% FARMS like what Basis accomplished was nothing

it was a hell of a lot, and it was one hell of a struggle
don't ever deny it - at least while my kids are still there, because I will be here to call you out, every time

what is the FARMS population at HARDy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To OP -- if you haven't hung out on DCUM much, you wouldn't know (but might guess!) that 17:10 is using a typical tactic to try to enrage and insult you so that you'll leave in a huff and leave her alone in whatever fantasy she wants to construct.

Please don't go for it.

excuse me, I am asking him to stand by his truth telling, backed by statistics, that he moralized about above
FACT: I never referred to the white population at Basis because it was not a factor in my analysis
FACT: he quoted one stat from a profile from 2015 about our FARMS population NOW
and then quoted another directly below about the number of white students who took the DC CAS in 2013,
and implied he was referring to the same population, and that these statistics proved it had not changed over time

REALITY? based on real statistics? You can look them up

Basis DC took the DC CAS twice, hence my reference to the DC CAS of 2014 (which refers to the kids who were in 5th-8th grade in the school year of 2013-2014) which somehow, in his analysis, morphed into my denial of the composition of the Basis population in what he called "2014" which is actually the year 2014-2015 - who are taking the PARCC.

Since for me this was all about DC CAS scores and FARMS populations, I again challenge OP to prove me "unhinged"

cite one statistic from a reputable source (I get that the charter board is stating the population of 2013-2014 as 2014-2015, and so should everyone else) that proves that

Basis DC, in the only two years we ever took [/b]the DC CAS (2013 when we opened and 2014)
had a similar FARMS population to the other two in the top 3 - Alice Deal and Washington Latin

and the results were
2013
1) Deal (who I believe has a lot of white kids, but again this was not my focus - but very few FARMS kids
2) Washington Latin (much higher AA population, but again not a lot suffering from poverty)
3) Basis DC (I believe we were 37% FARMS that year but am not positive)
2014
1) Deal (whose population had not changed significantly)
2) Basis (this may have been the only year we were Title I - but we were Title I according to OSSE = 40% + FARMS
3) Washington Latin (again population did not change but for some reason charter board demoted them to Tier 2)

These are FACTS my friend, and when the IB people are talking about Hardy and then Latin and Basis and saying it clearly is not about race but some perception of inferiority is it about FARMS? I have no clue.

Perhaps you should investigate instead of calling me names and letting my ex husband pile on (I recognize him)

This ought to be right up your alley, as an adult, as an economist, and as a member of the population of DC
Where everyone says the only way that non-white FARMS kids can succeed is at KIPP or DC Prep

FACT: EVERYBODY does not say that -- I don't for instance, and you provide no statistic backing up your perception of others' perception of KIP/DCP

FACT: OP can't "let" your ex pile on you here - he and the rest of us are just writing on a message board, not interfering in you personal life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op Here.

Thanks. The previous poster is unhinged. I'm not bothered by it. We can ignore her while the adults have a conversation.

OP, a few things.

First, thanks again for hanging in there and putting up with the off-topic and downright weird posts.

I think that maybe you should examine some of your assumptions. The first would be, the assumption that you are one of few economists analyzing this, among the DCUM and greater DC parent population. There are many of us with advanced degrees in economics or other quantitative subjects, working in quantitative fields, etc. I have been too lazy to dust off Mas-Colell for this debate (or whatever the kids are reading these days), but I'm no stranger to analyzing data or to game theory and I am sure that goes for many other parents and posters here. So by all means do your best to add to the debate, but please stop assuming that everyone else lives in a data-free or logic-free zone. Discarding this assumption will improve your analysis, because it will force you to accept the assumption of perfect information where it is appropriate, and therefore force you to dig deeper in your theorizing as to why parents avoid Hardy.

Which brings me to the second assumption or related set of assumptions. You have assumed or concluded (I cannot tell which) that there is an information problem here. Specifically, you think that many parents IB for Hardy are unaware that: 1) "white" kids score well wherever they attend; 2) white kids in DC score better than anywhere else in the country (no quotation marks here, as the published data on this one is based on race); 3) when you control for demographics, Hardy's test scores look a lot like Deal's, or Deal's of several years ago; and so on.

I know a lot of people who are white, literally and in the broader sense that you define in your first post. I bet that the vast majority and perhaps every single one of them is aware of the above. The one about white kids in DC scoring the highest in the nation, for example, has been published in the Post and elsewhere, and widely discussed among parents IRL and on DCUM. It's strong proof of your central thesis, which seems to be that if your kid is "white", your kid will do well at Hardy. So, quite the opposite of assuming informational asymmetry, you should assume that everybody knows the above 3 facts, and that everybody knows that everybody knows, etc to infinity. You are not presenting us with anything new in the analysis of test scores in your first post. We all know this, and we know that everyone else knows it too.

So the main problem with your model is that it assumes information problems when in fact we have perfect information ***regarding the likely outcomes of "white" kids***. (BTW if you were more familiar with DCUM, you would use "high-SES" to designate this. This is considered the politically correct way to express this on DCUM. I am not criticizing you, just letting you know FYI.)

Where we lack perfect information, is of course, regarding whether all the other families at the 5th to 6th grade transition will choose Hardy. Here, game theory is appropriate, because we do not have perfect information. This leads to the prisoner's dilemma or coordination problem.

Here I have a smaller quibble with you. You state up-thread that private school is not dominant, and the prisoner's dilemma is inappropriate, but you are over-simplifying. Private is not the only way to avoid Hardy, and for many IB, avoiding Hardy via whatever means is inexpensive relative to family resources. The classic PD matrix is (confess, confess), (confess, deny), (deny, confess), (deny, deny). My best case is (D,D), but my worst case is (D, C), and because my utility function exhibits risk aversion, and because I don't know what you will do, I choose C, and you and I have stable equilibrium at (C,C), the mediocre option.

For the Hardy decision the matrix is (avoid Hardy, avoid Hardy), (avoid Hardy, attend low SES Hardy), (attend low SES Hardy, avoid Hardy), (attend HIGH SES Hardy, attend HIGH SES Hardy). My best case is when we both attend, because I get the benefits of a high performing cohort without paying private tuition or similar expense (high SES Hardy, high SES Hardy), but my worst case is I attend Hardy while you avoid it, i.e. I attend low SES Hardy. So, risk averse and lacking compete info, we are stable with both avoiding Hardy. As with any PD matrix involving costs and benefits, you just subtract the costs (private school tuition eg) from the benefits when inserting the payoff values in the matrix.

I am not saying your use of stag hunt is wrong, but I am saying your quick dismissal of PD is probably wrong. It's hard to generalize this PD to more than 2 actors, like any PD, because there is a big gray area between low SES Hardy and high SES Hardy. There is a similar problem in the original PD: in a game of 100 players, how many confessions are needed to convict all the other players? Unless you assume that even one confession is enough to indict all deniers. This assumption is used in the simplest PD, but relaxed in more complex versions as I am sure you know. This difficulty in generalizing to the entire population does not negate the appropriateness of PD to this situation.

Getting back to the intuition here, my point up thread is, and remains, that across the country and around the world, high-SES families (note use of correct DCUM terminology!) consistently use cohort demographics and cohort academic performance as one of the most important, or the single most important, variable in choosing schools. NOTWITHSTANDING that their high-SES kid will do very well anywhere, they do not want the kid to be surrounded by low performing students. And, this is not irrational, or based on information shortage, or anything of the sort. It's completely rational and backed up by all kinds of research and common sense. So, your analysis of test score data is, frankly, largely irrelevant to the decision for most high SES parents, and for good reasons. The only relevant question is, "how many IB will be at Hardy next year?", which is not surprisingly the title of one of the long running Hardy threads on DCUM. Your game theory analysis (stag vs PD) is very relevant to this question, which is why I raise it again here.

And please note that this is not unique to Hardy or to Washington DC or to the United States of America. We see this in the VA and MD suburbs (if you don't believe me, check the DCUM threads comparing MS and HS options in the suburbs), and across the country and around the world. So if you are truly trying to convince high-SES parents that they should not care about the cohort, and should only care about their own kid's likely performance, then you have a lot of convincing to do, because it is not only many IB Hardy parents who have concluded this, but probably the vast majority of high-SES people anywhere. So, good luck with that.

Finally, because this is the internet, please everyone note that none of what I write is intended to denigrate Hardy or parents IB or OOB who choose to send kids there now, nor am I predicting that Hardy's current situation will continue. On the contrary, I am pretty confident that Hardy is on a clear upward trajectory both in terms of academic performance and IB interest. I am just arguing against those who claim that it is somehow wrong to focus on cohort performance and demographics when choosing schools.

[Anonymous]

You guys are making my frickin' head hurt!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Getting back to the intuition here, my point up thread is, and remains, that across the country and around the world, high-SES families (note use of correct DCUM terminology!) consistently use cohort demographics and cohort academic performance as one of the most important, or the single most important, variable in choosing schools. NOTWITHSTANDING that their high-SES kid will do very well anywhere, they do not want the kid to be surrounded by low performing students.

Not OP here, but I would say relevant to OPs analysis, is why this is the case. What is the cost to attending a heavily (but not exclusively) low SES school.

A. The isolation of being 'the only" But that is not applicable with even 10% high SES.
B. General social isolation related to the SES mix. I think that will vary. Some high SES kids will be better at making friends with low SES kids. Some high SES kids are teased and bullied by other higher SES kids. There is a considerable information issue here - both parents not knowing exactly how socialization plays out at Hardy, and them tending to overestimate the social problems their kids will face with low SES, as opposed to other high SES kids.
C. Serious quality of life issues due to low SES kids behaviors - but again, that will depend on how the school handles it, and there may well be info problems about Hardy on that issue
D. Low SES kids as a proxy for academic offerings - Assume that high SES kids will enjoy their education better with challenging offerings, independent of test scores. But why use a proxy when you can directly observe the number of challenging academic offerings?
E. Attendance at a school with low SES kids as a factor in parents social status (what was earlier hinted at with the "ghetto school uniforms" joke) May be based on poor information, not by the parents making the choices, but by their peers who are non parents, or who are committed to privates anyway.

So while OP may be wrong that this is purely an information issue, and it does have elements of a PD, I think it is likely that information plays a considerable role, which is why the actual Hardy related content on these threads is so important. I would say the PD and info issues are interrelated. Given heterogeneity of preferences on the part of choosers, and moderately imperfect info, and assuming that better info would suggest lower costs to choose Hardy, a small improvement in info could lead to a virtuous cycle and an escape from the PD.

[Anonymous]

I think the upshot here is, parents choose, or decline to choose Hardy based on more than just whether their kid would theoretically perform well there. My kid would theoretically perform well at Hardy, and I think Hardy is a great school, but I chose to send him elsewhere. Some people will say that's racist, some people will say that's a waste of a perfectly good school, whatever. The bottom line is, if you are lucky enough to be able to choose, you will likely choose what you feel is the best fit for your child, and base that decision on those factors that are most important to you (it's the reason why so many OOB parents send their kids to Hardy - they chose that option, decided their IB school wasn't the right fit, and were lucky enough to make it happen). It's not perfect, and not everyone will agree with your decision, but, hey, that's their problem, not yours.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Getting back to the intuition here, my point up thread is, and remains, that across the country and around the world, high-SES families (note use of correct DCUM terminology!) consistently use cohort demographics and cohort academic performance as one of the most important, or the single most important, variable in choosing schools. NOTWITHSTANDING that their high-SES kid will do very well anywhere, they do not want the kid to be surrounded by low performing students.

Not OP here, but I would say relevant to OPs analysis, is why this is the case. What is the cost to attending a heavily (but not exclusively) low SES school.

A. The isolation of being 'the only" But that is not applicable with even 10% high SES.
B. General social isolation related to the SES mix. I think that will vary. Some high SES kids will be better at making friends with low SES kids. Some high SES kids are teased and bullied by other higher SES kids. There is a considerable information issue here - both parents not knowing exactly how socialization plays out at Hardy, and them tending to overestimate the social problems their kids will face with low SES, as opposed to other high SES kids.
C. Serious quality of life issues due to low SES kids behaviors - but again, that will depend on how the school handles it, and there may well be info problems about Hardy on that issue
D. Low SES kids as a proxy for academic offerings - Assume that high SES kids will enjoy their education better with challenging offerings, independent of test scores. But why use a proxy when you can directly observe the number of challenging academic offerings?
E. Attendance at a school with low SES kids as a factor in parents social status (what was earlier hinted at with the "ghetto school uniforms" joke) May be based on poor information, not by the parents making the choices, but by their peers who are non parents, or who are committed to privates anyway.

So while OP may be wrong that this is purely an information issue, and it does have elements of a PD, I think it is likely that information plays a considerable role, which is why the actual Hardy related content on these threads is so important. I would say the PD and info issues are interrelated. Given heterogeneity of preferences on the part of choosers, and moderately imperfect info, and assuming that better info would suggest lower costs to choose Hardy, a small improvement in info could lead to a virtuous cycle and an escape from the PD.

You're quoting my post. There are many reasons to seek a uniformly high-performing, high-SES student body irrespective of your prediction that your kid will do well anywhere. These include but are not limited to:

1) School is able to put significant resources into enrichment, because no remedial work is needed

2) School can adopt progressive teaching and focus on enriched understanding. No need to teach to the test, which is unnecessary for high-SES students and boring/uninspired

3) Parents can afford a lot of expensive field trips, international trips, elaborate after-school activities, other stuff that is ruled out at Title I schools because it would be impossible to arrange such luxuries while also ensuring equal opportunity to participate

4) Parent volunteering can focus on the joyful aspects of education versus the depressing aspects

5) Kids will make friends with people from successful families

6) Parents will make friends with successful parents

7) Nice schools are often located in nice neighborhoods, lots of trees and low crime (Hardy already satisfies this one)

8) Fewer worries about violence, teen pregnancy, bad behavior in classrooms, etc etc

9) Peer pressure tends toward academic performance or is at least neutral to academic performance, as opposed to anti-academics

10) School day is shorter (here I am referring to, say, Deal vs KIPP, not Deal vs Hardy)

I could go on and on. And there have been millions of words published about this. As I wrote above, I am shocked if there are high-SES people who do not understand this intuitively, even if they cannot express it in a list as I do here.

And I am NOT saying that you are wrong to choose a Title I school for your kid or that great experiences cannot be had at such schools. I am just saying, again, that when rational and informed parents seek high-SES schools, they are not mistaken. Theirs is not the only choice or even the best choice, but it is not the irrational or informationally starved choice that OP makes it out to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: please stop assuming that everyone else lives in a data-free or logic-free zone. Discarding this assumption will improve your analysis, because it will force you to accept the assumption of perfect information where it is appropriate, and therefore force you to dig deeper in your theorizing as to why parents avoid Hardy.

I'd ask you, pp, to not assume that everyone else lives in a data/logic-free zone. I don't see that assumption in OP's posts and don't live in that zone myself, though I am not an economist.

I also do not assume your 1-2-3 points in your post about what IB Hardy parents know. I've been followed numerous discussions on DCUM where some of them seemed ignorant about or resistant to knowledge about some or all of those points - using them as reasons not to send their kids to Hardy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
And I am NOT saying that you are wrong to choose a Title I school for your kid or that great experiences cannot be had at such schools. I am just saying, again, that when rational and informed parents seek high-SES schools, they are not mistaken. Theirs is not the only choice or even the best choice, but it is not the irrational or informationally starved choice that OP makes it out to be.

I am not going through your entire post - some of your reasons a parent would prefer a higher SES school are ones I already mentioned.. Some (such as benefits to the child from having high SES friends are examples of where I think there are larger info problems - are kids better off long term from having a narrower group of friends - what are the benefits (including career benefits) in being able to befriend a wider range of people?

And quite frankly, based on observations in the suburbs, I am very skeptical that all parents know that their children will do as well academically in a lower SES school. Maybe that is different in NW DC.

You are also seem to be positing that parents are either perfectly informed, or informationally starved - that is a straw man argument of the kind often used to defend unrealistic assumptions. It is quite possible that parents are broadly informed, but have room to be better informed. OP presented data on the test scores issue that specifically related to the current situation at Hardy. I doubt everyone knew that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
And I am NOT saying that you are wrong to choose a Title I school for your kid or that great experiences cannot be had at such schools. I am just saying, again, that when rational and informed parents seek high-SES schools, they are not mistaken. Theirs is not the only choice or even the best choice, but it is not the irrational or informationally starved choice that OP makes it out to be.

I am not going through your entire post - some of your reasons a parent would prefer a higher SES school are ones I already mentioned.. Some (such as benefits to the child from having high SES friends are examples of where I think there are larger info problems - are kids better off long term from having a narrower group of friends - what are the benefits (including career benefits) in being able to befriend a wider range of people?

And quite frankly, based on observations in the suburbs, I am very skeptical that all parents know that their children will do as well academically in a lower SES school. Maybe that is different in NW DC.

You are also seem to be positing that parents are either perfectly informed, or informationally starved - that is a straw man argument of the kind often used to defend unrealistic assumptions. It is quite possible that parents are broadly informed, but have room to be better informed. OP presented data on the test scores issue that specifically related to the current situation at Hardy. I doubt everyone knew that.

+1 This. Over and over and over again we hear, "Middle school is so important; I refuse to take the risk of sending my child to a lower performing school."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
And I am NOT saying that you are wrong to choose a Title I school for your kid or that great experiences cannot be had at such schools. I am just saying, again, that when rational and informed parents seek high-SES schools, they are not mistaken. Theirs is not the only choice or even the best choice, but it is not the irrational or informationally starved choice that OP makes it out to be.

I am not going through your entire post - some of your reasons a parent would prefer a higher SES school are ones I already mentioned.. Some (such as benefits to the child from having high SES friends are examples of where I think there are larger info problems - are kids better off long term from having a narrower group of friends - what are the benefits (including career benefits) in being able to befriend a wider range of people?

And quite frankly, based on observations in the suburbs, I am very skeptical that all parents know that their children will do as well academically in a lower SES school. Maybe that is different in NW DC.

You are also seem to be positing that parents are either perfectly informed, or informationally starved - that is a straw man argument of the kind often used to defend unrealistic assumptions. It is quite possible that parents are broadly informed, but have room to be better informed. OP presented data on the test scores issue that specifically related to the current situation at Hardy. I doubt everyone knew that.

Seemed that way to me, too. I'd also say, that irrespective of the level of information parents have, that other factors (emotional, historical, perceptual) that are hard to measure, also play a part in decision-making and that parents often use or dismiss the "facts" as needed to reach their conclusions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
And I am NOT saying that you are wrong to choose a Title I school for your kid or that great experiences cannot be had at such schools. I am just saying, again, that when rational and informed parents seek high-SES schools, they are not mistaken. Theirs is not the only choice or even the best choice, but it is not the irrational or informationally starved choice that OP makes it out to be.

I am not going through your entire post - some of your reasons a parent would prefer a higher SES school are ones I already mentioned.. Some (such as benefits to the child from having high SES friends are examples of where I think there are larger info problems - are kids better off long term from having a narrower group of friends - what are the benefits (including career benefits) in being able to befriend a wider range of people?

And quite frankly, based on observations in the suburbs, I am very skeptical that all parents know that their children will do as well academically in a lower SES school. Maybe that is different in NW DC.

You are also seem to be positing that parents are either perfectly informed, or informationally starved - that is a straw man argument of the kind often used to defend unrealistic assumptions. It is quite possible that parents are broadly informed, but have room to be better informed. OP presented data on the test scores issue that specifically related to the current situation at Hardy. I doubt everyone knew that.

+1 This. Over and over and over again we hear, "Middle school is so important; I refuse to take the risk of sending my child to a lower performing school."

And I wouldn't be surprised that if (heaven forbid) there was another financial crisis, some of those IB hardy parents would be able to justify sending their kids to Hardy with the very thinking they eschew now -- if other high SES IB parents choose Hardy, then it will be a better school.

Like the Deal Parents a few years ago, they need impetus -- hopefully, it won't take another financial meltdown to provide it.

[Anonymous]

child in uniform..."ghetto" school...?
please, please tell me this was a sarcastic attempt at humour.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:child in uniform..."ghetto" school...?
please, please tell me this was a sarcastic attempt at humour.

Children at Washington Latin and NCS wear uniforms
but there have been a number of vocal IB Hardy parents who misleadingly claim that they would send their children but for the uniforms. It is dishonest and a distractor..........

ignore it