Ranking my PK4 list
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Anonymous
Thank you. It does make me wonder whether looking at enrollment figures, feeders, and current offerings Coolidge could be on a trajectory to offer more rigorous programming. |
Anonymous
I specifically asked what made it worth it because our current EOTP IB school has been very academically rigorous with the added bonus of a strong community. So the idea of losing that community for education makes me curious what exactly the educational difference is. I appreciate the specific programming and offerings, and it makes sense, but those offerings exist in part because people are willing to drive around the city to get them rather than demand them in their own backyards. I want to know what to try and demand in my own backyard. |
Anonymous
I think that’s laudable and I truly wish you well in that effort. But if you have early elementary kids, you may find the community starting to weaken in a few years and realize you’re driving all around the city for extracurriculars anyways. My kid’s school has 15 afterschool options for just their grade. Languages, academic supplementation, athletics, arts and drama, and special interests. All paid and none cheap - which makes that range of offerings impossible for a school that doesn’t have the entire student body able to afford hundreds of dollars extra a month for Chinese and Pokémon club. And specials classes and teachers that are paid for by the PTA, not DCPS. And extra classroom teachers paid for by the PTA. It varies school to school, but even if the core subjects are comparable (because Title 1 schools attract the best, most passionate teachers!), what you get in Ward 3 are strong non-core academics on top of what you get at other schools. Our Title 1 was a true “gem” (ahem ahem) that gets praise on DCUM, but it was focused in a way that I didn’t realize until I could compare the alternative. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but the truth is that DCPS is incredibly inequitable in a way that suburban districts are not allowed to be, and there’s really nothing individual schools can do to change that structural inequality. |
Anonymous
It's possible, but it takes a lot of time to build up those programs. |
Anonymous
Well, it depends what you think is realistic for the feeder pattern. For example to offer Calculus BC like Wilson does, Coolidge would need a bunch of 9th graders to take Algebra II. So that means Wells has to get some 7th graders through Algebra I so that they can take Geometry as 8th graders. And the only way that can happen is if the entering 6th grade class has some strong math students. See how it fits together? Therefore you need to understand that it's not as simple as demanding it and it will appear. That's naive elementary school parent thinking. The problem is low performance throughout the feeder pattern. It's not that DCPS just hates Coolidge or thinks parents don't want a good school or whatever rationale you're imagining. It's a very hard and very expensive thing to change. And it's not for lack of parents demanding change. And you also need to understand that Coolidge just isn't as large, and it's overcrowded-- its target enrollment is actually a little lower. So it's always going to have less variety than a bigger school does. Pros and cons to that either way. |
Anonymous
What people want is a high performing peer group that's big enough to justify offering advanced classes. Go ahead and demand it! What do you think, that they'll special order a peer group for you? Come on. You need to understand that this is the work of decades. Maybe you can try getting involved at Wells in advance. You'd surely learn a lot and it sounds like you need to. |
Anonymous
You're gonna lose the community anyway. That's normal as kids grow older and the parents don't spend as much time at the school. And people will start leaving, they'll peel off for Latin and BASIS and for Jackson-Reed feeders, and the high performing cohort at your school will shrink and shrink. Yes it's a collective action problem, obviously, but telling people that doesn't change it. You could try to make some sort of pact to stay, but those never work-- the price of staying at a low performing school is more than many people are willing to pay. The only answer is the grindingly slow work to improve actual quality of the school. Understand that as time passes and kids grow older, the advanced kids pull ahead and the slower kids are farther and farther behind. By 4th grade the ability range is really wide and hard to teach effectively. By 6th it's even worse. Puberty means behavior gets worse. What seems like not that big a deal to you right now, in terms of academic weaknesses and behavior, may seem very different to you in a few years. I wish you all the best in helping out at your school. But the best thing you can do is have your eyes wide open about this stuff. You'll be a more effective advocate if you're realistic and data driven. There's a lot of knowledge in this forum to help you out, but you have to open your eyes and realize it's not as simple as parents demanding things and DCPS giving it to them. |
Anonymous
Community members tried to tell DCPS that Coolidge enrollment would grow and they built a building that's massively undersized anyways. So I do think there's something to be said for DCPS playing darlings. It's lovely to say everyone is just naive for demanding a push for change that will never happen, but it's also naive to say that WOTP schools are only seen as better because they are and because residents have more money. Sure PTO and outside activities change things, but it's absolutely a choice made by the system and the people in charge to not listen to EOTP communities when they complain about building issues or overcrowding or lacking resources. Things can change. It's just a lot of people either don't want them to or don't really care. |
Anonymous
| One thing I noticed about our strong EOTP DCPS was that none of the staff that lived in the city had their children at the school, even though there were lottery spots available. Pretty universally they had their kids in better performing schools in more expensive neighborhoods. Many in western MCPS, but also some in JR feeders. The one teacher that did had a kid with special needs that she wanted to keep closer to her and with a familiar admin. And then her older kids went to Deal after the elementary school. |
Anonymous
Well of course. But still, slow progress can be made. It's part of how Jackson-Reed got to be what it is-- partly DCPS favoritism but partly the parents did advocate and volunteer and put in a lot of effort and money. Same goes for Hardy and Deal. And the same for Stuart-Hobson and Eliot-Hine and many other schools and also Wells, and the forthcoming Euclid St Middle School. It's naive to think this will happen fast, and it's naive to think that what's missing is parent demand for particular things. What would I do, in Coolidge PP's situation? Well, it depends. It's a process of improving quality throughout the feeder pyramid, with a laser focus on the most serious problems and anything that's truly just not okay. Things that are meh, or things that some parents are fine with but others are not, are second-tier priorities. So Coolidge PP should bring that approach first to their own elementary school. Ensure that it's functioning well and sending up well-prepared students to Wells. If the elementary school is in decent shape and has a strong PTO already, then focus on the middle school. In some ways having only one middle school makes this simpler. Elementary parents absolutely can engage with their middle school and help out-- provided they do so with some humility and understand that there is a real learning curve when dealing with this age group and how middle schools need to function. Helping out with the Wells community should, honestly, take up Coolidge PP's time for the next few years. Because Wells is doing great and I take off my hat to their team, but there's still a long way to go. Coolidge PP should not mistake this for a collective action problem that would be fixed if everyone just suddenly decided to send their kids to Coolidge. Or if DCPS suddenly decided to fund things at Coolidge like Calc BC that the kids aren't academically capable of participating in. That's not how this works, that's naive fantasy thinking. The only thing that works is providing-- and paying for-- quality, in every possible way. |
Anonymous
| One thing about Coolidge is the colocalization of the early college program there. This can pull in some extra strong academic students. If there is any mixing with the general program (I’m not sure if there is) that can help. For example if there is a higher level math class in 10th grade for some of the early college kids it may be possible for students not in that program to ask to take that math? |
Anonymous
Does it though? Coolidge didn't have 10 kids scoring on grade level in math. Don't mistake DCPS branding of "advanced" this or "honors" that for actual good performance. And you certainly won't find out on Coolidge's website. This is a great example of why people think JR is better. Because it isn't that hard or expensive to produce a decent website, yet Coolidge's leadership hasn't done it. |
Anonymous
| Go ahead and rank Lafayette and Shepherd first, but you truly wont get into either for PreK4. One option is stay nearby, have an easy commute, meet some kids and families who live near you and move later. Yes go visit the IB and other nearby schools to see if there are meaningful differences. School quality does not really start to mostly track socioeconomics until later. |
Anonymous
I have a middle schooler at now and came from a Title 1 DCPS elementary. In early-mid elementary I would have said it was amazing, but the experience did slip in later elementary (chaos in the classroom, less differentiation, less teaching time due to behavior issues.). But -- my kid is doing great at a much more rigorous middle, as are friends who came from similar Title 1 elementaries. Kids can catch up. So, I'm not sure if you need to optimize elementary school if there are a lot of other perks (commute, neighborhood friends). I do think all parents should send them kids to the best middle school that they can, because the classes offered varies, curriculum within the classes varies, the homework load varies, and how prepared the kids are for high school will end up varying. In an ideal world, every DCPS middle school would offer classes that meet the needs of all students, at both ends of ability. But unfortunately, they don't. |
Anonymous
This is interesting because our strong EOTP DCPS actually has quite a few teachers' kids there. (7 teachers that I can think of off hand.) |