Article on Maury/Miner merger proposal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“ McMillan, who grew up on Capitol Hill, ultimately decided to avoid neighborhood schools altogether. She used the district’s lottery process to send her daughter to a school near her office that felt welcoming”

Lol OK. That sure is a story about support for integrating IB schools.

If you read the context…she was saying she didn’t want to send her kids to Miner cause it might be merged with Maury and the whole debate turned her off the Maury community.

That’s absurd and also a lie. She likely lotteried out of Miner because it’s doing so poorly and will end up sending her kid private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“ We try not to engage in that kind of promise making, because we have no idea,” he said. “It’s not clear what the benefits are for a model that hasn’t yet been developed, apart from the fundamental motivation, which is, kids are going to do better both academically and socially” in more diverse schools.”

Maury is MUCH more diverse than any of the schools that the elites of the mayor’s team and the ed policy journos likely send their kids.

Hate to break it to you, but reporters and civil servants aren’t exactly raking it in financially. These people hardly qualify as elites and probably can’t afford to live in the Maury boundary much less Ward 3.

Paul Kihn is a former McKinsey employee and his kids go to private school.

Yep. And as I recall one of the “Miner parents” who was accusing Maury parents had actually moved to MoCo!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“ We try not to engage in that kind of promise making, because we have no idea,” he said. “It’s not clear what the benefits are for a model that hasn’t yet been developed, apart from the fundamental motivation, which is, kids are going to do better both academically and socially” in more diverse schools.”

Maury is MUCH more diverse than any of the schools that the elites of the mayor’s team and the ed policy journos likely send their kids.

Hate to break it to you, but reporters and civil servants aren’t exactly raking it in financially. These people hardly qualify as elites and probably can’t afford to live in the Maury boundary much less Ward 3.

hate to break it to you, but Paul Kihn sends his kids to private, and the author of this bullsh*t article lives in … wait for it … Bethesda.

That's funny. Richard Kahlenberg, who likes to lecture about how great diverse schools are, also lives in Bethesda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“ We try not to engage in that kind of promise making, because we have no idea,” he said. “It’s not clear what the benefits are for a model that hasn’t yet been developed, apart from the fundamental motivation, which is, kids are going to do better both academically and socially” in more diverse schools.”

Maury is MUCH more diverse than any of the schools that the elites of the mayor’s team and the ed policy journos likely send their kids.

Hate to break it to you, but reporters and civil servants aren’t exactly raking it in financially. These people hardly qualify as elites and probably can’t afford to live in the Maury boundary much less Ward 3.

hate to break it to you, but Paul Kihn sends his kids to private, and the author of this bullsh*t article lives in … wait for it … Bethesda.

That’s where the offices of this paper are. It doesn’t mean she lives there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“ We try not to engage in that kind of promise making, because we have no idea,” he said. “It’s not clear what the benefits are for a model that hasn’t yet been developed, apart from the fundamental motivation, which is, kids are going to do better both academically and socially” in more diverse schools.”

Maury is MUCH more diverse than any of the schools that the elites of the mayor’s team and the ed policy journos likely send their kids.

Hate to break it to you, but reporters and civil servants aren’t exactly raking it in financially. These people hardly qualify as elites and probably can’t afford to live in the Maury boundary much less Ward 3.

hate to break it to you, but Paul Kihn sends his kids to private, and the author of this bullsh*t article lives in … wait for it … Bethesda.

That’s where the offices of this paper are. It doesn’t mean she lives there.

That’s where she lives AFAIK. Certainly she’s not zoned for Miner.

[Anonymous]

Ambitious black parents look elsewhere!

[Anonymous]

"“Some of the criticisms I heard involved, ‘you haven’t thought about X, you haven’t thought about Y,’” Kihn said. “And I guarantee you, if we had shown up and said, ‘Well, here’s what we do about X or Y, then it would have been the exact opposite,’” meaning parents would have complained the district came up with a plan without their input. “That’s just how this dynamic plays out.”"

So Kihn's defense for not having done a thorough or professional job is, "even if I had done a thorough and professional job people would have been mad. So there was no point in doing a thorough and professional job.?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"“Some of the criticisms I heard involved, ‘you haven’t thought about X, you haven’t thought about Y,’” Kihn said. “And I guarantee you, if we had shown up and said, ‘Well, here’s what we do about X or Y, then it would have been the exact opposite,’” meaning parents would have complained the district came up with a plan without their input. “That’s just how this dynamic plays out.”"

So Kihn's defense for not having done a thorough or professional job is, "even if I had done a thorough and professional job people would have been mad. So there was no point in doing a thorough and professional job.?

Kihn thought he would get some kind of medal for this I guess.

[Anonymous]

They started with this idea to blend 2 schools and then they went looking for the right combo. They looked at Brent and Chisholm; then realized Chisholm is spanish immersion. A lot of the school pairing options were separated by major high-traffic streets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They started with this idea to blend 2 schools and then they went looking for the right combo. They looked at Brent and Chisholm; then realized Chisholm is spanish immersion. A lot of the school pairing options were separated by major high-traffic streets.

I don’t think you want to resurrect that dumb argument again. Maury was seemingly targeted by a well known “Ed policy” gadfly who specifically wanted to make a lesson out of Maury.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They started with this idea to blend 2 schools and then they went looking for the right combo. They looked at Brent and Chisholm; then realized Chisholm is spanish immersion. A lot of the school pairing options were separated by major high-traffic streets.

I don’t think you want to resurrect that dumb argument again. Maury was seemingly targeted by a well known “Ed policy” gadfly who specifically wanted to make a lesson out of Maury.

I actually think the most doable pairing logistically would have been LT and JOW, because they are truly only 3 straight normal sized blocks apart and the zones are entirely contiguous. But they benefited from having "only" a 30% gap in at risk population and the qualifying limit was set to 40% and, possibly, H Street as a major thoroughfare (but that I think would be pretty sketchy, since it's a pedestrian thoroughfare that folks cross all the time). Ironically, the LT-JOW merger may have benefited from the IB for JOW being more gentrified and therefore more invested in pushing for the merger, but I think it wasn't really considered because JOW was already in late stage planning for a new building (too late to redo it to accommodate a different population) and LT is one of the city's best good schools that are actually diverse models.

[Anonymous]

If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If they really wanted to try something like this, I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to start with two schools that are closer together in terms of at-risk population (DME’s stated concern) or test scores (correlated but obviously not the same).

People who bought within the Maury boundary paid a premium to do so because of the school. That’s not to say they are entitled to go there — boundaries change sometimes, etc — but just to say that these are people for whom going to a school with a certain cohort of on-grade level or advanced learners was important enough to pay a lot more money than they would have if they had bought a couple of blocks over. They are not going to “come quietly” if you are all of a sudden going to organize things in a way that will put their kids in classrooms that are now 50% below grade level.

If you start by evening out two schools closer together on those measures, you are likely to get less vociferous opposition, because the changes will be less dramatic, and in the process of doing it are likely to learn more about how to make this model both more effective academically and more attractive to families (important for retaining the more invested families/higher performing kids you are trying to spread around).

Or if there was more trust that all kids are going to get the level of instruction they need, instead of pretending it is wrong to want your kid to get that. And of course the current fad for disregarding, you know, actual teaching and learning methods, is much worse for poor kids than rich kids. If instruction at Maury hadn’t been so haphazard already it might have been an easier ask.

This for sure. Even now at Maury, several teachers have told me how difficult it is to effectively teach the range of children they are presented with in each class. Broadening the range — or weighting it further in one direction — would only make it that much harder to provide the needed education to each student there. If a school offers tracking, and you can be confident your kid will be taught content at their level with a cohort around the same level, you can fill the school however you want.

[Anonymous]

Public education is a joke, period.