OK. I'm game, what's so bad about Peabody/Watkins?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No DCPS school boasts very high results for AA kids (I'll go with more than 2/3 scoring proficient) while every DCPS school with enough white kids taking the test to post scores by race shows white kids scoring at least 80% proficient and 40% advanced.

Anonymous wrote:McKinnley and Banneker come to mind as proving your argument bunk

I am all for keeping it real, not being PC and saying it like it is, but there are plenty of examples of AA kids doing well en masse. Brent, Watkins's neighbor, for example, has its AA population scoring around 2/3 proficient.

And Banneker is stocked with smart motivated kids. The staff leaves something to be desired, but the kids (and their families) deserve props.

[Anonymous]

Why not? The Brent and Maury PTAs have knocked themsleves out to reinvent their schools as institutions where upper-middle-class families are comfortable first and foremost, while Watkins hasn't kept up with the times. Brent now has a mostly white teaching staff and student body in a mostly white neighborhood. Watkins has a largely AA teaching staff in a mostly white neighborhood. Brent and Maury spend PTA money to hire aides to provide pullout differentiation. To my knowledge, Watkins doesn't. In-class differentiation is half-assed by comparision.

Brent no longer forces students to do structured DC-CAS test prep because the princpal won't play ball with DCPS on that score. What's the point when the school is mostly white, and white kids mostly score advanced? Watkins still does it. And Brent and Maury look a lot better outside than they did around 2005, while Watkins looks worse to me.

Total BS. Watkins staff is very evenly mixed in terms of race, gender, age, etc. Lots of (good) changes in recent years. For the record, my child has only had white teachers, a data point that's not particularly instructive. The new Cluster principal deserves HUGE credit for moving out a number of bad apples who somehow evaded firing for years. Recent turnover has been all to the good. There are still a few duds left, but i can absolutely picture a path forward through 5th for my kid with nothing but excellent teachers.

All 1st grade classes have fulltime PTA-funded aides who facilitate all kinds of differentiated small group pull-out learning. The upper grades (2-5) are very strongly tracked -- new this year! -- with hours-long daily pull-out blocks grouped by ability. The Cluster PTA has pushed hard on differentiation and challenge for advanced learners. It may be a bitter pill to swallow if you're bent on tearing down your neighbors, but Brent and Maury don't actually have a monopoly on differentiation (or high-achieving white kids, if that's your primary metric for school quality). I have lots of friends at both schools and prefer to see us all moving forward together than ripping each other apart.

Oh, and Watkins is in line for modernization next year. We'll have the same DCPS makeover Maury and Brent already had, which will nicely blend the school building with our already fabulous playground, athletic fields, and award-winning gardens. There are lots of areas needing real improvement I would gladly point you to at Watkins but exterior cosmetics is not high among them.

[Anonymous]

Hardly total BS. You over-state improvements. We're in first, hoping to lottery out, like all too many others.

Yes, there have been a good many positive changes of late, but, no, Watkins doesn't appear to be on track to catch Brent or Maury in the higher grades. There are far too many kids who struggle and disrupt for the likes of us. Pullout high achievers and you're still dealing with some fairly low-achievers in the higher reading and math groups because the baseline isn't nearly as high as it would be if the student body was primarily IB. If wanting more high-SES classmates, and a nicer building to boot, makes us racist, so be it.

[Anonymous]

+1. The only way to make Watkins competitive is to make it much smaller and, hence, mostly IB, which the PTA and leadership aren't pushing for. At this rate, the school will only appeal to a minority of IB families in the upper grades for a really long time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hardly total BS. You over-state improvements. We're in first, hoping to lottery out, like all too many others.
Yes, there have been a good many positive changes of late, but, no, Watkins doesn't appear to be on track to catch Brent or Maury in the higher grades. There are far too many kids who struggle and disrupt for the likes of us. Pullout high achievers and you're still dealing with some fairly low-achievers in the higher reading and math groups because the baseline isn't nearly as high as it would be if the student body was primarily IB. If wanting more high-SES classmates, and a nicer building to boot, makes us racist, so be it.

Then by all means lottery out. I'm not a Watkins parent but that's too high a horse for me to not have an issue with. The kind of homogeneity you're looking for, on behavior, personalities, abilities and smarts of all kinds, just really doesn't exist any longer, for sure not in college and not even in grad school. (Poked your head into any of these places as of late?) For sure, you can seek it and end up paying to keep it real clean and simple but numerous studies will tell you that you're not actually doing your children a service by homogenizing his or her environment at every price.

[Anonymous]

+1

a mostly white neighborhood.

And seriously, have you really looked at the Watkins/Peabody boundaries? Sure, there are some areas that look all nice and Brenty, but keep in mind that a fair number of those pesky black kids you're so worried about are actually IB. And yes, Watkins has a lot of OOB kids, but also note that many of those are Hill kids a block OOB, not a full scale Ward 8 takeover. Just wait until DCPS redraws the boundaries and shrinks Brent's and expands Watkins'. Maybe you should start a conversation on MOTH now about how to do that so that the Cluster's IB student population is whiter. I'll start making the popcorn now.

[Anonymous]

a mostly white neighborhood.

And seriously, have you really looked at the Watkins/Peabody boundaries? Sure, there are some areas that look all nice and Brenty, but keep in mind that a fair number of those pesky black kids you're so worried about are actually IB. And yes, Watkins has a lot of OOB kids, but also note that many of those are Hill kids a block OOB, not a full scale Ward 8 takeover. Just wait until DCPS redraws the boundaries and shrinks Brent's and expands Watkins'. Maybe you should start a conversation on MOTH now about how to do that so that the Cluster's IB student population is whiter. I'll start making the popcorn now.

PP, you're no good for PR. If you want more IB parents, woo them, court them, work with your leadership to incentivize them, reassure them, don't chastise those who are moving on for good reason.

Watkins is mostly OOB and if it were mostly IB it would in fact be mostly white. No reason to get snarky about all that when it's supposed to be a neighborhood school. If Watkins continues to beef up offerings for "advanced learners" (read run of the mill high-SES kids and a few low-SES kids) perhaps there is hope of drawing in a lot more of the IB population,and keeping them. The trend toward more differentiation is positive at any rate.

[Anonymous]

Watkins parents who have MS plans that don't include SH are increasingly inclined to try to lottery into Brent in search of a smaller school and nicer stuff (impressive music room, MACs, art room, science room), among other things. At the last Brent open house, there were a dozen parents with kids in the lower grades at Watkins. Brent's PTA now raises more than the Cluster both because it has a lot more high-SES parents per capita past Peabody, and because parents are more inclinded to stay to the upper grades at Wakins, so willing to invest in the school. Watkins tries hard but reality bites.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Watkins parents who have MS plans that don't include SH are increasingly inclined to try to lottery into Brent in search of a smaller school and nicer stuff (impressive music room, MACs, art room, science room), among other things. At the last Brent open house, there were a dozen parents with kids in the lower grades at Watkins. Brent's PTA now raises more than the Cluster both because it has a lot more high-SES parents per capita past Peabody, and because parents are more inclinded to stay to the upper grades at Wakins, so willing to invest in the school. Watkins tries hard but reality bites.

I'm not saying they would choose do so, but the the in bounds Watkins parents who lottery into Brent for elementary would be able to go to Stuart Hobson for middle school. They are in bounds for Watkins so they are in bounds for SH, correct?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Watkins parents who have MS plans that don't include SH are increasingly inclined to try to lottery into Brent in search of a smaller school and nicer stuff (impressive music room, MACs, art room, science room), among other things. At the last Brent open house, there were a dozen parents with kids in the lower grades at Watkins. Brent's PTA now raises more than the Cluster both because it has a lot more high-SES parents per capita past Peabody, and because parents are more inclinded to stay to the upper grades at Wakins, so willing to invest in the school. Watkins tries hard but reality bites.

I'm not saying they would choose do so, but the the in bounds Watkins parents who lottery into Brent for elementary would be able to go to Stuart Hobson for middle school. They are in bounds for Watkins so they are in bounds for SH, correct?

Sorry, but that's incorrect. Look at the Stuart Hobson boundaries, which are relatively small and only overlap with part of the western portion of Watkins' boundary. You can feed from Watkins to Stuart Hobson as part of the Cluster stream, but you have to be inbounds by right if you do not rise from Watkins 5th to SH. Many Ludlow Taylor IB families are physically inbounds for Stuart Hobson even if they do not feed through LT.

[Anonymous]

Ugh. I feel fortunate to be in bounds for Maury, and for the improvements there -- which realistically I know are due to "high ses" influx. Yet this race thing is so gross ... Why can't Watkins have the same nice stuff? Why should "high ses" get special services in the guise of being advanced?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Watkins parents who have MS plans that don't include SH are increasingly inclined to try to lottery into Brent in search of a smaller school and nicer stuff (impressive music room, MACs, art room, science room), among other things. At the last Brent open house, there were a dozen parents with kids in the lower grades at Watkins. Brent's PTA now raises more than the Cluster both because it has a lot more high-SES parents per capita past Peabody, and because parents are more inclinded to stay to the upper grades at Wakins, so willing to invest in the school. Watkins tries hard but reality bites.

I'm not saying they would choose do so, but the the in bounds Watkins parents who lottery into Brent for elementary would be able to go to Stuart Hobson for middle school. They are in bounds for Watkins so they are in bounds for SH, correct?

Sorry, but that's incorrect. Look at the Stuart Hobson boundaries, which are relatively small and only overlap with part of the western portion of Watkins' boundary. You can feed from Watkins to Stuart Hobson as part of the Cluster stream, but you have to be inbounds by right if you do not rise from Watkins 5th to SH. Many Ludlow Taylor IB families are physically inbounds for Stuart Hobson even if they do not feed through LT.

Ah, got it. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. I feel fortunate to be in bounds for Maury, and for the improvements there -- which realistically I know are due to "high ses" influx. Yet this race thing is so gross ... Why can't Watkins have the same nice stuff? Why should "high ses" get special services in the guise of being advanced?

The advanced thing sticks with me, too. Most kids in DC who are getting services called advanced or this crazy gifted label are really just normally bright and smack on grade level, maybe a bit above. It us just that there are many many kids below grade level and way below grade level that normal appears advanced. I would much prefer some of these schools up the game in the regular classroom and assign extra resources to remediation and extra help for those trying to catch up. But I guess that sounds different and maybe stigmatizes? Much more pleasant to think all our kids are ok or advanced.

[Anonymous]

How awful is it to move a kid in 5th to Watkins to guarantee SH? I hate to do it. He's in 4th grade now @ Brent. My kid is very social, confident, adaptable, fairly athletic, advanced in math (but not in other areas). He really wants to go to SH. He knows a few kids at Watkins from sports.

[Anonymous]

You could also play the lottery for 6th grade at SH. Anyone know the likelihood of getting an OOB spot there in 6th versus 5th? Are you inboundary for Watkins?