Please explain relevance of "OOB crowding" to the DCPS boundary review process

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But won't giving preference to "OOB from Rhee-era feeder schools" pretty much shut out for the next 10 years those students who were unlucky in the lottery and didn't get into a Deal/Wilson elementary feeder school? It seems unfair that they lost the lottery once at pre-k/k and now they are pretty much forever shut out and it would be more fair to allow them an equal shot at the lottery to Deal/Wilson.

What's unfair is that there aren't enough seats at quality middle and high schools for everyone who wants one. All the other unfairness just runs downhill from that.

[Anonymous]

People think middle school and high school in DCPS are a disaster. And, they are. But what they don't realize is that it all started with elementary, but nobody was paying attention. It all cascades from there.

I think the whole system needs to be shored up. Sure, it would be great to have more middle schools and high schools that could replicate what's going on in some of the better ones. But that's dealing with the symptoms.

Ideally, officials and policymakers need to go back and look at what's going on - it's too much of a critical mass of kids who didn't get adequate foundational skills, kids who had a rough upbringing and as such may have behavioral problems, and so on. And those problems get more segregated and concentrated going from elementary to middle school, and even more so from middle school into high school - as those who can flee the middle and high schools, leaving the problems behind.

This city needs to wrap its head around how to break this cycle, with very early interventions, even at the pre-K level, robustly working on instilling strong foundational academic skills together with identifying and deprogramming the many counterproductive cultural issues coming from multi-generational poverty and teaching these kids what "normal" is in today's society, and instilling values, instilling a sense of curiosity and ambition, and a desire to break that cycle and become functional, successful, and hopefully prosperous members of modern society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the OP and think the way to resolve this is to end the feeder rights, while grandfathering in the students that are already at Deal or Wilson and their younger siblings. Yes, some students will lose out on when feeder rights end. Some students are going to lose out no matter which way you slice it, but all the other alternatives seem more unfair to me. I think a companion to this will be coming up with more resources to support failing schools in other parts of the city, even if it means allocating away some Deal/Wilson resources -- good staff, funding, whatever it takes.

Deal and Wilson do not get extra funding. They get standard per pupil funding and likely less than many other schools because they are not Title I schools. Several failing high schools across the city have gotten renovations in excess of $100 million in cost, lack of funding is not the problem. The key resource that Deal and Wilson have that is hard to replicate is the percentage of the student body that arrives prepared. That is not a resource you can allocate to another school. They need to find ways to make prepared students want to go to other schools.

Yes, the kids are more prepared -- but also their families are more likely to have resources (in both time and money) to contribute to the school. Deal's annual PTA dues are $150/family; my kid's EOTP PTA dues are $35/family. More SAHMs means more people available to volunteer. Deal parents are probably more likely than those at, say, Sousa, to be able to prevail on their employers to make corporate contributions.

IMO the biggest source of educational inequality is the difference in how much parents are able to contribute to their child's school. Unfortunately, you can't exactly prevent parents from doing that -- investing your resources in your child is a fundamental part of being a parent.

Yeah. No. Not at the high school level and likely irrelevant at the middle school level, too. The days of parent reading volunteers and PTA (!?) are long past being a factor by the time a teen crosses the threshold of Wilson vs Dunbar. You're confusing pk4 with AP history. "sahms" have nothing to do with the latter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People think middle school and high school in DCPS are a disaster. And, they are. But what they don't realize is that it all started with elementary, but nobody was paying attention. It all cascades from there.

I think the whole system needs to be shored up. Sure, it would be great to have more middle schools and high schools that could replicate what's going on in some of the better ones. But that's dealing with the symptoms.

Ideally, officials and policymakers need to go back and look at what's going on - it's too much of a critical mass of kids who didn't get adequate foundational skills, kids who had a rough upbringing and as such may have behavioral problems, and so on. And those problems get more segregated and concentrated going from elementary to middle school, and even more so from middle school into high school - as those who can flee the middle and high schools, leaving the problems behind.

This city needs to wrap its head around how to break this cycle, with very early interventions, even at the pre-K level, robustly working on instilling strong foundational academic skills together with identifying and deprogramming the many counterproductive cultural issues coming from multi-generational poverty and teaching these kids what "normal" is in today's society, and instilling values, instilling a sense of curiosity and ambition, and a desire to break that cycle and become functional, successful, and hopefully prosperous members of modern society.

+1. PS-3 and PK-4 are a good start to getting poor kids into the system early. However, if I was in charge of DCPS I would vastly reduce class size in the early elementary years in the District's poorest schools. With just 8 to 10 students per class, a teacher could provide greater attention to both the socio-emotional and academic needs of his/her students.

[Anonymous]

How is it possible that OOB lottery results are announced (March) before I enroll my child in their IB school in May? How do they know how many OOB seats are available?

[Anonymous]

Typically the schools send out forms to current families to see if they will be returning. Of course kids move in/out after the form is filled out but it gives them a general idea.

[Anonymous]

For K, the elementary schools know what the IB preK 4 wait lists looked like the previous year and they have demographic data for the neighborhood and so it is an educated guess where they likely err on the conservative side so that their classes are not overcrowded. They also have historical knowledge of how thier IB numbers shift in the upper grades. I suspect it is trickier in schools that are on the rise of popularity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Yeah. No. Not at the high school level and likely irrelevant at the middle school level, too. The days of parent reading volunteers and PTA (!?) are long past being a factor by the time a teen crosses the threshold of Wilson vs Dunbar. You're confusing pk4 with AP history. "sahms" have nothing to do with the latter.

Demographics are still important there...educated parents with disposable income will find tutors or lobby for afterschool clubs and even SAT classes vs parents who don't have $45/hr to pay the Chemistry tutor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, wow, I love how active DCUM forums can be!

Ok, this has really helped me. I was unsure of what my opinion was on all of this, and I think now my opinion is the following:

- the boundary for Wilson should stay as it is (not sure about Deal, but sounds like Wilson has the real crowding problem)
- everyone resident within the boundary gets first preference
- then those OOB with siblings attending
- then those OOB from Rhee-era feeder schools
- then everyone else
- until the school has reached capacity.

This is how it works in cities with good neighborhood schools, that I have seen. Everyone IB for neighborhood schools gets in first and if (only if) there are extra spots, they do a lottery.

In practice, this would, it sounds to me, drastically reduce OOB attendance thru feeder schools, which seems fair to me.

In response to the PP(s) who say that even IB is not an entitlement, sure, same as how you can buy a house next to a park, pay a premium, and yet the govt builds a trash dump on the park, over your protests.

But if you are going to cut property owners out of 40-year old boundaries for a desirable school then you should have a compelling reason. The only compelling reason I can think of would be overcrowding that is solely due to increased school-age population within the boundary.

But in this case Wilson is big enough to handle all children within boundary. The 47% of OOB should be cut before any boundary shrinking takes place.

To the OOB parent above who refers to the contract, I am not going to get into the legal issues of contract law! But I will ask you this: what reasonable expectation did you have for Wilson when you bought your house in Eckington or Anacostia, etc? It seems to me that a purchaser in Crestwood or Palisades had a reasonable expectation of Wilson, and paid a preimum for it, but the purchaser in Anacostia or Eckington or Co Heights did not have a reasonable expectation; they won a lottery, and probably their house was inexpensive (by DC standards!).

It seems much more fair to me to take away someone's lottery win than to take away something that someone paid for with their hard-earned dollars.

Therefore, I think the OOB kids must be excluded before any IB kids, with some grandfathering. Tough on those OOB families of course, but you are no worse off than when you bought your house. You only had a lucky windfall taken away from you. Like as if you bought a house, and later the govt announced a new park, and then the govt changed its mind and didn't build the park. You're not worse off.

To those (perhaps Rhee?) who say they want to "force" high socio-economic status parents to invest in DCPS, good luck with that. White participation in DCPS (sad but true, race is a good SES proxy in DC) is at a multi-decade record high of 12%, correct? And a whopping 22% at Wilson? The idea that local schools are bad is already assumed in most parts of DC. For many high-SES parents, Deal and Wilson are probably on the borderline of acceptable quality. Worsen them and people will likely do something else, as they have for decades. And yes someone will take their place in their house if they move to the 'burbs, but probably someone childless.

As an aside, I came to the depressing realization when reading all of this, that there probably just isn't the demographics in DC to support a system-wide high-quality public school system right now. I mean even if you accomplished the goal of "spreading out" all the high-SES parents across the city schools, they would be spread too thin. A universal quality education in DC seems demographically impossible now.

The only long term hope for DCPS is demographic change. This city just has more poverty than it can bear, not in terms of tax base (where the mean average plays a role), but in terms of critical mass for social capital accumulation (where the median rules all).

In the meantime, probably better to preserve whatever quality has been concentrated in a small number of schools west of the park, than to pursue a beggar-thy-neighbor policy and ruin all schools within DC...

This is the best suggestion that I've seen so far about this situation. I hope someone from DCPS is taking notes!

[Anonymous]

OP here again - thanks for the vote of confidence for my mayoral run

Although I think you can see from my ideas that I am unlikely to succeed on the other side of the river, which was more or less Fenty's undoing last time. There was an interesting WaPo article recently about how DC's demographics have changed a lot over the past 20 years however the demographics (and preferences) of registered democrats in DC who regularly vote has not changed as much. Hence the continued popularity of Marion Barry etc.

Interesting discussion here about whether or not OOB families in the Rhee-era feeders should get preference or not in the lottery (assuming we go with the idea of keeping the boundaries as they are and taking all IB first). Maybe it would be best to say that for now they do get preference and then phase it out over 5-8 years so at least the kids in those elementary schools now would get in... tough call though. In contrast to the idea of keeping the boundaries as-is and accepting IB first, which for me is not a difficult call.

I am in complete agreement with the posters who say that intervention needs to happen very early and MS/HS is way too late. Lots of research about how the first 5 years are critical. But has anyone seen an example of a municipal govt or public school system accomplishing this on a massive scale? I have never heard of any success.

Where I have seen success is when a predominantly average-to-affluent school population admits a modest percentage of kids from homes with serious problems. In those cases the "troubled" kids do much better and the better-prepared kids don't suffer at all, because it is the better-off kids who set the tone.

But when the percentages are reversed, it does not work. For example, 80% affluent, 20% poor, great outcomes for everyone. 20% affluent, 80% poor, everyone suffers, because the dominant group is not the group that can be expected to set a good example... that's how I see it anyway from my own experiences, what I've read, etc.

[Anonymous]

OP here again - it's probably clear enough in my post, but the point of my last 3 paragraphs (and what I wrote in an earlier post) is that DCPS is the example of 80% poor 20% middle class/affluent, give or take.

So the best you can hope for at the HS and probably MS level is to concentrate the well-prepared students to try to create some positive peer pressure, and even then they will not be an overwhelming majority, and may still be a minority (Wilson in DC looks nothing like Whitman in Bethesda).

Whereas if you try to do some social engineering and somehow succeed in distributing the affluent families evenly throughout the city's schools (you'd never succeed for reasons already explained, but suppose you did) then they will not have critical mass anywhere and "the prison will be run by the inmates", a phrase which, in the context of DC, takes on a more literal meaning!

BTW some posters mentioned several other HSs which they see as promising within DCPS... honestly, I had not heard of anything decent non-charter outside of Wilson, but maybe I need to look into that some more. I'll admit to some ignorance of HSs east of the park. Same for MSs, non-charter. My understanding has generally been that Deal is borderline yes, Hardy borderline no but with potential, and everything else non-charter is a clear and resounding no. Again, I may be out of date/uninformed - I'm sceptical but I'd be very happy to be wrong about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here again - it's probably clear enough in my post, but the point of my last 3 paragraphs (and what I wrote in an earlier post) is that DCPS is the example of 80% poor 20% middle class/affluent, give or take.

So the best you can hope for at the HS and probably MS level is to concentrate the well-prepared students to try to create some positive peer pressure, and even then they will not be an overwhelming majority, and may still be a minority (Wilson in DC looks nothing like Whitman in Bethesda).

Whereas if you try to do some social engineering and somehow succeed in distributing the affluent families evenly throughout the city's schools (you'd never succeed for reasons already explained, but suppose you did) then they will not have critical mass anywhere and "the prison will be run by the inmates", a phrase which, in the context of DC, takes on a more literal meaning!

BTW some posters mentioned several other HSs which they see as promising within DCPS... honestly, I had not heard of anything decent non-charter outside of Wilson, but maybe I need to look into that some more. I'll admit to some ignorance of HSs east of the park. Same for MSs, non-charter. My understanding has generally been that Deal is borderline yes, Hardy borderline no but with potential, and everything else non-charter is a clear and resounding no. Again, I may be out of date/uninformed - I'm sceptical but I'd be very happy to be wrong about that.

I would characterize your understanding of MS and HS in DC as limited and/or dated. Deal is no longer considered borderline by most WOTP parents. Hence the overcrowding. More and more WOTP families are choosing Wilson (again causing the crowding issue) and interest in School Without Walls continues to be high. Banneker has great scores but has not yet received a vote of confidence from WOTP families. Many chalk this up to racism but others point to low SAT scores. Finally, things are looking up for Hardy which, according to a recent post, is expecting an influx of in-boundary students. Personally, I'm really rooting for that school to succeed.

[Anonymous]

I would characterize your understanding of MS and HS in DC as limited and/or dated. Deal is no longer considered borderline by most WOTP parents. Hence the overcrowding. More and more WOTP families are choosing Wilson (again causing the crowding issue) and interest in School Without Walls continues to be high. Banneker has great scores but has not yet received a vote of confidence from WOTP families. Many chalk this up to racism but others point to low SAT scores. Finally, things are looking up for Hardy which, according to a recent post, is expecting an influx of in-boundary students. Personally, I'm really rooting for that school to succeed.


OP here - on reflection I have heard good things about School Without Walls - fair point. Banneker I am unfamiliar. I just looked it up and it's 60% free lunch, yet 99% graduation and college attendance. That's some impressive value-added. I don't know enough to express any solid opinion on it. I'll just say that the free lunch number worries me and a school that gives "N/A" as the white percentage (presumably 99% black/hispanic?) does not meet my standards for diversity. Nor does a school that is 99% white non-hispanic, for the record.

When I say Deal and Wilson are "borderline yes", I know people IB for these schools who are considering moving to MoCo, Arlington, Fairfax (or paying private if that's an option for them). The public opinion ranking seems to be: Deal first, then Wilson, then Hardy. But no-one raves about any of them. It is more of a careful calculus that weighs school quality against commute time and urban amenities vs. suburban life, etc. Most people I know would prefer to live in DC, other things held equal, and they may be willing to compromise on schools in order to "stay urban".

But other things are not equal. I have never heard a single negative thing about the best MD and VA schools except "they're too rich/white", and people put up with crappy commutes and pay for expensive houses for the privilege of sending their kids there.

This is what I mean by borderline. Maybe it's not the best word choice as it suggests a more negative view than what I intend.

I agree that I am outdated/uninformed about east-of-park schools, but I think this is a pretty fair assessment of where Hardy/Deal/Wilson stand in the eyes of most parents I talk to on this stuff.

[Anonymous]

OP - do you know any families with kids actually at Deal? It sounds like no. It is not a borderline school, the families with kids there that I know are very impressed and happy. Bethesda schools are quite large and crowded as well. Moco has g&t programs which is good, but Deal has an middle years IB curriculum that is advanced.

If you are unfamiliar with Ellington, SWW and. Banneker you are quite uninformed and I suggest you find families with kids there to learn from. Wilson would frankly not be my first choice for my children but I will have to a we what their interests are as they get older.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP - do you know any families with kids actually at Deal? It sounds like no. It is not a borderline school, the families with kids there that I know are very impressed and happy. Bethesda schools are quite large and crowded as well. Moco has g&t programs which is good, but Deal has an middle years IB curriculum that is advanced.

If you are unfamiliar with Ellington, SWW and. Banneker you are quite uninformed and I suggest you find families with kids there to learn from. Wilson would frankly not be my first choice for my children but I will have to a we what their interests are as they get older.

+1. I was quite impressed with the OP's posts about boundaries and feeder rights, but she lost me when she started talking about no other HS. Also, to be honest, I am no longer impressed with any VA ands schools. My niece just graduated from a top VA HS (top 5% of class) and has horrible English basics and was not ready for her college English course. My best friend is a VP at a top MoCo HS and I am not impressed when she shared how they score students, test, prep them. So a big no thanks for me when it comes to all the VA and MD school love. I'll keep SWW, Basis, Latin, Banneker and maybe Wilson. We are IB for Deal but not Wilson.