Ward 6 Needs to Boot Joe Weedon

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

I can't argue that there might be more seats than needed. And I would also like to have a "Deal" in Ward 6. I just can't support solving that problem by closing the single middle school that seems to be the best performing school in an area with a very low bar. I feel the same about tinkering with Maury. Along with Brent, it is a bright spot in an otherwise mediocre landscape of ES's. Why risk damaging this by engineering an ill-thought-out cluster model?

Isn't one cluster on the Hill too much already?

SWS outperformed both of them on PARCC last year

But SWS is just a straight lottery that happens to attract more Hill kids due to location. (Previously there was a priority for kids who were close by, but that's gone now... so any remaining effects of it are just the result of sibling priority.)

SWS also feeds Eliot Hine, and many of those neighborhood kids are impacted by the various by right MS options in Ward 6

[Anonymous]

SWS outperformed both of them on PARCC last year

I think SWS is a bit of an anomaly. The PARCC scores are indeed impressive. But please recall that last year there was no 5th grade so the testing results only include 3 & 4 results. For both Maury and Brent, the 5th grade scores tend to bring down the scores considerably.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

no, that's my exact point. Ward 6 parents are chosing not to use their neighborhood schools in general, opening up those seats to OOB students who then feed to SH. You can't blame the OOB students.

So blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to use their neighborhood school (when only around 1/3 of them are in-boundary for SH), rather than incentivizing them to use it by offering the sort of program they're looking for? Granted, you can't blame OOB students for using Hobson, but you can certainly blame DCPS for failing to offer the challenge and rich curricular and extra-curricular offerings most high SES Ward 6 parents are looking for. E.g. Deal is offering Mandarin, Arabic, French, 7th grade algebra and 8th grade geometry while Hobson is offering none of these classes. BASIS is offering 5th and 6th grade algebra to students who can test in, 7th grade algebra to the rest, and AP World History to 8th graders. The several strongest Ward 6 elementary schools--Brent, Maury and SWS-don't feed into SH, leaving most high parents coming out of the other Hobson feeders (really just Watkins for the time being) reluctant to use the school.

When I asked how my mildly math gifted child would be served at SH, I was told that DC would be put in front of a computer during math classes. Sorry, eleven year olds don't learn math well without a teacher or tutor on hand to teach it to them. What we're going to see in the next decade are slightly increases in the percentage of high SES and white students using Hobson year on year, from under 20% to maybe one-third. Not a bad result, but nothing to cheer about in a catchment area that's overwhelmingly high SES and white. Without a strong Ward 6 MS on the horizon, most of the current parents of babies and toddlers will hit the road by MS. Ward 6 could do a lot better. At least Joe Weedon gets it.

Yes, absolutely I blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to invest in their neighborhood schools. These things are not going to be handed to you on a silver platter; there's no reason for DCPS to go out if its way to "incentivize" a certain, very privileged group of parents who vocally and hostilely turn up their noses at mixing with the hoi polloi. Enroll your kid and ask them to be skipped into 8th grade algebra if you feel they are ready, then ask to send them to Eastern to take advanced math later on. Truly advanced math students have always had to come up with solutions like that.

You mean Hill Parents.

I don't have a middle school to invest in (in Ward 6). Please stop using the term "Ward 6" to refer to Hill issues.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am no Weedon fan and plan to vote against him as he seems to only care about Maury and E-H at the expense of the rest of the Ward. That being said, he isn't wrong about the Middle Schools.

By my very rough math, there are twice as many seats in the MSs (800+600+800) as there are 4th graders in the ESs in Ward 6 (before the bail to charters etc) . If you were to reduce the seats, to me it does make sense to close the small school in the middle and divide those families between the larger schools that have more room. But given the amount of money that just went into the school and the up roar it would cause, I don't think you have reason to worry.

Your school capacity totals are right for the three schools but the breakdown is off (EH 850, Jefferson 900, SH 460). You've also omitted CH Montessori and Walker Jones (admittedly small) which are education campuses. Keep in mind that's total seats 6-8 and a 4th grade total could only be expected to occupy a third of that capacity and not the entire school. That would represent a 6th grade need of ~ 750 seats. of course Jefferson and Eliot Hine are both severely underenrolled with fewer students enrolled than SH, and EH having less than 1/2 of SH enrollment. EH and Jefferson combined only have 482 compared to 424 at SH

You also forgot Seaton. Lets face it, this is all Hill talk, not Ward 6 talk.

I didn't forget Seaton -- I was describing MIDDLE SCHOOl feeds in Ward 6. There are lots of other Ward 6 elementary schools not mentioned here. Plus Seaton feeds CARDOZA -- WARD 1

try to keep up

Please move me back to Ward 2, Please move me back to Ward 2.

You all are just such nasty witches.

[Anonymous]

This thread is proving why Joe is safe.

[Anonymous]

who ever knew health care - I mean Ward 6 middle schools could be so complicated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You mean Hill Parents.

I don't have a middle school to invest in (in Ward 6). Please stop using the term "Ward 6" to refer to Hill issues.

Thanks.

Can you have it both ways? When it comes time to sell, everyone in Ward 6 pretends that the Hill extends through every connecting fringe neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

SWS outperformed both of them on PARCC last year

I think SWS is a bit of an anomaly. The PARCC scores are indeed impressive. But please recall that last year there was no 5th grade so the testing results only include 3 & 4 results. For both Maury and Brent, the 5th grade scores tend to bring down the scores considerably.

I don't know. . . there's a big drop off for 5th grade at each of these schools. If you look at 3rd and 4th grade scores exclusively the same more or less holds true.

3rd ELA/M (4+)
B 57/67
M 50/50
S 72/62

4th ELA/M (4+)
B 70/60
M 45/43
S 60/65

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

SWS outperformed both of them on PARCC last year

I think SWS is a bit of an anomaly. The PARCC scores are indeed impressive. But please recall that last year there was no 5th grade so the testing results only include 3 & 4 results. For both Maury and Brent, the 5th grade scores tend to bring down the scores considerably.

I don't know. . . there's a big drop off for 5th grade at each of these schools. If you look at 3rd and 4th grade scores exclusively the same more or less holds true.

3rd ELA/M (4+)
B 57/67
M 50/50
S 72/62

4th ELA/M (4+)
B 70/60
M 45/43
S 60/65


This is, unfortunately, mostly about the racial breakdown of the schools. The stats for comparable cohorts are very similar. For instance, white kids AND black kids at L-T do better than at Maury, but Maury has a higher average SOLELY due to the demographics of the schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

SWS outperformed both of them on PARCC last year

I think SWS is a bit of an anomaly. The PARCC scores are indeed impressive. But please recall that last year there was no 5th grade so the testing results only include 3 & 4 results. For both Maury and Brent, the 5th grade scores tend to bring down the scores considerably.

I don't know. . . there's a big drop off for 5th grade at each of these schools. If you look at 3rd and 4th grade scores exclusively the same more or less holds true.

3rd ELA/M (4+)
B 57/67
M 50/50
S 72/62

4th ELA/M (4+)
B 70/60
M 45/43
S 60/65


This is, unfortunately, mostly about the racial breakdown of the schools. The stats for comparable cohorts are very similar. For instance, white kids AND black kids at L-T do better than at Maury, but Maury has a higher average SOLELY due to the demographics of the schools.

Not arguing about the SWS scores, but I question whether your last statement is accurate. If you look at Maury's scores broken out by ethnicity, you have a 78% meet or exceed for both ELA and Math. This is very comparable to SWS which has an 80/82. Are you trying to suggest that L-T has a higher score than this for the white population? I doubt that is likely, but since the testing group is too small a sample the results aren't broken out that way. For sure the black population at L-T does better than the black population at Maury, though. And I do find that impressive.

[Anonymous]

"Yes, absolutely I blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to invest in their neighborhood schools. These things are not going to be handed to you on a silver platter; there's no reason for DCPS to go out if its way to "incentivize" a certain, very privileged group of parents who vocally and hostilely turn up their noses at mixing with the hoi polloi. Enroll your kid and ask them to be skipped into 8th grade algebra if you feel they are ready, then ask to send them to Eastern to take advanced math later on. Truly advanced math students have always had to come up with solutions like that."

Does this pp have a child in DCPS? It is VERY hard to get your child anything out of the ordinary unless you have an IEP. Leaving campus during the day? Skipping a grade level in math? NO WAY would that ever happen. That's why the other pp said the only thing offered for math was to spend time playing computer games - that is what passes for differentiated learning your advanced students in DCPS. Which is why do many families leave. Over and over.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a referendum on SH's fate was held tomorrow, with only Ward 6 residents permitted to vote, I'd wager than 3/4 of those who voted would vote to change SH's status. What good is a "neighborhood" MS to us when it serves more students from Wards 5, 7 AND 8 than Ward 6? The question has been asked for decades, with the myopic Cluster leadership blocking change.

Weedon's certainly not an easy ed advocate to deal with, but he's not wrong in advocating for DCPS to use the SH building differently in the context of promoting neighborhood schools. I'd like to see SH become an elementary school serving the East Hill (since Payne and Miner don't serve their neighborhoods at all well) and EH renovated to become a pan Ward 6, Deal-like middle school with serious honors classes. As things stand, the Hill won't have middle schools most parents are comfortable with for another 20 years. No good.

How is turning SH into an elementary school going to help with the population you feel is "not served" by Payne and Miner? Are you going to do some kind of weird gerrymandering boundaries?

What makes you think that Ward 6 parents will send their kids to a renovated EH?

And more importantly, the REASON that kids get in OOB to from Wards 5, 7, and 8 into SH is because Ward 6 parents ARE NOT SENDING THEIR OWN KIDS. It's rich of you to blame the OOB students.

That misses a key point -- very few OOB students get into SH off MS lottery. Almost all get in from the feeders (Watkins, Ludlow Taylor and JO Wilson). About 2/3 of that is Watkins and the JO Wilson/LT split the other 1/3. Peabody is 75% IB and likely loses families to charters early by not having enough PK spaces for IB. Watkins and LT IB % has been trending upwards and both were 29% last year, up from low 20s the year before. JO Wilson is up to 25% IB. Most of that momentum is in the lower ES but it still represents incremental improvement in retention. Let's face it - this isn't upper NW

They're no different than the other Hill schools like Brent and Maury that get hit in upper ES, mainly for 5th. Brent and Maury probably have higher retention through 4th but all bets are off by 5th.

no, that's my exact point. Ward 6 parents are chosing not to use their neighborhood schools in general, opening up those seats to OOB students who then feed to SH. You can't blame the OOB students.

So blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to use their neighborhood school (when only around 1/3 of them are in-boundary for SH), rather than incentivizing them to use it by offering the sort of program they're looking for? Granted, you can't blame OOB students for using Hobson, but you can certainly blame DCPS for failing to offer the challenge and rich curricular and extra-curricular offerings most high SES Ward 6 parents are looking for. E.g. Deal is offering Mandarin, Arabic, French, 7th grade algebra and 8th grade geometry while Hobson is offering none of these classes. BASIS is offering 5th and 6th grade algebra to students who can test in, 7th grade algebra to the rest, and AP World History to 8th graders. The several strongest Ward 6 elementary schools--Brent, Maury and SWS-don't feed into SH, leaving most high parents coming out of the other Hobson feeders (really just Watkins for the time being) reluctant to use the school.

When I asked how my mildly math gifted child would be served at SH, I was told that DC would be put in front of a computer during math classes. Sorry, eleven year olds don't learn math well without a teacher or tutor on hand to teach it to them. What we're going to see in the next decade are slightly increases in the percentage of high SES and white students using Hobson year on year, from under 20% to maybe one-third. Not a bad result, but nothing to cheer about in a catchment area that's overwhelmingly high SES and white. Without a strong Ward 6 MS on the horizon, most of the current parents of babies and toddlers will hit the road by MS. Ward 6 could do a lot better. At least Joe Weedon gets it.

Where are you getting your information? SH offers both Algebra and Geometry. This is flatly wrong. SH also offers Spanish. It's 1/3 the size of Deal and its budget reflects that

SH offers Spanish as an after school option. That's not equivalent to the language offerings at Deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
"Yes, absolutely I blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to invest in their neighborhood schools. These things are not going to be handed to you on a silver platter; there's no reason for DCPS to go out if its way to "incentivize" a certain, very privileged group of parents who vocally and hostilely turn up their noses at mixing with the hoi polloi. Enroll your kid and ask them to be skipped into 8th grade algebra if you feel they are ready, then ask to send them to Eastern to take advanced math later on. Truly advanced math students have always had to come up with solutions like that."

Does this pp have a child in DCPS? It is VERY hard to get your child anything out of the ordinary unless you have an IEP. Leaving campus during the day? Skipping a grade level in math? NO WAY would that ever happen. That's why the other pp said the only thing offered for math was to spend time playing computer games - that is what passes for differentiated learning your advanced students in DCPS. Which is why do many families leave. Over and over.

Well, I offer that up as one reasonable compromise to the issue (apparently made up) of SH not offering algebra and geometry. Apparently they DO offer algebra and geometry, so it's not actually an issue. But if say you have a truly advanced child (ready for calc in 7th or 8th grade -- it happens) then why not ask if they can take it at Eastern? Doesn't sound crazy. Work with the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
"Yes, absolutely I blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to invest in their neighborhood schools. These things are not going to be handed to you on a silver platter; there's no reason for DCPS to go out if its way to "incentivize" a certain, very privileged group of parents who vocally and hostilely turn up their noses at mixing with the hoi polloi. Enroll your kid and ask them to be skipped into 8th grade algebra if you feel they are ready, then ask to send them to Eastern to take advanced math later on. Truly advanced math students have always had to come up with solutions like that."

Does this pp have a child in DCPS? It is VERY hard to get your child anything out of the ordinary unless you have an IEP. Leaving campus during the day? Skipping a grade level in math? NO WAY would that ever happen. That's why the other pp said the only thing offered for math was to spend time playing computer games - that is what passes for differentiated learning your advanced students in DCPS. Which is why do many families leave. Over and over.

Well, I offer that up as one reasonable compromise to the issue (apparently made up) of SH not offering algebra and geometry. Apparently they DO offer algebra and geometry, so it's not actually an issue. But if say you have a truly advanced child (ready for calc in 7th or 8th grade -- it happens) then why not ask if they can take it at Eastern? Doesn't sound crazy. Work with the system.

How would that child get there? It takes 20 minutes by foot. This would only work for a student at EH. And I'm not 100% sure Eastern offers calculus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
"Yes, absolutely I blame Ward 6 parents for choosing not to invest in their neighborhood schools. These things are not going to be handed to you on a silver platter; there's no reason for DCPS to go out if its way to "incentivize" a certain, very privileged group of parents who vocally and hostilely turn up their noses at mixing with the hoi polloi. Enroll your kid and ask them to be skipped into 8th grade algebra if you feel they are ready, then ask to send them to Eastern to take advanced math later on. Truly advanced math students have always had to come up with solutions like that."

Does this pp have a child in DCPS? It is VERY hard to get your child anything out of the ordinary unless you have an IEP. Leaving campus during the day? Skipping a grade level in math? NO WAY would that ever happen. That's why the other pp said the only thing offered for math was to spend time playing computer games - that is what passes for differentiated learning your advanced students in DCPS. Which is why do many families leave. Over and over.

Well, I offer that up as one reasonable compromise to the issue (apparently made up) of SH not offering algebra and geometry. Apparently they DO offer algebra and geometry, so it's not actually an issue. But if say you have a truly advanced child (ready for calc in 7th or 8th grade -- it happens) then why not ask if they can take it at Eastern? Doesn't sound crazy. Work with the system.

How would that child get there? It takes 20 minutes by foot. This would only work for a student at EH. And I'm not 100% sure Eastern offers calculus.

They have Algebra II and Trig, and I assume that the IB math is advanced. There's ways to figure out the timing/transportation.