I am confused between Stuart Hobson Middle School vs. Deal Middle School

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that the commute from the Hill to MacArthur is a real drag during rush hour. The future campus is nowhere near near a Metro stop or a bus route that goes from the Hill. I live near Union Station but used to work near the future campus, where free parking was available to me. Many mornings, it took me nearly an hour to get to work through traffic. Also, Walls is not the safe bet for strong Hill students it once was, now that the entrance exam and PARCC scores have both been dropped in the admissions process. Think twice about a DCPS middle school EotP. Might be better to move.

When was Walls ever a safe bet with waitlist of 100+ kids?

Pre Covid, Walls was quite a safe bet for the strongest 8th graders EotP, coming out of both public and private schools. Before Bowser began pressuring DCPS to admit more low-SES minority students from over the River, and to ditch the entrance exam and standardized test scores requirements (DC-CAS, then PARCC or PSAT or SAT score) the academically able would get in. I've lived on the Hill for 30 years and saw this phenomenon play out over and over, particularly for teens who were very good at math, regardless of race. The Walls entrance exams emphasized fairly tough algebra and geometry. No longer. Admission to Walls has essentially become a lottery in the last several years.

That's a false assumption. There may have been intent to attract more diverse students to Walls, including from EotP, but the school remains overwhelmingly white and/or higher SES and enrolls an extremely small number of students from EotP. Dropping the entrance exam had no impact on the demographics

Dropping the entrance exam has in fact had a small impact on demographics and a larger impact on rigor. Now Walls admits plenty of white kids who are B students, along with those of other races. Sad.

This-- my DC was admitted to Walls from Deal last year...there was zero correlation between the academic merits of the kids who got in and the kids who didn't. In fact, fewer of the kids in geometry or Algebra 2 got in. Given the grade inflation, it was a total crap shoot.

PARCC scores over the next few years are going to be very telling.

High school PARCC scores are seldom very telling. DC should copy many of the states by giving the PSAT or SAT to 10th graders to meet Federal standardized testing requirements. The reality is that teens blow off PARCC in this city, because there's nothing in it for individuals to take the test seriously. JR has had serious problems over the years in simply getting students to show up for PARCC testing.

[Anonymous]

Yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:BASIS discussions come up whenever a post is about SH for obvious reasons. An enormous percentage of the BASIS student body is coming from Capitol Hill where families chose BASIS over SH. So of course in assessing SH this post is evoking comments from parents explaining why they didn’t choose it. But those parents didn’t forego SH for Deal. By and large folks are not choosing between SH and Deal for the obvious reason that they are two very different boundary locations and the commute between the two boundaries is daunting. So this thread wasn’t going to get too many helpful responses other than the obvious one: if you live in Capitol Hill and are worried about SH, look at BASIS and Latin and if that’s not for you or not an option, choose Deal because it has the better HS feed at the expense of a very long commute if you live on the hill. That’s it.

I don't get what you're asserting. How can we choose Deal from the Hill? We can't, other than by doing one of two things. We can uproot and move to Upper NW. Alternatively, with considerable luck, we can lottery into a Deal ES feeder school at some point between K and 5th grade, taking on an miserable rush hour commute for a little kid. I've only seen a handful of cases of the latter in the last 10 years. One or two of the families we know who were on track for Deal from the Hill switched to BASIS for 5th grade, after the commute to Deal had become untenable. When I came to the Hill 20 years ago, Hill kids could generally lottery into Deal. That ship sailed a long time ago indeed. Same with Hardy. Some of the in-boundary SH families do OK with a MS school that's right around the corner, leaving them plenty of time to supplement in the afternoons. The kids read a lot, maybe go to Mathnasium, work with tutors, then crack Walls for HS.

[Anonymous]

I should have clarified that the option for those concerned about SH is — AT 5th GRADE- to try for Latin or BASIS or a Deal feeder. Lafayette basically cleared its 5th grade waitlist so aiming for a Deal feeder is not preposterous. None of these options are guaranteed of course so moving in bounds for Deal or outside of DC or going to private school are the fall back options. As I mentioned, this whole thread about comparing SH to Deal is largely hypothetical because most folks on the hill can’t get into Deal or won’t be willing to travel for it. If the OP made clear they were asking this question from the perspective of deciding whether to move in bounds for Deal rather than stay in bounds for SH than that would have been better to specify and people would have chimed in with other considerations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:BASIS discussions come up whenever a post is about SH for obvious reasons. An enormous percentage of the BASIS student body is coming from Capitol Hill where families chose BASIS over SH. So of course in assessing SH this post is evoking comments from parents explaining why they didn’t choose it. But those parents didn’t forego SH for Deal. By and large folks are not choosing between SH and Deal for the obvious reason that they are two very different boundary locations and the commute between the two boundaries is daunting. So this thread wasn’t going to get too many helpful responses other than the obvious one: if you live in Capitol Hill and are worried about SH, look at BASIS and Latin and if that’s not for you or not an option, choose Deal because it has the better HS feed at the expense of a very long commute if you live on the hill. That’s it.

Spot on! For anyone who wants the data:

SY21-22 there were 650 kids enrolled at BASIS. Of that...
Eastern Feeders: 264*
Eastern HS - 80
Eliot Hine - 36
Jefferson - 47
Stuart Hobson - 54
Kelly Miller - 11
Brent - 11
Maury - 11
Peabody/Watkins - 14
LT/JOW - <20 combined

Jackson-Reed Feeders: 75*
JR - 33
Hardy MS - 17
Deal MS - 25
JR ES - >0

There are not enough (min 10) at each JR feeder ES to be included in the audit results but logic tells us since BASIS doesn't backfill there are sure to some from JR ES feeders in 5th grade. There are also not enough LT or JOW kids to be included in the audit, but anecdotally they number another 10 or so (at least). That means that @65-70% of BASIS is IB for either Wilson or Eastern.

If we layer on top of that the comparison of kids within the catchment that attend the Eastern IB MS/HS vs BASIS we learn that:

SH: 54 at BASIS/142 at SH
Eliot Hine: 36 at BASIS/130 at EH
Jefferson: 47 at BASIS/166 at Jefferson
Eastern: 80 at BASIS/256 at Eastern

That, my friends, is why a discussion of JR and Eastern schools morphs into a BASIS discussion. Because on the basis of enrollment data, BASIS is a large part of any decision for parents contemplating SH and a surprisingly relevant part of the discussion for JR feeder parents. It also confirms what we already knew: DCUM is predominantly occupied by UMC folks from the Hill and upper NW.

[Anonymous]

Makes sense.

Here is the student location map from a few years ago.

[Anonymous]

Irrelevant.

OP specifically wanted to hear from parents who have experience with either SH or Deal. (Read the first post of this thread.)

Parents who chose different schools do not fall into this category, regardless of the reasons for their choices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Irrelevant.

OP specifically wanted to hear from parents who have experience with either SH or Deal. (Read the first post of this thread.)

Parents who chose different schools do not fall into this category, regardless of the reasons for their choices.

And the 2 people who had experience with both spoke up on page one. No one is forcing you to read the forum or reply. This isn't an airport; you don't have announce when you leave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Irrelevant.

OP specifically wanted to hear from parents who have experience with either SH or Deal. (Read the first post of this thread.)

Parents who chose different schools do not fall into this category, regardless of the reasons for their choices.

And the 2 people who had experience with both spoke up on page one. No one is forcing you to read the forum or reply. This isn't an airport; you don't have announce when you leave.

I didn’t announce I was leaving. I chimed in to note that posts about Basis are irrelevant to OP’s question. People are, of course, free to post what they want (subject to the rules of the site and the moderator’s control), but that doesn’t mean they should.

It kind of defeats the purpose of having topic-specific threads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Irrelevant.

OP specifically wanted to hear from parents who have experience with either SH or Deal. (Read the first post of this thread.)

Parents who chose different schools do not fall into this category, regardless of the reasons for their choices.

And the 2 people who had experience with both spoke up on page one. No one is forcing you to read the forum or reply. This isn't an airport; you don't have announce when you leave.

I didn’t announce I was leaving. I chimed in to note that posts about Basis are irrelevant to OP’s question. People are, of course, free to post what they want (subject to the rules of the site and the moderator’s control), but that doesn’t mean they should.

It kind of defeats the purpose of having topic-specific threads.

You must be new here.

Numerous posters specifically showed how Basis was relevant to this thread, and people are free to post whatever they want.

Begone to the off-topic thread.

[Anonymous]

Again, OP wanted to hear from parents with experience at Deal or Basis. Those who chose other schools do not fall into this category.

But that’s fine. As long as we’re at it, how about we encourage parents of kids at Brookland, Hardy, CHEC, Francis Setvens and other middle schools to tell us what they think?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Again, OP wanted to hear from parents with experience at Deal or Basis. Those who chose other schools do not fall into this category.

But that’s fine. As long as we’re at it, how about we encourage parents of kids at Brookland, Hardy, CHEC, Francis Setvens and other middle schools to tell us what they think?

CORRECTION: Meant to say that OP wanted to hear from parents with experience at Deal or SH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that the commute from the Hill to MacArthur is a real drag during rush hour. The future campus is nowhere near near a Metro stop or a bus route that goes from the Hill. I live near Union Station but used to work near the future campus, where free parking was available to me. Many mornings, it took me nearly an hour to get to work through traffic. Also, Walls is not the safe bet for strong Hill students it once was, now that the entrance exam and PARCC scores have both been dropped in the admissions process. Think twice about a DCPS middle school EotP. Might be better to move.

When was Walls ever a safe bet with waitlist of 100+ kids?

Pre Covid, Walls was quite a safe bet for the strongest 8th graders EotP, coming out of both public and private schools. Before Bowser began pressuring DCPS to admit more low-SES minority students from over the River, and to ditch the entrance exam and standardized test scores requirements (DC-CAS, then PARCC or PSAT or SAT score) the academically able would get in. I've lived on the Hill for 30 years and saw this phenomenon play out over and over, particularly for teens who were very good at math, regardless of race. The Walls entrance exams emphasized fairly tough algebra and geometry. No longer. Admission to Walls has essentially become a lottery in the last several years.

That's a false assumption. There may have been intent to attract more diverse students to Walls, including from EotP, but the school remains overwhelmingly white and/or higher SES and enrolls an extremely small number of students from EotP. Dropping the entrance exam had no impact on the demographics

Dropping the entrance exam has in fact had a small impact on demographics and a larger impact on rigor. Now Walls admits plenty of white kids who are B students, along with those of other races. Sad.

This-- my DC was admitted to Walls from Deal last year...there was zero correlation between the academic merits of the kids who got in and the kids who didn't. In fact, fewer of the kids in geometry or Algebra 2 got in. Given the grade inflation, it was a total crap shoot.

PARCC scores over the next few years are going to be very telling.

High school PARCC scores are seldom very telling. DC should copy many of the states by giving the PSAT or SAT to 10th graders to meet Federal standardized testing requirements. The reality is that teens blow off PARCC in this city, because there's nothing in it for individuals to take the test seriously. JR has had serious problems over the years in simply getting students to show up for PARCC testing.

Feel better having gotten a completely irrelevant rant out of your system? The point here is not whether PARCC is a good test. And shis has nothing to do with JR. The reason the scores will be interesting is as a measure against the same population over time to see trendlines. If the admitted kids are less advanced we should see some sort of trend as evidence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I should have clarified that the option for those concerned about SH is — AT 5th GRADE- to try for Latin or BASIS or a Deal feeder. Lafayette basically cleared its 5th grade waitlist so aiming for a Deal feeder is not preposterous. None of these options are guaranteed of course so moving in bounds for Deal or outside of DC or going to private school are the fall back options. As I mentioned, this whole thread about comparing SH to Deal is largely hypothetical because most folks on the hill can’t get into Deal or won’t be willing to travel for it. If the OP made clear they were asking this question from the perspective of deciding whether to move in bounds for Deal rather than stay in bounds for SH than that would have been better to specify and people would have chimed in with other considerations.

who is driving their kid from the Hill to Lafayette? That’s a terrible solution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I should have clarified that the option for those concerned about SH is — AT 5th GRADE- to try for Latin or BASIS or a Deal feeder. Lafayette basically cleared its 5th grade waitlist so aiming for a Deal feeder is not preposterous. None of these options are guaranteed of course so moving in bounds for Deal or outside of DC or going to private school are the fall back options. As I mentioned, this whole thread about comparing SH to Deal is largely hypothetical because most folks on the hill can’t get into Deal or won’t be willing to travel for it. If the OP made clear they were asking this question from the perspective of deciding whether to move in bounds for Deal rather than stay in bounds for SH than that would have been better to specify and people would have chimed in with other considerations.

who is driving their kid from the Hill to Lafayette? That’s a terrible solution.

Would it surprise you to learn that there are a number of kids at HRCS who travel for upwards of an hour on multiple busses to escape their IB schools? It surprises you that someone would transit from Hill to Lafayette because you are thinking about this in the context of your finances and your life. If you did not have options to escape Eastern and you wanted your kid to have a guarantee at a quality MS and HS education then the short term pain is a long term investment in escaping generational poverty.