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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+1, I know a bunch of people who commute (or hire a car service fir their kids) so they can attend schools like Stokes or LAMB. I even know a family with a 30-40 minute, 2x daily commute because they wanted a Montessori PK3 spot. Their IB isn’t even bad, just mediocre.

A lot of families in DC make surprising choices regarding schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+1, I know a bunch of people who commute (or hire a car service fir their kids) so they can attend schools like Stokes or LAMB. I even know a family with a 30-40 minute, 2x daily commute because they wanted a Montessori PK3 spot. Their IB isn’t even bad, just mediocre.

A lot of families in DC make surprising choices regarding schools.

This amount if commuting is not unusual for primary or secondary schools in any big US city. People will always schlep their kids ( or have them schlep themselves ) to secure what they feel is the best education they can offer. There is a reason school kids in DC have free metro cards.

[Anonymous]

Fascinating interactive map. By city/grade level/ driving or transit
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/road-school-how-far-students-travel-school-choice-rich-cities-denver-detroit-new-orleans-new-york-city-and-washington-dc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Fascinating interactive map. By city/grade level/ driving or transit
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/road-school-how-far-students-travel-school-choice-rich-cities-denver-detroit-new-orleans-new-york-city-and-washington-dc

Thanks for sharing. It looks like the NYC map essentially doesn't show driving times because hardly anybody's driving kids to school. By contrast, a great deal of driving of kids to schools in DC, particularly for 6th-8th grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I don't think most of the people on DCUM discussing this are facing a choice between "generational poverty" and schlepping their kid to Lafayette. My impression is that the Hill parents that choose "HRCS" for elementary that are some distance away generally have one parent who is a SAH or works part-time, or a nanny that drives; or they realize that their IB elementary is fine. By MS the kid takes the bus (or more likely, family has decamped for MoCo.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+1, I know a bunch of people who commute (or hire a car service fir their kids) so they can attend schools like Stokes or LAMB. I even know a family with a 30-40 minute, 2x daily commute because they wanted a Montessori PK3 spot. Their IB isn’t even bad, just mediocre.

A lot of families in DC make surprising choices regarding schools.

Ah yes, they hire a car service to escape generational poverty. Cool!

Yes families will do silly thinks like add 1.5 hrs a day in a car because they think there is something magical about Montessori preschool. Usually this is the kind of family that moves to the suburbs for K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fascinating interactive map. By city/grade level/ driving or transit
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/road-school-how-far-students-travel-school-choice-rich-cities-denver-detroit-new-orleans-new-york-city-and-washington-dc

Thanks for sharing. It looks like the NYC map essentially doesn't show driving times because hardly anybody's driving kids to school. By contrast, a great deal of driving of kids to schools in DC, particularly for 6th-8th grades.

This data is about how long driving *would* take. It does NOT show how many people actually drive their kids to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fascinating interactive map. By city/grade level/ driving or transit
https://www.urban.org/research/publication/road-school-how-far-students-travel-school-choice-rich-cities-denver-detroit-new-orleans-new-york-city-and-washington-dc

Thanks for sharing. It looks like the NYC map essentially doesn't show driving times because hardly anybody's driving kids to school. By contrast, a great deal of driving of kids to schools in DC, particularly for 6th-8th grades.

This data is about how long driving *would* take. It does NOT show how many people actually drive their kids to school.

(to clarify - there is data on overall mode of travel, but not for individual schools. so this doesn't tell you anything about how many kids are going from the Hill to OOB NW schools, for example. It could just be trips to IB schools.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+1, I know a bunch of people who commute (or hire a car service fir their kids) so they can attend schools like Stokes or LAMB. I even know a family with a 30-40 minute, 2x daily commute because they wanted a Montessori PK3 spot. Their IB isn’t even bad, just mediocre.

A lot of families in DC make surprising choices regarding schools.

Ah yes, they hire a car service to escape generational poverty. Cool!

Yes families will do silly thinks like add 1.5 hrs a day in a car because they think there is something magical about Montessori preschool. Usually this is the kind of family that moves to the suburbs for K.

Yeah people make stupid choices all of the time. Committing that long for Montessori preschool is one of them. Will be even worse when they realize it’s limiting their second graders ability to do activities and extracurriculars because they’re spending so much time in the car.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I’ve never seen these numbers before and find them very interesting. Thanks, PP!

[Anonymous]

Where are these numbers coming from? I'd like to see more granular data, particularly a demographic breakdown of students at the Eastern feeders who go on to BASIS, along with at-risk percentages. I'd also like to see the same break-down for Latin and Latin Cooper.

At Brent, our in-boundary school, around 2/3 of the UMC students leave after 4th grade every year, with almost all those leaving running to BASIS or the Latins. The poor minority kids tend to stay for 5th before moving on to Jefferson Academy. Is this trend really of no concern to DCPS or the city council?

[Anonymous]

DCPS and the council members want the pushy and demanding UMC parents at charters to shut them up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCPS and the council members want the pushy and demanding UMC parents at charters to shut them up.

yes and then they say they care about diversity in DC schools!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

I don't think most of the people on DCUM discussing this are facing a choice between "generational poverty" and schlepping their kid to Lafayette. My impression is that the Hill parents that choose "HRCS" for elementary that are some distance away generally have one parent who is a SAH or works part-time, or a nanny that drives; or they realize that their IB elementary is fine. By MS the kid takes the bus (or more likely, family has decamped for MoCo.)

Except I was replying to the person who asked, "who is driving their kid from the Hill to Lafayette? That’s a terrible solution." It would seem that you and the poster to whom I replied share a similar insular focus. There are people outside of the DCUM bubble. And (this one is gonna shock you) there are even people on DCUM who live paycheck to paycheck and would do almost anything to secure a path through HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where are these numbers coming from? I'd like to see more granular data, particularly a demographic breakdown of students at the Eastern feeders who go on to BASIS, along with at-risk percentages. I'd also like to see the same break-down for Latin and Latin Cooper.

At Brent, our in-boundary school, around 2/3 of the UMC students leave after 4th grade every year, with almost all those leaving running to BASIS or the Latins. The poor minority kids tend to stay for 5th before moving on to Jefferson Academy. Is this trend really of no concern to DCPS or the city council?

The data is coming from DCPS https://dme.dc.gov/page/download-data. If you want to see the data fire up your MS Excel and do some filtering.

It does not include demographic data. The demographic data of the schools you reference are (or in the case of Cooper, soon will be) public. You can pretty easily extrapolate the at-risk.

Just for fun I dug into your belief that "around 2/3 of the UMC students leave after 4th grade every year, with almost all those leaving running to BASIS or the Latins". Brent sent fewer than 10 kids to Latin last year (DCPS doesn't report anything less than 10 so we don't know the actual #). 11 Brent 5th graders attended BASIS last year. Against an audited enrollment of 54 4th graders from SY20-21 (the grade that is reflected in the 21-22 BASIS/Latin enrollment data) that dropped to 34 enrolled 5th graders in SY21-22, we know that means a large percentage of the @20 kids who left went to BASIS or Latin.