MacArthur

[Anonymous]

I'm not defending any other posts -- just expressing my own view that Macarthur will never be the second full service high school that Ward 3 desperately needs, and, as an in bounds parent, I am quite disappointed by the decision to try to put it there. The truancy problem is due in part to the lack of transportation to the school, but the site is inadequate in many other ways.

[Anonymous]

Truancy is indeed a big problem at MacArthur. Not sure if there will be any improvement next year

[Anonymous]

But if kids aren’t there, which is awful for the kids, how is that an issue for everyone else? Fewer kids in class…. Or is it that they are further behind?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GDS found the Macarthur site to be inadequate for a small private elementary school. Why the city thought it was ideal for a public high school is beyond me.

It's utter non-sense. The private school GDS kids get a new metro accessible location with a public street re-routed exclusivley for their campus, while the DCPS kids get their building scraps... and the administration who won't even offer city buses with routes that actually make sense to get kids to MacArthur and home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GDS found the Macarthur site to be inadequate for a small private elementary school. Why the city thought it was ideal for a public high school is beyond me.

It's utter non-sense. The private school GDS kids get a new metro accessible location with a public street re-routed exclusivley for their campus, while the DCPS kids get their building scraps... and the administration who won't even offer city buses with routes that actually make sense to get kids to MacArthur and home.

I gotta agree with this sentiment. I know families are trying to make it work, which is great. But this is a crummy arrangement for a zoned comprehensive high school. (The Mayor wouldn’t even consider getting the old Hardy ES site back for DCPS use. Some current DCPS parents likely went to middle school there back in the 90s, before the move to Gordon.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am actually a DC resident in bounds for Hardy and Macarthur. And yes, people here are very concerned about high school options given that the cost of private school is soaring and spaces at Walls are limited.

Sorry, are you defending the generic uninformed trolling upthread or making some other point?

In any case, you should spend some time actually visiting the schools and not get your information from DCUM. There are a huge number of people whose life’s work seems to be denigrating schools attended by more than a handful of Black kids.

Whenever my kid’s HS (JR) is mentioned, weird non-native English speaking trolls come out of the woodwork to make up silly stories written as “this happened to my kid”, but their stories make clear that they’ve never actually seen the outside of the school, much less the inside.

+1. My friend’s kid is at MacArthur and I’ve spoken to them and their friends. They all say they prefer MacArthur to JR. Do not get your info from DCUM.

[Anonymous]

My son is at MacArthur. He likes it. He's challenged and loves his teachers and has extra curriculars. The doom and gloom reads like folks who have never been there and never spoken to someone who goes there. If you cite truancy as the major problem, please cite the source and know that you are looking at less than 1 year of data.

[Anonymous]

Why does truancy even matter?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why does truancy even matter?

Because the classes are all general ed. If 1/4 of the class doesn’t bother to show up half the time, they’ll drag the rest of the class down because the teacher will have to “differentiate.” There won’t be as much time for your kid to get, say, thoughtful feedback on a paper because the teacher is trying to deal with the kids who can barely write. And eventually this does mean that expectations are watered down. Teachers aren’t going to give assignments that are appropriately challenging for your kid (say, a 5 page research paper) when 1/4 of the class cannot/will not write one page.

[Anonymous]

Ah. Got it. To avoid not giving kids a chance, it’s a race to the bottom. Thank you equity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does truancy even matter?

Because the classes are all general ed. If 1/4 of the class doesn’t bother to show up half the time, they’ll drag the rest of the class down because the teacher will have to “differentiate.” There won’t be as much time for your kid to get, say, thoughtful feedback on a paper because the teacher is trying to deal with the kids who can barely write. And eventually this does mean that expectations are watered down. Teachers aren’t going to give assignments that are appropriately challenging for your kid (say, a 5 page research paper) when 1/4 of the class cannot/will not write one page.

This. Dealing with truancy is exhausting and also demoralising for teachers. If truancy impacts one third or one quarter of the class, it will negatively affect the entire class. If only 1-2 kids per class are missing regularly, it is much less of a factor

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not defending any other posts -- just expressing my own view that Macarthur will never be the second full service high school that Ward 3 desperately needs, and, as an in bounds parent, I am quite disappointed by the decision to try to put it there. The truancy problem is due in part to the lack of transportation to the school, but the site is inadequate in many other ways.

So… you don’t have ANY actual information but you’re confidently proclaiming that the school will fail — not just fail your kids but fail everybody else’s kids, including the many, many kids who actually attend and who actually have first hand knowledge and whose parents have posted on this and many other threads that they are happy with the school.

This right here is why DCUM is such a useless source for information on DCPS school — idiots like PP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does truancy even matter?

Because the classes are all general ed. If 1/4 of the class doesn’t bother to show up half the time, they’ll drag the rest of the class down because the teacher will have to “differentiate.” There won’t be as much time for your kid to get, say, thoughtful feedback on a paper because the teacher is trying to deal with the kids who can barely write. And eventually this does mean that expectations are watered down. Teachers aren’t going to give assignments that are appropriately challenging for your kid (say, a 5 page research paper) when 1/4 of the class cannot/will not write one page.

It’s so interesting how none of this is actually happening at all.

Just more speculative trolling nonsense from people with zero knowledge of the school.

I’m waiting for an appearance by the “my kid got jumped at Wilson” troll who thought Wilson was in Georgetown. He’ll fit right in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why does truancy even matter?

Because the classes are all general ed. If 1/4 of the class doesn’t bother to show up half the time, they’ll drag the rest of the class down because the teacher will have to “differentiate.” There won’t be as much time for your kid to get, say, thoughtful feedback on a paper because the teacher is trying to deal with the kids who can barely write. And eventually this does mean that expectations are watered down. Teachers aren’t going to give assignments that are appropriately challenging for your kid (say, a 5 page research paper) when 1/4 of the class cannot/will not write one page.

It’s so interesting how none of this is actually happening at all.

Just more speculative trolling nonsense from people with zero knowledge of the school.

I’m waiting for an appearance by the “my kid got jumped at Wilson” troll who thought Wilson was in Georgetown. He’ll fit right in.

DP. Of course it’s going to happen if you have either truancy or a wide gap in the achievement gap in a classroom. It happens every single day many schools in DCPS. It’s obvious you are not a teacher or don’t know teachers.

[Anonymous]

A decade ago, if you were OOB and truant, you could lose your spot.

It wasn't punishment, just recognition that the logistics weren't working and change was needed.

Now everyone feels entitled to attend any given school, geography be damned.

The people who complain about the difficulty of accessing MacArthur from across town and the lack of a shuttle bus from Foggy Bottom metro are absurd.

Inaccessibilty for in-bounds is a legitimate complaint. Inaccessibility for some OOB means those OOB need to pick a different school.