DC Lottery Results

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hi. We recently moved to dc and our child got accepted into Watkins for 1st grade. Any opinions?

You should search recent threads or start a new once because this one has devolved into niche debates and no one will see your question. FWIW, I have a friend who sent her kid to Watkins for 1st this year and they were pretty disappointed. It was their in boundary and no other lottery schools worked out.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:For 5th grade, we got >270 for Basis. Didn’t know such a bad result was even possible! (Would love to hear horror stories so we can pretend we dodged a bullet there . Our kid likes elementary school math and science but is not advanced… yet.) The total waitlist length in recent years looks like it’s been between 200-260 students, so 270 is a head scratcher.

And then there’s the 2 Latins. >450 for both.

This kind of result is similar to other lottery results we’ve gotten in prior years. Is it a blind random lottery or do they sort of chunk slots by location, demographics, or maybe even things like EAPs or prior attendance issues? Seems weird how consistently we’ve drawn crappy numbers when it’s just a luck-based process. I guess I’m being a bit paranoid. Probability and randomness are what they are.

I'm sure it's just blind luck that *two* members of the city council (Trayon, Nadeau) have children at LAMB, which has probably the longest waitlist of any school in the city.

LAMB may be a special case. There have always been rumors about the lottery there. They were also the last school to join the unified lottery.

There's a long history of DC officials jumping to the front of school waitlists. The education chancellor had to resign a few years ago when it came out that he skipped the line to get his daughter in somewhere.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-public-schools-leader-to-resign-after-skirting-school-assignment-rules/2018/02/20/9b372230-1662-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html

No, there isn't. In fact the story you point to isn't even an example of this. At the time this occurred the process inexplicably permitted discretion by Niles to make assignments based on individual circumstances. The Chancellor went through the formal process - he had his wife make the approach in some silly BS argument that he wasn't involved. She allowed it. Clearly the system should not have allowed this discretion, but he actually worked within the then in effect rules.

I am aware of no examples of evidence that any official or other person has been able to skirt the lottery rules. If you know of one and not tin foil hat conspiracies I am all ears.

P.S. I am not defending the Chancellor. It was a bonehead move and the fact that he had his wife make the approach is proof he knew it should not have been done. But I can't sit back and watch crazy people impugn the lottery process which is one of the best run city programs.

Fente TWICE
Snow

these are just two I can throw out off the top of my head

Good Lord, wasn't Fenty pre-lottery?

Not the second time. Post lottery, post divorce and his kids still got the "be someone or know someone" preference.

You are not making the point you think you are making. At the time Fenty and others applied for and were granted special consideration from Henderson the rules actually granted the authority for her to place at her sole discretion. It was insane that such authority was granted but no one broke rules or gamed the lottery. In the case of Fenty, he didn't get what he wanted in the lottery so he applied for special consideration through the official process. That authority no longer exists.

As I said, there is ZERO evidence of any official or anyone else "gaming" the lottery or getting preferential treatment in the lottery The accusations that this is happening are without merit. People like you are conflating bad design used by insiders (as allowed) and people cheating. And you are ignoring that the loophole has since been closed.

As I said, show me an example of the lottery being gamed or abused. It has not happened.

Military officer kids go to oob schools and application schools. If you are at these schools you know this. They live on the base and ride a bus across town to schools like sww that they got into after the application process was over.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It is starting to be more than a handful at EH recently. EH also offers math and ELA acceleration. Similar story at SH. People with bright kids do sometimes turn down Basis to instead just try these schools. It is somewhat hard to believe unless you have a child there or you have otherwise recently taken a hard look at these schools.

As has been discussed on here on many threads, the nuance that is missed in many of these broad sweeping conversations about good/bad schools is the huge achievement gaps that are important to understand when looking at the city to understand the big picture. But when the schools scores are lumped together and an average score is presented, IMO it at the very least makes it harder to understand what is really happening at a school. Many people on these threads talk about the importance of having a cohort of peers achieving at higher levels, which many of these middle schools do. Ideally everybody at a school would be achieving at higher levels, but we have a long ways to go to reaching that and is worth of a whole separate discussion about how we can get there as a city.

If you look at sub groups at some of these schools being discussed (SH or EH for example) you will see they match or outperform their peers in the same subgroups across the city. As a parent who has a now 7th grader at one of those schools, I can say that there are assignments and teachers that push them, and options for more advanced courses. I also know there are kids who cannot or choose not to complete the assignments at the same level, but I know that in each of my child's classes there are a large number of kids who are doing the work, getting pushed to think one step further, doing well on class and standardized tests, etc. And for those who are thinking about the high school long game, kids from these schools get into SWW, Banneker, McKinley, privates, and increasingly the EPIC program at Eastern (TBD how much traction that picks up)

All that to say, there are options for academically advanced kids at more than just a handful of schools in this city, and there are many families at these schools by choice (in addition to the ones there b/c they didn't win a lottery a few years ago).

I totally believe you about the middle schools. But the selective admissions high schools are so random in terms of who they let in, it's not something to count on. So the middle school decision is at least partly about, if you don't get in, are you comfortable with Eastern or are you able to pay for private school?

The selective high schools are NOT that random. Only Walls is. If your kid (on grade level) could be happy at Banneker or McKinley or Walls, you will get a spot at one of the 3.

They have very similar admissions process. None of them look at whether you are on grade level. You could strike out at all three.

Look, I’ve been though the high school process with two kids in the past couple years and watched where their friends applied and matched. If your kid has a 3.0 and does the admission process, they will get a slot at Banneker, McKinley, or Walls. I agree with you that the process descriptions are similar, but the actual outcomes and the way the schools run them is different.

A 3.0 will not get you into Walls.

[Anonymous]

Yay—Basis!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It is starting to be more than a handful at EH recently. EH also offers math and ELA acceleration. Similar story at SH. People with bright kids do sometimes turn down Basis to instead just try these schools. It is somewhat hard to believe unless you have a child there or you have otherwise recently taken a hard look at these schools.

As has been discussed on here on many threads, the nuance that is missed in many of these broad sweeping conversations about good/bad schools is the huge achievement gaps that are important to understand when looking at the city to understand the big picture. But when the schools scores are lumped together and an average score is presented, IMO it at the very least makes it harder to understand what is really happening at a school. Many people on these threads talk about the importance of having a cohort of peers achieving at higher levels, which many of these middle schools do. Ideally everybody at a school would be achieving at higher levels, but we have a long ways to go to reaching that and is worth of a whole separate discussion about how we can get there as a city.

If you look at sub groups at some of these schools being discussed (SH or EH for example) you will see they match or outperform their peers in the same subgroups across the city. As a parent who has a now 7th grader at one of those schools, I can say that there are assignments and teachers that push them, and options for more advanced courses. I also know there are kids who cannot or choose not to complete the assignments at the same level, but I know that in each of my child's classes there are a large number of kids who are doing the work, getting pushed to think one step further, doing well on class and standardized tests, etc. And for those who are thinking about the high school long game, kids from these schools get into SWW, Banneker, McKinley, privates, and increasingly the EPIC program at Eastern (TBD how much traction that picks up)

All that to say, there are options for academically advanced kids at more than just a handful of schools in this city, and there are many families at these schools by choice (in addition to the ones there b/c they didn't win a lottery a few years ago).

I totally believe you about the middle schools. But the selective admissions high schools are so random in terms of who they let in, it's not something to count on. So the middle school decision is at least partly about, if you don't get in, are you comfortable with Eastern or are you able to pay for private school?

The selective high schools are NOT that random. Only Walls is. If your kid (on grade level) could be happy at Banneker or McKinley or Walls, you will get a spot at one of the 3.

Less than 1/5th of SH students go to Eastern every year, so going there as a high performing student does not actually require you to be comfortable with Eastern. Banneker? Duke? McKinley? Yes. Eastern? No. Most years more kids opt for private or moving out of DC than Eastern.

So the kids who go to SH are either ok with Eastern or prepared to go to private school or move.

My kid is a straight 4s on DCPS ES report cards, 95-99% iReady, 1 4 & 3 5s on CAPE. I am not worried she isn’t getting into one of the selective schools and going to SH seems to be an advantage there since there are more kids getting into selective HSes (including Duke) than kids getting straight 4s on PARCC. Walls or bust is unrealistic, but I am not actually worried about she is headed to Eastern.

They don't look at the PARCC/CAPE score anymore or any other test scores. They haven't in years. The number of kids getting into selective high schools vs. the number of kids at grade level on the exam isn't relevant because the second one isn't a subset of the first. They do not even have access to that information when they are making the decision. That's the issue here.

If it were really the case that every kid with a 3.0 was getting into a selective-admissions high school, that would be one thing. I do not think that's the case. But if you're thinking "my kid is a really good student" because of their test scores or anything else, I just don't see where you think that information is being used in the admissions process. If it doesn't matter because you'll move or do private school, I totally get that, though.

I am completely aware they don’t look at ES anything when selecting for W/B/D/McK. I was just giving a sense of the kind of student my daughter is. I am not worried that she will end up with way over a 3.0 from SH nor that she will get into *one* of those schools.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It is starting to be more than a handful at EH recently. EH also offers math and ELA acceleration. Similar story at SH. People with bright kids do sometimes turn down Basis to instead just try these schools. It is somewhat hard to believe unless you have a child there or you have otherwise recently taken a hard look at these schools.

As has been discussed on here on many threads, the nuance that is missed in many of these broad sweeping conversations about good/bad schools is the huge achievement gaps that are important to understand when looking at the city to understand the big picture. But when the schools scores are lumped together and an average score is presented, IMO it at the very least makes it harder to understand what is really happening at a school. Many people on these threads talk about the importance of having a cohort of peers achieving at higher levels, which many of these middle schools do. Ideally everybody at a school would be achieving at higher levels, but we have a long ways to go to reaching that and is worth of a whole separate discussion about how we can get there as a city.

If you look at sub groups at some of these schools being discussed (SH or EH for example) you will see they match or outperform their peers in the same subgroups across the city. As a parent who has a now 7th grader at one of those schools, I can say that there are assignments and teachers that push them, and options for more advanced courses. I also know there are kids who cannot or choose not to complete the assignments at the same level, but I know that in each of my child's classes there are a large number of kids who are doing the work, getting pushed to think one step further, doing well on class and standardized tests, etc. And for those who are thinking about the high school long game, kids from these schools get into SWW, Banneker, McKinley, privates, and increasingly the EPIC program at Eastern (TBD how much traction that picks up)

All that to say, there are options for academically advanced kids at more than just a handful of schools in this city, and there are many families at these schools by choice (in addition to the ones there b/c they didn't win a lottery a few years ago).

I totally believe you about the middle schools. But the selective admissions high schools are so random in terms of who they let in, it's not something to count on. So the middle school decision is at least partly about, if you don't get in, are you comfortable with Eastern or are you able to pay for private school?

The selective high schools are NOT that random. Only Walls is. If your kid (on grade level) could be happy at Banneker or McKinley or Walls, you will get a spot at one of the 3.

Less than 1/5th of SH students go to Eastern every year, so going there as a high performing student does not actually require you to be comfortable with Eastern. Banneker? Duke? McKinley? Yes. Eastern? No. Most years more kids opt for private or moving out of DC than Eastern.

So the kids who go to SH are either ok with Eastern or prepared to go to private school or move.

My kid is a straight 4s on DCPS ES report cards, 95-99% iReady, 1 4 & 3 5s on CAPE. I am not worried she isn’t getting into one of the selective schools and going to SH seems to be an advantage there since there are more kids getting into selective HSes (including Duke) than kids getting straight 4s on PARCC. Walls or bust is unrealistic, but I am not actually worried about she is headed to Eastern.

They don't look at the PARCC/CAPE score anymore or any other test scores. They haven't in years. The number of kids getting into selective high schools vs. the number of kids at grade level on the exam isn't relevant because the second one isn't a subset of the first. They do not even have access to that information when they are making the decision. That's the issue here.

If it were really the case that every kid with a 3.0 was getting into a selective-admissions high school, that would be one thing. I do not think that's the case. But if you're thinking "my kid is a really good student" because of their test scores or anything else, I just don't see where you think that information is being used in the admissions process. If it doesn't matter because you'll move or do private school, I totally get that, though.

I think that PP is clearly an elementary school parent and CAPE/iReady are just the only pieces of information she really has to go on. She's making a gamble based on that.

Middle school is very different and they get actually grades based on how hard they work. Aptitude doesn't really matter (maybe it used to when there was a test for Walls). Thats what the application schools will see.

Certainly bolded it the case. I don't begrudge young parents who only know what they know, but I am always amazed and amused by their willingness to lecture parents of MS and HS kids who have firsthand experience and have been through it.

I don’t think that PP was lecturing anyone and not a single person in this thread has said that they personally know a strong student who has struck out at all 4. (And that’s counting a 3.0 as a strong student, which is debatable.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:It is starting to be more than a handful at EH recently. EH also offers math and ELA acceleration. Similar story at SH. People with bright kids do sometimes turn down Basis to instead just try these schools. It is somewhat hard to believe unless you have a child there or you have otherwise recently taken a hard look at these schools.

As has been discussed on here on many threads, the nuance that is missed in many of these broad sweeping conversations about good/bad schools is the huge achievement gaps that are important to understand when looking at the city to understand the big picture. But when the schools scores are lumped together and an average score is presented, IMO it at the very least makes it harder to understand what is really happening at a school. Many people on these threads talk about the importance of having a cohort of peers achieving at higher levels, which many of these middle schools do. Ideally everybody at a school would be achieving at higher levels, but we have a long ways to go to reaching that and is worth of a whole separate discussion about how we can get there as a city.

If you look at sub groups at some of these schools being discussed (SH or EH for example) you will see they match or outperform their peers in the same subgroups across the city. As a parent who has a now 7th grader at one of those schools, I can say that there are assignments and teachers that push them, and options for more advanced courses. I also know there are kids who cannot or choose not to complete the assignments at the same level, but I know that in each of my child's classes there are a large number of kids who are doing the work, getting pushed to think one step further, doing well on class and standardized tests, etc. And for those who are thinking about the high school long game, kids from these schools get into SWW, Banneker, McKinley, privates, and increasingly the EPIC program at Eastern (TBD how much traction that picks up)

All that to say, there are options for academically advanced kids at more than just a handful of schools in this city, and there are many families at these schools by choice (in addition to the ones there b/c they didn't win a lottery a few years ago).

I totally believe you about the middle schools. But the selective admissions high schools are so random in terms of who they let in, it's not something to count on. So the middle school decision is at least partly about, if you don't get in, are you comfortable with Eastern or are you able to pay for private school?

The selective high schools are NOT that random. Only Walls is. If your kid (on grade level) could be happy at Banneker or McKinley or Walls, you will get a spot at one of the 3.

Less than 1/5th of SH students go to Eastern every year, so going there as a high performing student does not actually require you to be comfortable with Eastern. Banneker? Duke? McKinley? Yes. Eastern? No. Most years more kids opt for private or moving out of DC than Eastern.

So the kids who go to SH are either ok with Eastern or prepared to go to private school or move.

My kid is a straight 4s on DCPS ES report cards, 95-99% iReady, 1 4 & 3 5s on CAPE. I am not worried she isn’t getting into one of the selective schools and going to SH seems to be an advantage there since there are more kids getting into selective HSes (including Duke) than kids getting straight 4s on PARCC. Walls or bust is unrealistic, but I am not actually worried about she is headed to Eastern.

They don't look at the PARCC/CAPE score anymore or any other test scores. They haven't in years. The number of kids getting into selective high schools vs. the number of kids at grade level on the exam isn't relevant because the second one isn't a subset of the first. They do not even have access to that information when they are making the decision. That's the issue here.

If it were really the case that every kid with a 3.0 was getting into a selective-admissions high school, that would be one thing. I do not think that's the case. But if you're thinking "my kid is a really good student" because of their test scores or anything else, I just don't see where you think that information is being used in the admissions process. If it doesn't matter because you'll move or do private school, I totally get that, though.

I am completely aware they don’t look at ES anything when selecting for W/B/D/McK. I was just giving a sense of the kind of student my daughter is. I am not worried that she will end up with way over a 3.0 from SH nor that she will get into *one* of those schools.

What worries me these days is that for parents without a good default high school, the increasingly popular strategy seems to be to find a school that is most likely to yield As in middle school so they have a good shot at one of the application schools. But what you should be doing with a kid like this is putting them in a middle school that challenging and stretches them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is starting to be more than a handful at EH recently. EH also offers math and ELA acceleration. Similar story at SH. People with bright kids do sometimes turn down Basis to instead just try these schools. It is somewhat hard to believe unless you have a child there or you have otherwise recently taken a hard look at these schools.

As has been discussed on here on many threads, the nuance that is missed in many of these broad sweeping conversations about good/bad schools is the huge achievement gaps that are important to understand when looking at the city to understand the big picture. But when the schools scores are lumped together and an average score is presented, IMO it at the very least makes it harder to understand what is really happening at a school. Many people on these threads talk about the importance of having a cohort of peers achieving at higher levels, which many of these middle schools do. Ideally everybody at a school would be achieving at higher levels, but we have a long ways to go to reaching that and is worth of a whole separate discussion about how we can get there as a city.

If you look at sub groups at some of these schools being discussed (SH or EH for example) you will see they match or outperform their peers in the same subgroups across the city. As a parent who has a now 7th grader at one of those schools, I can say that there are assignments and teachers that push them, and options for more advanced courses. I also know there are kids who cannot or choose not to complete the assignments at the same level, but I know that in each of my child's classes there are a large number of kids who are doing the work, getting pushed to think one step further, doing well on class and standardized tests, etc. And for those who are thinking about the high school long game, kids from these schools get into SWW, Banneker, McKinley, privates, and increasingly the EPIC program at Eastern (TBD how much traction that picks up)

All that to say, there are options for academically advanced kids at more than just a handful of schools in this city, and there are many families at these schools by choice (in addition to the ones there b/c they didn't win a lottery a few years ago).

I totally believe you about the middle schools. But the selective admissions high schools are so random in terms of who they let in, it's not something to count on. So the middle school decision is at least partly about, if you don't get in, are you comfortable with Eastern or are you able to pay for private school?

The selective high schools are NOT that random. Only Walls is. If your kid (on grade level) could be happy at Banneker or McKinley or Walls, you will get a spot at one of the 3.

Less than 1/5th of SH students go to Eastern every year, so going there as a high performing student does not actually require you to be comfortable with Eastern. Banneker? Duke? McKinley? Yes. Eastern? No. Most years more kids opt for private or moving out of DC than Eastern.

So the kids who go to SH are either ok with Eastern or prepared to go to private school or move.

My kid is a straight 4s on DCPS ES report cards, 95-99% iReady, 1 4 & 3 5s on CAPE. I am not worried she isn’t getting into one of the selective schools and going to SH seems to be an advantage there since there are more kids getting into selective HSes (including Duke) than kids getting straight 4s on PARCC. Walls or bust is unrealistic, but I am not actually worried about she is headed to Eastern.

They don't look at the PARCC/CAPE score anymore or any other test scores. They haven't in years. The number of kids getting into selective high schools vs. the number of kids at grade level on the exam isn't relevant because the second one isn't a subset of the first. They do not even have access to that information when they are making the decision. That's the issue here.

If it were really the case that every kid with a 3.0 was getting into a selective-admissions high school, that would be one thing. I do not think that's the case. But if you're thinking "my kid is a really good student" because of their test scores or anything else, I just don't see where you think that information is being used in the admissions process. If it doesn't matter because you'll move or do private school, I totally get that, though.

I am completely aware they don’t look at ES anything when selecting for W/B/D/McK. I was just giving a sense of the kind of student my daughter is. I am not worried that she will end up with way over a 3.0 from SH nor that she will get into *one* of those schools.

What worries me these days is that for parents without a good default high school, the increasingly popular strategy seems to be to find a school that is most likely to yield As in middle school so they have a good shot at one of the application schools. But what you should be doing with a kid like this is putting them in a middle school that challenging and stretches them.

What a bizarre thing to do, totally not worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:For 5th grade, we got >270 for Basis. Didn’t know such a bad result was even possible! (Would love to hear horror stories so we can pretend we dodged a bullet there . Our kid likes elementary school math and science but is not advanced… yet.) The total waitlist length in recent years looks like it’s been between 200-260 students, so 270 is a head scratcher.

And then there’s the 2 Latins. >450 for both.

This kind of result is similar to other lottery results we’ve gotten in prior years. Is it a blind random lottery or do they sort of chunk slots by location, demographics, or maybe even things like EAPs or prior attendance issues? Seems weird how consistently we’ve drawn crappy numbers when it’s just a luck-based process. I guess I’m being a bit paranoid. Probability and randomness are what they are.

I'm sure it's just blind luck that *two* members of the city council (Trayon, Nadeau) have children at LAMB, which has probably the longest waitlist of any school in the city.

LAMB may be a special case. There have always been rumors about the lottery there. They were also the last school to join the unified lottery.

There's a long history of DC officials jumping to the front of school waitlists. The education chancellor had to resign a few years ago when it came out that he skipped the line to get his daughter in somewhere.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-public-schools-leader-to-resign-after-skirting-school-assignment-rules/2018/02/20/9b372230-1662-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html

No, there isn't. In fact the story you point to isn't even an example of this. At the time this occurred the process inexplicably permitted discretion by Niles to make assignments based on individual circumstances. The Chancellor went through the formal process - he had his wife make the approach in some silly BS argument that he wasn't involved. She allowed it. Clearly the system should not have allowed this discretion, but he actually worked within the then in effect rules.

I am aware of no examples of evidence that any official or other person has been able to skirt the lottery rules. If you know of one and not tin foil hat conspiracies I am all ears.

P.S. I am not defending the Chancellor. It was a bonehead move and the fact that he had his wife make the approach is proof he knew it should not have been done. But I can't sit back and watch crazy people impugn the lottery process which is one of the best run city programs.

Fente TWICE
Snow

these are just two I can throw out off the top of my head

Good Lord, wasn't Fenty pre-lottery?

Not the second time. Post lottery, post divorce and his kids still got the "be someone or know someone" preference.

You are not making the point you think you are making. At the time Fenty and others applied for and were granted special consideration from Henderson the rules actually granted the authority for her to place at her sole discretion. It was insane that such authority was granted but no one broke rules or gamed the lottery. In the case of Fenty, he didn't get what he wanted in the lottery so he applied for special consideration through the official process. That authority no longer exists.

As I said, there is ZERO evidence of any official or anyone else "gaming" the lottery or getting preferential treatment in the lottery The accusations that this is happening are without merit. People like you are conflating bad design used by insiders (as allowed) and people cheating. And you are ignoring that the loophole has since been closed.

As I said, show me an example of the lottery being gamed or abused. It has not happened.

I know for a fact that schools have the ability to look at the waitlist and pull off whoever they want. Not going to name the schools but I've been around as a parent and nosy person for a decade and have heard it multiple times (from DCPS staffers)

Nope. But it is clear your opinion is informed by dated information. In the early days of the common lottery under MSDC, only the initial lottery pull was managed by MSCD. From there waitlists were handed off to schools to manage on their own. Under that regime there were certainly allegations of preferential treatment. It has been years (@2015 or 16 I think) since waitlists were handed off to schools. Under the current process there is zero facility or ability for a school to work a waitlist out of order.

You don't "know this for a fact" because that cannot be done. Even if it could be done, MSDC would have perfect visibility and be able to immediately act. Stop making things up.

I'm not PP, but this happened to my kid in a year that was after 2016. The circumstances were as undramatic as you can get, since my kid jumped one other child who I'm sure was offered admission shortly after, but it did happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is starting to be more than a handful at EH recently. EH also offers math and ELA acceleration. Similar story at SH. People with bright kids do sometimes turn down Basis to instead just try these schools. It is somewhat hard to believe unless you have a child there or you have otherwise recently taken a hard look at these schools.

As has been discussed on here on many threads, the nuance that is missed in many of these broad sweeping conversations about good/bad schools is the huge achievement gaps that are important to understand when looking at the city to understand the big picture. But when the schools scores are lumped together and an average score is presented, IMO it at the very least makes it harder to understand what is really happening at a school. Many people on these threads talk about the importance of having a cohort of peers achieving at higher levels, which many of these middle schools do. Ideally everybody at a school would be achieving at higher levels, but we have a long ways to go to reaching that and is worth of a whole separate discussion about how we can get there as a city.

If you look at sub groups at some of these schools being discussed (SH or EH for example) you will see they match or outperform their peers in the same subgroups across the city. As a parent who has a now 7th grader at one of those schools, I can say that there are assignments and teachers that push them, and options for more advanced courses. I also know there are kids who cannot or choose not to complete the assignments at the same level, but I know that in each of my child's classes there are a large number of kids who are doing the work, getting pushed to think one step further, doing well on class and standardized tests, etc. And for those who are thinking about the high school long game, kids from these schools get into SWW, Banneker, McKinley, privates, and increasingly the EPIC program at Eastern (TBD how much traction that picks up)

All that to say, there are options for academically advanced kids at more than just a handful of schools in this city, and there are many families at these schools by choice (in addition to the ones there b/c they didn't win a lottery a few years ago).

I totally believe you about the middle schools. But the selective admissions high schools are so random in terms of who they let in, it's not something to count on. So the middle school decision is at least partly about, if you don't get in, are you comfortable with Eastern or are you able to pay for private school?

The selective high schools are NOT that random. Only Walls is. If your kid (on grade level) could be happy at Banneker or McKinley or Walls, you will get a spot at one of the 3.

Less than 1/5th of SH students go to Eastern every year, so going there as a high performing student does not actually require you to be comfortable with Eastern. Banneker? Duke? McKinley? Yes. Eastern? No. Most years more kids opt for private or moving out of DC than Eastern.

So the kids who go to SH are either ok with Eastern or prepared to go to private school or move.

My kid is a straight 4s on DCPS ES report cards, 95-99% iReady, 1 4 & 3 5s on CAPE. I am not worried she isn’t getting into one of the selective schools and going to SH seems to be an advantage there since there are more kids getting into selective HSes (including Duke) than kids getting straight 4s on PARCC. Walls or bust is unrealistic, but I am not actually worried about she is headed to Eastern.

They don't look at the PARCC/CAPE score anymore or any other test scores. They haven't in years. The number of kids getting into selective high schools vs. the number of kids at grade level on the exam isn't relevant because the second one isn't a subset of the first. They do not even have access to that information when they are making the decision. That's the issue here.

If it were really the case that every kid with a 3.0 was getting into a selective-admissions high school, that would be one thing. I do not think that's the case. But if you're thinking "my kid is a really good student" because of their test scores or anything else, I just don't see where you think that information is being used in the admissions process. If it doesn't matter because you'll move or do private school, I totally get that, though.

I am completely aware they don’t look at ES anything when selecting for W/B/D/McK. I was just giving a sense of the kind of student my daughter is. I am not worried that she will end up with way over a 3.0 from SH nor that she will get into *one* of those schools.

What worries me these days is that for parents without a good default high school, the increasingly popular strategy seems to be to find a school that is most likely to yield As in middle school so they have a good shot at one of the application schools. But what you should be doing with a kid like this is putting them in a middle school that challenging and stretches them.

THIS. Sacrificing a middle school experience and cruising by without being challenged will not get you the results you want in middle or high school for your kid.

And no, I’m not interested in supplementing every single subject in middle school. Who has time for that??

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:For 5th grade, we got >270 for Basis. Didn’t know such a bad result was even possible! (Would love to hear horror stories so we can pretend we dodged a bullet there . Our kid likes elementary school math and science but is not advanced… yet.) The total waitlist length in recent years looks like it’s been between 200-260 students, so 270 is a head scratcher.

And then there’s the 2 Latins. >450 for both.

This kind of result is similar to other lottery results we’ve gotten in prior years. Is it a blind random lottery or do they sort of chunk slots by location, demographics, or maybe even things like EAPs or prior attendance issues? Seems weird how consistently we’ve drawn crappy numbers when it’s just a luck-based process. I guess I’m being a bit paranoid. Probability and randomness are what they are.

I'm sure it's just blind luck that *two* members of the city council (Trayon, Nadeau) have children at LAMB, which has probably the longest waitlist of any school in the city.

LAMB may be a special case. There have always been rumors about the lottery there. They were also the last school to join the unified lottery.

There's a long history of DC officials jumping to the front of school waitlists. The education chancellor had to resign a few years ago when it came out that he skipped the line to get his daughter in somewhere.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-public-schools-leader-to-resign-after-skirting-school-assignment-rules/2018/02/20/9b372230-1662-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html

No, there isn't. In fact the story you point to isn't even an example of this. At the time this occurred the process inexplicably permitted discretion by Niles to make assignments based on individual circumstances. The Chancellor went through the formal process - he had his wife make the approach in some silly BS argument that he wasn't involved. She allowed it. Clearly the system should not have allowed this discretion, but he actually worked within the then in effect rules.

I am aware of no examples of evidence that any official or other person has been able to skirt the lottery rules. If you know of one and not tin foil hat conspiracies I am all ears.

P.S. I am not defending the Chancellor. It was a bonehead move and the fact that he had his wife make the approach is proof he knew it should not have been done. But I can't sit back and watch crazy people impugn the lottery process which is one of the best run city programs.

Fente TWICE
Snow

these are just two I can throw out off the top of my head

Good Lord, wasn't Fenty pre-lottery?

Not the second time. Post lottery, post divorce and his kids still got the "be someone or know someone" preference.

You are not making the point you think you are making. At the time Fenty and others applied for and were granted special consideration from Henderson the rules actually granted the authority for her to place at her sole discretion. It was insane that such authority was granted but no one broke rules or gamed the lottery. In the case of Fenty, he didn't get what he wanted in the lottery so he applied for special consideration through the official process. That authority no longer exists.

As I said, there is ZERO evidence of any official or anyone else "gaming" the lottery or getting preferential treatment in the lottery The accusations that this is happening are without merit. People like you are conflating bad design used by insiders (as allowed) and people cheating. And you are ignoring that the loophole has since been closed.

As I said, show me an example of the lottery being gamed or abused. It has not happened.

I know for a fact that schools have the ability to look at the waitlist and pull off whoever they want. Not going to name the schools but I've been around as a parent and nosy person for a decade and have heard it multiple times (from DCPS staffers)

Nope. But it is clear your opinion is informed by dated information. In the early days of the common lottery under MSDC, only the initial lottery pull was managed by MSCD. From there waitlists were handed off to schools to manage on their own. Under that regime there were certainly allegations of preferential treatment. It has been years (@2015 or 16 I think) since waitlists were handed off to schools. Under the current process there is zero facility or ability for a school to work a waitlist out of order.

You don't "know this for a fact" because that cannot be done. Even if it could be done, MSDC would have perfect visibility and be able to immediately act. Stop making things up.

I'm not PP, but this happened to my kid in a year that was after 2016. The circumstances were as undramatic as you can get, since my kid jumped one other child who I'm sure was offered admission shortly after, but it did happen.

Well that would be a feat since there was an audit of the lottery process and ZERO irregularities were found. That's actually where the details on Fenty and Henderson's favoritism (permitted by rule at the time) was discovered.

So we'll agree to disagree. I'll rely on the audit and its public findings. You can continue to tell your story about what you secretly know that was hidden from the audit. LOL

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It is starting to be more than a handful at EH recently. EH also offers math and ELA acceleration. Similar story at SH. People with bright kids do sometimes turn down Basis to instead just try these schools. It is somewhat hard to believe unless you have a child there or you have otherwise recently taken a hard look at these schools.

As has been discussed on here on many threads, the nuance that is missed in many of these broad sweeping conversations about good/bad schools is the huge achievement gaps that are important to understand when looking at the city to understand the big picture. But when the schools scores are lumped together and an average score is presented, IMO it at the very least makes it harder to understand what is really happening at a school. Many people on these threads talk about the importance of having a cohort of peers achieving at higher levels, which many of these middle schools do. Ideally everybody at a school would be achieving at higher levels, but we have a long ways to go to reaching that and is worth of a whole separate discussion about how we can get there as a city.

If you look at sub groups at some of these schools being discussed (SH or EH for example) you will see they match or outperform their peers in the same subgroups across the city. As a parent who has a now 7th grader at one of those schools, I can say that there are assignments and teachers that push them, and options for more advanced courses. I also know there are kids who cannot or choose not to complete the assignments at the same level, but I know that in each of my child's classes there are a large number of kids who are doing the work, getting pushed to think one step further, doing well on class and standardized tests, etc. And for those who are thinking about the high school long game, kids from these schools get into SWW, Banneker, McKinley, privates, and increasingly the EPIC program at Eastern (TBD how much traction that picks up)

All that to say, there are options for academically advanced kids at more than just a handful of schools in this city, and there are many families at these schools by choice (in addition to the ones there b/c they didn't win a lottery a few years ago).

I totally believe you about the middle schools. But the selective admissions high schools are so random in terms of who they let in, it's not something to count on. So the middle school decision is at least partly about, if you don't get in, are you comfortable with Eastern or are you able to pay for private school?

The selective high schools are NOT that random. Only Walls is. If your kid (on grade level) could be happy at Banneker or McKinley or Walls, you will get a spot at one of the 3.

Less than 1/5th of SH students go to Eastern every year, so going there as a high performing student does not actually require you to be comfortable with Eastern. Banneker? Duke? McKinley? Yes. Eastern? No. Most years more kids opt for private or moving out of DC than Eastern.

So the kids who go to SH are either ok with Eastern or prepared to go to private school or move.

My kid is a straight 4s on DCPS ES report cards, 95-99% iReady, 1 4 & 3 5s on CAPE. I am not worried she isn’t getting into one of the selective schools and going to SH seems to be an advantage there since there are more kids getting into selective HSes (including Duke) than kids getting straight 4s on PARCC. Walls or bust is unrealistic, but I am not actually worried about she is headed to Eastern.

They don't look at the PARCC/CAPE score anymore or any other test scores. They haven't in years. The number of kids getting into selective high schools vs. the number of kids at grade level on the exam isn't relevant because the second one isn't a subset of the first. They do not even have access to that information when they are making the decision. That's the issue here.

If it were really the case that every kid with a 3.0 was getting into a selective-admissions high school, that would be one thing. I do not think that's the case. But if you're thinking "my kid is a really good student" because of their test scores or anything else, I just don't see where you think that information is being used in the admissions process. If it doesn't matter because you'll move or do private school, I totally get that, though.

I am completely aware they don’t look at ES anything when selecting for W/B/D/McK. I was just giving a sense of the kind of student my daughter is. I am not worried that she will end up with way over a 3.0 from SH nor that she will get into *one* of those schools.

What worries me these days is that for parents without a good default high school, the increasingly popular strategy seems to be to find a school that is most likely to yield As in middle school so they have a good shot at one of the application schools. But what you should be doing with a kid like this is putting them in a middle school that challenging and stretches them.

THIS. Sacrificing a middle school experience and cruising by without being challenged will not get you the results you want in middle or high school for your kid.

And no, I’m not interested in supplementing every single subject in middle school. Who has time for that??

I'm confused about what choices you think people are making here. You can't control whether or not you get a good lottery number, and there are a variety of very valid reasons why a family might not otherwise be willing or able to move for middle school.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It is starting to be more than a handful at EH recently. EH also offers math and ELA acceleration. Similar story at SH. People with bright kids do sometimes turn down Basis to instead just try these schools. It is somewhat hard to believe unless you have a child there or you have otherwise recently taken a hard look at these schools.

As has been discussed on here on many threads, the nuance that is missed in many of these broad sweeping conversations about good/bad schools is the huge achievement gaps that are important to understand when looking at the city to understand the big picture. But when the schools scores are lumped together and an average score is presented, IMO it at the very least makes it harder to understand what is really happening at a school. Many people on these threads talk about the importance of having a cohort of peers achieving at higher levels, which many of these middle schools do. Ideally everybody at a school would be achieving at higher levels, but we have a long ways to go to reaching that and is worth of a whole separate discussion about how we can get there as a city.

If you look at sub groups at some of these schools being discussed (SH or EH for example) you will see they match or outperform their peers in the same subgroups across the city. As a parent who has a now 7th grader at one of those schools, I can say that there are assignments and teachers that push them, and options for more advanced courses. I also know there are kids who cannot or choose not to complete the assignments at the same level, but I know that in each of my child's classes there are a large number of kids who are doing the work, getting pushed to think one step further, doing well on class and standardized tests, etc. And for those who are thinking about the high school long game, kids from these schools get into SWW, Banneker, McKinley, privates, and increasingly the EPIC program at Eastern (TBD how much traction that picks up)

All that to say, there are options for academically advanced kids at more than just a handful of schools in this city, and there are many families at these schools by choice (in addition to the ones there b/c they didn't win a lottery a few years ago).

I totally believe you about the middle schools. But the selective admissions high schools are so random in terms of who they let in, it's not something to count on. So the middle school decision is at least partly about, if you don't get in, are you comfortable with Eastern or are you able to pay for private school?

The selective high schools are NOT that random. Only Walls is. If your kid (on grade level) could be happy at Banneker or McKinley or Walls, you will get a spot at one of the 3.

Less than 1/5th of SH students go to Eastern every year, so going there as a high performing student does not actually require you to be comfortable with Eastern. Banneker? Duke? McKinley? Yes. Eastern? No. Most years more kids opt for private or moving out of DC than Eastern.

So the kids who go to SH are either ok with Eastern or prepared to go to private school or move.

My kid is a straight 4s on DCPS ES report cards, 95-99% iReady, 1 4 & 3 5s on CAPE. I am not worried she isn’t getting into one of the selective schools and going to SH seems to be an advantage there since there are more kids getting into selective HSes (including Duke) than kids getting straight 4s on PARCC. Walls or bust is unrealistic, but I am not actually worried about she is headed to Eastern.

They don't look at the PARCC/CAPE score anymore or any other test scores. They haven't in years. The number of kids getting into selective high schools vs. the number of kids at grade level on the exam isn't relevant because the second one isn't a subset of the first. They do not even have access to that information when they are making the decision. That's the issue here.

If it were really the case that every kid with a 3.0 was getting into a selective-admissions high school, that would be one thing. I do not think that's the case. But if you're thinking "my kid is a really good student" because of their test scores or anything else, I just don't see where you think that information is being used in the admissions process. If it doesn't matter because you'll move or do private school, I totally get that, though.

I am completely aware they don’t look at ES anything when selecting for W/B/D/McK. I was just giving a sense of the kind of student my daughter is. I am not worried that she will end up with way over a 3.0 from SH nor that she will get into *one* of those schools.

What worries me these days is that for parents without a good default high school, the increasingly popular strategy seems to be to find a school that is most likely to yield As in middle school so they have a good shot at one of the application schools. But what you should be doing with a kid like this is putting them in a middle school that challenging and stretches them.

THIS. Sacrificing a middle school experience and cruising by without being challenged will not get you the results you want in middle or high school for your kid.

And no, I’m not interested in supplementing every single subject in middle school. Who has time for that??

I'm confused about what choices you think people are making here. You can't control whether or not you get a good lottery number, and there are a variety of very valid reasons why a family might not otherwise be willing or able to move for middle school.

In this position. Lottery didn’t work out. Kid actually wanted to go to SH anyway. It has made a good enough impression that I’m willing to give it a shot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is starting to be more than a handful at EH recently. EH also offers math and ELA acceleration. Similar story at SH. People with bright kids do sometimes turn down Basis to instead just try these schools. It is somewhat hard to believe unless you have a child there or you have otherwise recently taken a hard look at these schools.

As has been discussed on here on many threads, the nuance that is missed in many of these broad sweeping conversations about good/bad schools is the huge achievement gaps that are important to understand when looking at the city to understand the big picture. But when the schools scores are lumped together and an average score is presented, IMO it at the very least makes it harder to understand what is really happening at a school. Many people on these threads talk about the importance of having a cohort of peers achieving at higher levels, which many of these middle schools do. Ideally everybody at a school would be achieving at higher levels, but we have a long ways to go to reaching that and is worth of a whole separate discussion about how we can get there as a city.

If you look at sub groups at some of these schools being discussed (SH or EH for example) you will see they match or outperform their peers in the same subgroups across the city. As a parent who has a now 7th grader at one of those schools, I can say that there are assignments and teachers that push them, and options for more advanced courses. I also know there are kids who cannot or choose not to complete the assignments at the same level, but I know that in each of my child's classes there are a large number of kids who are doing the work, getting pushed to think one step further, doing well on class and standardized tests, etc. And for those who are thinking about the high school long game, kids from these schools get into SWW, Banneker, McKinley, privates, and increasingly the EPIC program at Eastern (TBD how much traction that picks up)

All that to say, there are options for academically advanced kids at more than just a handful of schools in this city, and there are many families at these schools by choice (in addition to the ones there b/c they didn't win a lottery a few years ago).

I totally believe you about the middle schools. But the selective admissions high schools are so random in terms of who they let in, it's not something to count on. So the middle school decision is at least partly about, if you don't get in, are you comfortable with Eastern or are you able to pay for private school?

The selective high schools are NOT that random. Only Walls is. If your kid (on grade level) could be happy at Banneker or McKinley or Walls, you will get a spot at one of the 3.

They have very similar admissions process. None of them look at whether you are on grade level. You could strike out at all three.

Look, I’ve been though the high school process with two kids in the past couple years and watched where their friends applied and matched. If your kid has a 3.0 and does the admission process, they will get a slot at Banneker, McKinley, or Walls. I agree with you that the process descriptions are similar, but the actual outcomes and the way the schools run them is different.

A 3.0 will not get you into Walls.

+1. You have to have a 3.0 to be considered, but Walls gets enough students with 4.0 to fill all of their seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is starting to be more than a handful at EH recently. EH also offers math and ELA acceleration. Similar story at SH. People with bright kids do sometimes turn down Basis to instead just try these schools. It is somewhat hard to believe unless you have a child there or you have otherwise recently taken a hard look at these schools.

As has been discussed on here on many threads, the nuance that is missed in many of these broad sweeping conversations about good/bad schools is the huge achievement gaps that are important to understand when looking at the city to understand the big picture. But when the schools scores are lumped together and an average score is presented, IMO it at the very least makes it harder to understand what is really happening at a school. Many people on these threads talk about the importance of having a cohort of peers achieving at higher levels, which many of these middle schools do. Ideally everybody at a school would be achieving at higher levels, but we have a long ways to go to reaching that and is worth of a whole separate discussion about how we can get there as a city.

If you look at sub groups at some of these schools being discussed (SH or EH for example) you will see they match or outperform their peers in the same subgroups across the city. As a parent who has a now 7th grader at one of those schools, I can say that there are assignments and teachers that push them, and options for more advanced courses. I also know there are kids who cannot or choose not to complete the assignments at the same level, but I know that in each of my child's classes there are a large number of kids who are doing the work, getting pushed to think one step further, doing well on class and standardized tests, etc. And for those who are thinking about the high school long game, kids from these schools get into SWW, Banneker, McKinley, privates, and increasingly the EPIC program at Eastern (TBD how much traction that picks up)

All that to say, there are options for academically advanced kids at more than just a handful of schools in this city, and there are many families at these schools by choice (in addition to the ones there b/c they didn't win a lottery a few years ago).

I totally believe you about the middle schools. But the selective admissions high schools are so random in terms of who they let in, it's not something to count on. So the middle school decision is at least partly about, if you don't get in, are you comfortable with Eastern or are you able to pay for private school?

The selective high schools are NOT that random. Only Walls is. If your kid (on grade level) could be happy at Banneker or McKinley or Walls, you will get a spot at one of the 3.

They have very similar admissions process. None of them look at whether you are on grade level. You could strike out at all three.

Have you heard of any good students you know striking out at all three? I haven't. The only one I knew who "struck out" at the ones he applied to was in bounds for Jackson Reed. So, you know he had a good back up plan and was pickier as a result. The other factor is that if you can pay for Private if necessary, then things are truly not dire.

I’ve never heard of anyone striking out at all 3. There are so many seats being offered between all 3, especially after the Banneker expansion.