Middle Schools for Cap Hill

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't agree. The ed picture just isn't as black and white as you paint it.

City demographics continue to shift, and gentrification remains a powerful force for change. Mayor Bowser won't be in office forever.

The ed landscape you describe may have been accurate a decade back, but I'm not convinced that that DCPS and the city council members no longer give a whit about keeping high SES families in traditional public schools after elementary school. If high SES retention in DCPS middle and high schools was irrelevant politically, DCPS wouldn't be planning to open a 2nd high school in Ward 3 within the next few years, mainly to relieve crowding at Wilson.

Once the new HS opens, some CH families will join Hardy families there, via the OOB lottery.

No DCPS doesn’t care. They have taken honors classes away at Wilson with honors for all and more families from Deal are opting out of Wilson. They have done away with any testing for Walls and United the academic entrance and the admission process is opaque with the city saying they want more kids from other low SES wards other than 3.

The new HS will relieve some crowding at Wilson but don’t expect too much. My money is the primary motive is to draw OOB at risk kids to better schools and I bet anything there is going to be a set aside at risk preference.

. Honors for All st Wilson has been rolled back somewhat this school year. Just not true that many in-boundary families have been abandoning Deal and Wilson. If it were, in-boundary numbers wouldn’t have risen during the pandemic. Private schools cost a bomb and, with college, housing and fuel costs rising, even moderately wealthy families are feeling the squeeze. I’m willing to believe that DCPS doesn’t prioritize high SES\white retention, particularly EotP, but not that they could care less about it.

They do care -- just not in the way DCUM expects. This was all studied years ago, the last time boundaries/feeders were examined. If they allowed one Deal-type middle school to emerge, that would have retained all the white folks. But what those white people wanted was one middle school that contained all the gentrifying schools -- so that the disparity between the gentrified middle school and the other middle schools would have been enormous.

What DCPS wanted was to spread the gentrifiers among all the middle school, so their rising tide would lift all the boats. They figured that not all of them would leave (because not everyone can afford to/afford private), and not everyone would run to a charter, because BASIS, Latin, and 2 Rivers all have their own drawbacks. They are playing the very long game, and I can see it succeeding...maybe 20 years from now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:is it worth changing from a jefferson feeder to a hobson feeder? distance is about the same.

I'm sure you will hear from Jefferson boosters on here... but if you care about the size of the cohort of high performing kids & the size of the cohort of truly low performing kids, SH is a no brainer. ELA is where the huge difference is and that's the skill that's more transferable to the non-tracked classes like science & social studies. SH has 6% of kids getting 1s on PARCC... Jefferson has 26%. So, in one setting, your kid's class might have 1 or 2 kids *way* below grade level (illiterate or close to it, if we're being honest); in the other, it's fully 1/4th of the class. On the flip side, SH has over 50% of kids at grade level for ELA, so even the non-tracked classes are majority kids who have the tools to do the work; at Jefferson, it's just over 1/3.

A few responses to this:

* You are judging the two schools based solely on 2018-19 PARCC data and no other factors. I would suggest that there is far more to consider when weighing school options, particularly since none of that test data reflects the performance or aptitude of any of the kids who currently attend either school.

* While you are correct that the 2018-2019 data showed a significant difference in ELA proficiency (56% at Stuart-Hobson versus 37% at Jefferson), you did not mention that the math proficiency of the two schools was very similar that year (23% and 21%, respectively).

* The percentage of Jefferson students receiving a 1 in ELA in 2018-2019 was actually 23%, not 26%. I realize that it's a small difference -- and that it wasn't a good number in any case. But if you're going to rely solely on 2018-2019 PARCC data to judge the schools, at least be accurate, particularly if you're going to use phrases like "fully 1/4th."

* I would argue that math is more transferable to science than is ELA. And if f you're going to classify kids as "illiterate" for receiving a 1 on ELA, then how do you classify those who received a 1 in math in 2018-2019 (17% at Stuart-Hobson and 23% at Jefferson)?

* It bears repeating that all of these numbers are from 2018-2019 and do not in any way reflect the performance or aptitude of any of the current students at Jefferson or Stuart-Hobson.

* In the latest U.S. and World Report rankings, Jefferson is the considered third best standalone DCSP middle school, behind only Deal and Hardy. Stuart-Hobson is fourth in that category. Point being, those of us in Ward 6 have relatively good options for middle schools, despite all of the complaining of some on here.

* Regardless of which school may be "better," I don't think it's worth uprooting a kid from his or her current elementary school just for a change in the feeder pattern. For the past couple of years, Stuart-Hobson has been relatively easy to get into through the lottery. For 2021-2022, it made 91 waitlist offers for sixth grade. The year before that it made 135. (Some of the current students at Jefferson received waitlist offers for Stuart-Hobson but remained with Jefferson, while some kids who had been Jefferson-bound switched to Stuart-Hobson. Each family had its own reasons for its decision.)

Jefferson booster is here! I said if you care about the size of the high performing cohort and low performing cohort; some may not and have other things they value more. I specifically said ELA is where the huge difference is, so I’m not sure where you get that I didn’t acknowledge I was talking about ELA specifically. Math has very little transference to the BS middle school science class both schools are doing. This isn’t BASIS real physics. It’s like Earth Science at most. There’s a reason that ESes drill reading even to the detriment of math. Innumeracy doesn’t make you unable to read your science textbook… you know what does? (You’re right about 23 v 26; my apologies.)

You said that "if you care" about these factors, then it's a "no brainer." You are apparently disregarding everyone who does, in fact, care about these factors but who also takes into account other factors in considering schools. It's not as simple as "caring" or "not."

Apologies accepted.

Yeah, sorry. If you care at all about the size of the cohorts, I think it’s a no brainer. No apologies from me. Jefferson has too many really low performing kids and not enough high performing ones. No apologies for that reality.

You are apparently treating the 2018-2019 PARCC data as the end-all-be-all for determining how well students are performing at a given school. You apparently have no direct experience with Jefferson or with how kids there are placed in specific cohorts. Citing PARCC data that anyone can easily look up themselves adds absolutely nothing of value to the conversation.

Look, I get it that you chose not to send your kid(s) to Jefferson. That's perfectly fine. The school is not for everyone -- nor is any other school.

As long as we're going to play this game, why don't you tell us which middle school you did choose. Then those of us who have no experience with that school can tell you what's wrong with it.

This is the problem with Jefferson boosters. Talking about the size of various cohorts at the school is not an attack on you or your choices.

Please. I'm not buying your “aw shucks, I’m just discussing the size of cohorts” routine. You’re going far beyond that. You’re asserting that it’s a “no brainer” for anyone who cares about this issue to not choose Jefferson. As if those of us who send our kids there simply don’t care. That is an attack, whether you intend it to be or not.

In any event, you have no personal experience with the school or with how students there are placed in cohorts for their math, ELA, science and social studies classes. You therefore don't have anything of significant value to add to the discussion. Yet here you are. Again and again.

NP. You sound silly and defensive. What you have just argued is that citing data and drawing conclusions based on that data is an "attack" on you because the conclusions don't result in choosing the school you chose. That is childish. It also tells us you are incredibly insecure about the choices you made - that's an issue for you to work through with your shrink, not something that other who want to have an open discussion about public education need to be wary of.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't agree. The ed picture just isn't as black and white as you paint it.

City demographics continue to shift, and gentrification remains a powerful force for change. Mayor Bowser won't be in office forever.

The ed landscape you describe may have been accurate a decade back, but I'm not convinced that that DCPS and the city council members no longer give a whit about keeping high SES families in traditional public schools after elementary school. If high SES retention in DCPS middle and high schools was irrelevant politically, DCPS wouldn't be planning to open a 2nd high school in Ward 3 within the next few years, mainly to relieve crowding at Wilson.

Once the new HS opens, some CH families will join Hardy families there, via the OOB lottery.

No DCPS doesn’t care. They have taken honors classes away at Wilson with honors for all and more families from Deal are opting out of Wilson. They have done away with any testing for Walls and United the academic entrance and the admission process is opaque with the city saying they want more kids from other low SES wards other than 3.

The new HS will relieve some crowding at Wilson but don’t expect too much. My money is the primary motive is to draw OOB at risk kids to better schools and I bet anything there is going to be a set aside at risk preference.

. Honors for All st Wilson has been rolled back somewhat this school year. Just not true that many in-boundary families have been abandoning Deal and Wilson. If it were, in-boundary numbers wouldn’t have risen during the pandemic. Private schools cost a bomb and, with college, housing and fuel costs rising, even moderately wealthy families are feeling the squeeze. I’m willing to believe that DCPS doesn’t prioritize high SES\white retention, particularly EotP, but not that they could care less about it.

They do care -- just not in the way DCUM expects. This was all studied years ago, the last time boundaries/feeders were examined. If they allowed one Deal-type middle school to emerge, that would have retained all the white folks. But what those white people wanted was one middle school that contained all the gentrifying schools -- so that the disparity between the gentrified middle school and the other middle schools would have been enormous.

What DCPS wanted was to spread the gentrifiers among all the middle school, so their rising tide would lift all the boats. They figured that not all of them would leave (because not everyone can afford to/afford private), and not everyone would run to a charter, because BASIS, Latin, and 2 Rivers all have their own drawbacks. They are playing the very long game, and I can see it succeeding...maybe 20 years from now.

This doesn't make sense, no matter how much we may want it to. There aren't enough gentrifiers for this to happen, and if there were, then the other kids would feel eclipsed by them, anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't agree. The ed picture just isn't as black and white as you paint it.

City demographics continue to shift, and gentrification remains a powerful force for change. Mayor Bowser won't be in office forever.

The ed landscape you describe may have been accurate a decade back, but I'm not convinced that that DCPS and the city council members no longer give a whit about keeping high SES families in traditional public schools after elementary school. If high SES retention in DCPS middle and high schools was irrelevant politically, DCPS wouldn't be planning to open a 2nd high school in Ward 3 within the next few years, mainly to relieve crowding at Wilson.

Once the new HS opens, some CH families will join Hardy families there, via the OOB lottery.

No DCPS doesn’t care. They have taken honors classes away at Wilson with honors for all and more families from Deal are opting out of Wilson. They have done away with any testing for Walls and United the academic entrance and the admission process is opaque with the city saying they want more kids from other low SES wards other than 3.

The new HS will relieve some crowding at Wilson but don’t expect too much. My money is the primary motive is to draw OOB at risk kids to better schools and I bet anything there is going to be a set aside at risk preference.

. Honors for All st Wilson has been rolled back somewhat this school year. Just not true that many in-boundary families have been abandoning Deal and Wilson. If it were, in-boundary numbers wouldn’t have risen during the pandemic. Private schools cost a bomb and, with college, housing and fuel costs rising, even moderately wealthy families are feeling the squeeze. I’m willing to believe that DCPS doesn’t prioritize high SES\white retention, particularly EotP, but not that they could care less about it.

They do care -- just not in the way DCUM expects. This was all studied years ago, the last time boundaries/feeders were examined. If they allowed one Deal-type middle school to emerge, that would have retained all the white folks. But what those white people wanted was one middle school that contained all the gentrifying schools -- so that the disparity between the gentrified middle school and the other middle schools would have been enormous.

What DCPS wanted was to spread the gentrifiers among all the middle school, so their rising tide would lift all the boats. They figured that not all of them would leave (because not everyone can afford to/afford private), and not everyone would run to a charter, because BASIS, Latin, and 2 Rivers all have their own drawbacks. They are playing the very long game, and I can see it succeeding...maybe 20 years from now.

This experiment has failed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't agree. The ed picture just isn't as black and white as you paint it.

City demographics continue to shift, and gentrification remains a powerful force for change. Mayor Bowser won't be in office forever.

The ed landscape you describe may have been accurate a decade back, but I'm not convinced that that DCPS and the city council members no longer give a whit about keeping high SES families in traditional public schools after elementary school. If high SES retention in DCPS middle and high schools was irrelevant politically, DCPS wouldn't be planning to open a 2nd high school in Ward 3 within the next few years, mainly to relieve crowding at Wilson.

Once the new HS opens, some CH families will join Hardy families there, via the OOB lottery.

No DCPS doesn’t care. They have taken honors classes away at Wilson with honors for all and more families from Deal are opting out of Wilson. They have done away with any testing for Walls and United the academic entrance and the admission process is opaque with the city saying they want more kids from other low SES wards other than 3.

The new HS will relieve some crowding at Wilson but don’t expect too much. My money is the primary motive is to draw OOB at risk kids to better schools and I bet anything there is going to be a set aside at risk preference.

. Honors for All st Wilson has been rolled back somewhat this school year. Just not true that many in-boundary families have been abandoning Deal and Wilson. If it were, in-boundary numbers wouldn’t have risen during the pandemic. Private schools cost a bomb and, with college, housing and fuel costs rising, even moderately wealthy families are feeling the squeeze. I’m willing to believe that DCPS doesn’t prioritize high SES\white retention, particularly EotP, but not that they could care less about it.

They do care -- just not in the way DCUM expects. This was all studied years ago, the last time boundaries/feeders were examined. If they allowed one Deal-type middle school to emerge, that would have retained all the white folks. But what those white people wanted was one middle school that contained all the gentrifying schools -- so that the disparity between the gentrified middle school and the other middle schools would have been enormous.

What DCPS wanted was to spread the gentrifiers among all the middle school, so their rising tide would lift all the boats. They figured that not all of them would leave (because not everyone can afford to/afford private), and not everyone would run to a charter, because BASIS, Latin, and 2 Rivers all have their own drawbacks. They are playing the very long game, and I can see it succeeding...maybe 20 years from now.

DCPS could have had six or seven elementary schools feed into on Deal type middle school, a mix of gentrified schools (Brent, Maury, SWS) and gentrifying schools (Ludlow, JO Wilson, Payne, Tyler).

Agree that they're playing a very long game, and very cynical game, that could succeed decades from now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't agree. The ed picture just isn't as black and white as you paint it.

City demographics continue to shift, and gentrification remains a powerful force for change. Mayor Bowser won't be in office forever.

The ed landscape you describe may have been accurate a decade back, but I'm not convinced that that DCPS and the city council members no longer give a whit about keeping high SES families in traditional public schools after elementary school. If high SES retention in DCPS middle and high schools was irrelevant politically, DCPS wouldn't be planning to open a 2nd high school in Ward 3 within the next few years, mainly to relieve crowding at Wilson.

Once the new HS opens, some CH families will join Hardy families there, via the OOB lottery.

No DCPS doesn’t care. They have taken honors classes away at Wilson with honors for all and more families from Deal are opting out of Wilson. They have done away with any testing for Walls and United the academic entrance and the admission process is opaque with the city saying they want more kids from other low SES wards other than 3.

The new HS will relieve some crowding at Wilson but don’t expect too much. My money is the primary motive is to draw OOB at risk kids to better schools and I bet anything there is going to be a set aside at risk preference.

. Honors for All st Wilson has been rolled back somewhat this school year. Just not true that many in-boundary families have been abandoning Deal and Wilson. If it were, in-boundary numbers wouldn’t have risen during the pandemic. Private schools cost a bomb and, with college, housing and fuel costs rising, even moderately wealthy families are feeling the squeeze. I’m willing to believe that DCPS doesn’t prioritize high SES\white retention, particularly EotP, but not that they could care less about it.

They do care -- just not in the way DCUM expects. This was all studied years ago, the last time boundaries/feeders were examined. If they allowed one Deal-type middle school to emerge, that would have retained all the white folks. But what those white people wanted was one middle school that contained all the gentrifying schools -- so that the disparity between the gentrified middle school and the other middle schools would have been enormous.

What DCPS wanted was to spread the gentrifiers among all the middle school, so their rising tide would lift all the boats. They figured that not all of them would leave (because not everyone can afford to/afford private), and not everyone would run to a charter, because BASIS, Latin, and 2 Rivers all have their own drawbacks. They are playing the very long game, and I can see it succeeding...maybe 20 years from now.

DCPS could have had six or seven elementary schools feed into on Deal type middle school, a mix of gentrified schools (Brent, Maury, SWS) and gentrifying schools (Ludlow, JO Wilson, Payne, Tyler).

Agree that they're playing a very long game, and very cynical game, that could succeed decades from now.

You left out Watkins, which is the biggest feeder to SH and in the middle of all of the schools you named (and the biggest of the lot per grade). Ludlow is far past "gentrifying" at this point and DCPS would never treat it as such. Folks in the NW or Capitol Hill bubble often forget that citywide, non-Title I = rich.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't agree. The ed picture just isn't as black and white as you paint it.

City demographics continue to shift, and gentrification remains a powerful force for change. Mayor Bowser won't be in office forever.

The ed landscape you describe may have been accurate a decade back, but I'm not convinced that that DCPS and the city council members no longer give a whit about keeping high SES families in traditional public schools after elementary school. If high SES retention in DCPS middle and high schools was irrelevant politically, DCPS wouldn't be planning to open a 2nd high school in Ward 3 within the next few years, mainly to relieve crowding at Wilson.

Once the new HS opens, some CH families will join Hardy families there, via the OOB lottery.

No DCPS doesn’t care. They have taken honors classes away at Wilson with honors for all and more families from Deal are opting out of Wilson. They have done away with any testing for Walls and United the academic entrance and the admission process is opaque with the city saying they want more kids from other low SES wards other than 3.

The new HS will relieve some crowding at Wilson but don’t expect too much. My money is the primary motive is to draw OOB at risk kids to better schools and I bet anything there is going to be a set aside at risk preference.

. Honors for All st Wilson has been rolled back somewhat this school year. Just not true that many in-boundary families have been abandoning Deal and Wilson. If it were, in-boundary numbers wouldn’t have risen during the pandemic. Private schools cost a bomb and, with college, housing and fuel costs rising, even moderately wealthy families are feeling the squeeze. I’m willing to believe that DCPS doesn’t prioritize high SES\white retention, particularly EotP, but not that they could care less about it.

They do care -- just not in the way DCUM expects. This was all studied years ago, the last time boundaries/feeders were examined. If they allowed one Deal-type middle school to emerge, that would have retained all the white folks. But what those white people wanted was one middle school that contained all the gentrifying schools -- so that the disparity between the gentrified middle school and the other middle schools would have been enormous.

What DCPS wanted was to spread the gentrifiers among all the middle school, so their rising tide would lift all the boats. They figured that not all of them would leave (because not everyone can afford to/afford private), and not everyone would run to a charter, because BASIS, Latin, and 2 Rivers all have their own drawbacks. They are playing the very long game, and I can see it succeeding...maybe 20 years from now.

This experiment has failed.

It wasn’t an experiment. That would have just been a happy accident. There was no way they were going to create one school better than the others. If there is a choice, they will always choose to close achievement gap by pulling the top down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't agree. The ed picture just isn't as black and white as you paint it.

City demographics continue to shift, and gentrification remains a powerful force for change. Mayor Bowser won't be in office forever.

The ed landscape you describe may have been accurate a decade back, but I'm not convinced that that DCPS and the city council members no longer give a whit about keeping high SES families in traditional public schools after elementary school. If high SES retention in DCPS middle and high schools was irrelevant politically, DCPS wouldn't be planning to open a 2nd high school in Ward 3 within the next few years, mainly to relieve crowding at Wilson.

Once the new HS opens, some CH families will join Hardy families there, via the OOB lottery.

No DCPS doesn’t care. They have taken honors classes away at Wilson with honors for all and more families from Deal are opting out of Wilson. They have done away with any testing for Walls and United the academic entrance and the admission process is opaque with the city saying they want more kids from other low SES wards other than 3.

The new HS will relieve some crowding at Wilson but don’t expect too much. My money is the primary motive is to draw OOB at risk kids to better schools and I bet anything there is going to be a set aside at risk preference.

. Honors for All st Wilson has been rolled back somewhat this school year. Just not true that many in-boundary families have been abandoning Deal and Wilson. If it were, in-boundary numbers wouldn’t have risen during the pandemic. Private schools cost a bomb and, with college, housing and fuel costs rising, even moderately wealthy families are feeling the squeeze. I’m willing to believe that DCPS doesn’t prioritize high SES\white retention, particularly EotP, but not that they could care less about it.

They do care -- just not in the way DCUM expects. This was all studied years ago, the last time boundaries/feeders were examined. If they allowed one Deal-type middle school to emerge, that would have retained all the white folks. But what those white people wanted was one middle school that contained all the gentrifying schools -- so that the disparity between the gentrified middle school and the other middle schools would have been enormous.

What DCPS wanted was to spread the gentrifiers among all the middle school, so their rising tide would lift all the boats. They figured that not all of them would leave (because not everyone can afford to/afford private), and not everyone would run to a charter, because BASIS, Latin, and 2 Rivers all have their own drawbacks. They are playing the very long game, and I can see it succeeding...maybe 20 years from now.

DCPS could have had six or seven elementary schools feed into on Deal type middle school, a mix of gentrified schools (Brent, Maury, SWS) and gentrifying schools (Ludlow, JO Wilson, Payne, Tyler).

Agree that they're playing a very long game, and very cynical game, that could succeed decades from now.

You left out Watkins, which is the biggest feeder to SH and in the middle of all of the schools you named (and the biggest of the lot per grade). Ludlow is far past "gentrifying" at this point and DCPS would never treat it as such. Folks in the NW or Capitol Hill bubble often forget that citywide, non-Title I = rich.

Watkins is 36% in-boundary. Watkins should be right-sized and should also feed into a pan-Hill middle school.

-NP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't agree. The ed picture just isn't as black and white as you paint it.

City demographics continue to shift, and gentrification remains a powerful force for change. Mayor Bowser won't be in office forever.

The ed landscape you describe may have been accurate a decade back, but I'm not convinced that that DCPS and the city council members no longer give a whit about keeping high SES families in traditional public schools after elementary school. If high SES retention in DCPS middle and high schools was irrelevant politically, DCPS wouldn't be planning to open a 2nd high school in Ward 3 within the next few years, mainly to relieve crowding at Wilson.

Once the new HS opens, some CH families will join Hardy families there, via the OOB lottery.

No DCPS doesn’t care. They have taken honors classes away at Wilson with honors for all and more families from Deal are opting out of Wilson. They have done away with any testing for Walls and United the academic entrance and the admission process is opaque with the city saying they want more kids from other low SES wards other than 3.

The new HS will relieve some crowding at Wilson but don’t expect too much. My money is the primary motive is to draw OOB at risk kids to better schools and I bet anything there is going to be a set aside at risk preference.

. Honors for All st Wilson has been rolled back somewhat this school year. Just not true that many in-boundary families have been abandoning Deal and Wilson. If it were, in-boundary numbers wouldn’t have risen during the pandemic. Private schools cost a bomb and, with college, housing and fuel costs rising, even moderately wealthy families are feeling the squeeze. I’m willing to believe that DCPS doesn’t prioritize high SES\white retention, particularly EotP, but not that they could care less about it.

They do care -- just not in the way DCUM expects. This was all studied years ago, the last time boundaries/feeders were examined. If they allowed one Deal-type middle school to emerge, that would have retained all the white folks. But what those white people wanted was one middle school that contained all the gentrifying schools -- so that the disparity between the gentrified middle school and the other middle schools would have been enormous.

What DCPS wanted was to spread the gentrifiers among all the middle school, so their rising tide would lift all the boats. They figured that not all of them would leave (because not everyone can afford to/afford private), and not everyone would run to a charter, because BASIS, Latin, and 2 Rivers all have their own drawbacks. They are playing the very long game, and I can see it succeeding...maybe 20 years from now.

This experiment has failed.

Pretty much.

What was it that Einstein said of the definition of madness...doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I've lived on the Hill for 20 years. Ever since I arrived, DCPS has been waiting for a robust uptick in IB enrollment at SH, EH and Jefferson. But all that happens is that a dozen more UMC students turn up at each of these middle schools each fall, an in-boundary uptick of 1-2% per student body. At this rate, we will need to wait for more than 20 years for IB families to emerge as the dominant groups.

Meanwhile, other big US cities and the DC suburbs offer test-in MS programs. What makes such programs anathema in DC in 2022? City demographics are no longer the answer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't agree. The ed picture just isn't as black and white as you paint it.

City demographics continue to shift, and gentrification remains a powerful force for change. Mayor Bowser won't be in office forever.

The ed landscape you describe may have been accurate a decade back, but I'm not convinced that that DCPS and the city council members no longer give a whit about keeping high SES families in traditional public schools after elementary school. If high SES retention in DCPS middle and high schools was irrelevant politically, DCPS wouldn't be planning to open a 2nd high school in Ward 3 within the next few years, mainly to relieve crowding at Wilson.

Once the new HS opens, some CH families will join Hardy families there, via the OOB lottery.

No DCPS doesn’t care. They have taken honors classes away at Wilson with honors for all and more families from Deal are opting out of Wilson. They have done away with any testing for Walls and United the academic entrance and the admission process is opaque with the city saying they want more kids from other low SES wards other than 3.

The new HS will relieve some crowding at Wilson but don’t expect too much. My money is the primary motive is to draw OOB at risk kids to better schools and I bet anything there is going to be a set aside at risk preference.

. Honors for All st Wilson has been rolled back somewhat this school year. Just not true that many in-boundary families have been abandoning Deal and Wilson. If it were, in-boundary numbers wouldn’t have risen during the pandemic. Private schools cost a bomb and, with college, housing and fuel costs rising, even moderately wealthy families are feeling the squeeze. I’m willing to believe that DCPS doesn’t prioritize high SES\white retention, particularly EotP, but not that they could care less about it.

They do care -- just not in the way DCUM expects. This was all studied years ago, the last time boundaries/feeders were examined. If they allowed one Deal-type middle school to emerge, that would have retained all the white folks. But what those white people wanted was one middle school that contained all the gentrifying schools -- so that the disparity between the gentrified middle school and the other middle schools would have been enormous.

What DCPS wanted was to spread the gentrifiers among all the middle school, so their rising tide would lift all the boats. They figured that not all of them would leave (because not everyone can afford to/afford private), and not everyone would run to a charter, because BASIS, Latin, and 2 Rivers all have their own drawbacks. They are playing the very long game, and I can see it succeeding...maybe 20 years from now.

This experiment has failed.

Pretty much.

What was it that Einstein said of the definition of madness...doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

I've lived on the Hill for 20 years. Ever since I arrived, DCPS has been waiting for a robust uptick in IB enrollment at SH, EH and Jefferson. But all that happens is that a dozen more UMC students turn up at each of these middle schools each fall, an in-boundary uptick of 1-2% per student body. At this rate, we will need to wait for more than 20 years for IB families to emerge as the dominant groups.

Meanwhile, other big US cities and the DC suburbs offer test-in MS programs. What makes such programs anathema in DC in 2022? City demographics are no longer the answer.

And this is why Brent, Maury and SWS lose at least half their 5th grade class to BASIS and Latin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't agree. The ed picture just isn't as black and white as you paint it.

City demographics continue to shift, and gentrification remains a powerful force for change. Mayor Bowser won't be in office forever.

The ed landscape you describe may have been accurate a decade back, but I'm not convinced that that DCPS and the city council members no longer give a whit about keeping high SES families in traditional public schools after elementary school. If high SES retention in DCPS middle and high schools was irrelevant politically, DCPS wouldn't be planning to open a 2nd high school in Ward 3 within the next few years, mainly to relieve crowding at Wilson.

Once the new HS opens, some CH families will join Hardy families there, via the OOB lottery.

No DCPS doesn’t care. They have taken honors classes away at Wilson with honors for all and more families from Deal are opting out of Wilson. They have done away with any testing for Walls and United the academic entrance and the admission process is opaque with the city saying they want more kids from other low SES wards other than 3.

The new HS will relieve some crowding at Wilson but don’t expect too much. My money is the primary motive is to draw OOB at risk kids to better schools and I bet anything there is going to be a set aside at risk preference.

. Honors for All st Wilson has been rolled back somewhat this school year. Just not true that many in-boundary families have been abandoning Deal and Wilson. If it were, in-boundary numbers wouldn’t have risen during the pandemic. Private schools cost a bomb and, with college, housing and fuel costs rising, even moderately wealthy families are feeling the squeeze. I’m willing to believe that DCPS doesn’t prioritize high SES\white retention, particularly EotP, but not that they could care less about it.

They do care -- just not in the way DCUM expects. This was all studied years ago, the last time boundaries/feeders were examined. If they allowed one Deal-type middle school to emerge, that would have retained all the white folks. But what those white people wanted was one middle school that contained all the gentrifying schools -- so that the disparity between the gentrified middle school and the other middle schools would have been enormous.

What DCPS wanted was to spread the gentrifiers among all the middle school, so their rising tide would lift all the boats. They figured that not all of them would leave (because not everyone can afford to/afford private), and not everyone would run to a charter, because BASIS, Latin, and 2 Rivers all have their own drawbacks. They are playing the very long game, and I can see it succeeding...maybe 20 years from now.

This experiment has failed.

+1. Also, it's a weird notion that gentrifiers are supposed to educate everyone else's kids. Shouldn't that really be up to DCPS? One 8-year old doesn't owe another kid anything.

[Anonymous]

Guys, DCPS is never going to approve a middle school that will be de facto segregated. They just will not. Come up with some other ideas.

[Anonymous]

well, they approved "MacArthur"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:well, they approved "MacArthur"

Exactly. Ward 3 gets away with murder because Ward 6 exists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Guys, DCPS is never going to approve a middle school that will be de facto segregated. They just will not. Come up with some other ideas.

SH (513) + EH (266) + Jefferson (377) combined (1156) is still substantially smaller than Deal (1463).

If you combined the feeders for all of those schools -- Ludlow/Watkins/JOW + SWS/Maury/Payne/Miner + Brent/Van Ness/Tyler/Amidon-Bowen -- your school would not be segregated at all. It would be diverse with the majority of kids feeding from T1s but with plenty of kids to support actually advanced classes.

The question would be where to put it. Eastern has 735 students and is very close to EH, which is massively under-enrolled, so the most obvious option would be to split the 3 grades between those two facilities and put Eastern at either SH or Jefferson; I'm assuming SH would be the better fit location & size-wise and it's a nice facility. There are obviously other possibilities too.