Hill Middle Schools

[Anonymous]

Give us break, zero change of Eastern's location being changed, ever. Exactly zero.

[Anonymous]

There is a rise in parents who question value of being overly picky in school selection and believe in supporting and getting involved in local schools.

I was extremely picky myself but in hindsight, it wasn't worth it.

[Anonymous]

Not at the high school level. ES, yes, MS, maybe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a rise in parents who question value of being overly picky in school selection and believe in supporting and getting involved in local schools.

I was extremely picky myself but in hindsight, it wasn't worth it.

Agree, though I’d replace “less picky” with “more open minded” about what a school that works for your own kid might look like. Same idea though.

[Anonymous]

Put the strong math - science within school program back at Jefferson Middle School like when Vera White was principal. Find a company to partner with Jefferson.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Put the strong math - science within school program back at Jefferson Middle School like when Vera White was principal. Find a company to partner with Jefferson.

If you’re trying to get Hill buy in, Jefferson is the worst choice. It’s just too far away. Once your commuting for there, you might as well commute to Basis. If you’re trying to get people to stay on purpose, convenience and being part of the neighborhood matter… SH has a massive edge there, but EH is still more a part of the Hill than Jefferson.

[Anonymous]

But what if BASIS isn't an option? Fact is, almost half the Hill 4th grade families who put their name in the hat for BASIS over the winter are still on the BASIS WL.

It's all pie in the sky silliness anyway. DCPS has no plans to create some sort of middle school STEM test-in program EotP, at Jefferson or anywhere else. Moreover, they're under no pressure to do so, from Ward 6 or anywhere else.

The great majority of Hill parents vote with kids in DCPS elementary schools vote their feet from DCPS between around 3rd and 6th grades. That's the way things will stay for at least a decade. End of story.

[Anonymous]

There aren’t nearly enough UMC families engaging with Jefferson to change much of anything there. Only around half a dozen per 5th grade Brent cohort and a few more from Van Ness and Tyler. Really.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But what if BASIS isn't an option? Fact is, almost half the Hill 4th grade families who put their name in the hat for BASIS over the winter are still on the BASIS WL.

It's all pie in the sky silliness anyway. DCPS has no plans to create some sort of middle school STEM test-in program EotP, at Jefferson or anywhere else. Moreover, they're under no pressure to do so, from Ward 6 or anywhere else.

The great majority of Hill parents vote with kids in DCPS elementary schools vote their feet from DCPS between around 3rd and 6th grades. That's the way things will stay for at least a decade. End of story.

I feel like this thread keeps cycling back to the same few conversations - and this one has been discussed before. If you have lived in/have had kids in schools for the past 10-15 years, you would have noticed significant changes in the DCPS elementary school in boundary enrollment, as well as in the middle schools. Far more kids are staying for upper elementary at their DCPS schools, and many of these families have already completed a year + at their DCPS middle school, or are enrolled for the fall. Is it all parents, no. Some parents will continue to opt for private, move, or travel for charters. But to say things will stay the same for the next decade is also not accurate.

I feel like school discussions in DC are a microcosm of political bubbles in this country. People come on here saying 'everybody I know does x', or ' I don't know anybody who has gone to 'y'', etc - people are often surrounded by those who have made similar choices that they have, it is hard for them to see that there are many many families that are making different choices than they are, and have different perspectives or priorities.

[Anonymous]

I was thinking about this thread as I watched the 4th of July parade yesterday on Barracks Row. Eastern performed - amazing band and dancers, "Pride of Capitol Hill" shirts. The kids all appeared to be non-white. Then Maury, Brent, the Cluster, all walk, and the kids and parents are nearly all white. It made me deeply uncomfortable. I have a kid in prek at a Hill elementary and don't know what we are going to do for school but the animosity on this thread is bleak and just makes me sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a rise in parents who question value of being overly picky in school selection and believe in supporting and getting involved in local schools.

I was extremely picky myself but in hindsight, it wasn't worth it.

Agree, though I’d replace “less picky” with “more open minded” about what a school that works for your own kid might look like. Same idea though.

Yes and I think also not being willing to assume that high test scores= high academic performance. I remember when these standardized tests were being rolled out. A lot of parents and educators at the time questioned the validity of these tests and worried how they would impact the learning environment. In DC at least it seems like that critical thinking has been abandoned and hyper focus on standardized test scores has become the norm

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s already a “pan Ward 6” high school called Eastern that hardly any upper-income parents send their kids to.

A ton of money was spent renovating the school, and an International Bachelorette program was started. How did upper-income folks on Capitol Hill respond? By overwhelmingly continuing to decline to send their kids there.

And what rationale do many of them use? That the achievement of students in the International Bachelorette program is low compared with other schools.

Fixing the physical facilities and starting an advanced program wasn’t enough. It seems that many of these folks also wanted the school to miraculously come preloaded with kids as brilliant as their own — but before they sent their own kids there. A Catch-22 situation if I’ve ever seen one.

Given this history, DCPS should be highly skeptical of claims that upper-income Capitol Hill parents would totally embrace their in-bound middle schools if only DCPS would make X, Y, Z changes.

The Catch-22 situation you present hasn't been fostered by Hill parents in the 15 years since Eastern was renovated during Michelle Rhee's tenure as chancellor. The wholesale rejection of Eastern's IBD program by high SES Hill parents has been both self-created on DCPS' part and eminently predictable. If DCPS leaders want most Hill parents to embrace Eastern within, say, ten years, they need to enter into good faith dialogue with parent leaders of DCPS elementary schools on the Hill on how to make that happen now. Newcomers to the Hill with kids may not know that DCPS leaders have never bothered to give UMC Hill parents a voice in Eastern's development. DCPS has never seen value in soliciting our input in any meaningful form. We've effectively been ordered to collectively embrace Eastern, vs. incentivized to do it, a recipe for colossal failure for Eastern as a true in-boundary high school like J-R.

Upper-income Capitol Hil parents would indeed embrace a pan Ward 6 in-bound MS if one were created with extensive input from the parent leaders of the Hill DCPS elementary schools with strong neighborhood buy-in. Some of us got involved in the trying to shape the boundary review process in 2013-2014 as parent leaders at Brent, Maury and Watkins. We joined hands then and lobbied for a pan Ward 6 MS to serve as a neighborhood bridge to Eastern. Yet our input was ignored by both DCPS and the influential Cluster PTA-dominated CH Public School Parents Organization (now W6PSPO) group. The result was that we've bailed from DCPS to BASIS, the Latins, privates and the burbs en masse for MS in the intervening years.

The tried and tested model some of us backed was that of the handful of stunningly successful MoCo and Arlington test-in HS magnet programs housed in neighborhood high schools that were heavily low-income minority, and failing, as recently as the 1980s. The establishment of the magnets turned things around for our near neighbors in the burbs, resulting in strong and enduring neighborhood buy-in for these programs within just a few years of their establishment. Washington-Liberty's popular IB Diploma program in Arlington operates as a magnet program without the admissions tests MoCo uses, a model we liked. In Arlington, only the highest-performing in-boundary and transfer MS students are permitted to enroll in 9th grade pre-IB classes at W-L after having met an 8th grade GPA cut-off.

If DCPS wanted to see Eastern's IBD program thrive, ed leaders could set a high bar for admission to a magnet program with a city-wide draw and seat set-asides/preferential treatment in admissions for qualified in-boundary students, as in MoCo and Arlington. No other solution is going to work of course and none has. Blaming high SES Hill parents for failing to get onboard with a development plan for Eastern that was imposed on them from the get go may feel good, but serves no purpose.

DCPS could care less for high performing kids. They never did and never will. All they care about is the bottom of the barrel. The writing on the wall is the same as it always has been. One could argue that things are actually going downhill post Covid as academic standards are lowered even further. Prime example is honors for all at JR and the opaque admission standards now at Walls creating lower performing academic cohorts.

This is why families flock to the few acceptable charters to get out of DCPS. Charters are not under the rule of DCPS and independent. That’s a good thing. Or families move or go private.

The endless posts every few weeks/months about the same thing is not going to change anything. Those who face reality without rose color glasses on know this and have an exit plan if the lottery doesn’t work out.

DCPS is and has always been a dysfunctional mess. You might be able to counter to an extent at your local school level in ES and supplement. But it’s a totally different animal in MS and HS and you can’t supplement everything. I haven’t even mentioned the BS ineffective restorative justice and behavior issues that prevents some classes from learning anything. Talk to some Deal parents who have had a kid go thru then and another kid now. Things have definitely gone downhill overall.

If we’re describing CHILDREN as “bottom of the barrel”…maybe it’s not necessarily that DCPS doesn’t care about “high performing kids” but rather does not cafe for this alarmingly entitled attitude from parents.

[Anonymous]

We have one kid in MS post Brent, one who just graduated from Brent and one who will still be at Brent in the fall. BS that more UMC Hill parents opt for Jefferson these days than 2-3 years ago. The reality is that Latin Cooper and Stuart Hobson are winning the battle for in-boundary hearts and minds where families strike out in the lottery for BASIS and/or the original Latin, not a rising Jefferson. Half as many Brent 5th graders are heading to Jefferson as there were pre Latin Cooper. I wish things were different but there’s no point in pretending that they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There’s already a “pan Ward 6” high school called Eastern that hardly any upper-income parents send their kids to.

A ton of money was spent renovating the school, and an International Bachelorette program was started. How did upper-income folks on Capitol Hill respond? By overwhelmingly continuing to decline to send their kids there.

And what rationale do many of them use? That the achievement of students in the International Bachelorette program is low compared with other schools.

Fixing the physical facilities and starting an advanced program wasn’t enough. It seems that many of these folks also wanted the school to miraculously come preloaded with kids as brilliant as their own — but before they sent their own kids there. A Catch-22 situation if I’ve ever seen one.

Given this history, DCPS should be highly skeptical of claims that upper-income Capitol Hill parents would totally embrace their in-bound middle schools if only DCPS would make X, Y, Z changes.

The Catch-22 situation you present hasn't been fostered by Hill parents in the 15 years since Eastern was renovated during Michelle Rhee's tenure as chancellor. The wholesale rejection of Eastern's IBD program by high SES Hill parents has been both self-created on DCPS' part and eminently predictable. If DCPS leaders want most Hill parents to embrace Eastern within, say, ten years, they need to enter into good faith dialogue with parent leaders of DCPS elementary schools on the Hill on how to make that happen now. Newcomers to the Hill with kids may not know that DCPS leaders have never bothered to give UMC Hill parents a voice in Eastern's development. DCPS has never seen value in soliciting our input in any meaningful form. We've effectively been ordered to collectively embrace Eastern, vs. incentivized to do it, a recipe for colossal failure for Eastern as a true in-boundary high school like J-R.

Upper-income Capitol Hil parents would indeed embrace a pan Ward 6 in-bound MS if one were created with extensive input from the parent leaders of the Hill DCPS elementary schools with strong neighborhood buy-in. Some of us got involved in the trying to shape the boundary review process in 2013-2014 as parent leaders at Brent, Maury and Watkins. We joined hands then and lobbied for a pan Ward 6 MS to serve as a neighborhood bridge to Eastern. Yet our input was ignored by both DCPS and the influential Cluster PTA-dominated CH Public School Parents Organization (now W6PSPO) group. The result was that we've bailed from DCPS to BASIS, the Latins, privates and the burbs en masse for MS in the intervening years.

The tried and tested model some of us backed was that of the handful of stunningly successful MoCo and Arlington test-in HS magnet programs housed in neighborhood high schools that were heavily low-income minority, and failing, as recently as the 1980s. The establishment of the magnets turned things around for our near neighbors in the burbs, resulting in strong and enduring neighborhood buy-in for these programs within just a few years of their establishment. Washington-Liberty's popular IB Diploma program in Arlington operates as a magnet program without the admissions tests MoCo uses, a model we liked. In Arlington, only the highest-performing in-boundary and transfer MS students are permitted to enroll in 9th grade pre-IB classes at W-L after having met an 8th grade GPA cut-off.

If DCPS wanted to see Eastern's IBD program thrive, ed leaders could set a high bar for admission to a magnet program with a city-wide draw and seat set-asides/preferential treatment in admissions for qualified in-boundary students, as in MoCo and Arlington. No other solution is going to work of course and none has. Blaming high SES Hill parents for failing to get onboard with a development plan for Eastern that was imposed on them from the get go may feel good, but serves no purpose.

DCPS could care less for high performing kids. They never did and never will. All they care about is the bottom of the barrel. The writing on the wall is the same as it always has been. One could argue that things are actually going downhill post Covid as academic standards are lowered even further. Prime example is honors for all at JR and the opaque admission standards now at Walls creating lower performing academic cohorts.

This is why families flock to the few acceptable charters to get out of DCPS. Charters are not under the rule of DCPS and independent. That’s a good thing. Or families move or go private.

The endless posts every few weeks/months about the same thing is not going to change anything. Those who face reality without rose color glasses on know this and have an exit plan if the lottery doesn’t work out.

DCPS is and has always been a dysfunctional mess. You might be able to counter to an extent at your local school level in ES and supplement. But it’s a totally different animal in MS and HS and you can’t supplement everything. I haven’t even mentioned the BS ineffective restorative justice and behavior issues that prevents some classes from learning anything. Talk to some Deal parents who have had a kid go thru then and another kid now. Things have definitely gone downhill overall.

If we’re describing CHILDREN as “bottom of the barrel”…maybe it’s not necessarily that DCPS doesn’t care about “high performing kids” but rather does not cafe for this alarmingly entitled attitude from parents.

You can be a fussbot over word choice but the fact remains that about 12 years ago DPCS made a deliberate effort to close the achievement gap by making it clear that high performers are on their own and if the achievement gap narrows by pulling them down, all the better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Put the strong math - science within school program back at Jefferson Middle School like when Vera White was principal. Find a company to partner with Jefferson.

If you’re trying to get Hill buy in, Jefferson is the worst choice. It’s just too far away. Once your commuting for there, you might as well commute to Basis. If you’re trying to get people to stay on purpose, convenience and being part of the neighborhood matter… SH has a massive edge there, but EH is still more a part of the Hill than Jefferson.

Depends on where you live. For those of us on the O/B/S lines, Jefferson or EH would be much easier to get to than SH. Not many north south bus routes.