Brent vs. Maury vs. Ludlow-Taylor

[Anonymous]

And, yes, LT has more poor kids than Brent and Maury, that’s not secret. But it’s still only 16% economically disadvantaged. Like I totally understand folks who are concerned about jumping into a school that’s 40%+ economically disadvantaged, because we’re talking about huge non-academic needs that often translates into difficult academic needs as well. But 16%? If your kid can’t handle 1 out of 6 kids being poor, then you’re right… LT is not for you. But neither is DC or life really.

[Anonymous]

PP here: I also wanted to comment on this weird notion that Brent is a small school while Maury is not. All 3 schools had enrollments within 22 of each other for the last year stats are available. LT had 2 more kids than Maury, which had 20 more kids than Brent. It’s hard to imagine describing one of those schools as meaningfully smaller than the others. In fact, other than LTs extra small self contained classes and extra 5th grade classroom, I assume they all have the same number of classes with just slightly different numbers of students. Am I missing something?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP here: I also wanted to comment on this weird notion that Brent is a small school while Maury is not. All 3 schools had enrollments within 22 of each other for the last year stats are available. LT had 2 more kids than Maury, which had 20 more kids than Brent. It’s hard to imagine describing one of those schools as meaningfully smaller than the others. In fact, other than LTs extra small self contained classes and extra 5th grade classroom, I assume they all have the same number of classes with just slightly different numbers of students. Am I missing something?

LT has a bigger campus! Honestly the big playground and field would be a deciding factor for me if I was making this choice. But yeah, otherwise, same size.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maury and Brent are a tier above Ludlow-Taylor.

This, but OP should be fine at Ludlow if that's where the family ends up, particularly if they're not aiming for the upper elementary grades or a neighborhood middle school.

L-T has the best of the neighborhood middle schools, so that's sort of an odd comment... But the reality is that L-T is more diverse than Brent or Maury. I personally think that's a good thing. The UMC/high achieving cohort is plenty big enough for a kid to find his/her people and L-T's scores broken down by demographics are on par w/ Brent & Maury's, and have at times been better than Brent's. I actually think the in-school experience is just as good at L-T as at Brent or Maury. On some level, the real difference is the size of the UMC cohort (75% v 95%) and the size of the PTO budget ($80K v $150K?? (guessing at the latter numbers)).

If "more diverse" is code for more low SES AA kids than Maury and Brent, granted. But if you're looking for more national, international and ethnic diversity, Maury and Brent attract all sorts of interesting families from around the region, country and world on a scale that LT can't compete with yet. In another 10 years, probably, but not just yet.

Lol sounds like “all sorts of interesting families” is code for white people with different accents.

Along with Asian, AA, Native American and Latino people with different accents.

[Anonymous]

I wonder if the Brookings people are taking notes of this thread?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maury and Brent are a tier above Ludlow-Taylor.

This, but OP should be fine at Ludlow if that's where the family ends up, particularly if they're not aiming for the upper elementary grades or a neighborhood middle school.

L-T has the best of the neighborhood middle schools, so that's sort of an odd comment... But the reality is that L-T is more diverse than Brent or Maury. I personally think that's a good thing. The UMC/high achieving cohort is plenty big enough for a kid to find his/her people and L-T's scores broken down by demographics are on par w/ Brent & Maury's, and have at times been better than Brent's. I actually think the in-school experience is just as good at L-T as at Brent or Maury. On some level, the real difference is the size of the UMC cohort (75% v 95%) and the size of the PTO budget ($80K v $150K?? (guessing at the latter numbers)).

New pre k L-T parent. It was my understanding as well that L-T was the more diverse of the 3 schools. I was absolutely shocked at the lack of diversity in pk3-k classes this year. It was disappointing. Maybe it is still true for the upper grades? Aside from that we have been happy with the school so far but it has only been a few weeks.

Don't worry. Just stick around for the upper grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wonder if the Brookings people are taking notes of this thread?

Yes, we monitor these threads quite closely.

Keep it coming DCUM--we still have millions that we must spend from the Gates Foundation, and we need to keep the work going. And many of us have private school tuition payments we have to meet!

[Anonymous]

Watkins is an option too! Don't forget about us!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maury and Brent are a tier above Ludlow-Taylor.

This, but OP should be fine at Ludlow if that's where the family ends up, particularly if they're not aiming for the upper elementary grades or a neighborhood middle school.

L-T has the best of the neighborhood middle schools, so that's sort of an odd comment... But the reality is that L-T is more diverse than Brent or Maury. I personally think that's a good thing. The UMC/high achieving cohort is plenty big enough for a kid to find his/her people and L-T's scores broken down by demographics are on par w/ Brent & Maury's, and have at times been better than Brent's. I actually think the in-school experience is just as good at L-T as at Brent or Maury. On some level, the real difference is the size of the UMC cohort (75% v 95%) and the size of the PTO budget ($80K v $150K?? (guessing at the latter numbers)).

We get it. You're an L-T parent on the PTO and working hard to boost the school (and, ideally, the value of your house). L-T isn't bad, but I don't think it's the same as Maury or Brent. The stats bear that out.

Serious question: What stats? PP is right that the stats are equivalent when broken down demographically. Overall, yes Brent & Maury are richer and whiter, so the meaningless “average” stats are higher (although the year before last year of available stats that wasn’t even true for ELA for LT v Brent), but the Stats at LT for both sets of demographics relative to those demographics average performance are actually very good. Is there a “stat” you’re looking at other than pure average test scores? No one is denying that L-T is like 40/40/20 white/AA/other & mixed and Brent and Maury are much whiter…

To be clear, I’m not knocking Brent and Maury at all. We have tons of happy friends at both of those schools and my impression is that they’re both really solid schools. Maury, in particular, we don’t know anyone who doesn’t really like it personally. Like I said, the only complaint I’ve heard that isn’t true at LT is overcrowding of the building (mostly Brent; the new Maury building is incredible) and bigger class sizes.

If you break things out demographically, Watkins is just as good as any other school on the Hill as well, so why do the L-T boosters on this board go out of their way to compare L-T favorably to Maury and Brent while doing everything they can to say L-T is better than Watkins?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maury and Brent are a tier above Ludlow-Taylor.

This, but OP should be fine at Ludlow if that's where the family ends up, particularly if they're not aiming for the upper elementary grades or a neighborhood middle school.

L-T has the best of the neighborhood middle schools, so that's sort of an odd comment... But the reality is that L-T is more diverse than Brent or Maury. I personally think that's a good thing. The UMC/high achieving cohort is plenty big enough for a kid to find his/her people and L-T's scores broken down by demographics are on par w/ Brent & Maury's, and have at times been better than Brent's. I actually think the in-school experience is just as good at L-T as at Brent or Maury. On some level, the real difference is the size of the UMC cohort (75% v 95%) and the size of the PTO budget ($80K v $150K?? (guessing at the latter numbers)).

We get it. You're an L-T parent on the PTO and working hard to boost the school (and, ideally, the value of your house). L-T isn't bad, but I don't think it's the same as Maury or Brent. The stats bear that out.

Serious question: What stats? PP is right that the stats are equivalent when broken down demographically. Overall, yes Brent & Maury are richer and whiter, so the meaningless “average” stats are higher (although the year before last year of available stats that wasn’t even true for ELA for LT v Brent), but the Stats at LT for both sets of demographics relative to those demographics average performance are actually very good. Is there a “stat” you’re looking at other than pure average test scores? No one is denying that L-T is like 40/40/20 white/AA/other & mixed and Brent and Maury are much whiter…

To be clear, I’m not knocking Brent and Maury at all. We have tons of happy friends at both of those schools and my impression is that they’re both really solid schools. Maury, in particular, we don’t know anyone who doesn’t really like it personally. Like I said, the only complaint I’ve heard that isn’t true at LT is overcrowding of the building (mostly Brent; the new Maury building is incredible) and bigger class sizes.

If you break things out demographically, Watkins is just as good as any other school on the Hill as well, so why do the L-T boosters on this board go out of their way to compare L-T favorably to Maury and Brent while doing everything they can to say L-T is better than Watkins?

No one on this thread said anything bad about Watkins. OP only asked about 3 schools, which Watkins wasn't one of. I think Watkins has some issues -- I hate the two school split set up, for instance, and it's also quite a bit bigger (same size as the other 3 not counting PK-K) -- but I don't think test scores are one of them at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Watkins is an option too! Don't forget about us!

Don't worry, no one is forgetting about Watkins.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/southeast-dc-football-field-shooting-o-street-shooting-homicide-investigations/65-542cf39b-8f90-4603-a8c5-79e808eb6a1b

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Watkins is an option too! Don't forget about us!

Don't worry, no one is forgetting about Watkins.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/southeast-dc-football-field-shooting-o-street-shooting-homicide-investigations/65-542cf39b-8f90-4603-a8c5-79e808eb6a1b

If shootings near schools are a reason not to send a kid somewhere, there aren't going to be many choices. Definitely have to rule out Eaton, Mundo Verde, and a lot more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maury and Brent are a tier above Ludlow-Taylor.

This, but OP should be fine at Ludlow if that's where the family ends up, particularly if they're not aiming for the upper elementary grades or a neighborhood middle school.

L-T has the best of the neighborhood middle schools, so that's sort of an odd comment... But the reality is that L-T is more diverse than Brent or Maury. I personally think that's a good thing. The UMC/high achieving cohort is plenty big enough for a kid to find his/her people and L-T's scores broken down by demographics are on par w/ Brent & Maury's, and have at times been better than Brent's. I actually think the in-school experience is just as good at L-T as at Brent or Maury. On some level, the real difference is the size of the UMC cohort (75% v 95%) and the size of the PTO budget ($80K v $150K?? (guessing at the latter numbers)).

If "more diverse" is code for more low SES AA kids than Maury and Brent, granted. But if you're looking for more national, international and ethnic diversity, Maury and Brent attract all sorts of interesting families from around the region, country and world on a scale that LT can't compete with yet. In another 10 years, probably, but not just yet.

Yes, people come from all over the world to send their children to Maury or Brent.

[Anonymous]

You sound jealous.

There are embassy families on the Hill these days, international organization families, foreign consultants, journalists, entrepreneurs and so forth who elect not to live in Upper NW paying 40K for privates for elementary. Some make do with DCPS EotP, generally Ross, Maury and Brent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Watkins is an option too! Don't forget about us!

Don't worry, no one is forgetting about Watkins.

https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/southeast-dc-football-field-shooting-o-street-shooting-homicide-investigations/65-542cf39b-8f90-4603-a8c5-79e808eb6a1b

If shootings near schools are a reason not to send a kid somewhere, there aren't going to be many choices. Definitely have to rule out Eaton, Mundo Verde, and a lot more.

Someone was murdered last night at Watkins.

Someone was carjacked during Watkins morning dropoff a few years ago and the assailant fled with a 5-year-old:

https://www.popville.com/2018/10/carjacking-and-kidnapping-at-watkins-elementary-dropoff-on-capitol-hill-this-morning/

Sorry, what were you saying about Eaton?