Can we please stop with the JKLM

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It only bothers me because I think posts are so much more helpful when people actually name the school.

This. It’s the wanna be elitists that continue their attempt to give them exclusivity to a group name to set themselves apart from the masses a La “Big 3” in private schools, it really says more about themselves. If you want elite move to NYC or London and go to a real elite school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:3 out of 4 of the schools in JKLM are still the best in terms of PARCC scores. Key and Janney are in top 5 for both ELA and Math. Ross is too, even though it's not JKLM, so maybe we should change it to JKLR
OP, what makes you think they are not sought after?

Average ELA Score by School (Top 60 Schools)
School Without Walls High School 94.07
Benjamin Banneker High School 88.62
Janney Elementary School 88.19
Ross Elementary School 86.66
Key Elementary School 80.25

Average Math Score by School (Top 60)
Stoddert Elementary School 83.05
Janney Elementary School 81.57
Lafayette Elementary School 81.36
Ross Elementary School 78.33
Key Elementary School 73.88

Is that this year's parcc?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are not the best or most sought after schools. There are plenty of other excellent schools, which in some instances rate higher, than those schools - look at the most recent PARCC scores. I don't understand this forum's obsession.

I suspect the forum's obsession with JKLM schools is related to where people who post on here live.

I don't live in JKLM or send my kids there, bit that's just too easy. Those schools are the topic of frequent discussion because they, along with their MS and HS feeders, are the best in DCPS. Parents who strive to provide to their kids the best education are therefore understandably fixated on JKLM.

I do live in-bounds for one of these schools and send my kids there, but I disagree with you — these schools get talked about a lot because a lot of DCUM readers live in upper NW. This is basically a neighborhood listserv, but anonymous and citywide.

This. Every time someone posts, I expect them to live in Upper NW.

[Anonymous]

Hadn't seen JKLM for a really long time until Op brought it up. For me, JKLM is the top 15-20 schools in DCps/Charter. It's not the school or the teachers, it's the cohort that goes there that would make me pick the school now. I didn't when bought my home because I had no kids. I picked it because it was like suburbs in the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a bad situation and no one knows how to fix it. Yeah yeah yeah, I know -- if you just got inbound families to buy in, it would change. But you can't get a critical mass of IB families to buy in. Trust me, we have these conversations all the time.

If D.C. was really interested in attracting high performing in-boundary students, they could guarantee rigorous test-in only classes. Only 3 students test in? Then there are 3 students in the class. You don't fill the class with 20 other students who couldn't test in and then turn it into an easier class to accommodate them.

It's screwed up that the school is only 67% out of boundary, and D.C. seems to have no interest in actually meeting the needs of many of the in-boundary families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3 out of 4 of the schools in JKLM are still the best in terms of PARCC scores. Key and Janney are in top 5 for both ELA and Math. Ross is too, even though it's not JKLM, so maybe we should change it to JKLR
OP, what makes you think they are not sought after?

Average ELA Score by School (Top 60 Schools)
School Without Walls High School 94.07
Benjamin Banneker High School 88.62
Janney Elementary School 88.19
Ross Elementary School 86.66
Key Elementary School 80.25

Average Math Score by School (Top 60)
Stoddert Elementary School 83.05
Janney Elementary School 81.57
Lafayette Elementary School 81.36
Ross Elementary School 78.33
Key Elementary School 73.88

With exception of magnet high schools at the top, the top scores are simply the richest and whitest schools. When you really break it down at most of the schools, they actually underperform compared to other non-JKLMs. Hint, check out the black student performance at Lafayette.

To add…

Empower makes it very easy to drill it down. When looking at top performance for just White students, the rankings are as follows:

Math:
Payne 92%
Hyde Addison 90%
Maury
Banneker
Tyler
Stoddert
Murch
Eliot Hine
SWW
Van Ness
Brent
Key
Janney
Deal
Bancroft
Jefferson
Sojourner Truth
DC Bilingual
Watkins
Capital City
Oyster Adams
Inspired Teaching
Marie Reed
Shepherd
LT
Eaton
Sela
Stokes
Mundo Verde 8th 75%

ELA
Walls 98%
Latin 95%
Deal
Ross
Payne
Maury
Janney
DC Bilingual
Bancroft
Key
LT
Oyster
Duke Ellington
Lafayette
Hardy
SH
Eaton
Two Rivers
McKinley
Latin Cooper
Stoddert
Jefferson
Walls
Basis
Hyde Addison
Eastern
Latin Middle
Lee
Hearst
Murch 78%
JR
CHM
DCI
ITS
MV
Tyler 75%
Mann 69%

So again…and I’ve said this for years now, there is no “JKLM” those are just the schools that don’t have black and brown at risk kids that muddy their overall scores so their average 79-80% scores look really good overall but when you compare them citywide they are average at best.

These comparisons are a little weird, though — I would certainly hope high schools and middle schools outperform an elementary school on ELA tests, even though I know the scores are comparing like age groups. Am I supposed to be dissatisfied with Janney because its 3rd graders don't score better on reading/writing tests than the sophomores at Walls do on theirs?

Not at all. You’re supposed to acknowledge that your kid’s peers at Ross, Payne, DCB, and Bancroft perform the same as your kids at Janney so let’s stop with the “JKLM is the only way to go” rhetoric.

I'm the PP you're replying to. I've never said anything about JKLM being the only way to go, and I don't care about PARCC scores. Moving in-bounds to Janney worked out fine for my family; we were never able to get into DCB or Bancroft in the lottery when we lived elsewhere, and our house here was more affordable than buying in-bounds for Ross or Bancroft would have been. While we're telling people what rhetoric to cut out, let's also cut out the assumptions that every single person whose kids go to one of these schools is also a rabid and blind booster of them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hadn't seen JKLM for a really long time until Op brought it up. For me, JKLM is the top 15-20 schools in DCps/Charter. It's not the school or the teachers, it's the cohort that goes there that would make me pick the school now. I didn't when bought my home because I had no kids. I picked it because it was like suburbs in the city.

Then you must not come here often. It was brought up quite a bit on the latest popular thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hadn't seen JKLM for a really long time until Op brought it up. For me, JKLM is the top 15-20 schools in DCps/Charter. It's not the school or the teachers, it's the cohort that goes there that would make me pick the school now. I didn't when bought my home because I had no kids. I picked it because it was like suburbs in the city.

The stop calling or JKLM. Say a “top” school or a “popular” school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a bad situation and no one knows how to fix it. Yeah yeah yeah, I know -- if you just got inbound families to buy in, it would change. But you can't get a critical mass of IB families to buy in. Trust me, we have these conversations all the time.

If D.C. was really interested in attracting high performing in-boundary students, they could guarantee rigorous test-in only classes. Only 3 students test in? Then there are 3 students in the class. You don't fill the class with 20 other students who couldn't test in and then turn it into an easier class to accommodate them.

It's screwed up that the school is only 67% out of boundary, and D.C. seems to have no interest in actually meeting the needs of many of the in-boundary families.

Our inbound school is Dunbar. They don’t even offer AP Calc AB, a minimum bar for selective (let alone highly selective) colleges. Consequently, that school can’t even be in the consideration set. Though by the time it becomes an issue for us, they may have had to close the school down due to under enrollment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hadn't seen JKLM for a really long time until Op brought it up. For me, JKLM is the top 15-20 schools in DCps/Charter. It's not the school or the teachers, it's the cohort that goes there that would make me pick the school now. I didn't when bought my home because I had no kids. I picked it because it was like suburbs in the city.

The stop calling or JKLM. Say a “top” school or a “popular” school.

JKLM is JKLM. It doesn't include anything other than those schools. The difference between JKLM and other high performing DCPS elementary schools is (1) the feeder pattern and (2) the money that the parents have who are in-bound for those schools. If you don't care about either of those things then you have a lot of choices as to where you can send your kids.

Also, and more importantly, who cares? Send your kids where you want to send them and stop worrying about what anonymous internet posters think about it.

[Anonymous]

What? JKLM is a shorthand for those 4 schools (or perhaps 5 with Mann/Murch) together. That is all folks. If someone told me they go to JKLM but they really go to sws I would be very confused. Not an indictment on sws, just an inaccurate description of their school. JKLM is a handy shorthand because those schools have many things in common: wotp, by-right schools that are high-performing by dc standards. They all also historically fed to wilson although that has obv changed. That’s it.

[Anonymous]

The acronym was formed long, long ago, so all the recent statistics and new feeder patterns and new reasons for using it are not what it was when it was really just people moving or OOB people entering the old lottery trying to figure out which WOTP schools that fed to Deal. It may mean different things to different people today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a bad situation and no one knows how to fix it. Yeah yeah yeah, I know -- if you just got inbound families to buy in, it would change. But you can't get a critical mass of IB families to buy in. Trust me, we have these conversations all the time.

If D.C. was really interested in attracting high performing in-boundary students, they could guarantee rigorous test-in only classes. Only 3 students test in? Then there are 3 students in the class. You don't fill the class with 20 other students who couldn't test in and then turn it into an easier class to accommodate them.

It's screwed up that the school is only 67% out of boundary, and D.C. seems to have no interest in actually meeting the needs of many of the in-boundary families.

Your plan would be lovely but is not fiscally possible. Your taxes would be through the roof if DCPS had 3 person MS or HS classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are not the best or most sought after schools. There are plenty of other excellent schools, which in some instances rate higher, than those schools - look at the most recent PARCC scores. I don't understand this forum's obsession.

I suspect the forum's obsession with JKLM schools is related to where people who post on here live.

I don't live in JKLM or send my kids there, bit that's just too easy. Those schools are the topic of frequent discussion because they, along with their MS and HS feeders, are the best in DCPS. Parents who strive to provide to their kids the best education are therefore understandably fixated on JKLM.

I do live in-bounds for one of these schools and send my kids there, but I disagree with you — these schools get talked about a lot because a lot of DCUM readers live in upper NW. This is basically a neighborhood listserv, but anonymous and citywide.

You are wrong. I live on CH and I can tell you when people leave for schools they go to JKLM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your plan would be lovely but is not fiscally possible. Your taxes would be through the roof if DCPS had 3 person MS or HS classes.

You don't seem to understand. Guarantee advanced classes even if there are only 4 students who show up, not make every DCPS classroom 4 students. That'd only add a handful of classes to one highschool; it's not going to have any perceptible impact on the $2.3 billion DCPS budget.