Two Rivers elementary families -- what is your MS plan

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can read the board meeting minutes here. To its credit, Two Rivers' minutes are a lot more substantive than what you get from many schools. If you skim the minutes for the past few years you can kind of piece things together.

https://www.tworiverspcs.org/who-we-are/team/board-partners/

Disagree. The Board was absent when needed most. They sat and watched it happen.

Oh I agree the board was asleep at the wheel as to the actual problems. They failed to intervene for a long time. I'm just saying their minutes are somewhat informative. If you compare to what various other schools' minutes look like, some are revealing basically nothing, and some haven't made any minutes public for several years.

Transparency is great but the truth is at most schools you don't need to comb through years of meeting minutes to "figure out what went wrong." Either nothing went wrong or a school's challenges are obvious. TR is unique in that it should be doing at least as well as other similarly situated charters in terms of retention, behavior, and test scores. And it's not-- it's in a downward spiral.

Can you give us the play by play of exactly what happened at Two Rivers over the past 5 years? Because it's obvious that a downward spiral occured, but I'm not sure of anything more specific than that.

Pre-Covid things were going okay but there were already signs of issues that needed to be addressed. Some grumbling among middle and upper elementary parents about academics. One of the challenges of having a large cohort of UMC families is that they tend to be demanding. And unlike many other charters TR doesn't have a teaching philosophy or selling point that tends to attract parents willing to be forgiving (which charters like SWS, CHML, Lee, Stokes, YY, and LAMB all have). There were also frustrations with the 4th Street campus which was/is aging and very tight.

But the bright spot was the Young campus and the MS. Even parents who were getting a bit restless viewed this as a good direction. This was 5 or more years ago when fewer families viewed SH or EH as viable options, and before Latin Cooper opened. The feeling was that if the MS was successful, TR families could lock in 10 years of solid education. Similar to what ITDS has done. In fact ITDS's current trajectory is what I think many TR families had in mind when the Young campus opened.

Then Covid. Obviously it sucked for everyone and TR faced a lot of the same challenges, including internal divisions on when it was safe to go back in person. TR chose to stay closed pretty much the maximum length of time and I think at the time they believed this choice has the support if most families. But the reality was more complex. A lot of families actually thought they could have opened sooner (safely) and simply didn't express this out loud because the vibe in DC made that an unpopular thing to say. But many of these were the families who even pre-Covid were starting feel like the academics at the school were not great. So they started leaving. En masse. Some lotteried into other charters (including the aforementioned ITDS which is close by, though small). But many also started going IB. The biggest shift was at LT, which used to have lot of boundary kids at TR. This attitude totally flipped by 2021 or so. But other Ward 6 schools had similar if less dramatic shifts.

The loss of a lot of middle and upper elementary kids hurt TR 4th but they still had plenty of buy in at the ECE level. What really took the hit was Young, which was floundering aggressively. The school couldn't retain many of the really invested families into MS. This resulted in under enrollment, low test scores, and a lot of behavioral issues. As this problem got worse it only made the defections from the elementary campuses worse. This has cycled all the way down to early elementary. PK is really the only level that hasn't been hit by this but even there... it seems a lot easier to get a PK spot there these days.

Now layer on top of this: massive administration failures in responding to these issues as they unfolded, especially at the MS. Teacher attrition. A tendency to revert to ra-ra platitudes and meaningless edu-speak when asked pointed, important questions about the direction of the school. Yes they've replaced some of these people. But they've also papered over a lot of things-- some of the "new" administrative staff are actually returning or just shifted around between schools. I think they actually have a lot of trouble recruiting competent administrators.

As a result there is still not really any plan to turn this around. They need a total overhaul that probably starts with the curriculum. They need to be offering something meaningfully competitive with what DCPS is offering, especially around math acceleration and perhaps around writing. Again they don't have immersion or Montessori or Reggio Emilio to draw people in and make them buy in.

I think that pretty much brings us up to speed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can read the board meeting minutes here. To its credit, Two Rivers' minutes are a lot more substantive than what you get from many schools. If you skim the minutes for the past few years you can kind of piece things together.

https://www.tworiverspcs.org/who-we-are/team/board-partners/

Disagree. The Board was absent when needed most. They sat and watched it happen.

Oh I agree the board was asleep at the wheel as to the actual problems. They failed to intervene for a long time. I'm just saying their minutes are somewhat informative. If you compare to what various other schools' minutes look like, some are revealing basically nothing, and some haven't made any minutes public for several years.

Transparency is great but the truth is at most schools you don't need to comb through years of meeting minutes to "figure out what went wrong." Either nothing went wrong or a school's challenges are obvious. TR is unique in that it should be doing at least as well as other similarly situated charters in terms of retention, behavior, and test scores. And it's not-- it's in a downward spiral.

Can you give us the play by play of exactly what happened at Two Rivers over the past 5 years? Because it's obvious that a downward spiral occured, but I'm not sure of anything more specific than that.

Pre-Covid things were going okay but there were already signs of issues that needed to be addressed. Some grumbling among middle and upper elementary parents about academics. One of the challenges of having a large cohort of UMC families is that they tend to be demanding. And unlike many other charters TR doesn't have a teaching philosophy or selling point that tends to attract parents willing to be forgiving (which charters like SWS, CHML, Lee, Stokes, YY, and LAMB all have). There were also frustrations with the 4th Street campus which was/is aging and very tight.

But the bright spot was the Young campus and the MS. Even parents who were getting a bit restless viewed this as a good direction. This was 5 or more years ago when fewer families viewed SH or EH as viable options, and before Latin Cooper opened. The feeling was that if the MS was successful, TR families could lock in 10 years of solid education. Similar to what ITDS has done. In fact ITDS's current trajectory is what I think many TR families had in mind when the Young campus opened.

Then Covid. Obviously it sucked for everyone and TR faced a lot of the same challenges, including internal divisions on when it was safe to go back in person. TR chose to stay closed pretty much the maximum length of time and I think at the time they believed this choice has the support if most families. But the reality was more complex. A lot of families actually thought they could have opened sooner (safely) and simply didn't express this out loud because the vibe in DC made that an unpopular thing to say. But many of these were the families who even pre-Covid were starting feel like the academics at the school were not great. So they started leaving. En masse. Some lotteried into other charters (including the aforementioned ITDS which is close by, though small). But many also started going IB. The biggest shift was at LT, which used to have lot of boundary kids at TR. This attitude totally flipped by 2021 or so. But other Ward 6 schools had similar if less dramatic shifts.

The loss of a lot of middle and upper elementary kids hurt TR 4th but they still had plenty of buy in at the ECE level. What really took the hit was Young, which was floundering aggressively. The school couldn't retain many of the really invested families into MS. This resulted in under enrollment, low test scores, and a lot of behavioral issues. As this problem got worse it only made the defections from the elementary campuses worse. This has cycled all the way down to early elementary. PK is really the only level that hasn't been hit by this but even there... it seems a lot easier to get a PK spot there these days.

Now layer on top of this: massive administration failures in responding to these issues as they unfolded, especially at the MS. Teacher attrition. A tendency to revert to ra-ra platitudes and meaningless edu-speak when asked pointed, important questions about the direction of the school. Yes they've replaced some of these people. But they've also papered over a lot of things-- some of the "new" administrative staff are actually returning or just shifted around between schools. I think they actually have a lot of trouble recruiting competent administrators.

As a result there is still not really any plan to turn this around. They need a total overhaul that probably starts with the curriculum. They need to be offering something meaningfully competitive with what DCPS is offering, especially around math acceleration and perhaps around writing. Again they don't have immersion or Montessori or Reggio Emilio to draw people in and make them buy in.

I think that pretty much brings us up to speed.

This is a good summary... I would add that Two Rivers claimed some sort of "expeditionary learning" model but people just don't care about that the way they care about language and Montessori. It's not very clear to me what caused Young to flounder. But the common theme, I think, is not enough attention to core academics, and parents getting sick of how the school was underperforming its demographics. ITDS, though it's far from perfect, is pretty solid academically and has a lot of kids getting 4s and 5s. Lots of Two Rivers kids (and faculty and an admin, for better or for worse) came over to Inspired Teaching over the past few years.

PP doesn't mention the opening of Latin Cooper, but I do think that had an impact on Two Rivers at a vulnerable time. I'm not sure exactly how many kids came over, but introducing 95 desirable 5th grade seats, plus however many 6th grade seats, in the initial school year 21-22, made it much easier for people to leave Two Rivers. It certainly took a bite out of ITDS' 5th and 6th grade classes, freeing up space for Two Rivers kids at ITDS (of which there are many).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can read the board meeting minutes here. To its credit, Two Rivers' minutes are a lot more substantive than what you get from many schools. If you skim the minutes for the past few years you can kind of piece things together.

https://www.tworiverspcs.org/who-we-are/team/board-partners/

Disagree. The Board was absent when needed most. They sat and watched it happen.

Oh I agree the board was asleep at the wheel as to the actual problems. They failed to intervene for a long time. I'm just saying their minutes are somewhat informative. If you compare to what various other schools' minutes look like, some are revealing basically nothing, and some haven't made any minutes public for several years.

Transparency is great but the truth is at most schools you don't need to comb through years of meeting minutes to "figure out what went wrong." Either nothing went wrong or a school's challenges are obvious. TR is unique in that it should be doing at least as well as other similarly situated charters in terms of retention, behavior, and test scores. And it's not-- it's in a downward spiral.

Can you give us the play by play of exactly what happened at Two Rivers over the past 5 years? Because it's obvious that a downward spiral occured, but I'm not sure of anything more specific than that.

Pre-Covid things were going okay but there were already signs of issues that needed to be addressed. Some grumbling among middle and upper elementary parents about academics. One of the challenges of having a large cohort of UMC families is that they tend to be demanding. And unlike many other charters TR doesn't have a teaching philosophy or selling point that tends to attract parents willing to be forgiving (which charters like SWS, CHML, Lee, Stokes, YY, and LAMB all have). There were also frustrations with the 4th Street campus which was/is aging and very tight.

But the bright spot was the Young campus and the MS. Even parents who were getting a bit restless viewed this as a good direction. This was 5 or more years ago when fewer families viewed SH or EH as viable options, and before Latin Cooper opened. The feeling was that if the MS was successful, TR families could lock in 10 years of solid education. Similar to what ITDS has done. In fact ITDS's current trajectory is what I think many TR families had in mind when the Young campus opened.

Then Covid. Obviously it sucked for everyone and TR faced a lot of the same challenges, including internal divisions on when it was safe to go back in person. TR chose to stay closed pretty much the maximum length of time and I think at the time they believed this choice has the support if most families. But the reality was more complex. A lot of families actually thought they could have opened sooner (safely) and simply didn't express this out loud because the vibe in DC made that an unpopular thing to say. But many of these were the families who even pre-Covid were starting feel like the academics at the school were not great. So they started leaving. En masse. Some lotteried into other charters (including the aforementioned ITDS which is close by, though small). But many also started going IB. The biggest shift was at LT, which used to have lot of boundary kids at TR. This attitude totally flipped by 2021 or so. But other Ward 6 schools had similar if less dramatic shifts.

The loss of a lot of middle and upper elementary kids hurt TR 4th but they still had plenty of buy in at the ECE level. What really took the hit was Young, which was floundering aggressively. The school couldn't retain many of the really invested families into MS. This resulted in under enrollment, low test scores, and a lot of behavioral issues. As this problem got worse it only made the defections from the elementary campuses worse. This has cycled all the way down to early elementary. PK is really the only level that hasn't been hit by this but even there... it seems a lot easier to get a PK spot there these days.

Now layer on top of this: massive administration failures in responding to these issues as they unfolded, especially at the MS. Teacher attrition. A tendency to revert to ra-ra platitudes and meaningless edu-speak when asked pointed, important questions about the direction of the school. Yes they've replaced some of these people. But they've also papered over a lot of things-- some of the "new" administrative staff are actually returning or just shifted around between schools. I think they actually have a lot of trouble recruiting competent administrators.

As a result there is still not really any plan to turn this around. They need a total overhaul that probably starts with the curriculum. They need to be offering something meaningfully competitive with what DCPS is offering, especially around math acceleration and perhaps around writing. Again they don't have immersion or Montessori or Reggio Emilio to draw people in and make them buy in.

I think that pretty much brings us up to speed.

This is a good summary... I would add that Two Rivers claimed some sort of "expeditionary learning" model but people just don't care about that the way they care about language and Montessori. It's not very clear to me what caused Young to flounder. But the common theme, I think, is not enough attention to core academics, and parents getting sick of how the school was underperforming its demographics. ITDS, though it's far from perfect, is pretty solid academically and has a lot of kids getting 4s and 5s. Lots of Two Rivers kids (and faculty and an admin, for better or for worse) came over to Inspired Teaching over the past few years.

PP doesn't mention the opening of Latin Cooper, but I do think that had an impact on Two Rivers at a vulnerable time. I'm not sure exactly how many kids came over, but introducing 95 desirable 5th grade seats, plus however many 6th grade seats, in the initial school year 21-22, made it much easier for people to leave Two Rivers. It certainly took a bite out of ITDS' 5th and 6th grade classes, freeing up space for Two Rivers kids at ITDS (of which there are many).

Agree with all of this. There were definite cracks before covid, but the former head of school kristina was woefully in over her head. It was easier for her ro keep the school closed then run it.
I also think that there’s an over emphasis on community at TR. that’s used as an excuse for many gaps and shifts a lot of responsibility on learning etc to parents/ guardians. See previous mentioned MS closure. I found this really interesting/frustrating when my DS was a student.

[Anonymous]

There was a brand-new Executive Director (Kristina) who was not up to the task at all, and who followed the founding Executive Director (the only ED the school had ever had) right when covid hit. Lots of compounding factors for sure, but to me they all start there. Had they managed to skip Kristina and go to the ED they have now, who seems very good, or had the founding ED been steering the ship during covid, things might be much different.

PP's mention of the impact of Cooper's opening timing is also 100% correct.

[Anonymous]

I know this thread is more of a post-mortem on Two Rivers, but given the small class size and middling test scores I'm fascinated by how well their students fared at the application high schools last year. 10 to Banneker, 15 to McKinley, 1-9 to Duke Ellington, and 1-9 to School Without Walls. Any insight into what drove that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know this thread is more of a post-mortem on Two Rivers, but given the small class size and middling test scores I'm fascinated by how well their students fared at the application high schools last year. 10 to Banneker, 15 to McKinley, 1-9 to Duke Ellington, and 1-9 to School Without Walls. Any insight into what drove that?

It is impressive, but yes, there are reasons. Getting into application high schools is allll about having good grades (not perfect but very good) and about putting together a strong package of teacher recommendations and, for Ellington, an audition. It's NOT about the kids being above grade level academically and PARCC scores are not part of the process. These are things that, with a lot of parent support, can be done even if the school isn't strong on academics and behavior. Most teachers are capable of writing a glowing rec even if they aren't a very good teacher overall, and the school knows it needs to deliver some application high school acceptances so there's pressure on the teachers to do a good job with the recs and grades. And parents are heavily involved to make sure good grades happen, supervising the kid to make sure all homework is adequately done and turned in (OMG turning in the work is such an obstacle for middle schoolers!). The Ellington audition component is basically kid talent and parent support, it's not like Two Rivers is running an awesome arts program.

People whose kids don't have good grades tend to see the writing on the wall and leave their middle schools before 8th grade to secure a different high school option. So you're left with a middle school full of kids whose parents are confident about application high schools, and kids whose parents either plan to move or go private, or have some other option, or the parents are oblivious. The same dynamic exists at ITDS.

I will also say that this is an outlier year for Two Rivers Middle, prior years did not have 10 kids headed to any one school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know this thread is more of a post-mortem on Two Rivers, but given the small class size and middling test scores I'm fascinated by how well their students fared at the application high schools last year. 10 to Banneker, 15 to McKinley, 1-9 to Duke Ellington, and 1-9 to School Without Walls. Any insight into what drove that?

The 10 to Banneker is a decent result but the McKinley number isn't meaningful -- McKinley regularly has fewer matches on results day than available spots which means if you apply for it and don't get into a school you ranked higher you will probably get into McKinley. That might be changing as the gap narrowed a lot in the 2024 lottery (147 matches for 250 seats -- the first time they've ever had over 200 matches). But for the 2023-2024 school year it was not competitive to get into the school.

It's good they sent at least one kid to Ellington and Walls but it's also uncommon for a middle school to send NO kids those schools. In this case the difference between one and nine kids is actually pretty big but there's no way to know.

[Anonymous]

^ sorry should say 247 matches for 250 lottery spots in this year's lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know this thread is more of a post-mortem on Two Rivers, but given the small class size and middling test scores I'm fascinated by how well their students fared at the application high schools last year. 10 to Banneker, 15 to McKinley, 1-9 to Duke Ellington, and 1-9 to School Without Walls. Any insight into what drove that?

The 10 to Banneker is a decent result but the McKinley number isn't meaningful -- McKinley regularly has fewer matches on results day than available spots which means if you apply for it and don't get into a school you ranked higher you will probably get into McKinley. That might be changing as the gap narrowed a lot in the 2024 lottery (147 matches for 250 seats -- the first time they've ever had over 200 matches). But for the 2023-2024 school year it was not competitive to get into the school.

It's good they sent at least one kid to Ellington and Walls but it's also uncommon for a middle school to send NO kids those schools. In this case the difference between one and nine kids is actually pretty big but there's no way to know.

Well, the data does show 1,271 kids applied to McKinley Tech. Some matched elsewhere, and some perhaps didn't complete the process or didn't have even close to the grades, or moved away or whatever. But it's really not the case that anyone can just walk into McKinley Tech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know this thread is more of a post-mortem on Two Rivers, but given the small class size and middling test scores I'm fascinated by how well their students fared at the application high schools last year. 10 to Banneker, 15 to McKinley, 1-9 to Duke Ellington, and 1-9 to School Without Walls. Any insight into what drove that?

The 10 to Banneker is a decent result but the McKinley number isn't meaningful -- McKinley regularly has fewer matches on results day than available spots which means if you apply for it and don't get into a school you ranked higher you will probably get into McKinley. That might be changing as the gap narrowed a lot in the 2024 lottery (147 matches for 250 seats -- the first time they've ever had over 200 matches). But for the 2023-2024 school year it was not competitive to get into the school.

It's good they sent at least one kid to Ellington and Walls but it's also uncommon for a middle school to send NO kids those schools. In this case the difference between one and nine kids is actually pretty big but there's no way to know.

Well, the data does show 1,271 kids applied to McKinley Tech. Some matched elsewhere, and some perhaps didn't complete the process or didn't have even close to the grades, or moved away or whatever. But it's really not the case that anyone can just walk into McKinley Tech.

Agreed you can't just walk in but it's also not clear how competitive it is to get in. This was the first year that they posted the number of applicants and also the first year that their matched students number came anywhere close to their available seats (247 out of 250). This is similar to what you consistently see at Banneker with a small number of unfilled seats likely due to some number of selected students ranking another school higher in the lottery and thus not matching (Walls consistently matches the full class on results day with a sizeable waitlist). But in prior years McKinley didn't come close to filling their class on match day with often 100+ unfilled seats. Presumably this is due to a combination of (1) not enough applicants who could meet the school's minimum requirements and (2) a number of selected applicants matched at another school they ranked higher. But since we don't know the number of applicants for any year prior to this one and we don't know if there were rejected students who did not receive matches at higher ranked schools we can't say.

Anecdotally I have heard from many families that McKinley is a fairly safe option for a STEM focused kid with good grades -- I don't know anyone who has wanted a seat there and not gotten it (unless they got in somewhere they wanted more).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know this thread is more of a post-mortem on Two Rivers, but given the small class size and middling test scores I'm fascinated by how well their students fared at the application high schools last year. 10 to Banneker, 15 to McKinley, 1-9 to Duke Ellington, and 1-9 to School Without Walls. Any insight into what drove that?

The 10 to Banneker is a decent result but the McKinley number isn't meaningful -- McKinley regularly has fewer matches on results day than available spots which means if you apply for it and don't get into a school you ranked higher you will probably get into McKinley. That might be changing as the gap narrowed a lot in the 2024 lottery (147 matches for 250 seats -- the first time they've ever had over 200 matches). But for the 2023-2024 school year it was not competitive to get into the school.

It's good they sent at least one kid to Ellington and Walls but it's also uncommon for a middle school to send NO kids those schools. In this case the difference between one and nine kids is actually pretty big but there's no way to know.

Well, the data does show 1,271 kids applied to McKinley Tech. Some matched elsewhere, and some perhaps didn't complete the process or didn't have even close to the grades, or moved away or whatever. But it's really not the case that anyone can just walk into McKinley Tech.

Agreed you can't just walk in but it's also not clear how competitive it is to get in. This was the first year that they posted the number of applicants and also the first year that their matched students number came anywhere close to their available seats (247 out of 250). This is similar to what you consistently see at Banneker with a small number of unfilled seats likely due to some number of selected students ranking another school higher in the lottery and thus not matching (Walls consistently matches the full class on results day with a sizeable waitlist). But in prior years McKinley didn't come close to filling their class on match day with often 100+ unfilled seats. Presumably this is due to a combination of (1) not enough applicants who could meet the school's minimum requirements and (2) a number of selected applicants matched at another school they ranked higher. But since we don't know the number of applicants for any year prior to this one and we don't know if there were rejected students who did not receive matches at higher ranked schools we can't say.

Anecdotally I have heard from many families that McKinley is a fairly safe option for a STEM focused kid with good grades -- I don't know anyone who has wanted a seat there and not gotten it (unless they got in somewhere they wanted more).

I'm not sure McKinley itself knows where the bar will be in the future. But they are probably managing their large applicant pool somehow by applying a grade cutoff (at like, must have As and Bs in STEM and Cs are ok in other subjects).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was a brand-new Executive Director (Kristina) who was not up to the task at all, and who followed the founding Executive Director (the only ED the school had ever had) right when covid hit. Lots of compounding factors for sure, but to me they all start there. Had they managed to skip Kristina and go to the ED they have now, who seems very good, or had the founding ED been steering the ship during covid, things might be much different.

PP's mention of the impact of Cooper's opening timing is also 100% correct.

Agree with all this “Dr” Kristina was a baffling hire.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There was a brand-new Executive Director (Kristina) who was not up to the task at all, and who followed the founding Executive Director (the only ED the school had ever had) right when covid hit. Lots of compounding factors for sure, but to me they all start there. Had they managed to skip Kristina and go to the ED they have now, who seems very good, or had the founding ED been steering the ship during covid, things might be much different.

PP's mention of the impact of Cooper's opening timing is also 100% correct.

If you look at the pathways data from eduscape, the Latin Cooper excuse doesn't hold up. Only a small number of TR kids are getting in there even in the first two years when they were taking 5th and 6th grade students. Meanwhile the number of students going to Young has dropped by a huge number each year, and the number of places that 4th and 5th grade students are going to has multiplied. Not just Cooper but SH, EH, Deal, Hardy, CHML, Cap City, Truth, and others. The number of kids going to Cooper is small compared to the total number of kids leaving.

Also Cooper has not had that impact on other schools. In terms of enrollment and retaining feeder kids, SH and EH have improved even as Cooper opened. The popularity of ITDS MS has stayed high and it's actually led to less attrition from ITDS in the upper grades. TR was struggling before Cooper and continues to struggle now. The fact that a small handful of TR students went there is really pretty irrelevant to the problems at TR and especially at Young MS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was a brand-new Executive Director (Kristina) who was not up to the task at all, and who followed the founding Executive Director (the only ED the school had ever had) right when covid hit. Lots of compounding factors for sure, but to me they all start there. Had they managed to skip Kristina and go to the ED they have now, who seems very good, or had the founding ED been steering the ship during covid, things might be much different.

PP's mention of the impact of Cooper's opening timing is also 100% correct.

If you look at the pathways data from eduscape, the Latin Cooper excuse doesn't hold up. Only a small number of TR kids are getting in there even in the first two years when they were taking 5th and 6th grade students. Meanwhile the number of students going to Young has dropped by a huge number each year, and the number of places that 4th and 5th grade students are going to has multiplied. Not just Cooper but SH, EH, Deal, Hardy, CHML, Cap City, Truth, and others. The number of kids going to Cooper is small compared to the total number of kids leaving.

Also Cooper has not had that impact on other schools. In terms of enrollment and retaining feeder kids, SH and EH have improved even as Cooper opened. The popularity of ITDS MS has stayed high and it's actually led to less attrition from ITDS in the upper grades. TR was struggling before Cooper and continues to struggle now. The fact that a small handful of TR students went there is really pretty irrelevant to the problems at TR and especially at Young MS.

That's not what I was saying, though. Yes, TR is struggling before and after. But in the initial year of Cooper, when 5th and 6th grade classes were being filled from scratch with nobody having sibling preference, SY 22-23, was a different year in the system. Only one single school (Brent) sent 10 or more kids to Cooper. It's fascinating to me that no TR students went to Cooper for 5th that year, but it did have 6th graders from both campuses. I'm not sure how many. But losing a "small handful" of students really can be a big deal, if those students are mostly from TR's precious few high academic performers. And even if kids didn't go directly from TR to Cooper, 95 new 5th grade seats introduced a lot more flexibility in the system as a whole. In the Ward 5/6 area, it was easier for TR students to find a seat that they wanted at any number of schools. It's not just about direct transfers, it's about the system as a whole.

That year took a big bite out of ITDS middle school too. It doesn't really show in the data, but ITDS is such a small school that losing even 5 kids is a big deal. A lot of the grade-level and above-grade-level kids went over to Cooper and the impact is still being felt in that cohort and through sibling preference. ITDS middle is still doing okay, but that particular year was rough.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was a brand-new Executive Director (Kristina) who was not up to the task at all, and who followed the founding Executive Director (the only ED the school had ever had) right when covid hit. Lots of compounding factors for sure, but to me they all start there. Had they managed to skip Kristina and go to the ED they have now, who seems very good, or had the founding ED been steering the ship during covid, things might be much different.

PP's mention of the impact of Cooper's opening timing is also 100% correct.

If you look at the pathways data from eduscape, the Latin Cooper excuse doesn't hold up. Only a small number of TR kids are getting in there even in the first two years when they were taking 5th and 6th grade students. Meanwhile the number of students going to Young has dropped by a huge number each year, and the number of places that 4th and 5th grade students are going to has multiplied. Not just Cooper but SH, EH, Deal, Hardy, CHML, Cap City, Truth, and others. The number of kids going to Cooper is small compared to the total number of kids leaving.

Also Cooper has not had that impact on other schools. In terms of enrollment and retaining feeder kids, SH and EH have improved even as Cooper opened. The popularity of ITDS MS has stayed high and it's actually led to less attrition from ITDS in the upper grades. TR was struggling before Cooper and continues to struggle now. The fact that a small handful of TR students went there is really pretty irrelevant to the problems at TR and especially at Young MS.

That's not what I was saying, though. Yes, TR is struggling before and after. But in the initial year of Cooper, when 5th and 6th grade classes were being filled from scratch with nobody having sibling preference, SY 22-23, was a different year in the system. Only one single school (Brent) sent 10 or more kids to Cooper. It's fascinating to me that no TR students went to Cooper for 5th that year, but it did have 6th graders from both campuses. I'm not sure how many. But losing a "small handful" of students really can be a big deal, if those students are mostly from TR's precious few high academic performers. And even if kids didn't go directly from TR to Cooper, 95 new 5th grade seats introduced a lot more flexibility in the system as a whole. In the Ward 5/6 area, it was easier for TR students to find a seat that they wanted at any number of schools. It's not just about direct transfers, it's about the system as a whole.

That year took a big bite out of ITDS middle school too. It doesn't really show in the data, but ITDS is such a small school that losing even 5 kids is a big deal. A lot of the grade-level and above-grade-level kids went over to Cooper and the impact is still being felt in that cohort and through sibling preference. ITDS middle is still doing okay, but that particular year was rough.

Right, one year with more attrition than usual but then it's fine and schools adjust. Except at TR. And think about why TR had so few "academically advanced" students to spare anyway. There is no reason for that to be the case except that TR's academics has been weak for years and strong students had already left the school (or failed to be one strong students in the first place because of weak curriculum and instruction).

Also one factor no one has mentioned is the degree to which virtual instruction during Covid revealed to a lot of parents how weak the school was academically. And while I agree Ms. Kristina handled Covid poorly, you can't blame this on her. She had been with the school a short time-- what parents saw was an unengaging, unchallenging curriculum delivered with little conviction by often inexperienced and checked out teachers. It was shocking.

Talk to a parent who supervised their kid's 1st, 2nd or 3rd grade year on zoom at TR and you'll see. Though you won't find many of them at TR be abuse most of us bailed pretty quickly after that.

This is the heart of TR's issues. Their PK programming is warm and supportive and it pulls you in, but once you get to the elementary grades, it's a mess. Expeditions is a joke. And that's not on Ms. Kristina or Latin Cooper. That's on the TR education model.