How would this controlled choice nonsense actually work on Capitol Hill?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The Cluster is part of the reason the DCPS feeder system is such a complete mess on Capitol Hill. Students who attend an IB school such as Brent are forced to choose between Eliot-Hine and Jefferson as a last resort, while students who abandon IB schools such as Ludlow-Taylor in order to attend Watkins have had the right to attend Stuart-Hobson.

Your argument is a bit of a mess. The LT IB students are likely IB for SH as well, not to mention LT feeds SH even if they live OOB

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Capitol Hill is actually the perfect example to demonstrate why such heavy emphasis on boundaries makes no sense at all. By starting this discussion based on the % of IB children, you completely disregard that in fact a great many children at all of the Capitol Hill schools live in Capitol Hill (subtract those that actually live in MD). The IB numbers at all of our schools we're all picking schools from around here that don't happen to be our IB schools, sometimes simply because the official boundaries are totally screwed up. Brent kids go to Watkins, Watkins kids go to Maury, Miner kids go to Ludlow-Taylor, J.O. Wilson Kids attend Brent, those in turn attend SWS and Logan Montessori, Tyler has kids from from all other Capitol Hill boundaries due to Spanish, likewise J.O. Wilson due to French, so on and so forth. I'd claim that if you drew one big boundary for what you think of "Capitol Hill Schools" and examined how many kids within all of these schools are from within that boundary, I'd guess you'd be at about 75% to 80%. Can someone run the data please to prove me wrong?

Or a crazy idea -- you could provide your own data to support your own argument. Not sure I really follow what you're saying anyway

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oops, I meant Tyler, not LT.

Okay - Tyler. You don't sound terribly knowledgeable about LT, Tyler, or Watkins. Yes, some Tyler IB kids could attend Watkins by proximity by choise. Tyler generally attracts more nearby FARMS than Watkins. The proximity is misleading -- you may think Watkins is a better school than Tyler (traditional at least), but it doesn't mean Watkins draws significantly from the nearby project kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Capitol Hill is actually the perfect example to demonstrate why such heavy emphasis on boundaries makes no sense at all. By starting this discussion based on the % of IB children, you completely disregard that in fact a great many children at all of the Capitol Hill schools live in Capitol Hill (subtract those that actually live in MD). The IB numbers at all of our schools we're all picking schools from around here that don't happen to be our IB schools, sometimes simply because the official boundaries are totally screwed up. Brent kids go to Watkins, Watkins kids go to Maury, Miner kids go to Ludlow-Taylor, J.O. Wilson Kids attend Brent, those in turn attend SWS and Logan Montessori, Tyler has kids from from all other Capitol Hill boundaries due to Spanish, likewise J.O. Wilson due to French, so on and so forth. I'd claim that if you drew one big boundary for what you think of "Capitol Hill Schools" and examined how many kids within all of these schools are from within that boundary, I'd guess you'd be at about 75% to 80%. Can someone run the data please to prove me wrong?

Or a crazy idea -- you could provide your own data to support your own argument. Not sure I really follow what you're saying anyway

Alright, I will if someone could please re-post the link to the data. As for comprehension of my argument, try this:
If, for argument's sake, say I live on 10th St SE, thus IB for Watkins but really like nearby Brent better and take my kids there, my two kids will be recorded as OOB at Brent. You, meanwhile live in the Brent boundary but really feel strongly about Watkins' school garden and Stuart-Hobson as your MS feeder and therefore send your kids to Watkins, you too are recorded as OOB. In fact, both of us are recorded as OOB although neither one of us lives far from those schools and we would probably think of ourselves as "IB", certainly compared to someone who does an hour-long commute from Ward 5, 7, or 8. Got that? Now try to think of almost everyone doing what I describe the two of us doing. Right, that makes all of us OOB. In sum, we're all OOB, yet we're not really.

[Anonymous]

The most insidious aspect of controlled choice is it has the potential to pit different areas of Capitol Hill against one another in a zero sum game, all in the guise of preserving "diversity.". Many families IB for Brent will be unhappy if assigned to Payne or Miner, while families IB for Payne or Miner would likely be very happy to be assigned to Brent or Maury.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Capitol Hill is actually the perfect example to demonstrate why such heavy emphasis on boundaries makes no sense at all. By starting this discussion based on the % of IB children, you completely disregard that in fact a great many children at all of the Capitol Hill schools live in Capitol Hill (subtract those that actually live in MD). The IB numbers at all of our schools we're all picking schools from around here that don't happen to be our IB schools, sometimes simply because the official boundaries are totally screwed up. Brent kids go to Watkins, Watkins kids go to Maury, Miner kids go to Ludlow-Taylor, J.O. Wilson Kids attend Brent, those in turn attend SWS and Logan Montessori, Tyler has kids from from all other Capitol Hill boundaries due to Spanish, likewise J.O. Wilson due to French, so on and so forth. I'd claim that if you drew one big boundary for what you think of "Capitol Hill Schools" and examined how many kids within all of these schools are from within that boundary, I'd guess you'd be at about 75% to 80%. Can someone run the data please to prove me wrong?

Or a crazy idea -- you could provide your own data to support your own argument. Not sure I really follow what you're saying anyway

Alright, I will if someone could please re-post the link to the data. As for comprehension of my argument, try this:
If, for argument's sake, say I live on 10th St SE, thus IB for Watkins but really like nearby Brent better and take my kids there, my two kids will be recorded as OOB at Brent. You, meanwhile live in the Brent boundary but really feel strongly about Watkins' school garden and Stuart-Hobson as your MS feeder and therefore send your kids to Watkins, you too are recorded as OOB. In fact, both of us are recorded as OOB although neither one of us lives far from those schools and we would probably think of ourselves as "IB", certainly compared to someone who does an hour-long commute from Ward 5, 7, or 8. Got that? Now try to think of almost everyone doing what I describe the two of us doing. Right, that makes all of us OOB. In sum, we're all OOB, yet we're not really.

Boundaries are boundaries, regardless of OOB proximity, whether you want to "think" 10th Street is IB for Brent, and CH is increasingly socioeconomic ally homogeneous. Perhaps it would have made more sense for DCPS to have retained the Hine site and merged a number of elementary schools into another Janney as part of an effort to remediate the Balkanization we now have, but no one was that forward thinking.

[Anonymous]

My point exactly. Boundaries are random lines on a map in the context of Capitol Hill. Remove the lines for argument's sake and you'll find that we're all more or less "in-boundary", from within Capitol Hill that is and we should all be able to choose from among "our" schools in a less "random boundary drawn" way. Controlled choice, for you and me on 10th St SE could then mean, for example, that we can both claim those proximities as enhancers (or "controls") of our choice. Of course, "controlled" choice can also add other factors into the mix, such as sibling preference, language "controls", racial controls, socio-economic controls etc. That's where the discussion starts turning ugly. But the idea is excellent if you ask me.

[Anonymous]

Again, it only sounds excellent if your IB school is one that is underperforming. No one IB for Brent is sending their kids to Watkins for the gardens or DPR athletic facility. By the same token only a couple of families IB for other CH schools might be admitted to Brent at the upper grades (even though Brent can't fill FIfth Grade with OOB students).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Again, it only sounds excellent if your IB school is one that is underperforming. No one IB for Brent is sending their kids to Watkins for the gardens or DPR athletic facility. By the same token only a couple of families IB for other CH schools might be admitted to Brent at the upper grades (even though Brent can't fill FIfth Grade with OOB students).

At most you'd find a very small number of Brent families switching to Watkins for 5th grade only, and even there it's not likely the Brent IB kids but the upper grade OOB kids seeking SH for MS. No one IB for Brent is sending their kids to Watkins for any other reason.

[Anonymous]

I think we can all agree that the boundaries on the Hill are somewhat arbitrary (especially the Cluster) and that any one of the Capitol Hill schools could be considered a "neighborhood" school for most people living on the Hill, using the dictionary definition of neighborhood. The problem is, not all DCPS schools are good enough for most parents (myself included). A significant number of DCPS schools on the Hill are not going to meet my standards or the standards of many other higher SES families. The only way our family could afford to stay in the city was if we could buy a house where we knew we could go to a higher-performing school as a matter of right. So we looked at the (somewhat arbitrary) boundary map and drew lines around areas in bounds for the better schools, and didn't consider anything else. If, by our housing choice, there was an equal chance of our kids going to Brent or Payne, there is no way we would have taken that risk and bought our current house, because we are not going to send our kids to Payne. We would have escaped to the burbs, and I imagine there are many families like us that would have done the same (some may criticize this attitude, but I think it is a reality, and the "we don't want your kind anyhow" attitude isn't helpful because the reality is that DCPS needs high SES families in them, and not just the ones who are very interested in getting their hands dirty improving the schools). A good way to keep higher-SES families in DC is by giving them some certainty that their kids can get a good public school education, and you can't do that with controlled choice, at least with the schools in their current state.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From what I see on MoCo threads peopke don't like it and avoid being in the controlled choice areas if they can.

Considering moving back into the city from MoCo because financial windfall has allowed private options. But this is incorrect - "controlled choice" in MoCo (which is for high school only) is substantially different than CH. MoCo has strong-performing schools to begin with, whereas there are vast disparities in the CH schools. And to do this in HS is different than starting in ES. Selling off Hines to the highest bidder in retrospect seems foolish, but it's the hand dealt.

The first step is to bring performance (and resources) up in the lower performers, creating an incentive for higher SES parents to enroll. And it's not just class sizes - it's teacher recruitment and SWAT team style performance increase. MoCo actually provides a good example of doing this at the ES level from I believe some of the lower performing TP schools, which through targeted resource investments were brought up to county standards within something like 2 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again, it only sounds excellent if your IB school is one that is underperforming. No one IB for Brent is sending their kids to Watkins for the gardens or DPR athletic facility. By the same token only a couple of families IB for other CH schools might be admitted to Brent at the upper grades (even though Brent can't fill FIfth Grade with OOB students).

At most you'd find a very small number of Brent families switching to Watkins for 5th grade only, and even there it's not likely the Brent IB kids but the upper grade OOB kids seeking SH for MS. No one IB for Brent is sending their kids to Watkins for any other reason.

How do you know that those Brent OOB kids are not Hill kids? Isn't that the discussion for the last several pages - that people are as a matter of strict boundaries, OOB for some Capitol Hill schools but are actually neighborhood kids? One poster, not me, thought that the overall Hill presence is about 70-75%. But your message dismisses the OOB kids at Brent. Or is this code for something else?

[Anonymous]

What about Watkins?
What about Tyler??

[Anonymous]

Controlled choice on the hill is terrible. High SES families would not be retained past K because their chance of winning a spot at a "good" school would be much decreased. That would be if there were any "good" schools left. I expect my house price (house that is well designed for a family of four plus grandparents) would go down by about 10 to 15 percent right when I wanted to sell it.

[Anonymous]

Shutting down Capitol Hill schools that are hugely OOB would probably help the remaining schools turn into neighborhood schools faster. This would accelerate the flip, which, as a person IB for a CH school that is very very far from such a flip, I would be happy.