DCPS Middle School problem in the Washington Post

[Anonymous]

One thing that I have not understood with the growth of charters is how DCPS could be so slow to respond. DCPS has a huge disadvantage -- that they have to take all comers -- relative to the charters, but they also have a huge advantage that they tend not to use. Although charters have to run a lottery only take the winners, DCPS is not so constrained. They can select on other criteria. Have test-in schools. Create all the immersion schools they want and organize them in a way more oriented towards children with more support in that language or a mixture of different backgrounds. In short, they have some means of cherry picking the best students, but do not use them. Maybe that is a good thing. But since the charters have soft means of doing so, it seems strange that DCPS does not at least try to combat that with better options of their own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Why?? Didn't you hear? People like the one from the Hill quoted in the story won't consider attending a school unless it is already up, running, beautiful and enriched. And left unsaid, "...and already full of people in my demographic."

As a parent of a fourth grader, I don't see anything wrong with this mindset. I don't want to send my child to a middle school that has only remedial options for academics, no extra curriculars, and kids who lack drive and discipline. Your smug statement seems to imply that you have a better plan?

DP here. Just want to point out that it's not as if the choice has to be "full of people in my demographic" vs. "kids who lack drive and discipline," as if it can only be one or the other. A school can give your kid a good education and have some combination of both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One thing that I have not understood with the growth of charters is how DCPS could be so slow to respond. DCPS has a huge disadvantage -- that they have to take all comers -- relative to the charters, but they also have a huge advantage that they tend not to use. Although charters have to run a lottery only take the winners, DCPS is not so constrained. They can select on other criteria. Have test-in schools. Create all the immersion schools they want and organize them in a way more oriented towards children with more support in that language or a mixture of different backgrounds. In short, they have some means of cherry picking the best students, but do not use them. Maybe that is a good thing. But since the charters have soft means of doing so, it seems strange that DCPS does not at least try to combat that with better options of their own.

Charter schools are most certainly not "cherry picking the best students". Students of all kinds end up at charter schools in droves. Like almost half of the public school children in our city. That isn't cherry picking. That is something about DCPS driving them elsewhere

[Anonymous]

The article says 19 4th graders at Ross. That is low. The best students are the ones who leave first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing that I have not understood with the growth of charters is how DCPS could be so slow to respond. DCPS has a huge disadvantage -- that they have to take all comers -- relative to the charters, but they also have a huge advantage that they tend not to use. Although charters have to run a lottery only take the winners, DCPS is not so constrained. They can select on other criteria. Have test-in schools. Create all the immersion schools they want and organize them in a way more oriented towards children with more support in that language or a mixture of different backgrounds. In short, they have some means of cherry picking the best students, but do not use them. Maybe that is a good thing. But since the charters have soft means of doing so, it seems strange that DCPS does not at least try to combat that with better options of their own.

Charter schools are most certainly not "cherry picking the best students". Students of all kinds end up at charter schools in droves. Like almost half of the public school children in our city. That isn't cherry picking. That is something about DCPS driving them elsewhere

On one hand you are right, the charters can't cherry pick the students. The lottery should keep everything equal. However, the fact remains that the parents who play the lottery are a self selecting bunch to begin with and obviously already feel invested in their kids education. Think about it. Just to play lottery, its likely the parents have reviewed the test scores at their IB school and various other schools, visited multiple charters on tours or one on ones, spoken with teachers about what is the best fit for kid, signed up on line, tracked their number and results and are then willing to drive to god knows where in DC to get their kid to the preferred school. By and large, just having those KINDS OF parents creates more driven kids who know education is serious business in their house. That describes a lot of charter families regardless of race or income. So then you do end up with 5th grades that 9 kids and I am betting those kids are some of the ones who are struggling the most. The most involved and driven parents have bailed for Latin, basis or private. In that sense, yes, charters are "selective" just not in an obvious way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing that I have not understood with the growth of charters is how DCPS could be so slow to respond. DCPS has a huge disadvantage -- that they have to take all comers -- relative to the charters, but they also have a huge advantage that they tend not to use. Although charters have to run a lottery only take the winners, DCPS is not so constrained. They can select on other criteria. Have test-in schools. Create all the immersion schools they want and organize them in a way more oriented towards children with more support in that language or a mixture of different backgrounds. In short, they have some means of cherry picking the best students, but do not use them. Maybe that is a good thing. But since the charters have soft means of doing so, it seems strange that DCPS does not at least try to combat that with better options of their own.

Charter schools are most certainly not "cherry picking the best students". Students of all kinds end up at charter schools in droves. Like almost half of the public school children in our city. That isn't cherry picking. That is something about DCPS driving them elsewhere

Correct, charters do not cherrypick - students self-select into charters on the premise that the charters will meet their needs more effectively.

I think the PP was suggesting that DCPS would have the power to cherrypick and retain high-achieving students and compete with charters by making such offers available. But they don't have the political will and the more they drag their feet, the less credibility they have and the more the opportunity to turn things around slips through their fingers.

[Anonymous]

Part of the charter/public issue very broadly is, which system ends up with the poor, uninformed, uncaring, unhelpful parents of problem children who need help and don't get it anywhere else? That alone is a huge burden on one system vs. another.

[Anonymous]

I disagree with the previous posters who say charters are only attended by kids whose parents self-selected in. I know of many families at MANY charters who chose the charter without looking at it, thinking about it, or investigating it simply because it was near their house or near a care-provider's location. You would be amazed at how many families at language immersion schools have no idea their kid is learning chinese in an immersion model or french or spanish at LAMB or Elsie Whitlow Stokes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing that I have not understood with the growth of charters is how DCPS could be so slow to respond. DCPS has a huge disadvantage -- that they have to take all comers -- relative to the charters, but they also have a huge advantage that they tend not to use. Although charters have to run a lottery only take the winners, DCPS is not so constrained. They can select on other criteria. Have test-in schools. Create all the immersion schools they want and organize them in a way more oriented towards children with more support in that language or a mixture of different backgrounds. In short, they have some means of cherry picking the best students, but do not use them. Maybe that is a good thing. But since the charters have soft means of doing so, it seems strange that DCPS does not at least try to combat that with better options of their own.

Charter schools are most certainly not "cherry picking the best students". Students of all kinds end up at charter schools in droves. Like almost half of the public school children in our city. That isn't cherry picking. That is something about DCPS driving them elsewhere

Correct, charters do not cherrypick - students self-select into charters on the premise that the charters will meet their needs more effectively.

I think the PP was suggesting that DCPS would have the power to cherrypick and retain high-achieving students and compete with charters by making such offers available. But they don't have the political will and the more they drag their feet, the less credibility they have and the more the opportunity to turn things around slips through their fingers.

Yes, Yes. I get all that. But what I am saying is that if almost HALF THE CITY is choosing charters, that is not just the high achievers leaving DCPS. I bet people also leave DCPS and choose a charter school because their child is failing miserably and they need to try something different. These false impressions get circulated that charters somehow attract only stellar students. Not so. They do in general attract parents and families who have exercised some judgement about their kids' education, however. I give you that. But I have also seen with my own eyes social service agencies submitting piles of applications to charter schools in loco parentis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing that I have not understood with the growth of charters is how DCPS could be so slow to respond. DCPS has a huge disadvantage -- that they have to take all comers -- relative to the charters, but they also have a huge advantage that they tend not to use. Although charters have to run a lottery only take the winners, DCPS is not so constrained. They can select on other criteria. Have test-in schools. Create all the immersion schools they want and organize them in a way more oriented towards children with more support in that language or a mixture of different backgrounds. In short, they have some means of cherry picking the best students, but do not use them. Maybe that is a good thing. But since the charters have soft means of doing so, it seems strange that DCPS does not at least try to combat that with better options of their own.

Charter schools are most certainly not "cherry picking the best students". Students of all kinds end up at charter schools in droves. Like almost half of the public school children in our city. That isn't cherry picking. That is something about DCPS driving them elsewhere

On one hand you are right, the charters can't cherry pick the students. The lottery should keep everything equal. However, the fact remains that the parents who play the lottery are a self selecting bunch to begin with and obviously already feel invested in their kids education. Think about it. Just to play lottery, its likely the parents have reviewed the test scores at their IB school and various other schools, visited multiple charters on tours or one on ones, spoken with teachers about what is the best fit for kid, signed up on line, tracked their number and results and are then willing to drive to god knows where in DC to get their kid to the preferred school. By and large, just having those KINDS OF parents creates more driven kids who know education is serious business in their house. That describes a lot of charter families regardless of race or income. So then you do end up with 5th grades that 9 kids and I am betting those kids are some of the ones who are struggling the most. The most involved and driven parents have bailed for Latin, basis or private. In that sense, yes, charters are "selective" just not in an obvious way.

Actually, some of the 5th graders who remain at Ross or Brent are the ones who will go private for 6th. One more year of public education. It is only those who need a slot at a public charter school who are compelled to leave after 4th

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But I have also seen with my own eyes social service agencies submitting piles of applications to charter schools in loco parentis.

Now THAT is really interesting... I wonder which schools get those students.

[Anonymous]

Given the SES demographic in DC how were more than a few of the middle schools ever able to get good enough that most of us would use them. Yes there are issues with the fact that a middle school would offer only one semester of social studies, but more importantly almost every single person has agreed, that they could duplicate Deal 100% except for the student composition and they would not use it. The fact of the matter is that DC has too many poor kids as part of its student body for too long for viable options to open up that would make middle and upper class parents happy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing that I have not understood with the growth of charters is how DCPS could be so slow to respond. DCPS has a huge disadvantage -- that they have to take all comers -- relative to the charters, but they also have a huge advantage that they tend not to use. Although charters have to run a lottery only take the winners, DCPS is not so constrained. They can select on other criteria. Have test-in schools. Create all the immersion schools they want and organize them in a way more oriented towards children with more support in that language or a mixture of different backgrounds. In short, they have some means of cherry picking the best students, but do not use them. Maybe that is a good thing. But since the charters have soft means of doing so, it seems strange that DCPS does not at least try to combat that with better options of their own.

Charter schools are most certainly not "cherry picking the best students". Students of all kinds end up at charter schools in droves. Like almost half of the public school children in our city. That isn't cherry picking. That is something about DCPS driving them elsewhere

On one hand you are right, the charters can't cherry pick the students. The lottery should keep everything equal. However, the fact remains that the parents who play the lottery are a self selecting bunch to begin with and obviously already feel invested in their kids education. Think about it. Just to play lottery, its likely the parents have reviewed the test scores at their IB school and various other schools, visited multiple charters on tours or one on ones, spoken with teachers about what is the best fit for kid, signed up on line, tracked their number and results and are then willing to drive to god knows where in DC to get their kid to the preferred school. By and large, just having those KINDS OF parents creates more driven kids who know education is serious business in their house. That describes a lot of charter families regardless of race or income. So then you do end up with 5th grades that 9 kids and I am betting those kids are some of the ones who are struggling the most. The most involved and driven parents have bailed for Latin, basis or private. In that sense, yes, charters are "selective" just not in an obvious way.

Exactly. Charters select their students via lottery and have to abide by those results. So no explicit cherry picking. But they have soft means of doing so. First and foremost, they are doing something that all of us (I hope) would encourage, namely trying to create good schools that folks want to attend. PP perfectly describes how that can skew the mix of students. Of course, (again hopefully) no one wants the charters to be worse schools in order to stop this. In fact part of the point of charters is to provide competition with traditional public schools in the hope that charter would promote better traditional public school and that charters could experiment more flexibly with educational approaches and by so doing get better outcomes. Again, carry on. Now I would suggest that in my limited experience charters also try to encourage their pool one way or another for example by suggesting that parents who are accepted may be "required" to volunteer, and a little more explicitly by trying to shed students back to DCPS who would bring down their scores or who would require them to use more resources than the school wants to. This is a tougher problem, and ways of cherry picking the class either up front or after they have arrived at the school.

But the point of what I said is not really to complain about what charters do. It is to point out that DCPS *could* take steps to draw back some of those motivated families back, but either chooses not to do so or just cannot get its act together. Maybe it is the former: they feel strongly that DCPS shouldn't have specialized schools or tracked schools because it is important to have a standard high quality education for everyone -- they just happen to struggle to make that happen. But I suspect it is the latter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same issue at Brent. 45 4th graders and something like 11 5th graders

A magnet middle school just makes TOO much sense. But, you know what, a magnet DCPS middle could cut really deeply into the Charters' business. I'd be suspicious of what kind of payoffs are going on to prevent such a thing from happening. Charters are big bucks for the folks who run them.

This is an interesting thought, until I think about what a magnet DCPS would look like initially in comparison to Latin and BASIS and I realize that it would still be my third choice given who would be hired to teach there. Charters have a real advantage when it comes to hiring subject-matter experts, not just classroom managers. However, a legit 3rd choice rather than the abyss would be welcome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One thing that I have not understood with the growth of charters is how DCPS could be so slow to respond. DCPS has a huge disadvantage -- that they have to take all comers -- relative to the charters, but they also have a huge advantage that they tend not to use. Although charters have to run a lottery only take the winners, DCPS is not so constrained. They can select on other criteria. Have test-in schools. Create all the immersion schools they want and organize them in a way more oriented towards children with more support in that language or a mixture of different backgrounds. In short, they have some means of cherry picking the best students, but do not use them. Maybe that is a good thing. But since the charters have soft means of doing so, it seems strange that DCPS does not at least try to combat that with better options of their own.

Charter schools are most certainly not "cherry picking the best students". Students of all kinds end up at charter schools in droves. Like almost half of the public school children in our city. That isn't cherry picking. That is something about DCPS driving them elsewhere

Correct, charters do not cherrypick - students self-select into charters on the premise that the charters will meet their needs more effectively.

I think the PP was suggesting that DCPS would have the power to cherrypick and retain high-achieving students and compete with charters by making such offers available. But they don't have the political will and the more they drag their feet, the less credibility they have and the more the opportunity to turn things around slips through their fingers.

Yes, Yes. I get all that. But what I am saying is that if almost HALF THE CITY is choosing charters, that is not just the high achievers leaving DCPS. I bet people also leave DCPS and choose a charter school because their child is failing miserably and they need to try something different. These false impressions get circulated that charters somehow attract only stellar students. Not so. They do in general attract parents and families who have exercised some judgement about their kids' education, however. I give you that. But I have also seen with my own eyes social service agencies submitting piles of applications to charter schools in loco parentis.

And I would totally give you that the percentage of kids in charters is high. But half the city can leave DCPS and they can still have a distribution of students that is among the better ones, even if it isn't "just the stellar ones". I am not going to argue that DCPS is doing a great job and that it isn't the case that parents are fleeing looking for more acceptable options. Just that DCPS has some flexibility to create better options that might keep some of these families.