Southwest to Eastern HS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ yes, but at Wilson, my DC won't be the only non-AA student, nor the only one scoring advanced.

With the boundary chances your DC won't be the only non-AA advanced student at Eastern -- there could be many, especially since Eastern population is small compared to Wilson. Wilson is only 20% White, remember.

This is a very real issue. Until there is a critical mass of white kids, the IB white parents are NOT sending their kids there. It just wont happen. How many white kids have attened Eastern in the last 20 years? none? maybe 5? It doesn't matter if they have the top scores in the City. it won't happen. Same reason white parents don't choose banneker even though its probably more rigorous than Wilson. Less than 5 white kids. This is what parents mean when they talk to each other about "we all just need to stick together through each grade"- they mean a cohort of high SES white kids.

I actually don't agree that it's a case of how many white kids there are. Certainly, that's not a factor for us. It's that there aren't enough high scoring kids at Eastern to create enough of the advanced AP/IB classes that you really need for rigorous college prep and competitive college applications these days. If you only have a handful of kids able to do honors and AP work per grade you're not going to have too many of those classes, let alone much diversity of options. And I think you see that in the structure of the Eastern IB program - they do IB "American studies" where the RM IB students do AP US History as sophmores in order to do the two year IB European History course and sit the AP and IB exams in that subject. Eastern has IB Spanish. RM has IB Spanish, French and German. Etc.

Eastern may be (and looks like it is) doing a laudable job of teaching kids that come from uneven educational backgrounds and getting a lot of them very proficient in the basics but it does not appear to have as much to offer in rigorous college prep. Nor, a lot of signs that it will in the near to medium term.

But if the Eastern population did have the high test scores... then you would move to consider what is now a second-order problem..."My kid will be the only white kid in most of his/her classes". Either way, he/she won't be attending... Much like they won't be attending Banneker.

And splitting the white student population on Capitol Hill among three different DCPS middle schools and 2-3 DCPCS schools, makes it nearly impossible to get a critical mass of parents who will 'stick it out together' and build a big enough demographic of high-SES white/asian to be self-sustaining.

You know, this really just isn't that big a deal for me - I did magnet programs in MCPS in the '80s and '90s and took several non-magnet classes where I was the only white kid and, in most of them white kids were the minority, and it just wasn't that big a deal. I can't see how a couple decades later it would be a bigger problem. I do think the lack of rigorous honors/AP level college prep classes is a big deal. I arrived at college with about a semster and a half worth of credit and classmates of mine who were stronger students had about a year. That's a big savings and helps you skip a lot of BS intro level courses.

[Anonymous]

Many of us have similar backgrounds to 16:43 and feel the same way. I went to a public magnet test-in school in the midwest that was not majority white, but had a 100% college acceptance rate with many of us leaving with 4-5 passing APs under our belt. Eastern is a ways off from that.

[Anonymous]

Exactly, there's not enough white students to make a difference in any school population at high school. It will never-ever happened and this hope that Eastern will become Wilson East was the same wishes for McKinley and Banner too. Currently the top students at Eastern are Asian - Americans and African-American and there's one white student at the school at the school. So we are diverse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ yes, but at Wilson, my DC won't be the only non-AA student, nor the only one scoring advanced.

With the boundary chances your DC won't be the only non-AA advanced student at Eastern -- there could be many, especially since Eastern population is small compared to Wilson. Wilson is only 20% White, remember.

25% white and 8% Asian. 17% hispanic and only a plurality AA (46%), not a "majority" as someone said upthread. Not assigning value to any one group!!!! but it's accurate to say Wilson is diverse. SWW probably is, too. Other DCPS high schools are ... not diverse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:C'mon Word Salad, for someone who works for DCPS and claims to be as much of an insider as you do, you are remarkably poorly informed. For 2013-2014, Wilson was 25% white and 8% Asian with 1696 students. That makes 560 students, of which the overwhelming majority are at or above grade level - and 300-400 of them are advanced. http://profiles.dcps.dc.gov/scorecard/Wilson+High+School
Not surprising, because there are over 200 white and Asian kids coming out of eighth grade from Deal each year, the overwhelming majority of whom are advanced or proficient, plus some more kids coming back from private school, plus kids feeding from Hardy, and some who are still there OOB from other wards.

There are not 300-400 advanced kids at Eastern. If the statistics on DCPS's web site are right, there are probably 50, spread out among several grades. We want a larger cohort of academic peers for our kids. And your inability to do basic math or acknowledge factual information does not inspire confidence in Eastern, no matter how vehement your boosterism.

And, frankly, I don't care whether you have confidence in my kid, who reads at a graduate school level and is heading into Algebra II as a 9th grader. When we talked to the folks at Eastern - and we did - they acknowledged that they had neither a language track nor a math track that would meet her needs.

Really? Who pays $30K per year for a prestigious private school for MS, only to return to WILSON for HS? Sure, it's the best comprehensive DCPS HS, but that isn't saying much. The suburban HS's truly embarrass Wilson, and that's not even accounting for the privates which draw from Wilson's catchment. Even the upcoming charters are edging in - and the Martha Cutts one is what, 2 years old?

Wilson boosters sound like people who paid too much for their Rockville-like DC real estate.

[Anonymous]

+1.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^ yes, but at Wilson, my DC won't be the only non-AA student, nor the only one scoring advanced.

With the boundary chances your DC won't be the only non-AA advanced student at Eastern -- there could be many, especially since Eastern population is small compared to Wilson. Wilson is only 20% White, remember.

This is a very real issue. Until there is a critical mass of white kids, the IB white parents are NOT sending their kids there. It just wont happen. How many white kids have attened Eastern in the last 20 years? none? maybe 5? It doesn't matter if they have the top scores in the City. it won't happen. Same reason white parents don't choose banneker even though its probably more rigorous than Wilson. Less than 5 white kids. This is what parents mean when they talk to each other about "we all just need to stick together through each grade"- they mean a cohort of high SES white kids.

I actually don't agree that it's a case of how many white kids there are. Certainly, that's not a factor for us. It's that there aren't enough high scoring kids at Eastern to create enough of the advanced AP/IB classes that you really need for rigorous college prep and competitive college applications these days. If you only have a handful of kids able to do honors and AP work per grade you're not going to have too many of those classes, let alone much diversity of options. And I think you see that in the structure of the Eastern IB program - they do IB "American studies" where the RM IB students do AP US History as sophmores in order to do the two year IB European History course and sit the AP and IB exams in that subject. Eastern has IB Spanish. RM has IB Spanish, French and German. Etc.

Eastern may be (and looks like it is) doing a laudable job of teaching kids that come from uneven educational backgrounds and getting a lot of them very proficient in the basics but it does not appear to have as much to offer in rigorous college prep. Nor, a lot of signs that it will in the near to medium term.

Sorry, new to this conversation - what school is "RM"?

[Anonymous]

Richard Montgomery?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Richard Montgomery?

I assume so - it's a Rockville HS that had the first IB program in the area, set up in the late '80s and is a test-in magnet with very good test scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Exactly, there's not enough white students to make a difference in any school population at high school. It will never-ever happened and this hope that Eastern will become Wilson East was the same wishes for McKinley and Banner too. Currently the top students at Eastern are Asian - Americans and African-American and there's one white student at the school at the school. So we are diverse.

I'm 16:43 and my point is not that there's not 'enough white students to make a difference' - the race of the student body doesn't matter to me at all, beyond, I guess, a vague preference for diversity - what does matter is the number of students ready to take rigorous, advanced, college prep classes, which Eastern does lack. Should my kid turn out to be math/science oriented I will absolutely encourage her to apply to Banneker. But Eastern's a far cry from that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am hearing talk from a few Basis middle school parents that they have no intention of allowing their students to stay at Basis for high school. They are wondering if the honors/IB Diploma program at Eastern would be doable if a whole group of them went at once. It is all questions at this point but the idea passing through their minds is a hopeful thing.

I have volunteered at Eastern. If those parents are serious, they should get in touch with the principal to talk it through. I bet she would be excited by that idea. There are some great teachers at Eastern, and the faculty is incredibly dedicated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I do a lot of work in the SW communtiy and I was just thinking how odd it is that no one has mentioned it. Amidon is underenrolled and I know Jefferson has really been struggling to attrach more students. I believe they offer IB at the middle school level to make themselves stand out. Honestly, I think this is really going to hurt them. they are kind of in the middle of nowhere to begin with and now without even feeder rights to Wilson not sure how they will continue to attract academically minded students who might have a choice.

I'm not sure where this notion that Amidon is undererolled is coming from. Its population has gone up in the last two years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do a lot of work in the SW communtiy and I was just thinking how odd it is that no one has mentioned it. Amidon is underenrolled and I know Jefferson has really been struggling to attrach more students. I believe they offer IB at the middle school level to make themselves stand out. Honestly, I think this is really going to hurt them. they are kind of in the middle of nowhere to begin with and now without even feeder rights to Wilson not sure how they will continue to attract academically minded students who might have a choice.

I'm not sure where this notion that Amidon is undererolled is coming from. Its population has gone up in the last two years.

This is true - I think the waitlist was not just for preK this year, either. That said, I think being pulled from the Wilson feeder pattern will hurt Amidon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am hearing talk from a few Basis middle school parents that they have no intention of allowing their students to stay at Basis for high school. They are wondering if the honors/IB Diploma program at Eastern would be doable if a whole group of them went at once. It is all questions at this point but the idea passing through their minds is a hopeful thing.

I have volunteered at Eastern. If those parents are serious, they should get in touch with the principal to talk it through. I bet she would be excited by that idea. There are some great teachers at Eastern, and the faculty is incredibly dedicated.

I totally agree, the parents from BASIS MS, contact Rachel Skerritt, Principal @ 202-698-4500, she would be delighted to have a conversation with those families. Also, let the record show that our incoming 9th grade school population will have students from Hardy, Howard MS, Stuart Hobson, Jeferson, Chavez, KIPP, Deal and others. The mixture of students from all over the city makes Eastern relevant and perpertually one of the school's systems best choice. Merely, stating here it is a school that's going into their 4th year and thier inaugural incoming class is about to graduate. Therefore, each year since the relaunch the population grew substantially to a point that they will be the second largest high-school next year. It goes to show, growinng slow and steady was the precise thing to do and the results are readily embraced by the outcome of those who selected Eastern as their choice.

To those nay-sayers who have a dislike for Eastern, again the school that you don't want, just maybe is the same school that doesn't want you.

[Anonymous]

Give us a break. Dislike for Eastern is not the problem. High SES Hill parents would love to see Eastern thrive. But when the catchment area is more than half white and Asian and the school is not even 1% white and Asian, perception of quality is not the only issue. Would you send your AA kid to a "neighborhood" school that's close to 100% white, Asian and Latino? If yes, convince us.