Is it important to have kids stay at your school through 5th grade?

[Anonymous]

I have a kid who struggles with anxiety and I wonder about how significant a school change or major move would be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear DC families who may not know --
Kids from higher SES homes experience no loss of educational outcome when in school and classes with low-SES kids. HOWEVER, low SES kids perform better when they're in classes that are mixed.

SO - send your kids to public school. If you don't like the school, find your neighbors with the same goals and FIX IT! Despite what you think, the District will help you.

VanNess, Amidon, Tyler, Maury ... parents made it possible for the district to get good leaders and teachers in those schools.

My opinion - you don't get to brag (?) that you send your kids to public school if you shelter them with elite charter schools.

What if you see good school culture at a relatively high poverty school?
That's only true within a certain percentage range. As in, once the low-SES student range gets above 25-30%, the academic quality of the school goes down for everyone. Yes, even the higher-SES children.

Don't believe me? Then ask yourself why 40% FARMS qualifies a school for free lunches for everyone.

Bottom line is that FARMS don't harm higher SES students as long as they're low numbers. Above 20% start to pay attention. Above 25-30 they can have an impact on school culture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear DC families who may not know --
Kids from higher SES homes experience no loss of educational outcome when in school and classes with low-SES kids. HOWEVER, low SES kids perform better when they're in classes that are mixed.

SO - send your kids to public school. If you don't like the school, find your neighbors with the same goals and FIX IT! Despite what you think, the District will help you.

VanNess, Amidon, Tyler, Maury ... parents made it possible for the district to get good leaders and teachers in those schools.

My opinion - you don't get to brag (?) that you send your kids to public school if you shelter them with elite charter schools.

That's only true within a certain percentage range. As in, once the low-SES student range gets above 25-30%, the academic quality of the school goes down for everyone. Yes, even the higher-SES children.

Don't believe me? Then ask yourself why 40% FARMS qualifies a school for free lunches for everyone.

Bottom line is that FARMS don't harm higher SES students as long as they're low numbers. Above 20% start to pay attention. Above 25-30 they can have an impact on school culture.

Sorry, bad posting should above.


What if you see good school culture at a relatively high poverty school?

[Anonymous]

There are probably fewer than 20 schools in the entire city (charter or public) with less than 25% of students qualifying for FARMS.

The FARMS numbers are hard to get anymore, because of community eligibility. But we know that 79.5% of DC public and public charter school students are economically at risk.

There are just not enough middle and upper class families in the school system to make you ratio a practical guideline.

[Anonymous]

As a former Brent mom whose child has just transferred to a charter school for 5th, I will say that it I snot easy. Many tears shed. Missing friends that have stayed on at Brent (gone are the days when hardly anyone would stay for 5th-- seems most kids stayed this year.) Missing teachers and opportunities at Brent -- school musical, etc. And middle school is a BIG change. Taking a bus to school rather than walking with parents and the whole set up have having more teachers and more classrooms and a bigger school.

But kids are resilient. Our child is actually happy for the change-- they felt ready for something new. It's a messy mix of emotions. Fingers crossed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Latin does so much better than our DCPS ES did with both discipline, mental health support and actually special ed support in general. Even if my kid didn't need these services/help, having many kids with unaddressed issues impacts everyone. It's definitely hard moving your kid in 5th grade from a school your family loves, but DCPS isn't doing a great job with middle schools other than Deal. Also DCPS is ignoring mental health issues and denying IEPs to seriously disabled children, and this only gets harder as kids get older.

You're WAY off base on SPED at Latin and I personally know of two shocking examples of how badly Latin deals with some SPED kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dear DC families who may not know --
Kids from higher SES homes experience no loss of educational outcome when in school and classes with low-SES kids. HOWEVER, low SES kids perform better when they're in classes that are mixed.

SO - send your kids to public school. If you don't like the school, find your neighbors with the same goals and FIX IT! Despite what you think, the District will help you.

VanNess, Amidon, Tyler, Maury ... parents made it possible for the district to get good leaders and teachers in those schools.

My opinion - you don't get to brag (?) that you send your kids to public school if you shelter them with elite charter schools.

That's only true within a certain percentage range. As in, once the low-SES student range gets above 25-30%, the academic quality of the school goes down for everyone. Yes, even the higher-SES children.

Don't believe me? Then ask yourself why 40% FARMS qualifies a school for free lunches for everyone.

Bottom line is that FARMS don't harm higher SES students as long as they're low numbers. Above 20% start to pay attention. Above 25-30 they can have an impact on school culture.

Sorry, bad posting should above.


What if you see good school culture at a relatively high poverty school?

Don't confuse their good story with logic or evidence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What I mean is, how much does attrition or influx of new kids affect your kid's experience? Interested to hear from parents of older children.

I remember losing friends who moved far away but nobody else ever changed schools where I grew up, so I don't know if this will be an issue (assuming we stay at our child's match school). I imagine at DCPS this may be a bigger challenge, but even at charters there seems to be a lot of moving around.
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[Anonymous]

We stayed at our dcps school for 5th grade. Small class size with 15 kids we got lots of personalization.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dear DC families who may not know --
Kids from higher SES homes experience no loss of educational outcome when in school and classes with low-SES kids. HOWEVER, low SES kids perform better when they're in classes that are mixed.

SO - send your kids to public school. If you don't like the school, find your neighbors with the same goals and FIX IT! Despite what you think, the District will help you.

VanNess, Amidon, Tyler, Maury ... parents made it possible for the district to get good leaders and teachers in those schools.

My opinion - you don't get to brag (?) that you send your kids to public school if you shelter them with elite charter schools.

That’s not what FCPS found out when they did their study. Higher SES kids did experience loss of educational outcomes and low SES kids did not gain much past a breaking point.

The magic number they found was 20% or less FARMS. After that, above was the result.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The DME cross sector task force looked at this issue and the data found that the overwhelming majority of children leaving DC schools at all grades are leaving the city altogether.

I think there's a lot of movement at a few schools that get a lot of attention here, but the data simply do not support the 'mass exodus' narrative.

It probably feels like a mass exodus though if you are at one of those schools.

At many of the higher performing schools, especially in Ward 6 where middle and high school options are less appealing, about half the class leaves between 4th and 5th.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a former Brent mom whose child has just transferred to a charter school for 5th, I will say that it I snot easy. Many tears shed. Missing friends that have stayed on at Brent (gone are the days when hardly anyone would stay for 5th-- seems most kids stayed this year.) Missing teachers and opportunities at Brent -- school musical, etc. And middle school is a BIG change. Taking a bus to school rather than walking with parents and the whole set up have having more teachers and more classrooms and a bigger school.

But kids are resilient. Our child is actually happy for the change-- they felt ready for something new. It's a messy mix of emotions. Fingers crossed.

I think even the ones that stay wish they had left. That is how my kid feels - wishes he was having more challenge and doing something new.

[Anonymous]

Interesting that this 2017 thread was revived. We had one kid who stayed in fifth and one kid who left for a charter. Both were fine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The DME cross sector task force looked at this issue and the data found that the overwhelming majority of children leaving DC schools at all grades are leaving the city altogether.

I think there's a lot of movement at a few schools that get a lot of attention here, but the data simply do not support the 'mass exodus' narrative.

It probably feels like a mass exodus though if you are at one of those schools.

Is there data on this somewhere?

Here is the DCPS data from 2015: http://wamu.org/story/16/03/02/5th_grade_dropoff/

Brent, Ross, and CHM@L each lost most of their 4th graders.

The following schools lost between a quarter and a half:

Browne EC
Key ES
Thomson ES
Stoddert ES
Wheatley EC
Malcolm X ES @ Green
Maury ES
Whittier EC
Randle Highlands ES
C.W. Harris ES
Houston ES
LaSalle-Backus EC
Tyler ES
Plummer ES
Watkins ES
School Without Walls @ Francis-Stevens
Hyde-Addison ES
Walker-Jones EC
Leckie ES
Powell ES
Garfield ES
Savoy ES
Aiton ES
Raymond EC

And that is just between 4th and 5th grade. Some of those schools will back fill or have new kids move into the area. Some do a combined 4th and 5th grade, or just have fewer 5th grade classes.

One solution to this is to end the OOB feed so people aren't switching elementary schools for the chance to get into better middle schools. Another is to restrict charters so they can't start in 5th--make them start in either PK3, 3rd, 6th, or 9th.

I want to note here because I think people may not realize this, but a number of the schools on that list are PK-8 schools (look for the schools labeled EC which stands for "Education Campus" instead of ES for "Elementary School"). PK-8 schools generally have a harder time retaining students into middle school, which is why you see basically all the city's PK-8 schools on that list (I don't think this list doesn't include charters so I'm curious if ITDS would make that list as well).

[Anonymous]

Seems whether you stay or go, it's a shift for your kid if they've been with the same peer group for many years. If they leave, they are dealing with a new school and peer group. If they stay, they are dealing with missing the friends who did leave. It's a change no matter what.