What’s going on at DCI?

[Anonymous]

No lunch, recess and bathroom breaks; ridiculous! My kids would loose it!

[Anonymous]

Many kids are losing it, including 6th and 7th graders who aren't challenged because they're in class with many kids who lack basic skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many kids are losing it, including 6th and 7th graders who aren't challenged because they're in class with many kids who lack basic skills.

Not unique among charter middle schools. Most allow acceleration for math and foreign language only. The rest of the curriculum is standard for all students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many kids are losing it, including 6th and 7th graders who aren't challenged because they're in class with many kids who lack basic skills.

Wow.

Do you know what percentage of them are coming from feeders, by any chance?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many kids are losing it, including 6th and 7th graders who aren't challenged because they're in class with many kids who lack basic skills.

Wow.

Do you know what percentage of them are coming from feeders, by any chance?

What 'them' are you referring to?

The vast majority of DCI students are from its feeders. Look at those feeders' PARCC scores to get a sense of student preparedness.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many kids are losing it, including 6th and 7th graders who aren't challenged because they're in class with many kids who lack basic skills.

Wow.

Do you know what percentage of them are coming from feeders, by any chance?

What 'them' are you referring to?

The vast majority of DCI students are from its feeders. Look at those feeders' PARCC scores to get a sense of student preparedness.

2018 5th grade PARCC scores ELA/Math


Stokes 44/23
DC Bilingual 50/45
LAMB 78/47
MV 54/46
YY 73/67

[Anonymous]

Has DCI ever broken down it’s achievement data by language track?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has DCI ever broken down it’s achievement data by language track?

What are you suggesting?

They track individual students and try to get them targetted help where its needed, regardless of language track.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCI has significantly different demographics from Latin and BASIS which is just plain harder. It is also significantly larger with 804 students (and it's still growing/adding a grade).

It is also a newer school.

From the beginning DCI intended to allow students an option not to pursue an IB diploma (read their charter application). They know a significant portion of their students may not ever attend college, and are supposed to be offering them the IB career diploma and training.

So why not just make DCI a vocational program with a bit of language instruction? Sheesh. We really need more high-performing schools in this city to serve taxpayers, not skim milk IB program BS. DCI can't built a critical mass of strong students without a more serious curriculum, teaching and higher standards.

Theres’s nothing inherently skim milk or not-rigorous about the IB diploma or career track programs. DCI is offering both.

But like all start up schools, it will probably take a few years at full capacity before they hit their stride. The bleeding edge kids (and their parents) are always in for a bumpy ride.

Disagree. We're native Mandarin speakers, fairly new to DC, who were given permission to sit in on the most advanced Chinese class early this year. We visited to help us decide if we'd take our DCI spot. The kids' Chinese didn't impress, and that's putting it mildly. We'd read about poor Chinese skills on DCUM threads but took the posts with a grain of salt. A teacher told us that there are NO students in the MS who speak Chinese at home with native-speaking parents.

As a parent who got a high score on higher level IB diploma Chinese in the 90s, it looked to me like the kids are on track to score low on standard level IB diploma Chinese. We also sat in on an advanced 9th grade math class that didn't impress us. We observed 9th graders at BASIS knocking it out the park in AB and BC calc classes. We saw chaos in hallways and at dismissal. DCPC just can't build a truly rigorous IB diploma program this way. Not even close.

I know maybe five kids at DCI and one absolutely speaks Chinese with a native-speaking parent. I don't have a dog in this fight because my kids are at a different school but that teacher was wrong.

[Anonymous]

DCI parent here 6th grade, there are a number of children in the Chinese track with native speaking and fluent 2nd gen parents... not certain why the PP feels the need to shoot down 12 year olds...

[Anonymous]

Why did the MS principal resign? Didn't she just start at DCI over the summer after relocating for the job?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has DCI ever broken down it’s achievement data by language track?

What are you suggesting?

They track individual students and try to get them targetted help where its needed, regardless of language track.

Would just be interesting to see PARCC performance data based on language track (French, Chinese, Spanish).

[Anonymous]

Seems like the YY kids come in with the highest performance on average... would be interesting to see if the performance holds after leaving...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Seems like the YY kids come in with the highest performance on average... would be interesting to see if the performance holds after leaving...

Students in DCI's bubble class are in 6th grade this year at DCI. Not sure how many didn't enroll at DCI, but the class had 91 students. Assuming their scores don't drop dramatically from 5th to 6th DCI's MS PARCC should go up in 2019.

What will reflect more on DCI is how the high schoolers perform, on IB exams as well as SATs, ACTs and college admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why did the MS principal resign? Didn't she just start at DCI over the summer after relocating for the job?

No reason given for the resignation.

And yes she was at the school for less than a year.