please tell me about Maury elementary school in NE DC

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bump. How is Maury doing 2 years later? Did those MC families stay after 3rd grade or did they bail?

I'd say the percentages at Maury are starting to approach the numbers at Brent. 52% AA. 40% FARMs. 46% in-boundary.

Really interested in Maury and what the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades are like in 2013.

I think that's a perfectly valid question to tour the school. Call the front desk and ask. However, I don't think there are plans to accept any new students into those grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bump. How is Maury doing 2 years later? Did those MC families stay after 3rd grade or did they bail?

I'd say the percentages at Maury are starting to approach the numbers at Brent. 52% AA. 40% FARMs. 46% in-boundary.

Brent must have changed.... 32% AA, 21% FARMs these days, 38% in-boundary.

Really interested in Maury and what the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades are like in 2013.

Hence the phrase "starting to approach the numbers". Maury was 80%+ FARMs only 6 years ago.

(I'll assume you were being unintentionally snotty.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I go to the OSSE website, I can see the breakdown of FARMS versus non FARMS for Brent ES.

Last year, 3rd grade had 46% FARM.
4th grade 60% FARM.
5th grade was 80% FARM.

The overall school is 28% FARM.

It's a fine school for under 3rd grade. Good teachers and some interesting stuff happening for children.

By third grade, your child will take 6 practice tests for the DCCAS. (That's over 24 instructional hours devoted to practicing for the DCCAS.) That coupled with no substantial language offerings, no music program and a "museum magnet program" that seems to comprised of going on field trips to museums (different from any other school how??) makes other schools look more appealing.

Families leave for suburban schools just as they always have. The rallying cry at Brent is that if there were a good feeder, families will stay.

Brent needs to focus on compelling programming within their walls and pull away from their reliance on nonstop test prep in the 3rd-5th grades, if they are going to keep local families.

No music program??? While it certainly could be more robust and integrated, we have an excellent music teacher who is exposing students to various instruments (my 1st grader is learning guitar during music class). The museum magnet program moniker lives on from an earlier era and suffers from the inability of some teachers to step up and be more creative. However, museum night is quite impressive, particular for upper grades and the EC teachers are introducing the masters and modernists to Pre-K students.

A thread about Maury seems to be focused on Brent . . .

Didn't the OP asked which ES is the best on the Hill?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Didn't the OP asked which ES is the best on the Hill?

Yes, but that was two years ago, when this thread was started....

[Anonymous]

Maury is a fine school, improving all the time. There's nothing seriously wrong with Maury itself. The problem is the feeder pattern. As long as there's room enough at Latin and Basis (maybe DCI) that Maury students can realistically expect to have a good MS experience, then it's a good situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maury is a fine school, improving all the time. There's nothing seriously wrong with Maury itself. The problem is the feeder pattern. As long as there's room enough at Latin and Basis (maybe DCI) that Maury students can realistically expect to have a good MS experience, then it's a good situation.

Actually, a natural fit with Maury's "think tank" (project-based, inquisitive, exploratory) approach to learning would be G&T at Hardy MS, which incidentally has 70 (seventy) open 6th grade spots in the lottery this year, plenty to go around for anyone who doesn't rush around like a chicken with their head cut off (and most Maury parents typically don't).
Eliot-Hine's IB is also coming along nicely; I can say this as first-hand as it gets for someone who is doing his/her homework on middle schools these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maury is a fine school, improving all the time. There's nothing seriously wrong with Maury itself. The problem is the feeder pattern. As long as there's room enough at Latin and Basis (maybe DCI) that Maury students can realistically expect to have a good MS experience, then it's a good situation.

Actually, a natural fit with Maury's "think tank" (project-based, inquisitive, exploratory) approach to learning would be G&T at Hardy MS, which incidentally has 70 (seventy) open 6th grade spots in the lottery this year, plenty to go around for anyone who doesn't rush around like a chicken with their head cut off (and most Maury parents typically don't).
Eliot-Hine's IB is also coming along nicely; I can say this as first-hand as it gets for someone who is doing his/her homework on middle schools these days.

Booster Alert

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maury is a fine school, improving all the time. There's nothing seriously wrong with Maury itself. The problem is the feeder pattern. As long as there's room enough at Latin and Basis (maybe DCI) that Maury students can realistically expect to have a good MS experience, then it's a good situation.

Actually, a natural fit with Maury's "think tank" (project-based, inquisitive, exploratory) approach to learning would be G&T at Hardy MS, which incidentally has 70 (seventy) open 6th grade spots in the lottery this year, plenty to go around for anyone who doesn't rush around like a chicken with their head cut off (and most Maury parents typically don't).
Eliot-Hine's IB is also coming along nicely; I can say this as first-hand as it gets for someone who is doing his/her homework on middle schools these days.

Booster Alert

Fortunately, we have not only parents and students who diligently, patiently, and repeatedly tour and spend entire days at schools throughout the city to distinguish fact from fiction, which - I assure you - this isn't. And, let's not forget, an emerging consulting market is also at your disposal if it's asking too much to go see for yourself

[Anonymous]

Improvement in anything is good, but I would curb my enthusiasm until the test scores work their way out of the middling/intermediate range.

http://www.greatschools.org/washington-dc/washington/146-Hardy-Middle-School/?tab=test-scores

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maury is a fine school, improving all the time. There's nothing seriously wrong with Maury itself. The problem is the feeder pattern. As long as there's room enough at Latin and Basis (maybe DCI) that Maury students can realistically expect to have a good MS experience, then it's a good situation.

Actually, a natural fit with Maury's "think tank" (project-based, inquisitive, exploratory) approach to learning would be G&T at Hardy MS, which incidentally has 70 (seventy) open 6th grade spots in the lottery this year, plenty to go around for anyone who doesn't rush around like a chicken with their head cut off (and most Maury parents typically don't).
Eliot-Hine's IB is also coming along nicely; I can say this as first-hand as it gets for someone who is doing his/her homework on middle schools these days.

Booster Alert

Fortunately, we have not only parents and students who diligently, patiently, and repeatedly tour and spend entire days at schools throughout the city to distinguish fact from fiction, which - I assure you - this isn't. And, let's not forget, an emerging consulting market is also at your disposal if it's asking too much to go see for yourself

Insufferable. Self righteous. Judgemental.

[Anonymous]

Oops. Did I say that out loud?

[Anonymous]

Maury is and will always be the best of the best on the HILL, I am a graduate of maury from 1966- to 1971,am trying to find out can I volunteer my time to a worthy [e-mail]

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:10:11, you're right. I worded that poorly. Students in most low-peforming DCPS schools now take 6 practice tests for the DCCAS. The process of sitting for that test is 4 hours. 6x 4 is 24.

There is plenty of teaching time focused on performing well on those practice tests, not to mention the 2 week period of school that is devoted to the actual taking of the DC CAS. At Brent, more time is devoted to standardized test taking than say, foreign language.

Plenty of parents are ok with that amount of time learning to take a test. Those parents will stay.

I'm a Brent parent and it's a nice school, but if I get lucky in a lottery that gets my kids more arts, or language and less test prep, I'll be gone.

Yes, test prep is a problem everywhere, but especially so at Brent where the poverty is concentrated in the upper grades. The FARMs tend to do poorly on the test and Brent is under pressure to raise those scores.

Even if your child can do very well on the test, they will still be subject to this test prep.

Right now the focus on Brent is a viable middle school. I can tell you right now there is no way my kids will be around that long if the focus doesn't move off of getting a high score on the DCCAS.

Clearly, there are others who feel differently.

As the gentrifiers move through the school, you'll start getting years where every kid in a testing kid is a kid who can do very well on the test. I'd say that will happen in less than 3 years. Then there will be less focus on test prep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:10:11, you're right. I worded that poorly. Students in most low-peforming DCPS schools now take 6 practice tests for the DCCAS. The process of sitting for that test is 4 hours. 6x 4 is 24.

There is plenty of teaching time focused on performing well on those practice tests, not to mention the 2 week period of school that is devoted to the actual taking of the DC CAS. At Brent, more time is devoted to standardized test taking than say, foreign language.

Plenty of parents are ok with that amount of time learning to take a test. Those parents will stay.

I'm a Brent parent and it's a nice school, but if I get lucky in a lottery that gets my kids more arts, or language and less test prep, I'll be gone.

Yes, test prep is a problem everywhere, but especially so at Brent where the poverty is concentrated in the upper grades. The FARMs tend to do poorly on the test and Brent is under pressure to raise those scores.

Even if your child can do very well on the test, they will still be subject to this test prep.

Right now the focus on Brent is a viable middle school. I can tell you right now there is no way my kids will be around that long if the focus doesn't move off of getting a high score on the DCCAS.

Clearly, there are others who feel differently.

As the gentrifiers move through the school, you'll start getting years where every kid in a testing kid is a kid who can do very well on the test. I'd say that will happen in less than 3 years. Then there will be less focus on test prep.

"every kid in a testing grade"

[Anonymous]

Maury Elementary is an up and coming school because of the school's ability to to get middle and upper-middle class families to send their kids there. The FARM rate has dropped and the test scores have improved. Maury is a model for what other Ward 6 Elementary Schools (Ludlow-Taylor, Van Ness Elementary, and Tyler Elementary) need to do in order to become highly sought after Elementary Schools.