Latin Cooper - Capitol Hill families?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So let me take a stab at this relative hardness to get into in the initial lottery question. I've been pondering it today!

Background: Basis took in 89 rising 5th graders with no preference (ignoring founders preference and siblings) and had 155 rising 5th graders with no preference waitlisted. Latin Cooper took in 40 rising 5th graders with no preference (2 had sibling accepted preference, not considering equitable access applicants or slots) and had 192 rising 5th graders waitlisted.

So let's assume all of the kids with no preference (244 for Basis and 232 for Latin Cooper) had lottery numbers that were evenly distributed between 0 and 1 (0 being good). If we divide 89 by 244 (number of kids with no preference who got into Basis in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Basis would have been around 0.36. If we divide 40 by 232 (number of kids with no preference who got into Latin Cooper in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Latin Cooper would be 0.17. So you would have needed a much better lottery number to get into Latin Cooper.

This keeps the pools separate for analysis purposes. Of course the two pools pulling from the other affects what actual waitlist numbers were the actual cutoff numbers, but for it to really affect results, you'd need to assume that people who preferred Basis or Latin Cooper had skewed random lottery numbers.

Does this analysis work? I'm not a mathematician nor do I play one on TV.

Not correct. The problem with your "math" is that does not consider preference; it assumes someone gets a spot by virtue of their lottery # without regard to preference order. It assumes everyone has both schools on their lists. And it conflates the idea of how many people didn't get a spot at either (WL) with matching probability and success - those two things don't correlate.

OK. but what's clear to me, not a data analyst professionally, is that demand has dramatically outpaced supply in the rush for 5th grade spots in the most desirable charter MS programs in this city in the last 3 or 4 years. Not long ago, a 4th grader EotP could cruise into BASIS, and had a decent shot at Latin even without a sibling there.

With just 40 spots going to 5th graders at Latin 2, and almost 250 applications, the odds were not good, not at all. Neither are odds good at BASIS, where almost two-thirds of 5th grade applicants were wait listed. I expect twice as many kids to return to our DCPS EotP for 5th grade, 5th grade refugees in this race, as just five years ago. Some of these families will move to the burbs at this rate. Who's impressed with this system?

Not sure what your point is. That there are more kids who want slots at these schools than slots? Ok. There has been a rising number of school aged kids in the public school system for years now, so this is not surprising. And its not as if these are the only schools people try to go to. DCI, Deal, Hardy and others should be included in this calculation.

How long have you been in the District? How long in DC public schools? This train wreck was in the makings when Rhee & Henderson were at the helm. They made the decision to outsource MS to charters for UMC families EotP, to the system's detriment. They closed the door on test-in middle schools, a real shame in my books. What a headache for families in Wards 5 and 6. Just not the way an East Coast city should be run. My college friends in NYC, Chicago and Boston with kids at Hunter College, Stuyvesant, Boston Latin, Whitney Young etc. have taught me that over the years.

NP. How long have you been here? You seem confused on the timelines and realities of schools in DC. Rhee was Chancellor in 2007. Congress mandated the charter system in 1996. Even ignoring the 10 years in between, your position necessarily requires one to believe that until Rhee took over DCPS and MS in particular were healthy, vibrant and excellent. If you lived here then you would know none of those things were true. DCPS Central Admin was a train wreck and the WTU was calling all the shots. (See, Barbara Bullock, the missing $5 million and 9 year prison sentence). The aggregate school system in DC is much healthier now than it was in 2007 and the DCPS ES and MS are much, MUCH healthier now than they were in 2007. We didn't have a test-in MS then and we still don't have one now. Not sure how you are still blaming Rhee. We do, by the way, have several test-in HS that are excellent schools (SWW, McKinley Tech, Banneker). You can argue that is as much a function of increased population, wealth, housing prices and gentrification as it was charter or DC school improvements (those are fair arguments), but you don't get to just ignore data and history and recycle the same trite "Michelle Rhee is the boogeyman" noise. She was here for 4 years (2007-2010). The charter system has been in place for 25 years.

In DC? Since the 1990s. Let's agree to disagree, shall we?

Rhee may not have been the boogeyman, but she and Henderson certainly dropped the ball in failing to move to reinvent DCPS middle and high schools EotP so that they appealed to most in-boundary families. They paid lip service to the exercise is establishing the IB Diploma program at Eastern 15 years ago and left it at that. They had their chance, but outsourced the job to new charters.

The Brent PTA tried to create its own middle school in 2009, and Rhee shot them down right before the election Fenty lost, after having encouraged the parents' proposal for a good year. At present, no Ward 6 middle school offers "honors" classes for social studies or science, more than a decade after honors classes for math and English arrived at Stuart Hobson. The previous SH principal, who was great, quit over the issue, and other curricular matters, two years ago.

No, SWW, McKinley Tech and Banneker aren't excellent high schools. You're deeply mired in relalativism in claiming this. These programs can't hold a candle to the top test-in magnet programs in big cities around the country, or even in the DC burbs. DC's admissions high schools are far too wedded to affirmative action-based admissions to compete. End of story.

This poster speaks much truth. One minor quibble. The Brent PTA did not try to create “its own middle school”. It had several proposals ( including a pan-Hill middle school, feeding to SH, or else expanding into 6,7 and 8 for a few years until DCPS got its ish together at the MS level) that would have worked to keep those Brent graduates in a DCPS middle school situation. And as the pp points out, Rhee said “nah, pick Eliot Hine or Jefferson as your feeder.” A portion if the PTA acquiesced and got on board with keeping the Jefferson feed, hyped it up and then never sent their kids there. Fun times.

It’s honestly such a mistake. We could have a Deal-caliber middle school immediately if they just fed the Cluster, Brent, SWS and Maury into one place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So let me take a stab at this relative hardness to get into in the initial lottery question. I've been pondering it today!

Background: Basis took in 89 rising 5th graders with no preference (ignoring founders preference and siblings) and had 155 rising 5th graders with no preference waitlisted. Latin Cooper took in 40 rising 5th graders with no preference (2 had sibling accepted preference, not considering equitable access applicants or slots) and had 192 rising 5th graders waitlisted.

So let's assume all of the kids with no preference (244 for Basis and 232 for Latin Cooper) had lottery numbers that were evenly distributed between 0 and 1 (0 being good). If we divide 89 by 244 (number of kids with no preference who got into Basis in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Basis would have been around 0.36. If we divide 40 by 232 (number of kids with no preference who got into Latin Cooper in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Latin Cooper would be 0.17. So you would have needed a much better lottery number to get into Latin Cooper.

This keeps the pools separate for analysis purposes. Of course the two pools pulling from the other affects what actual waitlist numbers were the actual cutoff numbers, but for it to really affect results, you'd need to assume that people who preferred Basis or Latin Cooper had skewed random lottery numbers.

Does this analysis work? I'm not a mathematician nor do I play one on TV.

Not correct. The problem with your "math" is that does not consider preference; it assumes someone gets a spot by virtue of their lottery # without regard to preference order. It assumes everyone has both schools on their lists. And it conflates the idea of how many people didn't get a spot at either (WL) with matching probability and success - those two things don't correlate.

OK. but what's clear to me, not a data analyst professionally, is that demand has dramatically outpaced supply in the rush for 5th grade spots in the most desirable charter MS programs in this city in the last 3 or 4 years. Not long ago, a 4th grader EotP could cruise into BASIS, and had a decent shot at Latin even without a sibling there.

With just 40 spots going to 5th graders at Latin 2, and almost 250 applications, the odds were not good, not at all. Neither are odds good at BASIS, where almost two-thirds of 5th grade applicants were wait listed. I expect twice as many kids to return to our DCPS EotP for 5th grade, 5th grade refugees in this race, as just five years ago. Some of these families will move to the burbs at this rate. Who's impressed with this system?

Not sure what your point is. That there are more kids who want slots at these schools than slots? Ok. There has been a rising number of school aged kids in the public school system for years now, so this is not surprising. And its not as if these are the only schools people try to go to. DCI, Deal, Hardy and others should be included in this calculation.

How long have you been in the District? How long in DC public schools? This train wreck was in the makings when Rhee & Henderson were at the helm. They made the decision to outsource MS to charters for UMC families EotP, to the system's detriment. They closed the door on test-in middle schools, a real shame in my books. What a headache for families in Wards 5 and 6. Just not the way an East Coast city should be run. My college friends in NYC, Chicago and Boston with kids at Hunter College, Stuyvesant, Boston Latin, Whitney Young etc. have taught me that over the years.

NP. How long have you been here? You seem confused on the timelines and realities of schools in DC. Rhee was Chancellor in 2007. Congress mandated the charter system in 1996. Even ignoring the 10 years in between, your position necessarily requires one to believe that until Rhee took over DCPS and MS in particular were healthy, vibrant and excellent. If you lived here then you would know none of those things were true. DCPS Central Admin was a train wreck and the WTU was calling all the shots. (See, Barbara Bullock, the missing $5 million and 9 year prison sentence). The aggregate school system in DC is much healthier now than it was in 2007 and the DCPS ES and MS are much, MUCH healthier now than they were in 2007. We didn't have a test-in MS then and we still don't have one now. Not sure how you are still blaming Rhee. We do, by the way, have several test-in HS that are excellent schools (SWW, McKinley Tech, Banneker). You can argue that is as much a function of increased population, wealth, housing prices and gentrification as it was charter or DC school improvements (those are fair arguments), but you don't get to just ignore data and history and recycle the same trite "Michelle Rhee is the boogeyman" noise. She was here for 4 years (2007-2010). The charter system has been in place for 25 years.

In DC? Since the 1990s. Let's agree to disagree, shall we?

Rhee may not have been the boogeyman, but she and Henderson certainly dropped the ball in failing to move to reinvent DCPS middle and high schools EotP so that they appealed to most in-boundary families. They paid lip service to the exercise is establishing the IB Diploma program at Eastern 15 years ago and left it at that. They had their chance, but outsourced the job to new charters.

The Brent PTA tried to create its own middle school in 2009, and Rhee shot them down right before the election Fenty lost, after having encouraged the parents' proposal for a good year. At present, no Ward 6 middle school offers "honors" classes for social studies or science, more than a decade after honors classes for math and English arrived at Stuart Hobson. The previous SH principal, who was great, quit over the issue, and other curricular matters, two years ago.

No, SWW, McKinley Tech and Banneker aren't excellent high schools. You're deeply mired in relalativism in claiming this. These programs can't hold a candle to the top test-in magnet programs in big cities around the country, or even in the DC burbs. DC's admissions high schools are far too wedded to affirmative action-based admissions to compete. End of story.

This poster speaks much truth. One minor quibble. The Brent PTA did not try to create “its own middle school”. It had several proposals ( including a pan-Hill middle school, feeding to SH, or else expanding into 6,7 and 8 for a few years until DCPS got its ish together at the MS level) that would have worked to keep those Brent graduates in a DCPS middle school situation. And as the pp points out, Rhee said “nah, pick Eliot Hine or Jefferson as your feeder.” A portion if the PTA acquiesced and got on board with keeping the Jefferson feed, hyped it up and then never sent their kids there. Fun times.

It’s honestly such a mistake. We could have a Deal-caliber middle school immediately if they just fed the Cluster, Brent, SWS and Maury into one place.

And that is why they'll never allow it! The "equity"-vultures would descend up it.

[Anonymous]

Which is also why the hill schools (esp MS and HS) will never improve to a place that most UMC families want, no many how many UMC families enroll. The NW schools became established long before equity was in vogue. DCPS’s interpretation of “equity” doesn’t allow for the advanced programming that UMC families want.

[Anonymous]

i think all of the hill and hill-adjacent elementary schools are increasingly fine. the hill middle schools could probably all be reasonably similar to deal and hardy if area families did not widely buy into dated ideas from 10 or so years ago and opt out of the local dcps when deciding where to attend for middle schools.

[Anonymous]

What’s Stuart Hobson like?

[Anonymous]

Hobson is just OK. Academics are middling, discipline is subpar. Packs of kids in red jerseys have fist fights outside the building now and again, until the cops arrive to break the fights up. Spanish is decent at Hobson. Sports are good. Arts are very good - instrumental music, drama.

The in-boundary catchment area is around 3/4 white while the % of white students is in the teens and has been for 20 years. Do you need more?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hobson is just OK. Academics are middling, discipline is subpar. Packs of kids in red jerseys have fist fights outside the building now and again, until the cops arrive to break the fights up. Spanish is decent at Hobson. Sports are good. Arts are very good - instrumental music, drama.

The in-boundary catchment area is around 3/4 white while the % of white students is in the teens and has been for 20 years. Do you need more?

Not a place for respectable black folks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So let me take a stab at this relative hardness to get into in the initial lottery question. I've been pondering it today!

Background: Basis took in 89 rising 5th graders with no preference (ignoring founders preference and siblings) and had 155 rising 5th graders with no preference waitlisted. Latin Cooper took in 40 rising 5th graders with no preference (2 had sibling accepted preference, not considering equitable access applicants or slots) and had 192 rising 5th graders waitlisted.

So let's assume all of the kids with no preference (244 for Basis and 232 for Latin Cooper) had lottery numbers that were evenly distributed between 0 and 1 (0 being good). If we divide 89 by 244 (number of kids with no preference who got into Basis in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Basis would have been around 0.36. If we divide 40 by 232 (number of kids with no preference who got into Latin Cooper in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Latin Cooper would be 0.17. So you would have needed a much better lottery number to get into Latin Cooper.

This keeps the pools separate for analysis purposes. Of course the two pools pulling from the other affects what actual waitlist numbers were the actual cutoff numbers, but for it to really affect results, you'd need to assume that people who preferred Basis or Latin Cooper had skewed random lottery numbers.

Does this analysis work? I'm not a mathematician nor do I play one on TV.

Not correct. The problem with your "math" is that does not consider preference; it assumes someone gets a spot by virtue of their lottery # without regard to preference order. It assumes everyone has both schools on their lists. And it conflates the idea of how many people didn't get a spot at either (WL) with matching probability and success - those two things don't correlate.

OK. but what's clear to me, not a data analyst professionally, is that demand has dramatically outpaced supply in the rush for 5th grade spots in the most desirable charter MS programs in this city in the last 3 or 4 years. Not long ago, a 4th grader EotP could cruise into BASIS, and had a decent shot at Latin even without a sibling there.

With just 40 spots going to 5th graders at Latin 2, and almost 250 applications, the odds were not good, not at all. Neither are odds good at BASIS, where almost two-thirds of 5th grade applicants were wait listed. I expect twice as many kids to return to our DCPS EotP for 5th grade, 5th grade refugees in this race, as just five years ago. Some of these families will move to the burbs at this rate. Who's impressed with this system?

Not sure what your point is. That there are more kids who want slots at these schools than slots? Ok. There has been a rising number of school aged kids in the public school system for years now, so this is not surprising. And its not as if these are the only schools people try to go to. DCI, Deal, Hardy and others should be included in this calculation.

How long have you been in the District? How long in DC public schools? This train wreck was in the makings when Rhee & Henderson were at the helm. They made the decision to outsource MS to charters for UMC families EotP, to the system's detriment. They closed the door on test-in middle schools, a real shame in my books. What a headache for families in Wards 5 and 6. Just not the way an East Coast city should be run. My college friends in NYC, Chicago and Boston with kids at Hunter College, Stuyvesant, Boston Latin, Whitney Young etc. have taught me that over the years.

NP. How long have you been here? You seem confused on the timelines and realities of schools in DC. Rhee was Chancellor in 2007. Congress mandated the charter system in 1996. Even ignoring the 10 years in between, your position necessarily requires one to believe that until Rhee took over DCPS and MS in particular were healthy, vibrant and excellent. If you lived here then you would know none of those things were true. DCPS Central Admin was a train wreck and the WTU was calling all the shots. (See, Barbara Bullock, the missing $5 million and 9 year prison sentence). The aggregate school system in DC is much healthier now than it was in 2007 and the DCPS ES and MS are much, MUCH healthier now than they were in 2007. We didn't have a test-in MS then and we still don't have one now. Not sure how you are still blaming Rhee. We do, by the way, have several test-in HS that are excellent schools (SWW, McKinley Tech, Banneker). You can argue that is as much a function of increased population, wealth, housing prices and gentrification as it was charter or DC school improvements (those are fair arguments), but you don't get to just ignore data and history and recycle the same trite "Michelle Rhee is the boogeyman" noise. She was here for 4 years (2007-2010). The charter system has been in place for 25 years.

In DC? Since the 1990s. Let's agree to disagree, shall we?

Rhee may not have been the boogeyman, but she and Henderson certainly dropped the ball in failing to move to reinvent DCPS middle and high schools EotP so that they appealed to most in-boundary families. They paid lip service to the exercise is establishing the IB Diploma program at Eastern 15 years ago and left it at that. They had their chance, but outsourced the job to new charters.

The Brent PTA tried to create its own middle school in 2009, and Rhee shot them down right before the election Fenty lost, after having encouraged the parents' proposal for a good year. At present, no Ward 6 middle school offers "honors" classes for social studies or science, more than a decade after honors classes for math and English arrived at Stuart Hobson. The previous SH principal, who was great, quit over the issue, and other curricular matters, two years ago.

No, SWW, McKinley Tech and Banneker aren't excellent high schools. You're deeply mired in relalativism in claiming this. These programs can't hold a candle to the top test-in magnet programs in big cities around the country, or even in the DC burbs. DC's admissions high schools are far too wedded to affirmative action-based admissions to compete. End of story.

This poster speaks much truth. One minor quibble. The Brent PTA did not try to create “its own middle school”. It had several proposals ( including a pan-Hill middle school, feeding to SH, or else expanding into 6,7 and 8 for a few years until DCPS got its ish together at the MS level) that would have worked to keep those Brent graduates in a DCPS middle school situation. And as the pp points out, Rhee said “nah, pick Eliot Hine or Jefferson as your feeder.” A portion if the PTA acquiesced and got on board with keeping the Jefferson feed, hyped it up and then never sent their kids there. Fun times.

It’s honestly such a mistake. We could have a Deal-caliber middle school immediately if they just fed the Cluster, Brent, SWS and Maury into one place.

It's been a while since the Brent families hijacked a DCUM thread to complain that CH school alignment wasn't designed by them for them. But it never fails - "Everything would have been fie if only Brent kids were routed to SH." They also engage in revisionist history and forget that it wasn't long ago that Maury was just another marginal ES on CH.

Welcome back Brent families!!! We missed you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So let me take a stab at this relative hardness to get into in the initial lottery question. I've been pondering it today!

Background: Basis took in 89 rising 5th graders with no preference (ignoring founders preference and siblings) and had 155 rising 5th graders with no preference waitlisted. Latin Cooper took in 40 rising 5th graders with no preference (2 had sibling accepted preference, not considering equitable access applicants or slots) and had 192 rising 5th graders waitlisted.

So let's assume all of the kids with no preference (244 for Basis and 232 for Latin Cooper) had lottery numbers that were evenly distributed between 0 and 1 (0 being good). If we divide 89 by 244 (number of kids with no preference who got into Basis in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Basis would have been around 0.36. If we divide 40 by 232 (number of kids with no preference who got into Latin Cooper in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Latin Cooper would be 0.17. So you would have needed a much better lottery number to get into Latin Cooper.

This keeps the pools separate for analysis purposes. Of course the two pools pulling from the other affects what actual waitlist numbers were the actual cutoff numbers, but for it to really affect results, you'd need to assume that people who preferred Basis or Latin Cooper had skewed random lottery numbers.

Does this analysis work? I'm not a mathematician nor do I play one on TV.

Not correct. The problem with your "math" is that does not consider preference; it assumes someone gets a spot by virtue of their lottery # without regard to preference order. It assumes everyone has both schools on their lists. And it conflates the idea of how many people didn't get a spot at either (WL) with matching probability and success - those two things don't correlate.

OK. but what's clear to me, not a data analyst professionally, is that demand has dramatically outpaced supply in the rush for 5th grade spots in the most desirable charter MS programs in this city in the last 3 or 4 years. Not long ago, a 4th grader EotP could cruise into BASIS, and had a decent shot at Latin even without a sibling there.

With just 40 spots going to 5th graders at Latin 2, and almost 250 applications, the odds were not good, not at all. Neither are odds good at BASIS, where almost two-thirds of 5th grade applicants were wait listed. I expect twice as many kids to return to our DCPS EotP for 5th grade, 5th grade refugees in this race, as just five years ago. Some of these families will move to the burbs at this rate. Who's impressed with this system?

Not sure what your point is. That there are more kids who want slots at these schools than slots? Ok. There has been a rising number of school aged kids in the public school system for years now, so this is not surprising. And its not as if these are the only schools people try to go to. DCI, Deal, Hardy and others should be included in this calculation.

How long have you been in the District? How long in DC public schools? This train wreck was in the makings when Rhee & Henderson were at the helm. They made the decision to outsource MS to charters for UMC families EotP, to the system's detriment. They closed the door on test-in middle schools, a real shame in my books. What a headache for families in Wards 5 and 6. Just not the way an East Coast city should be run. My college friends in NYC, Chicago and Boston with kids at Hunter College, Stuyvesant, Boston Latin, Whitney Young etc. have taught me that over the years.

NP. How long have you been here? You seem confused on the timelines and realities of schools in DC. Rhee was Chancellor in 2007. Congress mandated the charter system in 1996. Even ignoring the 10 years in between, your position necessarily requires one to believe that until Rhee took over DCPS and MS in particular were healthy, vibrant and excellent. If you lived here then you would know none of those things were true. DCPS Central Admin was a train wreck and the WTU was calling all the shots. (See, Barbara Bullock, the missing $5 million and 9 year prison sentence). The aggregate school system in DC is much healthier now than it was in 2007 and the DCPS ES and MS are much, MUCH healthier now than they were in 2007. We didn't have a test-in MS then and we still don't have one now. Not sure how you are still blaming Rhee. We do, by the way, have several test-in HS that are excellent schools (SWW, McKinley Tech, Banneker). You can argue that is as much a function of increased population, wealth, housing prices and gentrification as it was charter or DC school improvements (those are fair arguments), but you don't get to just ignore data and history and recycle the same trite "Michelle Rhee is the boogeyman" noise. She was here for 4 years (2007-2010). The charter system has been in place for 25 years.

In DC? Since the 1990s. Let's agree to disagree, shall we?

Rhee may not have been the boogeyman, but she and Henderson certainly dropped the ball in failing to move to reinvent DCPS middle and high schools EotP so that they appealed to most in-boundary families. They paid lip service to the exercise is establishing the IB Diploma program at Eastern 15 years ago and left it at that. They had their chance, but outsourced the job to new charters.

The Brent PTA tried to create its own middle school in 2009, and Rhee shot them down right before the election Fenty lost, after having encouraged the parents' proposal for a good year. At present, no Ward 6 middle school offers "honors" classes for social studies or science, more than a decade after honors classes for math and English arrived at Stuart Hobson. The previous SH principal, who was great, quit over the issue, and other curricular matters, two years ago.

No, SWW, McKinley Tech and Banneker aren't excellent high schools. You're deeply mired in relalativism in claiming this. These programs can't hold a candle to the top test-in magnet programs in big cities around the country, or even in the DC burbs. DC's admissions high schools are far too wedded to affirmative action-based admissions to compete. End of story.

I don't think we can just agree to disagree vis-a-vis "math". You brought out the Rhee boogeyman to blame for the state of CH schools and then pretended not to notice the math on that being a 4 year period over a 25 year charter window. But now I get it. You were one of the Brent parents that still harbor a grudge that Rhee didn't acquiesce to your demands for Brent to feed into SH. And you and your Brent friends still hold tight to this belief that public education in DC (or at least CH) would have been solved if only you had gotten your way. LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So let me take a stab at this relative hardness to get into in the initial lottery question. I've been pondering it today!

Background: Basis took in 89 rising 5th graders with no preference (ignoring founders preference and siblings) and had 155 rising 5th graders with no preference waitlisted. Latin Cooper took in 40 rising 5th graders with no preference (2 had sibling accepted preference, not considering equitable access applicants or slots) and had 192 rising 5th graders waitlisted.

So let's assume all of the kids with no preference (244 for Basis and 232 for Latin Cooper) had lottery numbers that were evenly distributed between 0 and 1 (0 being good). If we divide 89 by 244 (number of kids with no preference who got into Basis in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Basis would have been around 0.36. If we divide 40 by 232 (number of kids with no preference who got into Latin Cooper in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Latin Cooper would be 0.17. So you would have needed a much better lottery number to get into Latin Cooper.

This keeps the pools separate for analysis purposes. Of course the two pools pulling from the other affects what actual waitlist numbers were the actual cutoff numbers, but for it to really affect results, you'd need to assume that people who preferred Basis or Latin Cooper had skewed random lottery numbers.

Does this analysis work? I'm not a mathematician nor do I play one on TV.

Not correct. The problem with your "math" is that does not consider preference; it assumes someone gets a spot by virtue of their lottery # without regard to preference order. It assumes everyone has both schools on their lists. And it conflates the idea of how many people didn't get a spot at either (WL) with matching probability and success - those two things don't correlate.

OK. but what's clear to me, not a data analyst professionally, is that demand has dramatically outpaced supply in the rush for 5th grade spots in the most desirable charter MS programs in this city in the last 3 or 4 years. Not long ago, a 4th grader EotP could cruise into BASIS, and had a decent shot at Latin even without a sibling there.

With just 40 spots going to 5th graders at Latin 2, and almost 250 applications, the odds were not good, not at all. Neither are odds good at BASIS, where almost two-thirds of 5th grade applicants were wait listed. I expect twice as many kids to return to our DCPS EotP for 5th grade, 5th grade refugees in this race, as just five years ago. Some of these families will move to the burbs at this rate. Who's impressed with this system?

Not sure what your point is. That there are more kids who want slots at these schools than slots? Ok. There has been a rising number of school aged kids in the public school system for years now, so this is not surprising. And its not as if these are the only schools people try to go to. DCI, Deal, Hardy and others should be included in this calculation.

How long have you been in the District? How long in DC public schools? This train wreck was in the makings when Rhee & Henderson were at the helm. They made the decision to outsource MS to charters for UMC families EotP, to the system's detriment. They closed the door on test-in middle schools, a real shame in my books. What a headache for families in Wards 5 and 6. Just not the way an East Coast city should be run. My college friends in NYC, Chicago and Boston with kids at Hunter College, Stuyvesant, Boston Latin, Whitney Young etc. have taught me that over the years.

NP. How long have you been here? You seem confused on the timelines and realities of schools in DC. Rhee was Chancellor in 2007. Congress mandated the charter system in 1996. Even ignoring the 10 years in between, your position necessarily requires one to believe that until Rhee took over DCPS and MS in particular were healthy, vibrant and excellent. If you lived here then you would know none of those things were true. DCPS Central Admin was a train wreck and the WTU was calling all the shots. (See, Barbara Bullock, the missing $5 million and 9 year prison sentence). The aggregate school system in DC is much healthier now than it was in 2007 and the DCPS ES and MS are much, MUCH healthier now than they were in 2007. We didn't have a test-in MS then and we still don't have one now. Not sure how you are still blaming Rhee. We do, by the way, have several test-in HS that are excellent schools (SWW, McKinley Tech, Banneker). You can argue that is as much a function of increased population, wealth, housing prices and gentrification as it was charter or DC school improvements (those are fair arguments), but you don't get to just ignore data and history and recycle the same trite "Michelle Rhee is the boogeyman" noise. She was here for 4 years (2007-2010). The charter system has been in place for 25 years.

In DC? Since the 1990s. Let's agree to disagree, shall we?

Rhee may not have been the boogeyman, but she and Henderson certainly dropped the ball in failing to move to reinvent DCPS middle and high schools EotP so that they appealed to most in-boundary families. They paid lip service to the exercise is establishing the IB Diploma program at Eastern 15 years ago and left it at that. They had their chance, but outsourced the job to new charters.

The Brent PTA tried to create its own middle school in 2009, and Rhee shot them down right before the election Fenty lost, after having encouraged the parents' proposal for a good year. At present, no Ward 6 middle school offers "honors" classes for social studies or science, more than a decade after honors classes for math and English arrived at Stuart Hobson. The previous SH principal, who was great, quit over the issue, and other curricular matters, two years ago.

No, SWW, McKinley Tech and Banneker aren't excellent high schools. You're deeply mired in relalativism in claiming this. These programs can't hold a candle to the top test-in magnet programs in big cities around the country, or even in the DC burbs. DC's admissions high schools are far too wedded to affirmative action-based admissions to compete. End of story.

This poster speaks much truth. One minor quibble. The Brent PTA did not try to create “its own middle school”. It had several proposals ( including a pan-Hill middle school, feeding to SH, or else expanding into 6,7 and 8 for a few years until DCPS got its ish together at the MS level) that would have worked to keep those Brent graduates in a DCPS middle school situation. And as the pp points out, Rhee said “nah, pick Eliot Hine or Jefferson as your feeder.” A portion if the PTA acquiesced and got on board with keeping the Jefferson feed, hyped it up and then never sent their kids there. Fun times.

It’s honestly such a mistake. We could have a Deal-caliber middle school immediately if they just fed the Cluster, Brent, SWS and Maury into one place.

It's been a while since the Brent families hijacked a DCUM thread to complain that CH school alignment wasn't designed by them for them. But it never fails - "Everything would have been fie if only Brent kids were routed to SH." They also engage in revisionist history and forget that it wasn't long ago that Maury was just another marginal ES on CH.

Welcome back Brent families!!! We missed you.

I posted that and we are inbound for SH.

[Anonymous]

No, actually, not a Brent family. But I've been on the Hill long enough to know the story.

If SWS, Brent, Maury, Ludlow etc. had been permitted to feed into a pan Ward 6 ms with a full menu of honors classes a decade back, all boats would have risen with the tide.

The result would have been that UMC 4th parents in the neighborhood wouldn't be scrambling for scarce 5th and 6th grade seats at Latin 1, Latin 2, BASIS, DCI, Inspired Teaching etc. here in 2022.

No other US city relies on charter schools like DC does. The arrangement oozes political dysfunction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, actually, not a Brent family. But I've been on the Hill long enough to know the story.

If SWS, Brent, Maury, Ludlow etc. had been permitted to feed into a pan Ward 6 ms with a full menu of honors classes a decade back, all boats would have risen with the tide.

The result would have been that UMC 4th parents in the neighborhood wouldn't be scrambling for scarce 5th and 6th grade seats at Latin 1, Latin 2, BASIS, DCI, Inspired Teaching etc. here in 2022.

No other US city relies on charter schools like DC does. The arrangement oozes political dysfunction.

If you had been on the Hill long enough to know the story you'd know that DC did not create Charters, the US Congress did. And you'd also know that there is no "arrangement". Charters are, by design and according the law, independent from DCPS.

Of course if you'd actually lived on the Hill for "long enough" you'd know that Maury wasn't what you see today 10 years ago, and LT wasn't what you see today 5 years ago. And none of this was foreseeable in 2009 when Rhee was Chancellor and apparently responsible for all of this. You'd also know the history of SWS and that it is a city wide public school and NOT a neighborhood school so having it feed into SH at the expense of actual neighborhood public schools would have been counter to zones, feeders and established DCPS policy.

But you knew all that because you've lived here since like...2015.

[Anonymous]

Stuff it, I've lived on the Hill since the 1990s. I was even enough of a sucker to attend a couple of the BS parent input meetings DCPS set up during the 2013-2014 boundary and feeder review. The other parents I attended with all pushed for a pan-Ward 6 middle school, possibly spread between two campuses. We were ignored. DCPS could been pragmatic enough to change the feeder arrangement for Hill middle schools but didn't bother. That's all there is to it. Now most UMC public school parents EotP flee to MS charters like Latin Cooper East, an arrangement that leaves a great deal to be desired. Our near neighbors in the upscale VA and MD burbs (MoCo, Arlington, Fairfax) either don't bother with charters, or barely do, because most parents are OK with their in-boundary schools at every level. That's the ideal, not a school system where almost half the students attend charters, including start-ups like Latin Cooper in crappy temp buildings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So let me take a stab at this relative hardness to get into in the initial lottery question. I've been pondering it today!

Background: Basis took in 89 rising 5th graders with no preference (ignoring founders preference and siblings) and had 155 rising 5th graders with no preference waitlisted. Latin Cooper took in 40 rising 5th graders with no preference (2 had sibling accepted preference, not considering equitable access applicants or slots) and had 192 rising 5th graders waitlisted.

So let's assume all of the kids with no preference (244 for Basis and 232 for Latin Cooper) had lottery numbers that were evenly distributed between 0 and 1 (0 being good). If we divide 89 by 244 (number of kids with no preference who got into Basis in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Basis would have been around 0.36. If we divide 40 by 232 (number of kids with no preference who got into Latin Cooper in initial lottery divided by number of kids with no preference in the whole pool), the cutoff number for Latin Cooper would be 0.17. So you would have needed a much better lottery number to get into Latin Cooper.

This keeps the pools separate for analysis purposes. Of course the two pools pulling from the other affects what actual waitlist numbers were the actual cutoff numbers, but for it to really affect results, you'd need to assume that people who preferred Basis or Latin Cooper had skewed random lottery numbers.

Does this analysis work? I'm not a mathematician nor do I play one on TV.

Not correct. The problem with your "math" is that does not consider preference; it assumes someone gets a spot by virtue of their lottery # without regard to preference order. It assumes everyone has both schools on their lists. And it conflates the idea of how many people didn't get a spot at either (WL) with matching probability and success - those two things don't correlate.

OK. but what's clear to me, not a data analyst professionally, is that demand has dramatically outpaced supply in the rush for 5th grade spots in the most desirable charter MS programs in this city in the last 3 or 4 years. Not long ago, a 4th grader EotP could cruise into BASIS, and had a decent shot at Latin even without a sibling there.

With just 40 spots going to 5th graders at Latin 2, and almost 250 applications, the odds were not good, not at all. Neither are odds good at BASIS, where almost two-thirds of 5th grade applicants were wait listed. I expect twice as many kids to return to our DCPS EotP for 5th grade, 5th grade refugees in this race, as just five years ago. Some of these families will move to the burbs at this rate. Who's impressed with this system?

Not sure what your point is. That there are more kids who want slots at these schools than slots? Ok. There has been a rising number of school aged kids in the public school system for years now, so this is not surprising. And its not as if these are the only schools people try to go to. DCI, Deal, Hardy and others should be included in this calculation.

How long have you been in the District? How long in DC public schools? This train wreck was in the makings when Rhee & Henderson were at the helm. They made the decision to outsource MS to charters for UMC families EotP, to the system's detriment. They closed the door on test-in middle schools, a real shame in my books. What a headache for families in Wards 5 and 6. Just not the way an East Coast city should be run. My college friends in NYC, Chicago and Boston with kids at Hunter College, Stuyvesant, Boston Latin, Whitney Young etc. have taught me that over the years.

NP. How long have you been here? You seem confused on the timelines and realities of schools in DC. Rhee was Chancellor in 2007. Congress mandated the charter system in 1996. Even ignoring the 10 years in between, your position necessarily requires one to believe that until Rhee took over DCPS and MS in particular were healthy, vibrant and excellent. If you lived here then you would know none of those things were true. DCPS Central Admin was a train wreck and the WTU was calling all the shots. (See, Barbara Bullock, the missing $5 million and 9 year prison sentence). The aggregate school system in DC is much healthier now than it was in 2007 and the DCPS ES and MS are much, MUCH healthier now than they were in 2007. We didn't have a test-in MS then and we still don't have one now. Not sure how you are still blaming Rhee. We do, by the way, have several test-in HS that are excellent schools (SWW, McKinley Tech, Banneker). You can argue that is as much a function of increased population, wealth, housing prices and gentrification as it was charter or DC school improvements (those are fair arguments), but you don't get to just ignore data and history and recycle the same trite "Michelle Rhee is the boogeyman" noise. She was here for 4 years (2007-2010). The charter system has been in place for 25 years.

In DC? Since the 1990s. Let's agree to disagree, shall we?

Rhee may not have been the boogeyman, but she and Henderson certainly dropped the ball in failing to move to reinvent DCPS middle and high schools EotP so that they appealed to most in-boundary families. They paid lip service to the exercise is establishing the IB Diploma program at Eastern 15 years ago and left it at that. They had their chance, but outsourced the job to new charters.

The Brent PTA tried to create its own middle school in 2009, and Rhee shot them down right before the election Fenty lost, after having encouraged the parents' proposal for a good year. At present, no Ward 6 middle school offers "honors" classes for social studies or science, more than a decade after honors classes for math and English arrived at Stuart Hobson. The previous SH principal, who was great, quit over the issue, and other curricular matters, two years ago.

No, SWW, McKinley Tech and Banneker aren't excellent high schools. You're deeply mired in relalativism in claiming this. These programs can't hold a candle to the top test-in magnet programs in big cities around the country, or even in the DC burbs. DC's admissions high schools are far too wedded to affirmative action-based admissions to compete. End of story.

This poster speaks much truth. One minor quibble. The Brent PTA did not try to create “its own middle school”. It had several proposals ( including a pan-Hill middle school, feeding to SH, or else expanding into 6,7 and 8 for a few years until DCPS got its ish together at the MS level) that would have worked to keep those Brent graduates in a DCPS middle school situation. And as the pp points out, Rhee said “nah, pick Eliot Hine or Jefferson as your feeder.” A portion if the PTA acquiesced and got on board with keeping the Jefferson feed, hyped it up and then never sent their kids there. Fun times.

It’s honestly such a mistake. We could have a Deal-caliber middle school immediately if they just fed the Cluster, Brent, SWS and Maury into one place.

It's been a while since the Brent families hijacked a DCUM thread to complain that CH school alignment wasn't designed by them for them. But it never fails - "Everything would have been fie if only Brent kids were routed to SH." They also engage in revisionist history and forget that it wasn't long ago that Maury was just another marginal ES on CH.

Welcome back Brent families!!! We missed you.

Sure, word salad. Cuz everything has turned up roses on the neighborhood middle school front a DECADE later ( sarcasm font ).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:i think all of the hill and hill-adjacent elementary schools are increasingly fine. the hill middle schools could probably all be reasonably similar to deal and hardy if area families did not widely buy into dated ideas from 10 or so years ago and opt out of the local dcps when deciding where to attend for middle schools.

Cogent analysis, thanks.