Boundary Review December town halls

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If DCPS eliminates feeder rights or makes it difficult for middle and UMC families to continue in their feeder (ie, introduces more uncertainty), the wheels will completely come off DCPS within two years of the policy change.

Middle and UMC people will vote with their feet and wallets. And it will probably set back DCPS back 30 years in terms of progress.

I can't think of a single dumber policy with equally awful outcomes.

Right - the alternative status quo where everyone just attends Deal and J-R is better?

If you move a critical mass of middle and upper middle class kids to a new school that school will immediately improve - the SES make-up of the kids at a school is more determinative of how good a school is than anything else.

This process doesn't need to include more uncertainty - hell the current process is filled with uncertainty for lots of families who spend years scrambling around for charter and OOB slots rather than having a sure path to a good neighborhood based public school.

You cannot "move" students anywhere. The kinds of parents who would go through years of planning and a lot of inconvenience to avoid their IB schools are not going to just say "gosh, you've got us" and do what you want them to do here. Feeder rights are just one mechanism by which families avoid their IB schools, but the reason they avoid them is that the schools are bad. And, yes, there is a collective action problem here, but because of the presence of charters (and the ability to move out of DC), it's not solvable like this. If DCPS wants more IB families, they have to actually make middle and high schools attractive.

Of course you can move students anywhere.

You haven't sent your kids to the schools you fear - so enlighten us about what is wrong with them?

I don't "fear" any schools, but like the majority of both my low-income and my high-income neighbors, I'm not sending my kids to our zoned middle school. Truancy rates are high and academic standards are low. This isn't complicated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If DCPS eliminates feeder rights or makes it difficult for middle and UMC families to continue in their feeder (ie, introduces more uncertainty), the wheels will completely come off DCPS within two years of the policy change.

Middle and UMC people will vote with their feet and wallets. And it will probably set back DCPS back 30 years in terms of progress.

I can't think of a single dumber policy with equally awful outcomes.

Right - the alternative status quo where everyone just attends Deal and J-R is better?

If you move a critical mass of middle and upper middle class kids to a new school that school will immediately improve - the SES make-up of the kids at a school is more determinative of how good a school is than anything else.

This process doesn't need to include more uncertainty - hell the current process is filled with uncertainty for lots of families who spend years scrambling around for charter and OOB slots rather than having a sure path to a good neighborhood based public school.

You cannot "move" students anywhere. The kinds of parents who would go through years of planning and a lot of inconvenience to avoid their IB schools are not going to just say "gosh, you've got us" and do what you want them to do here. Feeder rights are just one mechanism by which families avoid their IB schools, but the reason they avoid them is that the schools are bad. And, yes, there is a collective action problem here, but because of the presence of charters (and the ability to move out of DC), it's not solvable like this. If DCPS wants more IB families, they have to actually make middle and high schools attractive.

Of course you can move students anywhere.

You haven't sent your kids to the schools you fear - so enlighten us about what is wrong with them?

I don't "fear" any schools, but like the majority of both my low-income and my high-income neighbors, I'm not sending my kids to our zoned middle school. Truancy rates are high and academic standards are low. This isn't complicated.

Truancy rates at Deal and J-R are terrible too.

How are the academic standards low?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Making Dorothy Height a dual language school would be one of the smartest and easiest things they could do for equity. Why offer a specialized program only for certain neighborhoods, especially when they tend to be the most expensive - Woodley Park, Mt. Pleasant. There should be citywide options for dual language. Instead, Dorothy Height is a citywide school without a specialized program that differentiates it from the other neighborhood schools.

[Anonymous]

We have an educational "marketplace" where there is choice for almost everyone. It isn't a monopoly. Nobody is forced to go to their in-bounds school. (In fact, data shows most people don't.) You can lottery into an out-of-bounds school, opt for a charter school (about half the DCPS kids do) or -- if you can afford it -- go to a private school, or move to MD or VA.

If you put people into a new boundary and they don't like that school, they won't go. You can try to assuage their concerns, add new programs, etc. and that, over time, may help. But, hint: trying to shame them into going to an inbounds schools by implying they're racist has never worked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If DCPS eliminates feeder rights or makes it difficult for middle and UMC families to continue in their feeder (ie, introduces more uncertainty), the wheels will completely come off DCPS within two years of the policy change.

Middle and UMC people will vote with their feet and wallets. And it will probably set back DCPS back 30 years in terms of progress.

I can't think of a single dumber policy with equally awful outcomes.

Right - the alternative status quo where everyone just attends Deal and J-R is better?

If you move a critical mass of middle and upper middle class kids to a new school that school will immediately improve - the SES make-up of the kids at a school is more determinative of how good a school is than anything else.

This process doesn't need to include more uncertainty - hell the current process is filled with uncertainty for lots of families who spend years scrambling around for charter and OOB slots rather than having a sure path to a good neighborhood based public school.

You cannot "move" students anywhere. The kinds of parents who would go through years of planning and a lot of inconvenience to avoid their IB schools are not going to just say "gosh, you've got us" and do what you want them to do here. Feeder rights are just one mechanism by which families avoid their IB schools, but the reason they avoid them is that the schools are bad. And, yes, there is a collective action problem here, but because of the presence of charters (and the ability to move out of DC), it's not solvable like this. If DCPS wants more IB families, they have to actually make middle and high schools attractive.

Of course you can move students anywhere.

You haven't sent your kids to the schools you fear - so enlighten us about what is wrong with them?

I don't "fear" any schools, but like the majority of both my low-income and my high-income neighbors, I'm not sending my kids to our zoned middle school. Truancy rates are high and academic standards are low. This isn't complicated.

Truancy rates at Deal and J-R are terrible too.

How are the academic standards low?

Uhhh.... truancy rates at my zoned middle are more than four times what they are at Deal, the median PARCC score is a 2, and to the extent tracking exists, it's to separate out the profoundly behind kids from everyone else. There's a reason parents across the income spectrum don't send their kids there. And it's far from the worst middle school in DC. Are you brand-new to this topic?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

Solving Ward 4 capacity issues won’t solve the issues for kids in those gentrifying communities. Are you suggesting that there will be enough seats in those Ward 4 schools to widen the boundaries for many more families? (Not being argumentative; just trying to understand)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

Solving Ward 4 capacity issues won’t solve the issues for kids in those gentrifying communities. Are you suggesting that there will be enough seats in those Ward 4 schools to widen the boundaries for many more families? (Not being argumentative; just trying to understand)

People keep saying gentrifying like it's still ongoing and there will be huge changes from here. This is pretty much the end of the line for middle class families with children changing a neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have an educational "marketplace" where there is choice for almost everyone. It isn't a monopoly. Nobody is forced to go to their in-bounds school. (In fact, data shows most people don't.) You can lottery into an out-of-bounds school, opt for a charter school (about half the DCPS kids do) or -- if you can afford it -- go to a private school, or move to MD or VA.

If you put people into a new boundary and they don't like that school, they won't go. You can try to assuage their concerns, add new programs, etc. and that, over time, may help. But, hint: trying to shame them into going to an inbounds schools by implying they're racist has never worked.

Since when is a lottery a marketplace?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

NP and courage is an odd choice to describe this. We are a middle class family in Ward 4 who sends their kids to our neighborhood school. But would I send my kids to the zoned HS? Nope. But courage has nothing to do with it- it’s a terrible high school. It’s not brave to send your kid to a school that won’t educate them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

Solving Ward 4 capacity issues won’t solve the issues for kids in those gentrifying communities. Are you suggesting that there will be enough seats in those Ward 4 schools to widen the boundaries for many more families? (Not being argumentative; just trying to understand)

What Ward 4 capacity issues are you referring to? Coolidge and Roosevelt are grossly under enrolled. There is a chicken and egg issue in Ward 4 around MS capacity but that is easily solvable by increasing the capacity at Wells.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

NP and courage is an odd choice to describe this. We are a middle class family in Ward 4 who sends their kids to our neighborhood school. But would I send my kids to the zoned HS? Nope. But courage has nothing to do with it- it’s a terrible high school. It’s not brave to send your kid to a school that won’t educate them.

Again there is a ton of data on this - the SES make-up of the student body is the single biggest indicator of how good a school will be. If all of the middle class families in Ward 4 suddenly had their kids attending say Wells and Coolidge rather than charters or Deal/J-R the school would immediately improve dramatically.

There is lots of evidence of this including locally - the exact same thing happened at Hardy which no one wanted to attend until suddenly Eaton was moved there and the school and its test scores improved immediately.

What is so bizarre about this to me as the parent of 2 J-R students is that J-R is not a great school at all. There are a lot of great teachers and students/families but it is not a rigorous school academically at all - both of my kids had more homework at Deal than they had at J-R.

My oldest is a sophomore in college and he and a lot of his friends (mostly male) were not prepared at all for the rigors of college - I think it was a shock that they were actually expected to read books for their classes.

And the facilities and behavior issues at J-R continue to be real problems.

All of which again begs the question about how much do these parents really even know about the neighborhood schools they refuse to send their kids to or the schools they oddly think are so much better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

Solving Ward 4 capacity issues won’t solve the issues for kids in those gentrifying communities. Are you suggesting that there will be enough seats in those Ward 4 schools to widen the boundaries for many more families? (Not being argumentative; just trying to understand)

What Ward 4 capacity issues are you referring to? Coolidge and Roosevelt are grossly under enrolled. There is a chicken and egg issue in Ward 4 around MS capacity but that is easily solvable by increasing the capacity at Wells.

Please read the data. Coolidge is NOT grossly under enrolled. They were at 1015 students last year. Wells is at 548 this year and this basically all one building.

[Anonymous]

Citation https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/27