How to replicate Ross's success?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But do you Ross families plan to have your 10 yo in the closet? I don't really get this past K.

In the closet how? The school has some diversity after K and that's not a bad thing. F-S has even more, so all the better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But do you Ross families plan to have your 10 yo in the closet? I don't really get this past K.

In the closet how? The school has some diversity after K and that's not a bad thing. F-S has even more, so all the better.

I meant sleeping in the closet in the literal sense, sorry that could have been confusing...

[Anonymous]

So the key is high SES plus a certain urban density preference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
But do you Ross families plan to have your 10 yo in the closet? I don't really get this past K.

In the closet how? The school has some diversity after K and that's not a bad thing. F-S has even more, so all the better.

I meant sleeping in the closet in the literal sense, sorry that could have been confusing...

There are small affordable two bedrooms in the Ross area (less than 1000 sq feet). The in-bound kids are not sleeping in closets. They're just not living in McMansions but taking advantage of a small educational gem that allows their parents to have a good commute.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So the answer to OP is to have neighborhoods with more million dollar homes?

Or to convince more people in those million dollar home neighborhoods to actually send their kids to their neighborhood school. Not all of them--some will always choose private or charter (if they snag a spot at LAMB, YY, etc.)--but enough to fill up 1-2 PK classes (having PK3 available is key to get more in-boundary folks). And then, each grade needs to be kept relatively small so that the school can maintain as high an in-boundary percentage as possible. The good test scores will follow when these higher in-boundary cohorts reach testing grades.

Well, yes, if your goal is to have a richer school. If your goal is to have a BETTER school for all who happen to attend--a more democratic goal--then you have to do a lot more than just convince nearby rich people to postpone their Sidwell and WIS applications for a few years. Instead, you have to have the teachers, administration, resources, and willpower to bring kids with delays up to speed while simultaneously making sure that those who arrive ahead aren't held back for lack of resources or political reasons. It's complicated stuff, and DCPS has traditionally not shown itself to be up to the task. If Ross actually HAS succeeded in this, I hope the lessons learned will spread far and wide. If its success is just due to a demographic shift, then that's nothing to crow about and says absolutely nothing about the quality of the school.

Your second statement--"each grade needs to be kept relatively small so that the school can maintain as high an in-boundary percentage as possible"--is particularly telling, since it's basically advocating the privatizing of a public school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I noticed on schooldigger.com this set of rankings. http://www.schooldigger.com/go/DC/schoolrank.aspx

Looks like Ross is really doing well. Any insight into how they're doing it that could be replicated in other schools?

Well done, Ross!

OP, it is unfortunately extremely simple and cannot be replicated by intention, though it may be, and is being, replicated via the same demographic shifts in other neighborhoods.

In DC, test scores are highly correlated with family income and education. Dupont Circle has nearly 0% poverty. Expensive real estate, no homeless shelters. Formerly when the school was not doing as well it was because it had a high percentage of OOB students who weren't doing as well. At some point IB interest was piqued, and the school quickly "flipped" as the all-IB early childhood classes moved up through the years and the OOB percentage dropped. They also had a good principal during those years (now at HD Cooke?) but the demographics can take most of the credit.

This also happened at Brent.

This cannot and will not happen so quickly or at all in neighborhoods with a lot of affordable apartments or homeless shelters, even when those neighborhoods are seeing rapid appreciation in the price of market-rate real estate.

Sorry if this is very blunt, not politically correct, and sorry if this is bad news, OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I noticed on schooldigger.com this set of rankings. http://www.schooldigger.com/go/DC/schoolrank.aspx

Looks like Ross is really doing well. Any insight into how they're doing it that could be replicated in other schools?

Well done, Ross!

OP, it is unfortunately extremely simple and cannot be replicated by intention, though it may be, and is being, replicated via the same demographic shifts in other neighborhoods.

In DC, test scores are highly correlated with family income and education. Dupont Circle has nearly 0% poverty. Expensive real estate, no homeless shelters. Formerly when the school was not doing as well it was because it had a high percentage of OOB students who weren't doing as well. At some point IB interest was piqued, and the school quickly "flipped" as the all-IB early childhood classes moved up through the years and the OOB percentage dropped. They also had a good principal during those years (now at HD Cooke?) but the demographics can take most of the credit.

This also happened at Brent.

This cannot and will not happen so quickly or at all in neighborhoods with a lot of affordable apartments or homeless shelters, even when those neighborhoods are seeing rapid appreciation in the price of market-rate real estate.

Sorry if this is very blunt, not politically correct, and sorry if this is bad news, OP.

Brent "flipped" but the test scores are not the same as at Ross. In fact, Brent is closer to Hearst and Shepherd in test scores and those schools are majority OOB "unflipped".

[Anonymous]

OP, it is unfortunately extremely simple and cannot be replicated by intention, though it may be, and is being, replicated via the same demographic shifts in other neighborhoods.

In DC, test scores are highly correlated with family income and education. Dupont Circle has nearly 0% poverty. Expensive real estate, no homeless shelters. Formerly when the school was not doing as well it was because it had a high percentage of OOB students who weren't doing as well. At some point IB interest was piqued, and the school quickly "flipped" as the all-IB early childhood classes moved up through the years and the OOB percentage dropped. They also had a good principal during those years (now at HD Cooke?) but the demographics can take most of the credit.

This also happened at Brent.

This cannot and will not happen so quickly or at all in neighborhoods with a lot of affordable apartments or homeless shelters, even when those neighborhoods are seeing rapid appreciation in the price of market-rate real estate.

Sorry if this is very blunt, not politically correct, and sorry if this is bad news, OP.

I don't think you're giving Ross enough credit. It has 25% FARMS students (compared to less than 5% in most of the JKLM schools), but somehow has similar scores to the JKLM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

OP, it is unfortunately extremely simple and cannot be replicated by intention, though it may be, and is being, replicated via the same demographic shifts in other neighborhoods.

In DC, test scores are highly correlated with family income and education. Dupont Circle has nearly 0% poverty. Expensive real estate, no homeless shelters. Formerly when the school was not doing as well it was because it had a high percentage of OOB students who weren't doing as well. At some point IB interest was piqued, and the school quickly "flipped" as the all-IB early childhood classes moved up through the years and the OOB percentage dropped. They also had a good principal during those years (now at HD Cooke?) but the demographics can take most of the credit.

This also happened at Brent.

This cannot and will not happen so quickly or at all in neighborhoods with a lot of affordable apartments or homeless shelters, even when those neighborhoods are seeing rapid appreciation in the price of market-rate real estate.

Sorry if this is very blunt, not politically correct, and sorry if this is bad news, OP.

I don't think you're giving Ross enough credit. It has 25% FARMS students (compared to less than 5% in most of the JKLM schools), but somehow has similar scores to the JKLM.

Actually Ross has BETTER scores than most JKLMs. Impressive indeed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

OP, it is unfortunately extremely simple and cannot be replicated by intention, though it may be, and is being, replicated via the same demographic shifts in other neighborhoods.

In DC, test scores are highly correlated with family income and education. Dupont Circle has nearly 0% poverty. Expensive real estate, no homeless shelters. Formerly when the school was not doing as well it was because it had a high percentage of OOB students who weren't doing as well. At some point IB interest was piqued, and the school quickly "flipped" as the all-IB early childhood classes moved up through the years and the OOB percentage dropped. They also had a good principal during those years (now at HD Cooke?) but the demographics can take most of the credit.

This also happened at Brent.

This cannot and will not happen so quickly or at all in neighborhoods with a lot of affordable apartments or homeless shelters, even when those neighborhoods are seeing rapid appreciation in the price of market-rate real estate.

Sorry if this is very blunt, not politically correct, and sorry if this is bad news, OP.

I don't think you're giving Ross enough credit. It has 25% FARMS students (compared to less than 5% in most of the JKLM schools), but somehow has similar scores to the JKLM.

That's fair enough, point taken. Usually when people bring up this question, it's in reference to a high-poverty school that they want to see turned around, which was what I had in mind when I replied. So I guess it depends on what your perspective is on this question. If your perspective is comparing Ross with even wealthier schools, then yes, Ross looks good from an achievement gap perspective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I noticed on schooldigger.com this set of rankings. http://www.schooldigger.com/go/DC/schoolrank.aspx

Looks like Ross is really doing well. Any insight into how they're doing it that could be replicated in other schools?

Well done, Ross!

OP, it is unfortunately extremely simple and cannot be replicated by intention, though it may be, and is being, replicated via the same demographic shifts in other neighborhoods.

In DC, test scores are highly correlated with family income and education. Dupont Circle has nearly 0% poverty. Expensive real estate, no homeless shelters. Formerly when the school was not doing as well it was because it had a high percentage of OOB students who weren't doing as well. At some point IB interest was piqued, and the school quickly "flipped" as the all-IB early childhood classes moved up through the years and the OOB percentage dropped. They also had a good principal during those years (now at HD Cooke?) but the demographics can take most of the credit.

This also happened at Brent.

This cannot and will not happen so quickly or at all in neighborhoods with a lot of affordable apartments or homeless shelters, even when those neighborhoods are seeing rapid appreciation in the price of market-rate real estate.

Sorry if this is very blunt, not politically correct, and sorry if this is bad news, OP.

What is really unfortunate is your inaccuracy. You are incorrect on many points. You need to do more research, really basic information is just wrong.
1) 0% poverty? Then why is their FARM rate at about 28%?
2) Quickly flipped sounds like real estate and flipping a house/condo is done in several months. This is not the case. If you look at their scores, they have progressly gone up over the last 4 years. Mathematics 2011-71% 2012-73% 2013-79% 2014-92% Reading 2011-72% 2012-65% 2013-83% 2014-90%
http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/About+DCPS/DCPS+Data/DCPS+Data+Sets
3) The 'good principal' you are referring to (Searl) is still there and has been there for 5 years. Your HD Cooke principal (Larkin) was at Ross until 2012 but was not the principal.
4) At Ross there is no achievement gap, again check the data.
5) For what it's worth, the success at Ross is simple. I think it is high quality, hard work by all those involved: teachers, students, parents, PTA, and so on. One person cannot change everything.

[Anonymous]

6) The testing grades are majority OOB and higher FARMS than the school as a whole. We will have to wait a few more years to see how the IB cohort tests.

PP has the story the wrong way around. IB kids didn't drive th test scores up. The test scores increased first. Then the IB kids crowded in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:6) The testing grades are majority OOB and higher FARMS than the school as a whole. We will have to wait a few more years to see how the IB cohort tests.

PP has the story the wrong way around. IB kids didn't drive th test scores up. The test scores increased first. Then the IB kids crowded in.

This 100%!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Note recent trend of Ross staff moving on to teaching and leadership positions at nearby DCPS schools. Eg. Principal of HD Cooke. Assistant P. at Seaton, teachers at Seaton and SWW@FS. Good news for those schools and DCPS as a whole.

[Anonymous]

7) ESOL rate is 16%, not super high but much higher than the WOTP and sought after Hill schools.
The school deserves many kudos.