Anybody Here Ever Have a Kid Above Grade Level Go Through DCPS Middle Schools besides Deal or Hardy?

[Anonymous]

What does SH offer by way of after-school activities? I was in the NE library Friday afternoon, and there were about 20 SH kids screaming and fooling around nonstop until dinnertime. They weren't doing anything wrong (other than being really loud at a library, but they were outside) but it made me wonder why there wasn't anything for them to do.

[Anonymous]

Often this happens in public libraries. Perhaps their parents can't afford aftercare, and so they congregate in the library.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with you, PP, other than maybe Deal, Hardy and BASIS. Even for those programs, a parent needs to supplement quite a bit. No DC public program does a good job teaching English lit or writing, and BASIS parents tend to supplement quite a bit for extra curriculars. The DCPS middle school boosters on this thread are putting politics/liberal ideology before education for their children. I think it's called white guilt.

Thank you. I believe the ultimate disservice to DC public school kids is calling something great when it is a ****show. We can all have different standards but puhllleeeaze, so much that goes n in DCPS is ridiculous. White liberals who insist on the high quality of the education at DC Middle Schools know in their hearts that it is not. They simply have other priorities. To me, that is white privilege at it’s peak. Your middle class white kid will probably do ok no matter what middle school they attend. Students with less family support or academic motivation NEED actual quality

[Anonymous]

+1000

Asian students also need school quality, across the socioeconomic spectrum. Hint: they generally need to score around 450 points higher than AAs, and at least 140 points higher than whites, to be admitted to the very same colleges.

https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian-american/article-admission

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a kid at Deal and there are quite a few Asians there. I have another kid at a Big3 private and can't think of any DC Asians (none at all in my child's grade, I'm not as familiar with other grades). Asians generally don't want to pay close to $50k for school (smart people!).

I f the Big 3 is Sidwell, there are quite a few South Asians. STA/NCS has a fair number of Asians as well. That said, most Asian immigrants are at high-performing publics.

Yes, but the Asians at our Big3 are all from suburbia. Not DC residents.

Asians who opt for private schools want schools like Exeter, Andover first. They have never heard of the “Big Three” and if they heard of private schools in DC, it’s just Sidwell and St Albans.

The top boarding schools are inundated with applications from overseas Asian students mainly Chinese. Harder for them to get in too since they are competing among themselves. These families are totally different from Asian families that aim for great public schools in the ‘burbs - these do not move to DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good, DCUM should be on fire right now mainly because Bowser isn't serious about raising standards in our schools, particularly middle schools.

DCPS needs to come under far more pressure to track academically across the board, and to improve school discipline. They need to do this to start serving in-boundary populations in gentrifying neighborhoods well.

The leadership resists like mad, as though local voters are not important stakeholders. If rising DCPS middle school programs routinely offered bona fide advanced classes in English, math, social studies and science, they'd take off. Instead, we get Honors for All at Wilson, Grosso trying to shift parent-provided PTO funds from functional schools to dysfunctional ones with weak oversight, DCPS pouring tens of millions of dollars into half empty middle school buildings in Ward 6 (Eliot-Hine, Jefferson Academy) with no prospect of these buildings filling up on their current sad development trajectories etc.

Bowser is serious about raising standards, if by raising standards you mean “improving test scores for only students currently scoring 1-3 on the PARCC”.

It appears that any kids currently getting a 4 or 5 on the PARCC Bowser doesn’t care about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:+1000

Asian students also need school quality, across the socioeconomic spectrum. Hint: they generally need to score around 450 points higher than AAs, and at least 140 points higher than whites, to be admitted to the very same colleges.

https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/asian-american/article-admission

And rich kids currently get a huge boost applying to those same schools. https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/03/18/look-many-legal-ways-wealthy-applicants-have-edge-admissions
There’s no stronger affirmative action than being the rich white child of a billionaire.


What’s ironic is that in the recent Harvard affirmative action case, rightwing-billionaire funded thinktanks and lawyers funded the lawsuit but Asian-Americans were the front-facing plaintiffs.

It’s almost as if rich conservatives want to destroy colleges and they’re using Asians to help them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Often this happens in public libraries. Perhaps their parents can't afford aftercare, and so they congregate in the library.

Who send their junior high student to aftercare? Kids do clubs & sports at that age, but they don’t need babysitting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a kid at Deal and there are quite a few Asians there. I have another kid at a Big3 private and can't think of any DC Asians (none at all in my child's grade, I'm not as familiar with other grades). Asians generally don't want to pay close to $50k for school (smart people!).

I f the Big 3 is Sidwell, there are quite a few South Asians. STA/NCS has a fair number of Asians as well. That said, most Asian immigrants are at high-performing publics.

Yes, but the Asians at our Big3 are all from suburbia. Not DC residents.

I posted upthread that my kid went to SH and then private HS - at a Big3. I am Asian.

[Anonymous]

Asian poster, can you tell us something about your experiences at SH? My Asian spouse is adamantly opposed to sending our children to to SH if they're about the only Asians there, although we live a couple blocks away. He also doesn't like sci and social studies classes that aren't tracked, and the behavior of many of the students in the neighborhood. We are longtime neighborhood residents. We get SH kids in red polo shirts loitering in our back alley a lot, smoking, screaming, good around fighting, occasionally trashing stuff.

[Anonymous]

^^PP - your DH is looking for a unicorn. What MS, public or private tracks for social studies or science? That usually starts at HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^PP - your DH is looking for a unicorn. What MS, public or private tracks for social studies or science? That usually starts at HS.

Not the poster you’re responding to, but it’s liberal B.S. to believe that the achievement gap isn’t a greater problem in schools that have large at-risk populations and relatively smaller advanced learners. Tracking is more critical when the disparities within the student body are vast.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^PP - your DH is looking for a unicorn. What MS, public or private tracks for social studies or science? That usually starts at HS.

Not the poster you’re responding to, but it’s liberal B.S. to believe that the achievement gap isn’t a greater problem in schools that have large at-risk populations and relatively smaller advanced learners. Tracking is more critical when the disparities within the student body are vast.

That is fair. But the point is that S-H DOES NOT have a large at-risk population or a "relatively smaller" group of advanced learners. And the folks continuing to lean on that as their explanation for why the school won't work for their kid are either willfully ignorant or... something else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^PP - your DH is looking for a unicorn. What MS, public or private tracks for social studies or science? That usually starts at HS.

Not the poster you’re responding to, but it’s liberal B.S. to believe that the achievement gap isn’t a greater problem in schools that have large at-risk populations and relatively smaller advanced learners. Tracking is more critical when the disparities within the student body are vast.

That is fair. But the point is that S-H DOES NOT have a large at-risk population or a "relatively smaller" group of advanced learners. And the folks continuing to lean on that as their explanation for why the school won't work for their kid are either willfully ignorant or... something else.

Does S-H offer Algebra I and Geometry? Most middle schools offer these courses to their college bound students. You have to have Algebra I and Geometry in middle school at a minimum if you want to apply to competitive colleges because this is the sequence that will let a student take Calculus in high school.

If you don't have a sizable number of students scoring 5 in math in Parcc/advanced learners, the school does not offer these courses which is why most UMC parents will not consider sending their kids there. Same for English.

Nothing racist/something else about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^PP - your DH is looking for a unicorn. What MS, public or private tracks for social studies or science? That usually starts at HS.

Not the poster you’re responding to, but it’s liberal B.S. to believe that the achievement gap isn’t a greater problem in schools that have large at-risk populations and relatively smaller advanced learners. Tracking is more critical when the disparities within the student body are vast.

That is fair. But the point is that S-H DOES NOT have a large at-risk population or a "relatively smaller" group of advanced learners. And the folks continuing to lean on that as their explanation for why the school won't work for their kid are either willfully ignorant or... something else.

Your point is not supported by the data. At SH, only 15% of kids above grade level in ELA and only 3% in math. So very, very small group of advanced learners.