Maury Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

With online access to learning and AI's assistance, conventional role of school is changing. Look outside the box and be an active partner in your child's learning journey. They need analytical and social skills to be successful, any robot can regurgitate facts and throw balls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its good to see parental involvement in children's education. However, an unhealthy obsession of nit picking schools wouldn't help our kids much, while spending time doing academic and fun activities with them, providing healthy home environment and unprocessed food, providing opportunities for athletics and arts, absolutely would.

DC living gives easy access to art, history, politics, libraries, museums, zoo, botanical garden, parks and nature within driving distance. What are you doing to help them avail those opportunities?

You can avail yourself of all the many opportunities for growth and learning and exploration DC has to offer and ALSO care deeply about school quality. Your child will spend more waking hours at their elementary school than local museums or the botanical garden whether you like it or not. So it matters a lot.

Or are you here to advocate for homeschooling? Because that's another options I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With online access to learning and AI's assistance, conventional role of school is changing. Look outside the box and be an active partner in your child's learning journey. They need analytical and social skills to be successful, any robot can regurgitate facts and throw balls.

Yes, folks, it doesn't matter what happens with Maury -- who needs functional school communities, invested teachers, comfortable or pleasant learning spaces, etc., when you have AI? Just be an "active partner in your child's learning journey" and the rest will work itself out.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone suggesting that an E-H solution would draw kids away from BASIS and Latin ignores the reality of how short the MS years are and how bad the Hill HS situation is. If you don't want and can't leave DC or move for 9th, you have no choice but to take the Latin or BASIS exit if you are lucky enough to be offered it. MS is 3 years, and there's only 2 years of it before you need to have an idea of what your HS plan is. I sincerely hope E-H and all Hill schools get their sh*t together and prosper in the coming years. But I can tell you from experience that families without guaranteed HS options (ability to move, $ to pay for private) are generally not going to be motivated by nonspecific promises of some sort of "tracking light" at E-H. Step one to getting buy-in at E-H or SH is to stand up and offer a formal tracking process. No more of this nonsense where SH doesn't advertise tracking but allows students to take math classes with the year above and pretends it isn't happening.

This. EH is filled with families who struck out in the lottery and are trying to get a few more years in the city / hoping to lottery into Walls. IB families are not “choosing” EH.

There are absolutely EH families that choose EH over one of those charters … I’m under no illusions about having to find a different solution for HS but so far so good.

So you "chose" EH over a spot at Latin? Even though you won't use your IB HS? You are an example of what I described my friend. You feel you have options for HS; private $, move within DC, move out of DC, etc.

This. People will talk about going to EH or SH (or Jefferson) but their plan for HS is Walls, Banneker, private, or move. The plan is never Eastern. So it's tiresome when people talk about increased buy in for SH and EH (and let's get real about how much increased buy-in these schools are getting) without acknowledging that this is just people postponing their Plan Bs a few more years, not actually buying into the Ward 6 high school.

Both of these conversations can be true. The prior poster had the uninformed and inaccurate picture that all families at EH had already tried and struck out lottery. My family and many others never did the lottery and intended ongoing to EH from the get go.
As for high school, we are not ruling out Eastern but plan to learn about other public school options as well. Participating in the city's school choice system, especially for high school when there are very different programs does not mean you cannot be interested in and choose to go to your neighborhood middle school.

Not even entering the lottery is the picture of entitlement. In order to have acted in that manner you must have access to resources that informed that decision. There's nothing wrong with that, by the way. I would love to have mommy/daddy money to pay for private school. I would love to have a job that allows me to cash flow Sidwell in 9th. I would love to be able to move houses at the drop of a hat without regard to financial impact. Good for you.

But here's the thing. People like you ought not lecture people without those options or advantages about what they could or should do. It's the equivalent of having a parachute on under your jacket and encouraging others to get on a plane that is likely to crash, because "what if it doesn't and we reach our destination?"

I stand by my position that no one without HS options chose E-H without at least considering alternatives that solved for HS.

Ok. What’s your point again? The actual EH families’ point is that EH is going fine and we are reasonably happy. Not that we love the HS options or might have taken a spot at Latin. There’s always something potentially better so I struggle to understand why “striking out in the lottery” means EH is bad.

EH is objectively a bad school. You may be telling yourself that middle school academics don’t matter so it’s “going fine” but that doesn’t make it a good school. The academics are abysmal.

Do you have a kid there?

Seriously. The comments on this thread are exhausting. Some people choose one school, some people choose another. Great, that is why we have a lottery/school choice system. The vitriol and assumptions about people who choose to attend a DCPS middle school and think their kids are getting a good education is uncalled for. The merits of judging a school solely on test scores is a conversation for another day, as is the fact that kids can and do learn while in classrooms with kids of varying academic levels.

The vitriol stems from limited choice, because even with the lottery, parents in DC actually have very few good or reliable school choices past elementary school.

And the judgment flows both ways, all the time. Parents who go to charters are judged for "abandoning" DCPS. Parents who lottery into OOB DCPS are viewed as carpet baggers. Parents who send kids to schools with lower test scores (schools like Miner, which has been repeatedly trashed on this thread) are viewed as inadequate. Parents who move out of the city are views as weak-willed. And so on.

Basically the only parents who don't get judged in DC are the ones who send their kids to high quality IB DCPS schools. Like Maury. But then parents in that situation tend to judge everyone else for not being in that situation.

If this situation bothers you, you actually have to fix education in DC so that that people aren't constantly fighting over the very limited resource of good schools in this city.

I think there are small sub-segments of each population that come on here to judge. But outside of this forum, the vast majority of parents at schools are not wasting their energy on this. There are lots of good options in this city, many families are happy at a lot of different schools, not just the few that constantly get praised here . Mainly I am just suggesting people try to have a productive dialogue - when things devolve into uninformed insults from either side, it is unproductive. Even if both sides do it, doesn't mean it is right - isn't that we teach our kids?

The entire premise of this thread is for Maury parents to get mad about the prospect of merging with Miner. If this were a city with "lots of good options" for schools where families were "happy at lots of different schools" I do not think you would see the level of horror and anger in response to this proposal that you see.

Parents know Maury is one of a small handful of decent schools in Ward 6, and Miner is very much not, and this conversation revolves around parents at Maury trying to protect their access to what they are fully aware is a very precious resource.

I might be more inclined to agree with you if this thread were full of praise for Miner but let's get real here.

The thing is, we did Miner for ECE and it *was* really wonderful. They have really talented and dedicated teachers, at least through kindergarten. Kids were doing amazing projects like hatching baby chicks and watching a caterpillar transform into a butterfly. That’s why I actually think the cluster plan could work. The walk between Miner and Maury is neither long nor dangerous. It’s true there are terrifying incidents that have happened near Miner, but there was a carjacking near Maury this summer too! The reality is, walking my kids between the two, which I did often to meet friends at the Maury playground after school, feels lively and idyllic, passing other friends on the walk and beautiful houses and families with kids.

Meanwhile, the segregation between Miner and Maury is truly striking and disturbing. These schools are so close together, and the different even just in the resources in the building is incredible.

I also think concerns about the Miner population flooding Maury with high needs kids in a way that will hurt the school are overblown. A *lot* of Miner kids are out of bounds right now, and that’s in part because there are a *lot* of upper middle class families in the zone who don’t send their kids there (or do for ECE and then leave). With a cluster, if done well, all those kids would probably stay. It honestly seems like a good solution, especially given the strength of ECE at miner and the fact that a ton of Maury kids are there for ECE anyway.

Maybe they could sweeten the deal by feeding Maury to SH? Then both Maury and LT would feed there, which would make for a really strong cohort. EH already has a feed from SWS and Payne and Tyler (I think), so they’d still have a strong cohort too.

My kids didn't go to Miner for ECE, but we did put it on our lottery list; we thought the ECE program seemed really good based on EdFest and the people we spoke to. But as you get at later in your post, the SES make-up of ECE at Miner is a lot different than the later years, so I don't think the ECE experience sheds a lot of light on how a cluster would work. And that data doesn't support that "a ton of Maury kids" go to Miner for ECE. The data shows a handful in each year, and that people overwhelmingly choose AT Lincoln Park over Miner -- which could be a proximity preference more than a substantive preference, but which either way indicates most Maury families are not totally bought in to even just ECE at Miner.

I know the logistics of a double drop-off seem trivial to some, but the amount of time it would add to my day would make it harder for me to take additional time out to go in for class events or to help out at school, and as a practical matter I live a lot closer to Maury than to Miner, and I just would not be able to run over to Miner to help out in art or do a read-aloud or whatever in the middle of the day like I can with Maury. I know some people in the boundary are a lot closer to Miner than I am, so I realize this is not a universal issue, but it is a big reason why I am opposed. I really value being able to be active in the school to the extent that I can, but I would be much, much more limited in my ability to do that at Miner.

I found the Maury meeting especially educational in one respect; I too had always assumed that a lot of Miner's problem (in terms of test scores that lag other schools) is high SES in-boundary families going elsewhere. But according to the data DME presented, Miner's percentage of at-risk students now is actually very similar to the percentage of at-risk students living in the boundary. 60% of PK-5th grade students living in the Miner boundary are at-risk, and the school's SY22-23 at-risk percentage is 64%. So even if the high SES families in the Miner boundary began to choose the school en masse, it seems like a very high percentage of their students would still face significant challenges.

DC has done badly by Miner. The administration issues and instability have been a real problem, and it seems to me (admittedly not an education professional) like something they should have taken a hard look at and really prioritized long before now. I've never been inside the building, so I don't know what the deal is, but would happily support whatever renovation is needed. (I don't have a comprehensive undertsanding, but know that Maury and Payne were relatively recently renovated and that JO is due, so I assume there is some sort of process in place that is going through the schools -- but if needs are being ignored, I would absolutely lobby DC to address them.)

But I don't think the cluster will remedy the issues that exist at Miner -- and I am very suspicious of DME's advocacy of the cluster idea. Trying to raise a school's test scores by merging it with another school doesn't evince a desire to actually help students so much as it evinces a desire to *look like* you are helping students. And I haven't heard them say a single thing about what they will do after clustering to help the students who need extra support (and as someone pointed out earlier, the scores of Maury's at-risk students are markedly lower on average than the rest of the school population, so it doesn't seem like Maury has an existing framework that will solve all these issues).

I'm deeply troubled by some of what I saw on the DC School Report Card. 44.3% of Miner students are chronically absent, meaning they missed more than 10% of school days (Maury's number is 9.3%). That strikes me as a massive obstacle to these kids getting the education they deserve that is not at all addressed (and could actually be worsened) by the proposed cluster. It doesn't help anyone if these kids still aren't going to school, but DME is able to crow that they now go to a "better" one -- and that's exactly what this idea seems like to me. Miner students need (and deserve) someone to really grapple with the actual challenges they face.

[Anonymous]

Few things in this thread. The DME didn't focus on test scores specifically, they were talking about the socioeconomic segregation between the two schools. And it is true, the at risk population at Maury does not score very high at Maury , but as the number of at risk kids is so small at that school, it does not impact their overall numbers as much.

Separately, to whoever suggested Maury feed into SH, that would not work. Tyler feeds into Jefferson, so that would just leave Payne and SWS (which doesn't send many kids to EH)

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone suggesting that an E-H solution would draw kids away from BASIS and Latin ignores the reality of how short the MS years are and how bad the Hill HS situation is. If you don't want and can't leave DC or move for 9th, you have no choice but to take the Latin or BASIS exit if you are lucky enough to be offered it. MS is 3 years, and there's only 2 years of it before you need to have an idea of what your HS plan is. I sincerely hope E-H and all Hill schools get their sh*t together and prosper in the coming years. But I can tell you from experience that families without guaranteed HS options (ability to move, $ to pay for private) are generally not going to be motivated by nonspecific promises of some sort of "tracking light" at E-H. Step one to getting buy-in at E-H or SH is to stand up and offer a formal tracking process. No more of this nonsense where SH doesn't advertise tracking but allows students to take math classes with the year above and pretends it isn't happening.

This. EH is filled with families who struck out in the lottery and are trying to get a few more years in the city / hoping to lottery into Walls. IB families are not “choosing” EH.

There are absolutely EH families that choose EH over one of those charters … I’m under no illusions about having to find a different solution for HS but so far so good.

So you "chose" EH over a spot at Latin? Even though you won't use your IB HS? You are an example of what I described my friend. You feel you have options for HS; private $, move within DC, move out of DC, etc.

This. People will talk about going to EH or SH (or Jefferson) but their plan for HS is Walls, Banneker, private, or move. The plan is never Eastern. So it's tiresome when people talk about increased buy in for SH and EH (and let's get real about how much increased buy-in these schools are getting) without acknowledging that this is just people postponing their Plan Bs a few more years, not actually buying into the Ward 6 high school.

Both of these conversations can be true. The prior poster had the uninformed and inaccurate picture that all families at EH had already tried and struck out lottery. My family and many others never did the lottery and intended ongoing to EH from the get go.
As for high school, we are not ruling out Eastern but plan to learn about other public school options as well. Participating in the city's school choice system, especially for high school when there are very different programs does not mean you cannot be interested in and choose to go to your neighborhood middle school.

Not even entering the lottery is the picture of entitlement. In order to have acted in that manner you must have access to resources that informed that decision. There's nothing wrong with that, by the way. I would love to have mommy/daddy money to pay for private school. I would love to have a job that allows me to cash flow Sidwell in 9th. I would love to be able to move houses at the drop of a hat without regard to financial impact. Good for you.

But here's the thing. People like you ought not lecture people without those options or advantages about what they could or should do. It's the equivalent of having a parachute on under your jacket and encouraging others to get on a plane that is likely to crash, because "what if it doesn't and we reach our destination?"

I stand by my position that no one without HS options chose E-H without at least considering alternatives that solved for HS.

Ok. What’s your point again? The actual EH families’ point is that EH is going fine and we are reasonably happy. Not that we love the HS options or might have taken a spot at Latin. There’s always something potentially better so I struggle to understand why “striking out in the lottery” means EH is bad.

EH is objectively a bad school. You may be telling yourself that middle school academics don’t matter so it’s “going fine” but that doesn’t make it a good school. The academics are abysmal.

Do you have a kid there?

Seriously. The comments on this thread are exhausting. Some people choose one school, some people choose another. Great, that is why we have a lottery/school choice system. The vitriol and assumptions about people who choose to attend a DCPS middle school and think their kids are getting a good education is uncalled for. The merits of judging a school solely on test scores is a conversation for another day, as is the fact that kids can and do learn while in classrooms with kids of varying academic levels.

The vitriol stems from limited choice, because even with the lottery, parents in DC actually have very few good or reliable school choices past elementary school.

And the judgment flows both ways, all the time. Parents who go to charters are judged for "abandoning" DCPS. Parents who lottery into OOB DCPS are viewed as carpet baggers. Parents who send kids to schools with lower test scores (schools like Miner, which has been repeatedly trashed on this thread) are viewed as inadequate. Parents who move out of the city are views as weak-willed. And so on.

Basically the only parents who don't get judged in DC are the ones who send their kids to high quality IB DCPS schools. Like Maury. But then parents in that situation tend to judge everyone else for not being in that situation.

If this situation bothers you, you actually have to fix education in DC so that that people aren't constantly fighting over the very limited resource of good schools in this city.

I think there are small sub-segments of each population that come on here to judge. But outside of this forum, the vast majority of parents at schools are not wasting their energy on this. There are lots of good options in this city, many families are happy at a lot of different schools, not just the few that constantly get praised here . Mainly I am just suggesting people try to have a productive dialogue - when things devolve into uninformed insults from either side, it is unproductive. Even if both sides do it, doesn't mean it is right - isn't that we teach our kids?

The entire premise of this thread is for Maury parents to get mad about the prospect of merging with Miner. If this were a city with "lots of good options" for schools where families were "happy at lots of different schools" I do not think you would see the level of horror and anger in response to this proposal that you see.

Parents know Maury is one of a small handful of decent schools in Ward 6, and Miner is very much not, and this conversation revolves around parents at Maury trying to protect their access to what they are fully aware is a very precious resource.

I might be more inclined to agree with you if this thread were full of praise for Miner but let's get real here.

The thing is, we did Miner for ECE and it *was* really wonderful. They have really talented and dedicated teachers, at least through kindergarten. Kids were doing amazing projects like hatching baby chicks and watching a caterpillar transform into a butterfly. That’s why I actually think the cluster plan could work. The walk between Miner and Maury is neither long nor dangerous. It’s true there are terrifying incidents that have happened near Miner, but there was a carjacking near Maury this summer too! The reality is, walking my kids between the two, which I did often to meet friends at the Maury playground after school, feels lively and idyllic, passing other friends on the walk and beautiful houses and families with kids.

Meanwhile, the segregation between Miner and Maury is truly striking and disturbing. These schools are so close together, and the different even just in the resources in the building is incredible.

I also think concerns about the Miner population flooding Maury with high needs kids in a way that will hurt the school are overblown. A *lot* of Miner kids are out of bounds right now, and that’s in part because there are a *lot* of upper middle class families in the zone who don’t send their kids there (or do for ECE and then leave). With a cluster, if done well, all those kids would probably stay. It honestly seems like a good solution, especially given the strength of ECE at miner and the fact that a ton of Maury kids are there for ECE anyway.

Maybe they could sweeten the deal by feeding Maury to SH? Then both Maury and LT would feed there, which would make for a really strong cohort. EH already has a feed from SWS and Payne and Tyler (I think), so they’d still have a strong cohort too.

My kids didn't go to Miner for ECE, but we did put it on our lottery list; we thought the ECE program seemed really good based on EdFest and the people we spoke to. But as you get at later in your post, the SES make-up of ECE at Miner is a lot different than the later years, so I don't think the ECE experience sheds a lot of light on how a cluster would work. And that data doesn't support that "a ton of Maury kids" go to Miner for ECE. The data shows a handful in each year, and that people overwhelmingly choose AT Lincoln Park over Miner -- which could be a proximity preference more than a substantive preference, but which either way indicates most Maury families are not totally bought in to even just ECE at Miner.

I know the logistics of a double drop-off seem trivial to some, but the amount of time it would add to my day would make it harder for me to take additional time out to go in for class events or to help out at school, and as a practical matter I live a lot closer to Maury than to Miner, and I just would not be able to run over to Miner to help out in art or do a read-aloud or whatever in the middle of the day like I can with Maury. I know some people in the boundary are a lot closer to Miner than I am, so I realize this is not a universal issue, but it is a big reason why I am opposed. I really value being able to be active in the school to the extent that I can, but I would be much, much more limited in my ability to do that at Miner.

I found the Maury meeting especially educational in one respect; I too had always assumed that a lot of Miner's problem (in terms of test scores that lag other schools) is high SES in-boundary families going elsewhere. But according to the data DME presented, Miner's percentage of at-risk students now is actually very similar to the percentage of at-risk students living in the boundary. 60% of PK-5th grade students living in the Miner boundary are at-risk, and the school's SY22-23 at-risk percentage is 64%. So even if the high SES families in the Miner boundary began to choose the school en masse, it seems like a very high percentage of their students would still face significant challenges.

DC has done badly by Miner. The administration issues and instability have been a real problem, and it seems to me (admittedly not an education professional) like something they should have taken a hard look at and really prioritized long before now. I've never been inside the building, so I don't know what the deal is, but would happily support whatever renovation is needed. (I don't have a comprehensive undertsanding, but know that Maury and Payne were relatively recently renovated and that JO is due, so I assume there is some sort of process in place that is going through the schools -- but if needs are being ignored, I would absolutely lobby DC to address them.)

But I don't think the cluster will remedy the issues that exist at Miner -- and I am very suspicious of DME's advocacy of the cluster idea. Trying to raise a school's test scores by merging it with another school doesn't evince a desire to actually help students so much as it evinces a desire to *look like* you are helping students. And I haven't heard them say a single thing about what they will do after clustering to help the students who need extra support (and as someone pointed out earlier, the scores of Maury's at-risk students are markedly lower on average than the rest of the school population, so it doesn't seem like Maury has an existing framework that will solve all these issues).

I'm deeply troubled by some of what I saw on the DC School Report Card. 44.3% of Miner students are chronically absent, meaning they missed more than 10% of school days (Maury's number is 9.3%). That strikes me as a massive obstacle to these kids getting the education they deserve that is not at all addressed (and could actually be worsened) by the proposed cluster. It doesn't help anyone if these kids still aren't going to school, but DME is able to crow that they now go to a "better" one -- and that's exactly what this idea seems like to me. Miner students need (and deserve) someone to really grapple with the actual challenges they face.

The issue of truancy, to me, actually supports a cluster. As has been extensively discussed in other threads, the chronic absence issues are caused by several known issues: uninvested or absent parents, housing insecurity, and family instability. Sometimes (often) all three.

Having a very high concentration at risk kids at a school makes the issue of truancy a critical one for all students. Because even if your kid is showing up for school every day, having so many students around them chronically absent can be very disruptive to their learning environment. This can have a major impact on kids who are not chronically absent but may have other vulnerabilities, including learning disabilities, anxiety or ADHD, and other special needs.

So it's particularly bd for the 55% of Miner students who are NOT chronically absent to be at a school where so many students are. This can greatly alter the composition of their classes from day to day and throughout the year.

If combining the schools brought the chronic absence rate down overall, it could be very beneficial for Miner students who are actually showing up to school every day, creating a more stable classroom environment. I can see why Maury families would be upset by it, but I also see real benefits for the Miner families with kids who actually are showing up and trying to learn.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone suggesting that an E-H solution would draw kids away from BASIS and Latin ignores the reality of how short the MS years are and how bad the Hill HS situation is. If you don't want and can't leave DC or move for 9th, you have no choice but to take the Latin or BASIS exit if you are lucky enough to be offered it. MS is 3 years, and there's only 2 years of it before you need to have an idea of what your HS plan is. I sincerely hope E-H and all Hill schools get their sh*t together and prosper in the coming years. But I can tell you from experience that families without guaranteed HS options (ability to move, $ to pay for private) are generally not going to be motivated by nonspecific promises of some sort of "tracking light" at E-H. Step one to getting buy-in at E-H or SH is to stand up and offer a formal tracking process. No more of this nonsense where SH doesn't advertise tracking but allows students to take math classes with the year above and pretends it isn't happening.

This. EH is filled with families who struck out in the lottery and are trying to get a few more years in the city / hoping to lottery into Walls. IB families are not “choosing” EH.

There are absolutely EH families that choose EH over one of those charters … I’m under no illusions about having to find a different solution for HS but so far so good.

So you "chose" EH over a spot at Latin? Even though you won't use your IB HS? You are an example of what I described my friend. You feel you have options for HS; private $, move within DC, move out of DC, etc.

This. People will talk about going to EH or SH (or Jefferson) but their plan for HS is Walls, Banneker, private, or move. The plan is never Eastern. So it's tiresome when people talk about increased buy in for SH and EH (and let's get real about how much increased buy-in these schools are getting) without acknowledging that this is just people postponing their Plan Bs a few more years, not actually buying into the Ward 6 high school.

Both of these conversations can be true. The prior poster had the uninformed and inaccurate picture that all families at EH had already tried and struck out lottery. My family and many others never did the lottery and intended ongoing to EH from the get go.
As for high school, we are not ruling out Eastern but plan to learn about other public school options as well. Participating in the city's school choice system, especially for high school when there are very different programs does not mean you cannot be interested in and choose to go to your neighborhood middle school.

Not even entering the lottery is the picture of entitlement. In order to have acted in that manner you must have access to resources that informed that decision. There's nothing wrong with that, by the way. I would love to have mommy/daddy money to pay for private school. I would love to have a job that allows me to cash flow Sidwell in 9th. I would love to be able to move houses at the drop of a hat without regard to financial impact. Good for you.

But here's the thing. People like you ought not lecture people without those options or advantages about what they could or should do. It's the equivalent of having a parachute on under your jacket and encouraging others to get on a plane that is likely to crash, because "what if it doesn't and we reach our destination?"

I stand by my position that no one without HS options chose E-H without at least considering alternatives that solved for HS.

Ok. What’s your point again? The actual EH families’ point is that EH is going fine and we are reasonably happy. Not that we love the HS options or might have taken a spot at Latin. There’s always something potentially better so I struggle to understand why “striking out in the lottery” means EH is bad.

DP, but the point is that when you say lots of Maury families are "choosing EH" without acknowledging that these families often have resources that make them less stressed about HS.

People will lament the families who leave Hill elementaries in 5th for Latin or BASIS and try to argue "what's wrong with EH, SH, and Jefferson?" But the MSs are not the point. The high schools are. The people who lottery for characters in 5th and take those spots are not thrilled about giving up neighborhood schools and taking on long commutes for the next 8 years. They do it because they cannot afford to risk their kid not getting into Walls or Banneker, because they have no other good options. If you absolutely, 100% cannot afford private, and if moving would be a major financial stress (keep in mind that if you don't have a ton of money for private, you will also be limited as to where you can move and will likely not have access to the best suburban high schools either), then EH could be a freaking palace and a lot of parents would still choose a charter with an okay HS feed.

I often hear from Hill families that you have to be "willing to play the game." What this ignores is that some people are playing that game with extra cards. It is much easier to "roll the dice" on EH and the hope of Walls admissions if your back up is, to give a very common example, Gonzaga with with help from grandparents to cover costs. It's also easier to do if you have an HHI of 500k and you bought your Hill row house for 400k 15 years ago, so if you want to bail and move to Bethesda or Northern Virginia at any point, there are few barriers to you doing so.

Some of us cannot afford to do that. I do not ever want to put my kid in the position of having to get a spot in an application high school in DC or attend Eastern. Especially when grabbing spots at those applications schools becomes more and more of a crap shoot every year.

Why did you buy on the Hill in the first place if you are so dependent on the lottery??

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:My takeaway from the meeting materials is that combining Maury and Miner will move the needle on the city wide goal to reduce segregation across our schools. The DME team created a table of all the ES that border each other and picked the pair that would move the metric the most without a river or large road in between. Boundary adjustments “would not work” so the strategy is to replicate the Peabody Watkins cluster model.

The impact to the city wide metric under this plan is totally clear to me; segregation will go down, this is good. Less clear and unanswered is: how will the cluster model perform for our kids attending the new cluster school.

Peabody Watkins is a nearby cluster, and I’ve seen a lot of anecdotal comments online about how the school is doing; but frankly it’s really hard to know how to interpret them. Could be grumpy parents with an axe to grind, folks trolling and pretending to be impacted, parents rightfully being proud and invested in a school their children attend, etc. etc.

I took a look at enrollment and test scores for the Peabody Watkins cluster, and five other area ES to see how they’ve fared from 2014 to 2022. I chose those years because it’s when PARCC scores started. I’m sure there are flaws in this methodology; so by all means folks are welcome to jump in with thoughts/critiques and give recommendations on other data to consider.

Short summary 2014-2022 (PARCC era):
- The cluster is last in enrollment growth
- 5th in ELA, 4th in Math
- 5th in improvement of Math&ELA

This is all numbers with very little context, and I'm sure doesn't capture the entirety of the quality of education at all these schools; but at first glance it does not give me faith in the cluster plan. Why would Miner+Maury fair differently that Peabody+Watkins?

Enrollment:
+55% Maury
+45% Ludlow Taylor
+23% Payne
+17% Brent
-8% Peabody
-14% Miner
-31% Watkins

ELA (2022)
67% Ludlow Taylor
66% Brent
66% Maury
46% Payne
37% Watkins
10% Miner

MATH (2022)
67% Brent
59% Maury
45% Ludlow Taylor
39% Watkins
28% Payne
6% Miner

Improvement in ELA + Improvement in Math, From 2014 to 2022
+53% Payne
+44% Ludlow Taylor
+37% Maury
+8% Brent
+7% Watkins
-13% Mined

You should submit this to the DME. And you should loop in Charles Allen.

You realize the DME thinks it is BAD that Maury and LT grew and improved test scores to that extent, right? They want to stop that. That’s the whole goal.

Looking at this & the slide DME presented at the Maury meeting showing how they chose their potential cluster pairs (50%+ differential), I’d say Ludlow is very lucky they didn’t choose 40%+ as their arbitrary “too far apart” metric. If they had, Ludlow and JO would be having this same discussion and the geography there makes way more sense. And I can tell you as a JO IB family that IB families would love to cluster with Ludlow (though 2R would likely collapse overnight as a result).

JO's on a better trajectory than Miner though. About to get a big renovation (really a brand new building which I'm guessing will be as nice as Maury's or SWS), 2R's star has really fallen in recent years, and with the development around Union Market, it is in an area that is demographically very similar to LT in terms of housing costs.

Most (but not all) of JO's FARMS students are coming to the school from across the river -- like Miner, it has a large OOB contingent. But JO has a better shot at increasing IB participation with the new school. So they could organically achieve the kind of "rising tide lifting all boats" effect that the DME is looking for from a Miner-Maury cluster. Miner doesn't have those timing or location advantages.

I'm sure there are JO families today who would love an LT cluster if it were to happen next year. I don't think that will be true in about three years when JO's new facility is done. Whereas I just don't see many signs of improvement at Miner.

Co-sign. Miner does not have demographic advantages of JOW. I believe TR will shutter their 4th Street campus by 2030.

If DCPS is such a fail, why is TR failing? Wasn’t that started as an escape hatch for UMC parents?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Its good to see parental involvement in children's education. However, an unhealthy obsession of nit picking schools wouldn't help our kids much, while spending time doing academic and fun activities with them, providing healthy home environment and unprocessed food, providing opportunities for athletics and arts, absolutely would.

DC living gives easy access to art, history, politics, libraries, museums, zoo, botanical garden, parks and nature within driving distance. What are you doing to help them avail those opportunities?

My kid is in school seven hours a day. It’s not “nitpicking” to want those seven hours to be worthwhile. Particularly for older kids when you can no longer fool yourself that you’re making up for substandard academic instruction by taking them to the zoo …

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:With online access to learning and AI's assistance, conventional role of school is changing. Look outside the box and be an active partner in your child's learning journey. They need analytical and social skills to be successful, any robot can regurgitate facts and throw balls.

Ok this thread has jumped the shark.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone suggesting that an E-H solution would draw kids away from BASIS and Latin ignores the reality of how short the MS years are and how bad the Hill HS situation is. If you don't want and can't leave DC or move for 9th, you have no choice but to take the Latin or BASIS exit if you are lucky enough to be offered it. MS is 3 years, and there's only 2 years of it before you need to have an idea of what your HS plan is. I sincerely hope E-H and all Hill schools get their sh*t together and prosper in the coming years. But I can tell you from experience that families without guaranteed HS options (ability to move, $ to pay for private) are generally not going to be motivated by nonspecific promises of some sort of "tracking light" at E-H. Step one to getting buy-in at E-H or SH is to stand up and offer a formal tracking process. No more of this nonsense where SH doesn't advertise tracking but allows students to take math classes with the year above and pretends it isn't happening.

This. EH is filled with families who struck out in the lottery and are trying to get a few more years in the city / hoping to lottery into Walls. IB families are not “choosing” EH.

There are absolutely EH families that choose EH over one of those charters … I’m under no illusions about having to find a different solution for HS but so far so good.

So you "chose" EH over a spot at Latin? Even though you won't use your IB HS? You are an example of what I described my friend. You feel you have options for HS; private $, move within DC, move out of DC, etc.

This. People will talk about going to EH or SH (or Jefferson) but their plan for HS is Walls, Banneker, private, or move. The plan is never Eastern. So it's tiresome when people talk about increased buy in for SH and EH (and let's get real about how much increased buy-in these schools are getting) without acknowledging that this is just people postponing their Plan Bs a few more years, not actually buying into the Ward 6 high school.

Both of these conversations can be true. The prior poster had the uninformed and inaccurate picture that all families at EH had already tried and struck out lottery. My family and many others never did the lottery and intended ongoing to EH from the get go.
As for high school, we are not ruling out Eastern but plan to learn about other public school options as well. Participating in the city's school choice system, especially for high school when there are very different programs does not mean you cannot be interested in and choose to go to your neighborhood middle school.

Not even entering the lottery is the picture of entitlement. In order to have acted in that manner you must have access to resources that informed that decision. There's nothing wrong with that, by the way. I would love to have mommy/daddy money to pay for private school. I would love to have a job that allows me to cash flow Sidwell in 9th. I would love to be able to move houses at the drop of a hat without regard to financial impact. Good for you.

But here's the thing. People like you ought not lecture people without those options or advantages about what they could or should do. It's the equivalent of having a parachute on under your jacket and encouraging others to get on a plane that is likely to crash, because "what if it doesn't and we reach our destination?"

I stand by my position that no one without HS options chose E-H without at least considering alternatives that solved for HS.

Ok. What’s your point again? The actual EH families’ point is that EH is going fine and we are reasonably happy. Not that we love the HS options or might have taken a spot at Latin. There’s always something potentially better so I struggle to understand why “striking out in the lottery” means EH is bad.

EH is objectively a bad school. You may be telling yourself that middle school academics don’t matter so it’s “going fine” but that doesn’t make it a good school. The academics are abysmal.

Do you have a kid there?

Seriously. The comments on this thread are exhausting. Some people choose one school, some people choose another. Great, that is why we have a lottery/school choice system. The vitriol and assumptions about people who choose to attend a DCPS middle school and think their kids are getting a good education is uncalled for. The merits of judging a school solely on test scores is a conversation for another day, as is the fact that kids can and do learn while in classrooms with kids of varying academic levels.

The vitriol stems from limited choice, because even with the lottery, parents in DC actually have very few good or reliable school choices past elementary school.

And the judgment flows both ways, all the time. Parents who go to charters are judged for "abandoning" DCPS. Parents who lottery into OOB DCPS are viewed as carpet baggers. Parents who send kids to schools with lower test scores (schools like Miner, which has been repeatedly trashed on this thread) are viewed as inadequate. Parents who move out of the city are views as weak-willed. And so on.

Basically the only parents who don't get judged in DC are the ones who send their kids to high quality IB DCPS schools. Like Maury. But then parents in that situation tend to judge everyone else for not being in that situation.

If this situation bothers you, you actually have to fix education in DC so that that people aren't constantly fighting over the very limited resource of good schools in this city.

I think there are small sub-segments of each population that come on here to judge. But outside of this forum, the vast majority of parents at schools are not wasting their energy on this. There are lots of good options in this city, many families are happy at a lot of different schools, not just the few that constantly get praised here . Mainly I am just suggesting people try to have a productive dialogue - when things devolve into uninformed insults from either side, it is unproductive. Even if both sides do it, doesn't mean it is right - isn't that we teach our kids?

The entire premise of this thread is for Maury parents to get mad about the prospect of merging with Miner. If this were a city with "lots of good options" for schools where families were "happy at lots of different schools" I do not think you would see the level of horror and anger in response to this proposal that you see.

Parents know Maury is one of a small handful of decent schools in Ward 6, and Miner is very much not, and this conversation revolves around parents at Maury trying to protect their access to what they are fully aware is a very precious resource.

I might be more inclined to agree with you if this thread were full of praise for Miner but let's get real here.

The thing is, we did Miner for ECE and it *was* really wonderful. They have really talented and dedicated teachers, at least through kindergarten. Kids were doing amazing projects like hatching baby chicks and watching a caterpillar transform into a butterfly. That’s why I actually think the cluster plan could work. The walk between Miner and Maury is neither long nor dangerous. It’s true there are terrifying incidents that have happened near Miner, but there was a carjacking near Maury this summer too! The reality is, walking my kids between the two, which I did often to meet friends at the Maury playground after school, feels lively and idyllic, passing other friends on the walk and beautiful houses and families with kids.

Meanwhile, the segregation between Miner and Maury is truly striking and disturbing. These schools are so close together, and the different even just in the resources in the building is incredible.

I also think concerns about the Miner population flooding Maury with high needs kids in a way that will hurt the school are overblown. A *lot* of Miner kids are out of bounds right now, and that’s in part because there are a *lot* of upper middle class families in the zone who don’t send their kids there (or do for ECE and then leave). With a cluster, if done well, all those kids would probably stay. It honestly seems like a good solution, especially given the strength of ECE at miner and the fact that a ton of Maury kids are there for ECE anyway.

Maybe they could sweeten the deal by feeding Maury to SH? Then both Maury and LT would feed there, which would make for a really strong cohort. EH already has a feed from SWS and Payne and Tyler (I think), so they’d still have a strong cohort too.

If there are so many UMC families in the Miner boundary, then how are there a ton of seats available for Maury kids in ECE???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:My takeaway from the meeting materials is that combining Maury and Miner will move the needle on the city wide goal to reduce segregation across our schools. The DME team created a table of all the ES that border each other and picked the pair that would move the metric the most without a river or large road in between. Boundary adjustments “would not work” so the strategy is to replicate the Peabody Watkins cluster model.

The impact to the city wide metric under this plan is totally clear to me; segregation will go down, this is good. Less clear and unanswered is: how will the cluster model perform for our kids attending the new cluster school.

Peabody Watkins is a nearby cluster, and I’ve seen a lot of anecdotal comments online about how the school is doing; but frankly it’s really hard to know how to interpret them. Could be grumpy parents with an axe to grind, folks trolling and pretending to be impacted, parents rightfully being proud and invested in a school their children attend, etc. etc.

I took a look at enrollment and test scores for the Peabody Watkins cluster, and five other area ES to see how they’ve fared from 2014 to 2022. I chose those years because it’s when PARCC scores started. I’m sure there are flaws in this methodology; so by all means folks are welcome to jump in with thoughts/critiques and give recommendations on other data to consider.

Short summary 2014-2022 (PARCC era):
- The cluster is last in enrollment growth
- 5th in ELA, 4th in Math
- 5th in improvement of Math&ELA

This is all numbers with very little context, and I'm sure doesn't capture the entirety of the quality of education at all these schools; but at first glance it does not give me faith in the cluster plan. Why would Miner+Maury fair differently that Peabody+Watkins?

Enrollment:
+55% Maury
+45% Ludlow Taylor
+23% Payne
+17% Brent
-8% Peabody
-14% Miner
-31% Watkins

ELA (2022)
67% Ludlow Taylor
66% Brent
66% Maury
46% Payne
37% Watkins
10% Miner

MATH (2022)
67% Brent
59% Maury
45% Ludlow Taylor
39% Watkins
28% Payne
6% Miner

Improvement in ELA + Improvement in Math, From 2014 to 2022
+53% Payne
+44% Ludlow Taylor
+37% Maury
+8% Brent
+7% Watkins
-13% Mined

You should submit this to the DME. And you should loop in Charles Allen.

You realize the DME thinks it is BAD that Maury and LT grew and improved test scores to that extent, right? They want to stop that. That’s the whole goal.

Looking at this & the slide DME presented at the Maury meeting showing how they chose their potential cluster pairs (50%+ differential), I’d say Ludlow is very lucky they didn’t choose 40%+ as their arbitrary “too far apart” metric. If they had, Ludlow and JO would be having this same discussion and the geography there makes way more sense. And I can tell you as a JO IB family that IB families would love to cluster with Ludlow (though 2R would likely collapse overnight as a result).

JO's on a better trajectory than Miner though. About to get a big renovation (really a brand new building which I'm guessing will be as nice as Maury's or SWS), 2R's star has really fallen in recent years, and with the development around Union Market, it is in an area that is demographically very similar to LT in terms of housing costs.

Most (but not all) of JO's FARMS students are coming to the school from across the river -- like Miner, it has a large OOB contingent. But JO has a better shot at increasing IB participation with the new school. So they could organically achieve the kind of "rising tide lifting all boats" effect that the DME is looking for from a Miner-Maury cluster. Miner doesn't have those timing or location advantages.

I'm sure there are JO families today who would love an LT cluster if it were to happen next year. I don't think that will be true in about three years when JO's new facility is done. Whereas I just don't see many signs of improvement at Miner.

Co-sign. Miner does not have demographic advantages of JOW. I believe TR will shutter their 4th Street campus by 2030.

If DCPS is such a fail, why is TR failing? Wasn’t that started as an escape hatch for UMC parents?

TR had a disastrously long complete covid closure and kept quarantines/masking longer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My takeaway from the meeting materials is that combining Maury and Miner will move the needle on the city wide goal to reduce segregation across our schools. The DME team created a table of all the ES that border each other and picked the pair that would move the metric the most without a river or large road in between. Boundary adjustments “would not work” so the strategy is to replicate the Peabody Watkins cluster model.

The impact to the city wide metric under this plan is totally clear to me; segregation will go down, this is good. Less clear and unanswered is: how will the cluster model perform for our kids attending the new cluster school.

Peabody Watkins is a nearby cluster, and I’ve seen a lot of anecdotal comments online about how the school is doing; but frankly it’s really hard to know how to interpret them. Could be grumpy parents with an axe to grind, folks trolling and pretending to be impacted, parents rightfully being proud and invested in a school their children attend, etc. etc.

I took a look at enrollment and test scores for the Peabody Watkins cluster, and five other area ES to see how they’ve fared from 2014 to 2022. I chose those years because it’s when PARCC scores started. I’m sure there are flaws in this methodology; so by all means folks are welcome to jump in with thoughts/critiques and give recommendations on other data to consider.

Short summary 2014-2022 (PARCC era):
- The cluster is last in enrollment growth
- 5th in ELA, 4th in Math
- 5th in improvement of Math&ELA

This is all numbers with very little context, and I'm sure doesn't capture the entirety of the quality of education at all these schools; but at first glance it does not give me faith in the cluster plan. Why would Miner+Maury fair differently that Peabody+Watkins?

Enrollment:
+55% Maury
+45% Ludlow Taylor
+23% Payne
+17% Brent
-8% Peabody
-14% Miner
-31% Watkins

ELA (2022)
67% Ludlow Taylor
66% Brent
66% Maury
46% Payne
37% Watkins
10% Miner

MATH (2022)
67% Brent
59% Maury
45% Ludlow Taylor
39% Watkins
28% Payne
6% Miner

Improvement in ELA + Improvement in Math, From 2014 to 2022
+53% Payne
+44% Ludlow Taylor
+37% Maury
+8% Brent
+7% Watkins
-13% Mined

You should submit this to the DME. And you should loop in Charles Allen.

You realize the DME thinks it is BAD that Maury and LT grew and improved test scores to that extent, right? They want to stop that. That’s the whole goal.

Looking at this & the slide DME presented at the Maury meeting showing how they chose their potential cluster pairs (50%+ differential), I’d say Ludlow is very lucky they didn’t choose 40%+ as their arbitrary “too far apart” metric. If they had, Ludlow and JO would be having this same discussion and the geography there makes way more sense. And I can tell you as a JO IB family that IB families would love to cluster with Ludlow (though 2R would likely collapse overnight as a result).

JO's on a better trajectory than Miner though. About to get a big renovation (really a brand new building which I'm guessing will be as nice as Maury's or SWS), 2R's star has really fallen in recent years, and with the development around Union Market, it is in an area that is demographically very similar to LT in terms of housing costs.

Most (but not all) of JO's FARMS students are coming to the school from across the river -- like Miner, it has a large OOB contingent. But JO has a better shot at increasing IB participation with the new school. So they could organically achieve the kind of "rising tide lifting all boats" effect that the DME is looking for from a Miner-Maury cluster. Miner doesn't have those timing or location advantages.

I'm sure there are JO families today who would love an LT cluster if it were to happen next year. I don't think that will be true in about three years when JO's new facility is done. Whereas I just don't see many signs of improvement at Miner.

Co-sign. Miner does not have demographic advantages of JOW. I believe TR will shutter their 4th Street campus by 2030.

I don’t disagree with the overall message, but I think you’re going to find the reality of change *very* slow if you think in 3 years people wouldn’t want to Cluster with Ludlow. Also, JO has made almost no progress in the last 8 years; they’ve actually dropped off in the last few years. You’re right that they have a demographics advantage over Miner, but actually they have little to show for the last decade despite that. My suspicion is that Ludlow will always remain ahead — it’s way ahead now and its IB property will remain more expensive on average. JO will probably be a place folks are happy to stay, but it will be more like 10 years than 3.

I disagree because I think when the new building on K Street opens, it's going to be highly visible for IB families, and I think you underestimate the impact this is going to have.

Especially when you understand that currently, more IB families are at TR than at Ludlow. It's much easier to lottery into TR than Ludlow -- this year TR 4th came close to clearing every waitlist except the PK grades. And even for PK, families IB for JO have a much easier time getting into TR than Ludlow because Ludlow's PK seats largely go to their IB families.

Frustration with TR is high, their building is aging and has limited outdoor space, plus is right off Florida Avenue in a way that is unappealing for a lot of people with young kids. I think you're going to see a rapid buy-in at JO when the new building opens, from families that previously would have been thrilled to go to TR instead. Especially as families with babies and toddlers discover the playground at the new building, which I anticipate will be really nice and fill a real need north of H for a great outdoor play space (that neighborhood doesn't have as much green space as the Hill and the existing playground situation is wanting).

If TR was holding strong, you might be right about the 10 years. As it stands, JO is poised for a real renaissance. Especially because lotterying out of the JO boundary for LT/Maury/Brent is increasingly hard even in higher grades.

Some of you are forgetting how quickly LT and Maury went from Title 1 schools that IB families fled for charters to highly desirable IB options.

And some of you are forgetting how quickly Watkins went back to being Title 1 after its shiny renovation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My takeaway from the meeting materials is that combining Maury and Miner will move the needle on the city wide goal to reduce segregation across our schools. The DME team created a table of all the ES that border each other and picked the pair that would move the metric the most without a river or large road in between. Boundary adjustments “would not work” so the strategy is to replicate the Peabody Watkins cluster model.

The impact to the city wide metric under this plan is totally clear to me; segregation will go down, this is good. Less clear and unanswered is: how will the cluster model perform for our kids attending the new cluster school.

Peabody Watkins is a nearby cluster, and I’ve seen a lot of anecdotal comments online about how the school is doing; but frankly it’s really hard to know how to interpret them. Could be grumpy parents with an axe to grind, folks trolling and pretending to be impacted, parents rightfully being proud and invested in a school their children attend, etc. etc.

I took a look at enrollment and test scores for the Peabody Watkins cluster, and five other area ES to see how they’ve fared from 2014 to 2022. I chose those years because it’s when PARCC scores started. I’m sure there are flaws in this methodology; so by all means folks are welcome to jump in with thoughts/critiques and give recommendations on other data to consider.

Short summary 2014-2022 (PARCC era):
- The cluster is last in enrollment growth
- 5th in ELA, 4th in Math
- 5th in improvement of Math&ELA

This is all numbers with very little context, and I'm sure doesn't capture the entirety of the quality of education at all these schools; but at first glance it does not give me faith in the cluster plan. Why would Miner+Maury fair differently that Peabody+Watkins?

Enrollment:
+55% Maury
+45% Ludlow Taylor
+23% Payne
+17% Brent
-8% Peabody
-14% Miner
-31% Watkins

ELA (2022)
67% Ludlow Taylor
66% Brent
66% Maury
46% Payne
37% Watkins
10% Miner

MATH (2022)
67% Brent
59% Maury
45% Ludlow Taylor
39% Watkins
28% Payne
6% Miner

Improvement in ELA + Improvement in Math, From 2014 to 2022
+53% Payne
+44% Ludlow Taylor
+37% Maury
+8% Brent
+7% Watkins
-13% Mined

You should submit this to the DME. And you should loop in Charles Allen.

You realize the DME thinks it is BAD that Maury and LT grew and improved test scores to that extent, right? They want to stop that. That’s the whole goal.

Looking at this & the slide DME presented at the Maury meeting showing how they chose their potential cluster pairs (50%+ differential), I’d say Ludlow is very lucky they didn’t choose 40%+ as their arbitrary “too far apart” metric. If they had, Ludlow and JO would be having this same discussion and the geography there makes way more sense. And I can tell you as a JO IB family that IB families would love to cluster with Ludlow (though 2R would likely collapse overnight as a result).

JO's on a better trajectory than Miner though. About to get a big renovation (really a brand new building which I'm guessing will be as nice as Maury's or SWS), 2R's star has really fallen in recent years, and with the development around Union Market, it is in an area that is demographically very similar to LT in terms of housing costs.

Most (but not all) of JO's FARMS students are coming to the school from across the river -- like Miner, it has a large OOB contingent. But JO has a better shot at increasing IB participation with the new school. So they could organically achieve the kind of "rising tide lifting all boats" effect that the DME is looking for from a Miner-Maury cluster. Miner doesn't have those timing or location advantages.

I'm sure there are JO families today who would love an LT cluster if it were to happen next year. I don't think that will be true in about three years when JO's new facility is done. Whereas I just don't see many signs of improvement at Miner.

Co-sign. Miner does not have demographic advantages of JOW. I believe TR will shutter their 4th Street campus by 2030.

I don’t disagree with the overall message, but I think you’re going to find the reality of change *very* slow if you think in 3 years people wouldn’t want to Cluster with Ludlow. Also, JO has made almost no progress in the last 8 years; they’ve actually dropped off in the last few years. You’re right that they have a demographics advantage over Miner, but actually they have little to show for the last decade despite that. My suspicion is that Ludlow will always remain ahead — it’s way ahead now and its IB property will remain more expensive on average. JO will probably be a place folks are happy to stay, but it will be more like 10 years than 3.

I disagree because I think when the new building on K Street opens, it's going to be highly visible for IB families, and I think you underestimate the impact this is going to have.

Especially when you understand that currently, more IB families are at TR than at Ludlow. It's much easier to lottery into TR than Ludlow -- this year TR 4th came close to clearing every waitlist except the PK grades. And even for PK, families IB for JO have a much easier time getting into TR than Ludlow because Ludlow's PK seats largely go to their IB families.

Frustration with TR is high, their building is aging and has limited outdoor space, plus is right off Florida Avenue in a way that is unappealing for a lot of people with young kids. I think you're going to see a rapid buy-in at JO when the new building opens, from families that previously would have been thrilled to go to TR instead. Especially as families with babies and toddlers discover the playground at the new building, which I anticipate will be really nice and fill a real need north of H for a great outdoor play space (that neighborhood doesn't have as much green space as the Hill and the existing playground situation is wanting).

If TR was holding strong, you might be right about the 10 years. As it stands, JO is poised for a real renaissance. Especially because lotterying out of the JO boundary for LT/Maury/Brent is increasingly hard even in higher grades.

Some of you are forgetting how quickly LT and Maury went from Title 1 schools that IB families fled for charters to highly desirable IB options.

Even if you get PK3 kids in the first year, it will take 10+ years for the whole school to get there. Just like it did for Maury and LT. You’re crazy if you think IB 3rd graders will flood in for a pretty building while the previous year’s test scores are awful. It’s just not how it works. And, don’t forget, there’s going to be a further dip still during the renovation. Honestly, I hope it works out for JO, but you sound incredibly naive. DCPS is full of shiny empty buildings.

I don't think this is accurate, but I think it might have to do with how you define a turn-around for these schools.

I actually think LT and Maury turned around quickly. I had a kid who was a baby around the time it happened, and these two schools went from "I guess that's an okay option" to "highly desirable" in terms of our preferences for school in maybe 18 months. I still remember having conversations with some Maury families when my kid was like 18 months old and my perception of the school rapidly shifting just in the course of those conversations. Same with LT. Some friends of ours with a same-age kid live IB for LT, and when we first started talking about schools, they were upset to discover that CHMS was not a by-right school for them, and disappointed by LT as the consolation prize. By the time our kids actually started PK a little over a year later, they were thrilled.

Now we're just 4 years later and our kids are in mid-grades at these schools and they are considered two of the top three schools on the Hill. The shift happened fast from my perspective, even if I know there were people who had older kids as those shifts were happening who I'm sure thought as you do now about JO.

These changes can happen fast, and a shiny new renovation (especially if in a prominent location in the neighborhood -- I think Maury's location helps because it's so visible to people commuting through the neighborhood, walking to and from Lincoln Park, etc.) and the right neighborhood demographics, or declining interest in a previously popular nearby charter, are exactly what can flip the switch.

Your timing is all off. Maury was already non-T1 in 2015-2016; Ludlow didn't become non-T1 until 2020-2021 (and had the misfortune to have it happen during the COVID year). So, first, these schools are 5 years apart in their transformations; those transformations were not actually occurring on the same timeline. But more importantly, if you were just hearing about Maury's transformation 4 years ago, when it had already been not T1 for 5 years, then you won't even hear about JO for a decade. Even LT, if you heard 4 years ago, you heard during its last year as T1 when the loss had already been announced (there's 1 year lag time). You don't realize how much of the transformations were already underway before you woke up to them. JO is YEARS from being anywhere near non-T1 and will likely have its OOB percentage & at risk percentages INCREASE first, during the renovation year. I'm genuinely not disagreeing that JO is primed for the sort of change that's happened to Maury & LT, but you are so, so far off in your understanding of the timing and work involved.

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Anonymous wrote:My takeaway from the meeting materials is that combining Maury and Miner will move the needle on the city wide goal to reduce segregation across our schools. The DME team created a table of all the ES that border each other and picked the pair that would move the metric the most without a river or large road in between. Boundary adjustments “would not work” so the strategy is to replicate the Peabody Watkins cluster model.

The impact to the city wide metric under this plan is totally clear to me; segregation will go down, this is good. Less clear and unanswered is: how will the cluster model perform for our kids attending the new cluster school.

Peabody Watkins is a nearby cluster, and I’ve seen a lot of anecdotal comments online about how the school is doing; but frankly it’s really hard to know how to interpret them. Could be grumpy parents with an axe to grind, folks trolling and pretending to be impacted, parents rightfully being proud and invested in a school their children attend, etc. etc.

I took a look at enrollment and test scores for the Peabody Watkins cluster, and five other area ES to see how they’ve fared from 2014 to 2022. I chose those years because it’s when PARCC scores started. I’m sure there are flaws in this methodology; so by all means folks are welcome to jump in with thoughts/critiques and give recommendations on other data to consider.

Short summary 2014-2022 (PARCC era):
- The cluster is last in enrollment growth
- 5th in ELA, 4th in Math
- 5th in improvement of Math&ELA

This is all numbers with very little context, and I'm sure doesn't capture the entirety of the quality of education at all these schools; but at first glance it does not give me faith in the cluster plan. Why would Miner+Maury fair differently that Peabody+Watkins?

Enrollment:
+55% Maury
+45% Ludlow Taylor
+23% Payne
+17% Brent
-8% Peabody
-14% Miner
-31% Watkins

ELA (2022)
67% Ludlow Taylor
66% Brent
66% Maury
46% Payne
37% Watkins
10% Miner

MATH (2022)
67% Brent
59% Maury
45% Ludlow Taylor
39% Watkins
28% Payne
6% Miner

Improvement in ELA + Improvement in Math, From 2014 to 2022
+53% Payne
+44% Ludlow Taylor
+37% Maury
+8% Brent
+7% Watkins
-13% Mined

You should submit this to the DME. And you should loop in Charles Allen.

You realize the DME thinks it is BAD that Maury and LT grew and improved test scores to that extent, right? They want to stop that. That’s the whole goal.

Looking at this & the slide DME presented at the Maury meeting showing how they chose their potential cluster pairs (50%+ differential), I’d say Ludlow is very lucky they didn’t choose 40%+ as their arbitrary “too far apart” metric. If they had, Ludlow and JO would be having this same discussion and the geography there makes way more sense. And I can tell you as a JO IB family that IB families would love to cluster with Ludlow (though 2R would likely collapse overnight as a result).

JO's on a better trajectory than Miner though. About to get a big renovation (really a brand new building which I'm guessing will be as nice as Maury's or SWS), 2R's star has really fallen in recent years, and with the development around Union Market, it is in an area that is demographically very similar to LT in terms of housing costs.

Most (but not all) of JO's FARMS students are coming to the school from across the river -- like Miner, it has a large OOB contingent. But JO has a better shot at increasing IB participation with the new school. So they could organically achieve the kind of "rising tide lifting all boats" effect that the DME is looking for from a Miner-Maury cluster. Miner doesn't have those timing or location advantages.

I'm sure there are JO families today who would love an LT cluster if it were to happen next year. I don't think that will be true in about three years when JO's new facility is done. Whereas I just don't see many signs of improvement at Miner.

Co-sign. Miner does not have demographic advantages of JOW. I believe TR will shutter their 4th Street campus by 2030.

I don’t disagree with the overall message, but I think you’re going to find the reality of change *very* slow if you think in 3 years people wouldn’t want to Cluster with Ludlow. Also, JO has made almost no progress in the last 8 years; they’ve actually dropped off in the last few years. You’re right that they have a demographics advantage over Miner, but actually they have little to show for the last decade despite that. My suspicion is that Ludlow will always remain ahead — it’s way ahead now and its IB property will remain more expensive on average. JO will probably be a place folks are happy to stay, but it will be more like 10 years than 3.

I disagree because I think when the new building on K Street opens, it's going to be highly visible for IB families, and I think you underestimate the impact this is going to have.

Especially when you understand that currently, more IB families are at TR than at Ludlow. It's much easier to lottery into TR than Ludlow -- this year TR 4th came close to clearing every waitlist except the PK grades. And even for PK, families IB for JO have a much easier time getting into TR than Ludlow because Ludlow's PK seats largely go to their IB families.

Frustration with TR is high, their building is aging and has limited outdoor space, plus is right off Florida Avenue in a way that is unappealing for a lot of people with young kids. I think you're going to see a rapid buy-in at JO when the new building opens, from families that previously would have been thrilled to go to TR instead. Especially as families with babies and toddlers discover the playground at the new building, which I anticipate will be really nice and fill a real need north of H for a great outdoor play space (that neighborhood doesn't have as much green space as the Hill and the existing playground situation is wanting).

If TR was holding strong, you might be right about the 10 years. As it stands, JO is poised for a real renaissance. Especially because lotterying out of the JO boundary for LT/Maury/Brent is increasingly hard even in higher grades.

Some of you are forgetting how quickly LT and Maury went from Title 1 schools that IB families fled for charters to highly desirable IB options.

This is true, but can only happen with a principal who acts like IB families are welcome even if they are white/high SES. That’s not really on trend today.

Current principal at JO is not unwelcoming to IB families. I think he's kind of like the current principal of LT actually -- kind of a non-entity. PTO and a few very committed members of the teaching staff are much more visible, and PTO in particular is highly welcoming to IB families, as it is run by IB families very committed to the longterm success of the school.

I don't know how this compares to Miner, but I think it bodes well for JO.

This won't be good enough. L-T had a fabulous principal, Andrew Smith, during it's turnaround and he worked tirelessly to increase IB buy-in (while also maintaining the support of teachers; never underestimate how hard this is). L-T's admin has suffered since then and, yes, the PTO & teacher leadership have been enough to keep it stable, but that's because the heavy admin work had already been done.