MS Capitol Hill

[Anonymous]

I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There have been violent incidents at EH within the last year. The main concern is whether kids are actually learning any on grade level material. The 8th grade ELA and math scores don’t crack 20% proficiency.

Do you have a kid there? It’s curious how you dug up this thread after almost 2 weeks of inactivity to post this.

counterpoint: my kid at EH has said he has never seen a “violent incident” whatever that means. He has recounted some fights (that were between white kids fwiw …) It sounds much calmer than I have heard about other MS. I’ve been there at arrival and dismissal and it’s very well controlled. They are very strict on behavior and will remove/suspend/give detention as needed.

AFAIK the most recent 8th grade scores reflect the worst of the post-pandemic year that saw a big narrowing of the class size. But I know kids from that year that went on to HS that anyone here posting would be thrilled about.

+1

DCPS puts us in a tough spot giving us one piece of standardized test data to use and compare schools - and 6 months after the fact at that. It wasn't just COVID that impacted things in the past few years at middle schools - at least at EH, part or all of those 3 years the kids were in trailers. Before/during that renovation I think that turned some families off. I wrote this last week before half of this thread was deleted - but I really wish that somehow the schools were able to share iReady or MAP growth at the cohort level to show how many students made 1, 2, or 3 years of growth during any given school year.

PARCC allows us to compare apples to apples. Elliot Hine wasn’t the only school that experienced the pandemic. That’s not really a great excuse when similar schools, such as SH, have double the proficiency scores.

Ok please post here a breakdown comparing the results between SH and EH, stratified by at risk/not at risk, and by race. Then please take a look at the aggregate SH v EH scores and explain how they are meaningfully different.

Elliot Hine’s scores are significantly worse:

Proficiency rates for 8th grade at EH:
ELA: 15 of 75 (20%)
Math (8th grade): data suppressed (<5%)
Math (Algebra 1): data suppressed (<5%)

Proficiency rates for 8th grade at SH:
ELA: 68 of 146 (47%)
Math (8th grade): 6 of 114 (5%)
Math (Algebra 1): 22 of 29 (76%)

I asked for the 8th grade data disaggregated by race & at-risk status.

And what do you make of the aggregated data for all grades being similar between the two schools? Seems to me that EH just had a more difficult 8th grade year but 7th and 8th were better than SH.

So if the 95%+ of kids who are not proficient in math at Elliot Hine are a certain race that matters … why?

Because the assertion here is that EH is a “bad” school that cannot teach the average DCUM kid (who is white and privileged). The data show otherwise. Don’t pretend that this is all about how much you care about black kids. (FWIW EH has a lot of black kids doing well - but yes, also a lot of kids without the privileges of the average DCUM kid.)

Here is the dirty little secret at these poor performing schools where 95% plus kids are not grade level. The white parents supplement a lot.

And no there are not a lot of black kids doing well if less then 5% of kids are on grade level of above in math and only 20% of kids are on grade level in ELA. If you further break down to above grade level, I bet there would be less then a handful above grade level.

The data is there and I agree with another poster why PP keep asserting things when it’s clearly not true.

In my experience and observation actually the parents of high achievng white kids at these schools do NOT supplement a lot. Like they are not all enrolling their kids in mathnasium or sending them to academic summer camps or whatever. They definitely are not hiring tutors. They aren't doing the stuff you see in wealthy communities in private schools or wealthy publics.

Rather I think what you are seeing is a self-selecting group. Upper middle class parents whose kids struggle or don't easily perform at or above grade level in elementary are much less likely to send their kids to a school like E-H. Those are the parents who will prioritize getting into a charter or moving for better schools because they perceive their kids as needing more of a push to do well and worry that being in a school where 90% of students are below grade level will not be sufficient for helping them improve. They don't just send them to E-H and hire a tutor -- they choose a different school.

You also see this with mc and umc black families in the Eastern feeders btw. Parents who care about academics but whose kids struggle with reading or do poorly on the PARCC (CAPE) in elementary don't just stick it out in these schools and hope for the best. They go elsewhere (charters or moving or privates just like with white families). But there are also black families whose kids do well in elementary at the E-H feeders and as with those white families decide to stay within the feeder system even though they know there are many low performing kids because it is socially easier for their kids and the commute is easy if their kids aren't struggling why rock the boat.

Notably these parents don't worry about behavioral issues because the truth is that E-H and it's feeders don't have a lot of behavioral problems. Some but you see that at any public school.

Anyway I see this argument all the time that white parents at schools like this all supplement a lot and it just is not true. There are reasons the white kids at these schools tend to be strong academically but it's not because their parents are doing a ton of work with them outside of school.

+1

Depending on how you define supplementing... If you define it as mathnasium or outside tutors, then I agree with PP most of our peers at our DCPS Cap Hill middle school do not supplement.
Also agreeing with PP, I have wondered if it is a self-selecting pool or if the teachers at our elementary school were just amazing, because all of the peers that my child matriculated with from elementary have been scoring off the charts for years.
If you define supplementing as reading a lot, going to museums, doing things like kiwi crate when we were stuck at home during COVID, then yes I guess we supplement?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There have been violent incidents at EH within the last year. The main concern is whether kids are actually learning any on grade level material. The 8th grade ELA and math scores don’t crack 20% proficiency.

Do you have a kid there? It’s curious how you dug up this thread after almost 2 weeks of inactivity to post this.

counterpoint: my kid at EH has said he has never seen a “violent incident” whatever that means. He has recounted some fights (that were between white kids fwiw …) It sounds much calmer than I have heard about other MS. I’ve been there at arrival and dismissal and it’s very well controlled. They are very strict on behavior and will remove/suspend/give detention as needed.

AFAIK the most recent 8th grade scores reflect the worst of the post-pandemic year that saw a big narrowing of the class size. But I know kids from that year that went on to HS that anyone here posting would be thrilled about.

+1

DCPS puts us in a tough spot giving us one piece of standardized test data to use and compare schools - and 6 months after the fact at that. It wasn't just COVID that impacted things in the past few years at middle schools - at least at EH, part or all of those 3 years the kids were in trailers. Before/during that renovation I think that turned some families off. I wrote this last week before half of this thread was deleted - but I really wish that somehow the schools were able to share iReady or MAP growth at the cohort level to show how many students made 1, 2, or 3 years of growth during any given school year.

PARCC allows us to compare apples to apples. Elliot Hine wasn’t the only school that experienced the pandemic. That’s not really a great excuse when similar schools, such as SH, have double the proficiency scores.

Ok please post here a breakdown comparing the results between SH and EH, stratified by at risk/not at risk, and by race. Then please take a look at the aggregate SH v EH scores and explain how they are meaningfully different.

Elliot Hine’s scores are significantly worse:

Proficiency rates for 8th grade at EH:
ELA: 15 of 75 (20%)
Math (8th grade): data suppressed (<5%)
Math (Algebra 1): data suppressed (<5%)

Proficiency rates for 8th grade at SH:
ELA: 68 of 146 (47%)
Math (8th grade): 6 of 114 (5%)
Math (Algebra 1): 22 of 29 (76%)

I asked for the 8th grade data disaggregated by race & at-risk status.

And what do you make of the aggregated data for all grades being similar between the two schools? Seems to me that EH just had a more difficult 8th grade year but 7th and 8th were better than SH.

So if the 95%+ of kids who are not proficient in math at Elliot Hine are a certain race that matters … why?

Because the assertion here is that EH is a “bad” school that cannot teach the average DCUM kid (who is white and privileged). The data show otherwise. Don’t pretend that this is all about how much you care about black kids. (FWIW EH has a lot of black kids doing well - but yes, also a lot of kids without the privileges of the average DCUM kid.)

Here is the dirty little secret at these poor performing schools where 95% plus kids are not grade level. The white parents supplement a lot.

And no there are not a lot of black kids doing well if less then 5% of kids are on grade level of above in math and only 20% of kids are on grade level in ELA. If you further break down to above grade level, I bet there would be less then a handful above grade level.

The data is there and I agree with another poster why PP keep asserting things when it’s clearly not true.

In my experience and observation actually the parents of high achievng white kids at these schools do NOT supplement a lot. Like they are not all enrolling their kids in mathnasium or sending them to academic summer camps or whatever. They definitely are not hiring tutors. They aren't doing the stuff you see in wealthy communities in private schools or wealthy publics.

Rather I think what you are seeing is a self-selecting group. Upper middle class parents whose kids struggle or don't easily perform at or above grade level in elementary are much less likely to send their kids to a school like E-H. Those are the parents who will prioritize getting into a charter or moving for better schools because they perceive their kids as needing more of a push to do well and worry that being in a school where 90% of students are below grade level will not be sufficient for helping them improve. They don't just send them to E-H and hire a tutor -- they choose a different school.

You also see this with mc and umc black families in the Eastern feeders btw. Parents who care about academics but whose kids struggle with reading or do poorly on the PARCC (CAPE) in elementary don't just stick it out in these schools and hope for the best. They go elsewhere (charters or moving or privates just like with white families). But there are also black families whose kids do well in elementary at the E-H feeders and as with those white families decide to stay within the feeder system even though they know there are many low performing kids because it is socially easier for their kids and the commute is easy if their kids aren't struggling why rock the boat.

Notably these parents don't worry about behavioral issues because the truth is that E-H and it's feeders don't have a lot of behavioral problems. Some but you see that at any public school.

Anyway I see this argument all the time that white parents at schools like this all supplement a lot and it just is not true. There are reasons the white kids at these schools tend to be strong academically but it's not because their parents are doing a ton of work with them outside of school.

+1

Depending on how you define supplementing... If you define it as mathnasium or outside tutors, then I agree with PP most of our peers at our DCPS Cap Hill middle school do not supplement.
Also agreeing with PP, I have wondered if it is a self-selecting pool or if the teachers at our elementary school were just amazing, because all of the peers that my child matriculated with from elementary have been scoring off the charts for years.
If you define supplementing as reading a lot, going to museums, doing things like kiwi crate when we were stuck at home during COVID, then yes I guess we supplement?

PP here and I don't consider any of that "supplementing." We do that stuff to but our kids learn the vast majority of actual content at school. We might get a summer bridge workbook but we don't make our kids do them -- it's like "here's an option for the road trip."

When I hear people saying "whatever all the privileged kids' parents are supplementing and that's why they get 4s and 5s on PARCC at these [supposedly] terrible schools" then what I expect to hear is that these kids are in year round math tutoring and doing CTY camps or similar or their. And by and large the families I know with kids at EH and SH don't do that stuff. I do know a handful of kids doing AoPS or mathnasium but it's generally because either they are falling behind (in which case any conscientious parent would supplement no matter where your kid is in school) or they literally just love math and it's a hobby. But supplementing to replace the learning that is supposedly not happening in school -- nope.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

Yes I can tell you that, because PARCC is heavily content based, and the kids like mine do exactly the same as they’d do at the more affluent Deal or sought-after Latin. And I can see my kid growing and maturing nicely, learning to manage his workload, get along with others, have fun, and all those good things along with being able to roll out of bed at 8am and walk to school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

Yes I can tell you that, because PARCC is heavily content based, and the kids like mine do exactly the same as they’d do at the more affluent Deal or sought-after Latin. And I can see my kid growing and maturing nicely, learning to manage his workload, get along with others, have fun, and all those good things along with being able to roll out of bed at 8am and walk to school.

You are delusional if you think students at EH are learning all the same material as students at Deal, Latin or BASIS. Proficient in PARCC material is the floor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

Yes I can tell you that, because PARCC is heavily content based, and the kids like mine do exactly the same as they’d do at the more affluent Deal or sought-after Latin. And I can see my kid growing and maturing nicely, learning to manage his workload, get along with others, have fun, and all those good things along with being able to roll out of bed at 8am and walk to school.

You are delusional if you think students at EH are learning all the same material as students at Deal, Latin or BASIS. Proficient in PARCC material is the floor.

And most EH students are not even proficient!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

Yes I can tell you that, because PARCC is heavily content based, and the kids like mine do exactly the same as they’d do at the more affluent Deal or sought-after Latin. And I can see my kid growing and maturing nicely, learning to manage his workload, get along with others, have fun, and all those good things along with being able to roll out of bed at 8am and walk to school.

You are delusional if you think students at EH are learning all the same material as students at Deal, Latin or BASIS. Proficient in PARCC material is the floor.

+1. And I call BS that families at EH don’t supplement and that very high performing kids are going there and getting what they need.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

Yes I can tell you that, because PARCC is heavily content based, and the kids like mine do exactly the same as they’d do at the more affluent Deal or sought-after Latin. And I can see my kid growing and maturing nicely, learning to manage his workload, get along with others, have fun, and all those good things along with being able to roll out of bed at 8am and walk to school.

You are delusional if you think students at EH are learning all the same material as students at Deal, Latin or BASIS. Proficient in PARCC material is the floor.

+1. And I call BS that families at EH don’t supplement and that very high performing kids are going there and getting what they need.

Some people on here are so strange. You literally have multiple parents who are on here sharing their actual experience, and from the outside anonymous keyboard accuse them of lying? Seems to say more about you if you think kids can't possibly do well without supplementing?
And separately, I think it is possible to agree both that kids in these middle schools are learning, and also agree that standardized tests don't actually measure a whole lot about the kids true skills/abilities. That is a whole separate thread for another time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

Yes I can tell you that, because PARCC is heavily content based, and the kids like mine do exactly the same as they’d do at the more affluent Deal or sought-after Latin. And I can see my kid growing and maturing nicely, learning to manage his workload, get along with others, have fun, and all those good things along with being able to roll out of bed at 8am and walk to school.

You are delusional if you think students at EH are learning all the same material as students at Deal, Latin or BASIS. Proficient in PARCC material is the floor.

Ok well, do you have a child at EH? If PARCC is the floor then explain how EH is doing substantially better than Latin and DCI, two HRCS around here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

Yes I can tell you that, because PARCC is heavily content based, and the kids like mine do exactly the same as they’d do at the more affluent Deal or sought-after Latin. And I can see my kid growing and maturing nicely, learning to manage his workload, get along with others, have fun, and all those good things along with being able to roll out of bed at 8am and walk to school.

You are delusional if you think students at EH are learning all the same material as students at Deal, Latin or BASIS. Proficient in PARCC material is the floor.

+1. And I call BS that families at EH don’t supplement and that very high performing kids are going there and getting what they need.

What motivates someone with presumably no kid at the school to pontificate?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

Yes I can tell you that, because PARCC is heavily content based, and the kids like mine do exactly the same as they’d do at the more affluent Deal or sought-after Latin. And I can see my kid growing and maturing nicely, learning to manage his workload, get along with others, have fun, and all those good things along with being able to roll out of bed at 8am and walk to school.

You are delusional if you think students at EH are learning all the same material as students at Deal, Latin or BASIS. Proficient in PARCC material is the floor.

+1. And I call BS that families at EH don’t supplement and that very high performing kids are going there and getting what they need.

Some people on here are so strange. You literally have multiple parents who are on here sharing their actual experience, and from the outside anonymous keyboard accuse them of lying? Seems to say more about you if you think kids can't possibly do well without supplementing?
And separately, I think it is possible to agree both that kids in these middle schools are learning, and also agree that standardized tests don't actually measure a whole lot about the kids true skills/abilities. That is a whole separate thread for another time.

What motivates them is a psychological defense mechanism. They are so obsessed with the success of their own kids and the sacrifices they make, that they cannot accept that some families in their own demographic will make a different choice and do just fine. It shakes their world view.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

Yes I can tell you that, because PARCC is heavily content based, and the kids like mine do exactly the same as they’d do at the more affluent Deal or sought-after Latin. And I can see my kid growing and maturing nicely, learning to manage his workload, get along with others, have fun, and all those good things along with being able to roll out of bed at 8am and walk to school.

You are delusional if you think students at EH are learning all the same material as students at Deal, Latin or BASIS. Proficient in PARCC material is the floor.

Ok well, do you have a child at EH? If PARCC is the floor then explain how EH is doing substantially better than Latin and DCI, two HRCS around here?

I cannot speak for all of the PPs, but I'm not sure if anybody is trying to say that Cap Hill middle schools are the best/better. From the way I read it, parents are trying to say that they are good options and not the horrible places some describe them as. And at least for myself, as somebody who really doesn't make decisions based on once/year standardized test, just like I don't think EH SH or Jeffersons scores define them, I don't think that Latin, DCI etc have everything figured out perfectly just because kids score higher on a test given once/year. There are a lot of factors that contribute to kids doing well or not doing well in those tests, and as has been said here, those tests aren't even the best judge of what kids are learning.
And to answer someone's question, I judge the quality of my childs learning by what I see them doing at home, what they talk about learning at school and the way they can explain the math that they are working on when they are doing homework, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

Yes I can tell you that, because PARCC is heavily content based, and the kids like mine do exactly the same as they’d do at the more affluent Deal or sought-after Latin. And I can see my kid growing and maturing nicely, learning to manage his workload, get along with others, have fun, and all those good things along with being able to roll out of bed at 8am and walk to school.

You are delusional if you think students at EH are learning all the same material as students at Deal, Latin or BASIS. Proficient in PARCC material is the floor.

Ok well, do you have a child at EH? If PARCC is the floor then explain how EH is doing substantially better than Latin and DCI, two HRCS around here?

It’s literally not. It’s doing substantially worse. You just picked your favorite data subset so you could ignore the vast majority of EH kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm admittedly not great at working with the PARCC data spreadsheets, but from what I can tell, EH's 7th grade math results for white kids* looks basically identical to all other schools, and even better than some DCUM favs:

% Meets/Exceeds:
EH - 84%
SH - 70%
Deal - 86%
Hardy - 81%
Basis - 87%
Latin - 82%
DCI- 69%

* I'm only breaking this down for white kids to dispel the notion that your privileged kid will not learn anything. I would love to do a deeper dive on how the MS do with educating other demographics but that's not really what the discussion is about here, is it?

For me it is. You’re comparing a tiny subset of all test takers at Elliot Hine to cherry pick data, when the data shows that the vast majority of kids at Elliot Hine are below grade level. The vast majority of kids are at or above grade level at all those other schools (except perhaps
SH). You cannot tell me that the learning environment at Elliot Hine is going to come close to the same level of education as those other schools when you have so many students struggling with grade level material.

Yes I can tell you that, because PARCC is heavily content based, and the kids like mine do exactly the same as they’d do at the more affluent Deal or sought-after Latin. And I can see my kid growing and maturing nicely, learning to manage his workload, get along with others, have fun, and all those good things along with being able to roll out of bed at 8am and walk to school.

You are delusional if you think students at EH are learning all the same material as students at Deal, Latin or BASIS. Proficient in PARCC material is the floor.

+1. And I call BS that families at EH don’t supplement and that very high performing kids are going there and getting what they need.

Some people on here are so strange. You literally have multiple parents who are on here sharing their actual experience, and from the outside anonymous keyboard accuse them of lying? Seems to say more about you if you think kids can't possibly do well without supplementing?
And separately, I think it is possible to agree both that kids in these middle schools are learning, and also agree that standardized tests don't actually measure a whole lot about the kids true skills/abilities. That is a whole separate thread for another time.

What motivates them is a psychological defense mechanism. They are so obsessed with the success of their own kids and the sacrifices they make, that they cannot accept that some families in their own demographic will make a different choice and do just fine. It shakes their world view.

I can speak to what motivates me. I know several EH families and they’re constantly trying to get other people to send their high performing kids to EH so their own children will have a good cohort because they struck out in the lottery. They come on this website and post misleading things about the test scores in every thread, including this one. If they truly thought the school was good, they wouldn’t be trying to change its demographics so desperately. It’s gross.