Jefferson Academy Kool-Aid

[Anonymous]

In the 2015 boundary stuff, the boundary of Stuart Hobson was changed to match the boundaries of Peabody, Watson, Ludlow Taylor, and JO Wilson. How do so many Maury students have rights to Stuart Hobson? Are they grandfathered in or OOB to Maury? Just curious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And what happens when about half of the hardworking optimists get into Latin or Basis as the result of the lottery next Spring? Where does that leave the rest?

Basis may be cut off almost entirely if they start up their elementary school. If things look ugly now, they may get much worse in the next couple of years!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the 2015 boundary stuff, the boundary of Stuart Hobson was changed to match the boundaries of Peabody, Watson, Ludlow Taylor, and JO Wilson. How do so many Maury students have rights to Stuart Hobson? Are they grandfathered in or OOB to Maury? Just curious.

When the current 4th grade at Maury or Brent started at their schools, there were still many OOB spots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, as the middle school population grows (or potential middle school population), schools on the rise start to attract other well prepared students from OOB (see the Maury parent comments from earlier). It will take brave and hardworking parents to get the ball rolling, but it sounds like there is a principal at Jefferson willing to work with them.

Also, this is all a bit insulting to current Jefferson students who are proficient/advanced. There is already a cohort.

All 15 of them?

Taking this question seriously. I'm not going to look up the exact numbers right now, but if you assume Jefferson is roughly 300 kids and 12% are proficient or advanced, that's 36 kids. Spread over 3 grades, that's 12 per grade. Not a huge number but certainly enough for advanced classes which I know they have in at least math. Brent kids could easily double that. If you want all proficient/advanced kids in your entire class, you are in the wrong neighborhood...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, in the interests of fairness, I don't think anyone last night said Jefferson was the next Deal or that any of this would be easy. But they did let people know that the enrollment situation at Jefferson is improving, albeit it doesn't have nearly the demand as Basis or Latin. But demand is there which it isn't for Eliot-Hine or many other DCPS middle schools.

So you have done your due diligence in adding skepticism to the discussion. That is duly noted. Now how can we make a better middle school pathway for advanced/proficient students at Brent? I'm with the optimists who are working to improve Jefferson rather than throwing their hands up and getting a realtor or paying for private.

I would add that, yes, Hardy and Stuart-Hobson's test scores may improve faster than Jefferson's. But they are in demand now. So if Brent families would consider those schools now and the Hardy/SH aren't an option in the future, why not consider Jefferson if it gets to or could get to quickly the point Hardy is at now? It is my understanding that the proficient/advanced students at SH generally feel pretty good about their experience.

The fact that a school which has an enrollment of about 50 percent of its capacity has engineered a "waitlist" in order to create the perception that it is now "in demand" is too clever by half.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, in the interests of fairness, I don't think anyone last night said Jefferson was the next Deal or that any of this would be easy. But they did let people know that the enrollment situation at Jefferson is improving, albeit it doesn't have nearly the demand as Basis or Latin. But demand is there which it isn't for Eliot-Hine or many other DCPS middle schools.

So you have done your due diligence in adding skepticism to the discussion. That is duly noted. Now how can we make a better middle school pathway for advanced/proficient students at Brent? I'm with the optimists who are working to improve Jefferson rather than throwing their hands up and getting a realtor or paying for private.

I would add that, yes, Hardy and Stuart-Hobson's test scores may improve faster than Jefferson's. But they are in demand now. So if Brent families would consider those schools now and the Hardy/SH aren't an option in the future, why not consider Jefferson if it gets to or could get to quickly the point Hardy is at now? It is my understanding that the proficient/advanced students at SH generally feel pretty good about their experience.

The fact that a school which has an enrollment of about 50 percent of its capacity has engineered a "waitlist" in order to create the perception that it is now "in demand" is too clever by half.

Of all the criticisms on here, I think that one is one of the least meritorious. They closed the school down entirely several years ago and restarted it. Sure, if things really got rolling, their population would expand more rapidly. But it is expanding.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, as the middle school population grows (or potential middle school population), schools on the rise start to attract other well prepared students from OOB (see the Maury parent comments from earlier). It will take brave and hardworking parents to get the ball rolling, but it sounds like there is a principal at Jefferson willing to work with them.

Also, this is all a bit insulting to current Jefferson students who are proficient/advanced. There is already a cohort.

All 15 of them?

Taking this question seriously. I'm not going to look up the exact numbers right now, but if you assume Jefferson is roughly 300 kids and 12% are proficient or advanced, that's 36 kids. Spread over 3 grades, that's 12 per grade. Not a huge number but certainly enough for advanced classes which I know they have in at least math. Brent kids could easily double that. If you want all proficient/advanced kids in your entire class, you are in the wrong neighborhood...

I looked it up, by grade. ELA only, which is the better score with 16% proficient or advanced (math is 9%). Of course these kids are all a year older now.

6th - 11 of 97 students;
7th - 16 of 84 students;
8th - 17 of 96 students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, as the middle school population grows (or potential middle school population), schools on the rise start to attract other well prepared students from OOB (see the Maury parent comments from earlier). It will take brave and hardworking parents to get the ball rolling, but it sounds like there is a principal at Jefferson willing to work with them.

Also, this is all a bit insulting to current Jefferson students who are proficient/advanced. There is already a cohort.

All 15 of them?

Taking this question seriously. I'm not going to look up the exact numbers right now, but if you assume Jefferson is roughly 300 kids and 12% are proficient or advanced, that's 36 kids. Spread over 3 grades, that's 12 per grade. Not a huge number but certainly enough for advanced classes which I know they have in at least math. Brent kids could easily double that. If you want all proficient/advanced kids in your entire class, you are in the wrong neighborhood...

I looked it up, by grade. ELA only, which is the better score with 16% proficient or advanced (math is 9%). Of course these kids are all a year older now.

6th - 11 of 97 students;
7th - 16 of 84 students;
8th - 17 of 96 students.

Let's not play games. Of the 9% proficiency in math, which is a low bar, 0% are 5's, meaning "advanced." So even if we double the proficiency percentage to 18% with this hypothetical cohort of Brent students, that's still damn few who are truly advanced and a pathetic overall proficiency rate. And what of the optics and other social issues when the overwhelmingly white kids are placed in the "advanced" classes. Nothing there to worry about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, in the interests of fairness, I don't think anyone last night said Jefferson was the next Deal or that any of this would be easy. But they did let people know that the enrollment situation at Jefferson is improving, albeit it doesn't have nearly the demand as Basis or Latin. But demand is there which it isn't for Eliot-Hine or many other DCPS middle schools.

So you have done your due diligence in adding skepticism to the discussion. That is duly noted. Now how can we make a better middle school pathway for advanced/proficient students at Brent? I'm with the optimists who are working to improve Jefferson rather than throwing their hands up and getting a realtor or paying for private.

I would add that, yes, Hardy and Stuart-Hobson's test scores may improve faster than Jefferson's. But they are in demand now. So if Brent families would consider those schools now and the Hardy/SH aren't an option in the future, why not consider Jefferson if it gets to or could get to quickly the point Hardy is at now? It is my understanding that the proficient/advanced students at SH generally feel pretty good about their experience.

The fact that a school which has an enrollment of about 50 percent of its capacity has engineered a "waitlist" in order to create the perception that it is now "in demand" is too clever by half.

There's a lot of misconception about why schools offer OOB spots. Schools only offer OOB spaces with total confidence that the spaces will be filled and generate at least some waitlist. In the budgeting process the schools project enrollment and request budget accordingly. There's a strong disincentive to overestimating student enrollment because if the numbers don't materialize the schools lose the resources late in the process. Conversely, the principals are better served projecting realistically and almost conservatively because they can gain additional resources if the numbers demand it. They'd rather add if necessary late instead of completing their annual planning and subtracting resources at the beginning of the school year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, as the middle school population grows (or potential middle school population), schools on the rise start to attract other well prepared students from OOB (see the Maury parent comments from earlier). It will take brave and hardworking parents to get the ball rolling, but it sounds like there is a principal at Jefferson willing to work with them.

Also, this is all a bit insulting to current Jefferson students who are proficient/advanced. There is already a cohort.

All 15 of them?

Taking this question seriously. I'm not going to look up the exact numbers right now, but if you assume Jefferson is roughly 300 kids and 12% are proficient or advanced, that's 36 kids. Spread over 3 grades, that's 12 per grade. Not a huge number but certainly enough for advanced classes which I know they have in at least math. Brent kids could easily double that. If you want all proficient/advanced kids in your entire class, you are in the wrong neighborhood...

I looked it up, by grade. ELA only, which is the better score with 16% proficient or advanced (math is 9%). Of course these kids are all a year older now.

6th - 11 of 97 students;
7th - 16 of 84 students;
8th - 17 of 96 students.

Let's not play games. Of the 9% proficiency in math, which is a low bar, 0% are 5's, meaning "advanced." So even if we double the proficiency percentage to 18% with this hypothetical cohort of Brent students, that's still damn few who are truly advanced and a pathetic overall proficiency rate. And what of the optics and other social issues when the overwhelmingly white kids are placed in the "advanced" classes. Nothing there to worry about.

There are only a small handful of schools with >%15 over 5 and none with >%20 over 5. Even the best schools are more like in the 15% 5 range. That seems to be the pattern in math throughout DC but the number of advanced students in struggling schools is eye opening. Over 1/3 of schools have 0 advanced math students and roughly the same number have 1 or 2 students scoring 5 on math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, in the interests of fairness, I don't think anyone last night said Jefferson was the next Deal or that any of this would be easy. But they did let people know that the enrollment situation at Jefferson is improving, albeit it doesn't have nearly the demand as Basis or Latin. But demand is there which it isn't for Eliot-Hine or many other DCPS middle schools.

So you have done your due diligence in adding skepticism to the discussion. That is duly noted. Now how can we make a better middle school pathway for advanced/proficient students at Brent? I'm with the optimists who are working to improve Jefferson rather than throwing their hands up and getting a realtor or paying for private.

I would add that, yes, Hardy and Stuart-Hobson's test scores may improve faster than Jefferson's. But they are in demand now. So if Brent families would consider those schools now and the Hardy/SH aren't an option in the future, why not consider Jefferson if it gets to or could get to quickly the point Hardy is at now? It is my understanding that the proficient/advanced students at SH generally feel pretty good about their experience.

The fact that a school which has an enrollment of about 50 percent of its capacity has engineered a "waitlist" in order to create the perception that it is now "in demand" is too clever by half.

There's a lot of misconception about why schools offer OOB spots. Schools only offer OOB spaces with total confidence that the spaces will be filled and generate at least some waitlist. In the budgeting process the schools project enrollment and request budget accordingly. There's a strong disincentive to overestimating student enrollment because if the numbers don't materialize the schools lose the resources late in the process. Conversely, the principals are better served projecting realistically and almost conservatively because they can gain additional resources if the numbers demand it. They'd rather add if necessary late instead of completing their annual planning and subtracting resources at the beginning of the school year.

That's objectively interesting but ignores the reality that only a third of Jefferson students reside in the attendance zone. And the relaunch of Jefferson as a so-called "Academy" is a copout. Fully one-third of students tested at PARCC Level 1 - not meeting expectations- and were supposed to believe there is a viable IB MYP?

[Anonymous]

Why not set up a comprehensive middle school on Capitol Hill spread out on two campuses? 6th grade at Stuart-Hobson and 7th and 8th grade at Elliott-Hine. Feeders would be JO Wilson, LT, Watkins, Brent, Maury, Tyler, SWS, Payne, Miner, Van Ness, and Amidon-Bowen. There could be a Spanish immersion track to support students from Tyler Bilingual as well as Hill families from LAMB and Mundo Verde looking for a neighborhood school for the MS years. Turn Jefferson into a test-in STEM MS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, in the interests of fairness, I don't think anyone last night said Jefferson was the next Deal or that any of this would be easy. But they did let people know that the enrollment situation at Jefferson is improving, albeit it doesn't have nearly the demand as Basis or Latin. But demand is there which it isn't for Eliot-Hine or many other DCPS middle schools.

So you have done your due diligence in adding skepticism to the discussion. That is duly noted. Now how can we make a better middle school pathway for advanced/proficient students at Brent? I'm with the optimists who are working to improve Jefferson rather than throwing their hands up and getting a realtor or paying for private.

I would add that, yes, Hardy and Stuart-Hobson's test scores may improve faster than Jefferson's. But they are in demand now. So if Brent families would consider those schools now and the Hardy/SH aren't an option in the future, why not consider Jefferson if it gets to or could get to quickly the point Hardy is at now? It is my understanding that the proficient/advanced students at SH generally feel pretty good about their experience.

The fact that a school which has an enrollment of about 50 percent of its capacity has engineered a "waitlist" in order to create the perception that it is now "in demand" is too clever by half.

There's a lot of misconception about why schools offer OOB spots. Schools only offer OOB spaces with total confidence that the spaces will be filled and generate at least some waitlist. In the budgeting process the schools project enrollment and request budget accordingly. There's a strong disincentive to overestimating student enrollment because if the numbers don't materialize the schools lose the resources late in the process. Conversely, the principals are better served projecting realistically and almost conservatively because they can gain additional resources if the numbers demand it. They'd rather add if necessary late instead of completing their annual planning and subtracting resources at the beginning of the school year.

That's objectively interesting but ignores the reality that only a third of Jefferson students reside in the attendance zone. And the relaunch of Jefferson as a so-called "Academy" is a copout. Fully one-third of students tested at PARCC Level 1 - not meeting expectations- and were supposed to believe there is a viable IB MYP?

so which is it -- you want an under-enrolled school or an all IB school? Who cares where they live if they wish to attend. No one at Brent has to worry about the waitlist

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And what happens when about half of the hardworking optimists get into Latin or Basis as the result of the lottery next Spring? Where does that leave the rest?

This is a real problem. The raft is taking on water, and the rats on it who can abandon ship do so, almost to a family. At least some of the hardworking optimists don't have upper grades kids yet, so we have more years before they become a flight risk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, as the middle school population grows (or potential middle school population), schools on the rise start to attract other well prepared students from OOB (see the Maury parent comments from earlier). It will take brave and hardworking parents to get the ball rolling, but it sounds like there is a principal at Jefferson willing to work with them.

Also, this is all a bit insulting to current Jefferson students who are proficient/advanced. There is already a cohort.

All 15 of them?

Taking this question seriously. I'm not going to look up the exact numbers right now, but if you assume Jefferson is roughly 300 kids and 12% are proficient or advanced, that's 36 kids. Spread over 3 grades, that's 12 per grade. Not a huge number but certainly enough for advanced classes which I know they have in at least math. Brent kids could easily double that. If you want all proficient/advanced kids in your entire class, you are in the wrong neighborhood...

I looked it up, by grade. ELA only, which is the better score with 16% proficient or advanced (math is 9%). Of course these kids are all a year older now.

6th - 11 of 97 students;
7th - 16 of 84 students;
8th - 17 of 96 students.

Let's not play games. Of the 9% proficiency in math, which is a low bar, 0% are 5's, meaning "advanced." So even if we double the proficiency percentage to 18% with this hypothetical cohort of Brent students, that's still damn few who are truly advanced and a pathetic overall proficiency rate. And what of the optics and other social issues when the overwhelmingly white kids are placed in the "advanced" classes. Nothing there to worry about.

There are only a small handful of schools with >%15 over 5 and none with >%20 over 5. Even the best schools are more like in the 15% 5 range. That seems to be the pattern in math throughout DC but the number of advanced students in struggling schools is eye opening. Over 1/3 of schools have 0 advanced math students and roughly the same number have 1 or 2 students scoring 5 on math.

It seems like you moved the goalposts. I wasn't raising an issue about there not being 15% of students who are advanced. Someone made the point that there was enough of a cohort to offer "advanced" classes but the data shows that Jefferson has exactly one student who is a "Level 5" which can be inferred to mean "advanced." If the suggestion is that proficient students be segregated and tracked then just come out and say that so we can stop pretending that there is a cohort of G+T students at Jefferson.