Stoddert and Key to get expansions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A BIG part of the reason why they did the boundary work with DME Smith a couple years ago, frankly, was that Wilson was overcrowded and building another WOTP HS was going to be a ridiculous admission that the rest of the city's DCPS had failed to attract families. Because the truth is that they can't just build another floor on top, and the natural ways to have the school work are (1) citywide lottery, which has policy advantages that are real, but DCUM dismisses, and (2) tightening geographic boundaries to cut off the eastward flank. A Ward 3 high school that's only for Ward 3 would likely suit Ward 3 demand long term. One that is open to its current enrollment pattern is not sustainable.

The response is not to kidnap Ellington and turn it into Wilson II and force them into Shaw JHS, build a second WOTP high school, or something similar, the correct response is bar admissions from east of Rock Creek Park and make everyone build up the schools in their neighborhoods.

That's the outcome I want. I don't want my kids to go to Wilson. I want them to thrive at Roosevelt or Coolidge in our Ward or beat your kids out for SWW or Banneker. Please, go ahead and talk about MCPS or private, but that's my plan and my policy preference.

I'll tell you this. If a Mayor or a Ward 4 CM tells me that they support a second high school in Ward 3, I am going to go all-out to tear that policy choice down or throw that person out of office. That is not a solution for our school system and just throwing more money at delaying a solution.

You left off an option: limit OOB feeder rights. If you just made OOB feeder a lottery preference and not a right the crowding at Wilson and Deal would be fixed right away and you wouldn't have to move any boundaries. If Michelle Rhee had done that ten years ago when feeder rights were created nobody would have squawked at the time and we never would have gotten into this mess.

People keep saying to limit the OOB feeder rights. Isn't this being taken care of naturally anyway? IB folks are getting shut out for PK4 at most Deal feeders now. Where are people getting in OOB to a Deal feeder at this point? I know this was more of an option several years ago, but those kids would have to be grandfathered in to any policy change regardless. And honestly, how many kids are we really talking about? 100? I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but just seems like it would be a big fight to change a policy that has been in place for a long time that seems like it will soon be moot. I just don't see this as being the biggest contributor to the overcrowding.

Far more than 100.

For example: 12% of Lafayette was OOB in 2016-17 or 91 students; 7% of Janney or 50 students, etc.

But those numbers are across 7 grades, not one or 4 (number of high school grades). They could try and end feeder rights but it would require several years of grandfathering. People like to say that the feeder right policy for OOB hasn’t been around long. It’s been almost a decade, which is longer than the 7 years my family has been in the DCPS system. Acting as if it’s so easy to wipe it away is really naive.

It is far easier end feeder paths than it is to change boundaries.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A BIG part of the reason why they did the boundary work with DME Smith a couple years ago, frankly, was that Wilson was overcrowded and building another WOTP HS was going to be a ridiculous admission that the rest of the city's DCPS had failed to attract families. Because the truth is that they can't just build another floor on top, and the natural ways to have the school work are (1) citywide lottery, which has policy advantages that are real, but DCUM dismisses, and (2) tightening geographic boundaries to cut off the eastward flank. A Ward 3 high school that's only for Ward 3 would likely suit Ward 3 demand long term. One that is open to its current enrollment pattern is not sustainable.

The response is not to kidnap Ellington and turn it into Wilson II and force them into Shaw JHS, build a second WOTP high school, or something similar, the correct response is bar admissions from east of Rock Creek Park and make everyone build up the schools in their neighborhoods.

That's the outcome I want. I don't want my kids to go to Wilson. I want them to thrive at Roosevelt or Coolidge in our Ward or beat your kids out for SWW or Banneker. Please, go ahead and talk about MCPS or private, but that's my plan and my policy preference.

I'll tell you this. If a Mayor or a Ward 4 CM tells me that they support a second high school in Ward 3, I am going to go all-out to tear that policy choice down or throw that person out of office. That is not a solution for our school system and just throwing more money at delaying a solution.

You left off an option: limit OOB feeder rights. If you just made OOB feeder a lottery preference and not a right the crowding at Wilson and Deal would be fixed right away and you wouldn't have to move any boundaries. If Michelle Rhee had done that ten years ago when feeder rights were created nobody would have squawked at the time and we never would have gotten into this mess.

People keep saying to limit the OOB feeder rights. Isn't this being taken care of naturally anyway? IB folks are getting shut out for PK4 at most Deal feeders now. Where are people getting in OOB to a Deal feeder at this point? I know this was more of an option several years ago, but those kids would have to be grandfathered in to any policy change regardless. And honestly, how many kids are we really talking about? 100? I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but just seems like it would be a big fight to change a policy that has been in place for a long time that seems like it will soon be moot. I just don't see this as being the biggest contributor to the overcrowding.

Far more than 100.

For example: 12% of Lafayette was OOB in 2016-17 or 91 students; 7% of Janney or 50 students, etc.

But those numbers are across 7 grades, not one or 4 (number of high school grades). They could try and end feeder rights but it would require several years of grandfathering. People like to say that the feeder right policy for OOB hasn’t been around long. It’s been almost a decade, which is longer than the 7 years my family has been in the DCPS system. Acting as if it’s so easy to wipe it away is really naive.

It is far easier end feeder paths than it is to change boundaries.

Politically speaking, you’re wrong. Ending feeder paths for OOB kids will impact families and every ward in the city and they will all be very loud in their disapproval and will quickly make the argument about race and income. It’s way easier to piss off one or two school communities by cutting them out. Ask Eaton.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are going to have to create another by-right HS WoTP, right?

To me, it's only a matter of time.

Or change the feeder pattern and route some students to another by-right high school.

Or stop letting kids who got into an elementary or middle school OOB continue on through the feeder pattern. If you get a lottery spot at Hearst, you're there through 5th grade and that's the only guarantee you get. Deal figures out how many extra spaces it has and does a lottery for them (DCPS could give a preference for OOB kids at feeder schools though personally I'd rather they didn't). Same with high school.

There are fewer than 1000 IB kids at Wilson now. The school is not out of room by any means. Having some of the OOB kids attending their IB high schools (which should get more funding for things like honors and AP classes even if the classes are tiny at first, extracurriculars, guidance counselors, etc.) would be better for those schools and better for traffic and better for the district as a whole.

Time to pick on a new school. Nobody lotteries OOB into Hearst anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They are going to have to create another by-right HS WoTP, right?

To me, it's only a matter of time.

Or change the feeder pattern and route some students to another by-right high school.

Or stop letting kids who got into an elementary or middle school OOB continue on through the feeder pattern. If you get a lottery spot at Hearst, you're there through 5th grade and that's the only guarantee you get. Deal figures out how many extra spaces it has and does a lottery for them (DCPS could give a preference for OOB kids at feeder schools though personally I'd rather they didn't). Same with high school.

There are fewer than 1000 IB kids at Wilson now. The school is not out of room by any means. Having some of the OOB kids attending their IB high schools (which should get more funding for things like honors and AP classes even if the classes are tiny at first, extracurriculars, guidance counselors, etc.) would be better for those schools and better for traffic and better for the district as a whole.

Time to pick on a new school. Nobody lotteries OOB into Hearst anymore.

Clarify. Less than a handful of OOB siblings got in. One in January. School gets more IB as each older class graduates out. This excludes the three CES (autism) classes, of course.

[Anonymous]

Let’s be clear that not all OOB students are from out of the ward and all are not low income and disadvantaged. They just want good options and programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Just what are the policy advantages of a "citywide lottery," pray tell? I assume (perhaps incorrectly?) that any of these said "policy advantages" are based on a premise that the same capable students who currently inhabit a middle school like Deal are going to enter a city-wide high school lottery. I think the likelihood of that premise being correct is close to nil. Please tell me how the outcome could be otherwise, given the evidence that already exists over the decades in this city [hint: parents either move away, or move away if they don't get into a decent Charter]? Or, if you agree that the likelihood of the most capable students at Deal entering a lottery for HS is near zero, what would be the advantages of a citywide lottery?

The advantage of a citywide lottery is that ability to pay for proximity to Tenleytown is not used as a criterion for access to what you believe are the better city schools. It undoes some of the effect of residential segregation. It requires Ward 3 to invest in citywide solutions rather than hoard privilege. Should I go on? There is a long literature on this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Just what are the policy advantages of a "citywide lottery," pray tell? I assume (perhaps incorrectly?) that any of these said "policy advantages" are based on a premise that the same capable students who currently inhabit a middle school like Deal are going to enter a city-wide high school lottery. I think the likelihood of that premise being correct is close to nil. Please tell me how the outcome could be otherwise, given the evidence that already exists over the decades in this city [hint: parents either move away, or move away if they don't get into a decent Charter]? Or, if you agree that the likelihood of the most capable students at Deal entering a lottery for HS is near zero, what would be the advantages of a citywide lottery?

The advantage of a citywide lottery is that ability to pay for proximity to Tenleytown is not used as a criterion for access to what you believe are the better city schools. It undoes some of the effect of residential segregation. It requires Ward 3 to invest in citywide solutions rather than hoard privilege. Should I go on? There is a long literature on this.

Sounds good, but I think you missed the PP's point, which is that the effect of abolishing neighborhood schools would not be the creation of better schools throughout the city, but renewed flight to the suburbs and privates, as it had happened for decades. Schools are good when they are primarily attended by good students, and there currently aren't enough of those in DC to create good schools throughout the city. It's a nice idea to prevent the "hoarding of privilege", but that privilege isn't emanating from the schools. The schools are an effect of pre-existing privilege, which you are not going to redistribute by trying to redistribute school access. But I'm sure you know this and still think there is a magic way a system that is almost 80% economically disadvantaged could be turned into an educational utopia if only Ward 3 could be forced to "invest" in city-wide solutions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Just what are the policy advantages of a "citywide lottery," pray tell? I assume (perhaps incorrectly?) that any of these said "policy advantages" are based on a premise that the same capable students who currently inhabit a middle school like Deal are going to enter a city-wide high school lottery. I think the likelihood of that premise being correct is close to nil. Please tell me how the outcome could be otherwise, given the evidence that already exists over the decades in this city [hint: parents either move away, or move away if they don't get into a decent Charter]? Or, if you agree that the likelihood of the most capable students at Deal entering a lottery for HS is near zero, what would be the advantages of a citywide lottery?

The advantage of a citywide lottery is that ability to pay for proximity to Tenleytown is not used as a criterion for access to what you believe are the better city schools. It undoes some of the effect of residential segregation. It requires Ward 3 to invest in citywide solutions rather than hoard privilege. Should I go on? There is a long literature on this.

More importantly, there is a long history of these policies' failures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A BIG part of the reason why they did the boundary work with DME Smith a couple years ago, frankly, was that Wilson was overcrowded and building another WOTP HS was going to be a ridiculous admission that the rest of the city's DCPS had failed to attract families. Because the truth is that they can't just build another floor on top, and the natural ways to have the school work are (1) citywide lottery, which has policy advantages that are real, but DCUM dismisses, and (2) tightening geographic boundaries to cut off the eastward flank. A Ward 3 high school that's only for Ward 3 would likely suit Ward 3 demand long term. One that is open to its current enrollment pattern is not sustainable.

The response is not to kidnap Ellington and turn it into Wilson II and force them into Shaw JHS, build a second WOTP high school, or something similar, the correct response is bar admissions from east of Rock Creek Park and make everyone build up the schools in their neighborhoods.

That's the outcome I want. I don't want my kids to go to Wilson. I want them to thrive at Roosevelt or Coolidge in our Ward or beat your kids out for SWW or Banneker. Please, go ahead and talk about MCPS or private, but that's my plan and my policy preference.

I'll tell you this. If a Mayor or a Ward 4 CM tells me that they support a second high school in Ward 3, I am going to go all-out to tear that policy choice down or throw that person out of office. That is not a solution for our school system and just throwing more money at delaying a solution.

You left off an option: limit OOB feeder rights. If you just made OOB feeder a lottery preference and not a right the crowding at Wilson and Deal would be fixed right away and you wouldn't have to move any boundaries. If Michelle Rhee had done that ten years ago when feeder rights were created nobody would have squawked at the time and we never would have gotten into this mess.

People keep saying to limit the OOB feeder rights. Isn't this being taken care of naturally anyway? IB folks are getting shut out for PK4 at most Deal feeders now. Where are people getting in OOB to a Deal feeder at this point? I know this was more of an option several years ago, but those kids would have to be grandfathered in to any policy change regardless. And honestly, how many kids are we really talking about? 100? I'm not saying this is a bad idea, but just seems like it would be a big fight to change a policy that has been in place for a long time that seems like it will soon be moot. I just don't see this as being the biggest contributor to the overcrowding.

The problem is -- and the reason we got off on this tangent in this thread -- is that there is no connection between the capacity of the feeder schools and the fed schools. So put a new addition on Key and Stoddert, and presto! a few hundred more kids have inalienable rights to Wilson. DCPS has been increasing the capacity of the feeder schools steadily over the past decade or so.

To your actual question, Wilson is only 56% IB. Deal is only 70% IB. All of those OOB kids got there through the feeder school, neither school normally accepts any kids through the lottery. Neither school would be crowded if there weren't feeder rights. Of course, that would force DCPS to come with actual capacity numbers for the schools, something it is loathe to do.

The additions to Key and Stoddert are really to accommodate the current status - to build additions vs. the portables/trailers both schools are currently using. Will not up the enrollment. Key has been around 10-15% OOB even with the overcrowding as it is. Stoddert's OOB has been dropping, but the additions are not sized at building more capacity vs. permanent buildings to replace the trailers.

[Anonymous]

Still looking for a reality-based argument for a city-wide lottery. Most all of us know that such an argument does not exist (for example, see San Francisco, among others).

Instead, what might actually work to improve the available DCPS options? I think some commenters are already onto it: re-zone Deal and Wilson so that enough competent students (from, among other schools, Lafayette, Deal, and currently in-boundary for Wilson) get pushed into a middle and high school further East of Connecticut Avenue. Based on population studies, there needs to be large enough numbers of these students that the majority of affected parents won't be scared enough to uproot and move to the Burbs. The result would probably look something along the lines of constantly-improving Hardy, and within a few years you would probably see a pretty good thing happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Still looking for a reality-based argument for a city-wide lottery. Most all of us know that such an argument does not exist (for example, see San Francisco, among others).

Instead, what might actually work to improve the available DCPS options? I think some commenters are already onto it: re-zone Deal and Wilson so that enough competent students (from, among other schools, Lafayette, Deal, and currently in-boundary for Wilson) get pushed into a middle and high school further East of Connecticut Avenue. Based on population studies, there needs to be large enough numbers of these students that the majority of affected parents won't be scared enough to uproot and move to the Burbs. The result would probably look something along the lines of constantly-improving Hardy, and within a few years you would probably see a pretty good thing happening.

DCPS has to pull families into schools, it has no ability to push them, especially in the western part of the city. The example of Hardy is instructive. It's getting better now, but for a long time it had extremely low acceptance among in-boundary families. Simply drawing a line on a map didn't convince anyone to go to a school they didn't want to go to. Instead they went private, parochial, charter, they snuck into Deal, or they moved.

In an ideal world, a lottery would be a way of giving everybody better choices; there'd be lots of good choices and the lottery would be a way of more perfectly matching people with their best choice. In the current world, the lottery is a way of rationing a small number of acceptable choices. Expanding the lottery given that reality isn't going to be popular.

[Anonymous]

Such a lottery wouldn't be popular because it would be counter-productive and stupid. The reality of what it might accomplish only supports this evaluation.

Hardy is an example of what could be done better to create more high-performing schools in the future: for many years, the in-boundary students around Hardy were not numerous enough to provide balance for the larger numbers of lower-performing, OOB students; hence IB parents fled a low-performing situation. In the future, DCPS should be mindful that a majority of students at the school need to be performing at grade level, from the very beginning, in order for it to be a magnet for success over future years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Such a lottery wouldn't be popular because it would be counter-productive and stupid. The reality of what it might accomplish only supports this evaluation.

Hardy is an example of what could be done better to create more high-performing schools in the future: for many years, the in-boundary students around Hardy were not numerous enough to provide balance for the larger numbers of lower-performing, OOB students; hence IB parents fled a low-performing situation. In the future, DCPS should be mindful that a majority of students at the school need to be performing at grade level, from the very beginning, in order for it to be a magnet for success over future years.

"Not numerous enough" wasn't the problem. I had three kids in a Hardy feeder preK through fifth. My oldest child's cohort had four classes of twenty-five at kindergarten. Two of those kids ended up going to Hardy for sixth (and neither made it to eighth grade). Without going into the reasons, the school wasn't attractive, the parents voted with their feet. Hardy has gotten much more attractive in the past few years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Such a lottery wouldn't be popular because it would be counter-productive and stupid. The reality of what it might accomplish only supports this evaluation.

Hardy is an example of what could be done better to create more high-performing schools in the future: for many years, the in-boundary students around Hardy were not numerous enough to provide balance for the larger numbers of lower-performing, OOB students; hence IB parents fled a low-performing situation. In the future, DCPS should be mindful that a majority of students at the school need to be performing at grade level, from the very beginning, in order for it to be a magnet for success over future years.

"Not numerous enough" wasn't the problem. I had three kids in a Hardy feeder preK through fifth. My oldest child's cohort had four classes of twenty-five at kindergarten. Two of those kids ended up going to Hardy for sixth (and neither made it to eighth grade). Without going into the reasons, the school wasn't attractive, the parents voted with their feet. Hardy has gotten much more attractive in the past few years.

Last year, Hardy was up to around 50% from feeders -- and next year, a combo of significantly more families from Stoddert and the switch over of Eaton from Deal, and a little growth in Key and Mann - it is going to be a very different place...

[Anonymous]

I wonder if people would agree with me or want to discuss this point - I could break it onto a new thread - is whether the upper class/ish people who are new to Wards 1, 4, 5, and 6 (though it’s insulting, let’s call them gentrifiers for clarity) - are going to respond to the push/pull factors within DCPS in the same way Ward 3 would. Just for example, I read the above about people shying away from Hardy, even what some would call the “bad old Hardy,” whatever that was, and think people in Ward 1 with elementary kids wouldn’t shun a Hardy. They’d flock to it. And there are charters rather than privates as options here, though with their own limited access issues and weird locations eg up in Ward 4 above Military Road. And people over here are used to living and dying by lottery and figuring it out, not crying and moving to Potomac or whatever. Just thinking - wondering if anyone shares that sentiment that basically the old UMC Ward 3 and new EOTP gentrifiers don’t think the same ways about schools.