Acronyms

[Anonymous]

Would it be possible to create a sticky thread with a list of all of the acronyms used in this forum? (Maybe contained in a Google Doc so it's more dynamic and easily glanced at).

There are very few context clues for someone who hasn't lived on these forums for years to figure out what things like EOTP, WOTP, EOTR, HRCS, etc are. I'm guessing many of them are things like "east of the river" or "west of the park," but it's very unclear to tell which acronyms are referring to physical location of a school and which are referring to school type/quality, unless you already possess the background knowledge of the school system(s) in the area.

Things like DCPS and IB/OOB are easy enough, but some posts feel like alphabet soup...

[Anonymous]

We could take down the docs from the last boundary rewrite and post up a coherent set of acronyms.

I think the acronyms are dumb, but when you're typing it can speed things up.

[Anonymous]

HRCS is a term DCUM made up a few years ago "Highly Regarded Charter School" on a tongue-in-cheek thread. Now it refers to the charters that have a low at-risk population.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HRCS is a term DCUM made up a few years ago "Highly Regarded Charter School" on a tongue-in-cheek thread. Now it refers to the charters that have a low at-risk population.

I think the fact that so many of the acronyms are specific to DCUM/local to DC is what would make this a useful idea. Hard to Google specific acronyms like that.

[Anonymous]

EOTR - East of the [Anacostia] River
WOTR - West of the [Anacostia] River
EOTP - East of the [Rock Creek] Park
WOTP - West of the [Rock Creek] Park

These geographic designations all serve as short-hand generally to indicate the quality of the school. In the broadest, most-general terms (still sure to annoy many readers) a break down: many of the people on this site consider WOTP schools (i.e., those that feed into Wilson High School) as the most desirable, but most would send kids to many of the EOTP/WOTR schools for early years. EOTP parents complain about no good path. WOTP parents complain about over crowded schools.

HRCS - Highly-Regarded Charter School (as others have noted, started as a joke, now used to refer to a shifting group of charter schools that people find desirable at the moment)
EA - Early Action (schools were PK3/PK4 in-bound students are guaranteed a spot)
ECE - Early Childhood Education (PK3/PK4)

DCPS - DC Public Schools
DCPCS - DC Public Charter Schools


What else would help?

[Anonymous]

Some charter specific ones

DCPCSB - DC Public Charter School Board

PMF - the DCPCSB's Performance Management Framework, used to determine if a charter is Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3

QSR - Qualitative Site Review https://www.dcpcsb.org/report/qualitative-school-reviews

[Anonymous]

OSSE - Office of the State Superintendent of Schools (equivalent to other State's Boards of Education). Sets graduation requirements and disburses federal funds

DME - Deputy Mayor for Education. Oversees the DCPS chancellor and several other city agencies including the Department of Parks and Recreation)

[Anonymous]

FARMS: Free and Reduced lunch percentage. Used in this forum as a sign of HRCS school quality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:HRCS is a term DCUM made up a few years ago "Highly Regarded Charter School" on a tongue-in-cheek thread. Now it refers to the charters that have a low at-risk population.

It irritating when people bring up the origins of slang. Who cares? All slang came from somewhere. Also, I take HRCS as being a school with long waitlists (hence highly regarded). Yes, most of the time that correlates with low at-risk, but not always (see DC Bilingual).