Boundary Review December town halls

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Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

NP and courage is an odd choice to describe this. We are a middle class family in Ward 4 who sends their kids to our neighborhood school. But would I send my kids to the zoned HS? Nope. But courage has nothing to do with it- it’s a terrible high school. It’s not brave to send your kid to a school that won’t educate them.

Again there is a ton of data on this - the SES make-up of the student body is the single biggest indicator of how good a school will be. If all of the middle class families in Ward 4 suddenly had their kids attending say Wells and Coolidge rather than charters or Deal/J-R the school would immediately improve dramatically.

There is lots of evidence of this including locally - the exact same thing happened at Hardy which no one wanted to attend until suddenly Eaton was moved there and the school and its test scores improved immediately.

What is so bizarre about this to me as the parent of 2 J-R students is that J-R is not a great school at all. There are a lot of great teachers and students/families but it is not a rigorous school academically at all - both of my kids had more homework at Deal than they had at J-R.

My oldest is a sophomore in college and he and a lot of his friends (mostly male) were not prepared at all for the rigors of college - I think it was a shock that they were actually expected to read books for their classes.

And the facilities and behavior issues at J-R continue to be real problems.

All of which again begs the question about how much do these parents really even know about the neighborhood schools they refuse to send their kids to or the schools they oddly think are so much better.

The Maury situation shows what the DME office really thinks of middle class families who actually do this and how it can be yanked away any time. Private, charters or moving are the choices. WFH will allow my family to move once 9th grade is approaching.

This. This. This.

Also increasing the middle class SES makeup of a school by say 30% in ward 4 is going to do nothing with improving the school. Posters who think this are delusional, especially at the middle school level.

The focus is still and will always be on the bottom in DCPS. These kids who are 3+ grade levels will be the focus of all the resources and if anyone thinks that the middle school is going to miraculously offer any advance programming, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. I mean just look at JR and honors for all.

Get out of DCPS and their race to the bottom. End of story

It would likely improve the test scores and many people equate test scores with good schools. It might also lighten the load a bit for teachers -- it is extremely hard to prepare and plan for and instruct when the overwhelming majority of kids are coming behind grade level. Better scores and a better adult/teacher culture will attract more people and the school will then be deemed better.

This is so true. I wish we had better ways to talk about it. People have these very flat, unnuanced views about education because they don't understand these dynamics. So when we talk about "good schools" a lot to times we're just talking about schools where the majority of students have the resources at home to get good test scores. That's really what the tests ulimately measure.

My kid attends a Title 1 with about 70% at risk kids. The test scores are what people on DCUM would call "a failing school." A large percentage of students score between a 1 and a 3 on the PARCC. Lots of 1s. People see that and say "the school is failing."

At the school, everyone is aware of these test scores and there are efforts made to address them. But the school isn't failing. Not as a school and it's not failing the at risk kids. The school does so much for these kids. It helps them get fed, provides a safe place for them, provides tutoring and after school programming. The teachers are caring and patient and for many of these kids, their teachers may be one of the few caring, patient adults they interact with. The school is going above and beyond.

The truth is that these kids simply do not have the resources to get high test scores. That is the conclusion I've come to after years of being at this school. Kids who are experiencing homelessness, parents in jail or prison, domestic violence, poverty and hunger, etc., are simply never going to get high test scores. On the pyramid of needs, they are still falling short on the first level of the pyramid. Perhaps occasionally a very gifted and motivated child with no learning disabilities at all and who has an unusual capacity for surviving trauma will break through and do very well on tests even though they have these issues. But that's a rare exception. Even with the school working very hard to help meet these kids' needs (physical, mental, social, academic), children in these situations are going to have, on average, low test scores. Period.

My own child is very bright but if she were experiencing the stuff these kids experience daily, she'd also have low test scores. She's a sensitive person who gets frightened easily, and when she has stress she stores it in her body and it takes work to help her let it go. If she were housing insecure, hungry every day, dealing with violence at home or a parent who was sick or just gone, she'd be getting 1s and 2s on PARCC. But she doesn't have any of that and she's super well supported at home. So she gets 4s and 5s.

When I look at the test scores for our school, that's what I see. I can see the kids who are supported and well-resourced and those are our 4s and 5s. I can see the kids who have fewer resources but might not have active trauma, or may be more resilient generally but dealing with a lot of trauma. They get 3s and 4s. And then there are a lot of kids who are typical, great kids, have a ton of obstacles and very limited resources outsides school, and they get 1s and 2s. The scores reflect the home lives of the kids. The school itself is great, and I would venture to say that it does more and is more successful at what it does than your average school with a largely high-SES student population, but our school has to do so many things that schools with well-off kids never have to do. But all of this is invisible on the test scores. The test scores just tell you what percent of kids at our school have parents and families who can support them and provide what they need to be successful on tests.

Unnuanced view my ass. My oldest was a Title 1 school and we got the hell out of there as soon because it was obvious that each passing year would place them further behind and not having learned what they should at an age appropriate pace. That school—with dedicated, caring teachers and staff—would have failed my kids.

PP here. You should make the choice that makes sense for your family but I have not found that my school fails my kid (who participates in summer CTY camps and I know to be above grade level generally even against peers who attend non-Title 1 schools and private schools where far more kids are at or above grade level, and who is challenged at school).

My point was that saying a school is "failing" because it has low test scores while serving a predominantly at risk student population makes no sense. That's where the lack of nuance is. If your standard for a school succeeding is "PARCC scores are mostly 4s and 5s" then the only successful schools will be the ones where most students are MC or UMC, because that is what is required to get those scores.

Granted, there are schools in DC where most students are MC or UMC and their scores are low. If you want to call those schools failing, I'm okay with that. But calling a school failing because it's mostly at risk population gets the scores that at risk kids always get ignores the fact that those schools are actually succeeding on a million metrics that a high-SES school doesn't even compete on because a high-SES school doesn't have to do all the stuff that a Title 1 school has to do for it's students.

You don't have to send your kid to a Title 1 school. But if you choose not to, that doesn't mean it's a failing school.

From now on, everyone please identify schools as having terrible test scores instead of failing please.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

NP and courage is an odd choice to describe this. We are a middle class family in Ward 4 who sends their kids to our neighborhood school. But would I send my kids to the zoned HS? Nope. But courage has nothing to do with it- it’s a terrible high school. It’s not brave to send your kid to a school that won’t educate them.

Again there is a ton of data on this - the SES make-up of the student body is the single biggest indicator of how good a school will be. If all of the middle class families in Ward 4 suddenly had their kids attending say Wells and Coolidge rather than charters or Deal/J-R the school would immediately improve dramatically.

There is lots of evidence of this including locally - the exact same thing happened at Hardy which no one wanted to attend until suddenly Eaton was moved there and the school and its test scores improved immediately.

What is so bizarre about this to me as the parent of 2 J-R students is that J-R is not a great school at all. There are a lot of great teachers and students/families but it is not a rigorous school academically at all - both of my kids had more homework at Deal than they had at J-R.

My oldest is a sophomore in college and he and a lot of his friends (mostly male) were not prepared at all for the rigors of college - I think it was a shock that they were actually expected to read books for their classes.

And the facilities and behavior issues at J-R continue to be real problems.

All of which again begs the question about how much do these parents really even know about the neighborhood schools they refuse to send their kids to or the schools they oddly think are so much better.

The Maury situation shows what the DME office really thinks of middle class families who actually do this and how it can be yanked away any time. Private, charters or moving are the choices. WFH will allow my family to move once 9th grade is approaching.

This. This. This.

Also increasing the middle class SES makeup of a school by say 30% in ward 4 is going to do nothing with improving the school. Posters who think this are delusional, especially at the middle school level.

The focus is still and will always be on the bottom in DCPS. These kids who are 3+ grade levels will be the focus of all the resources and if anyone thinks that the middle school is going to miraculously offer any advance programming, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. I mean just look at JR and honors for all.

Get out of DCPS and their race to the bottom. End of story

It would likely improve the test scores and many people equate test scores with good schools. It might also lighten the load a bit for teachers -- it is extremely hard to prepare and plan for and instruct when the overwhelming majority of kids are coming behind grade level. Better scores and a better adult/teacher culture will attract more people and the school will then be deemed better.

This is so true. I wish we had better ways to talk about it. People have these very flat, unnuanced views about education because they don't understand these dynamics. So when we talk about "good schools" a lot to times we're just talking about schools where the majority of students have the resources at home to get good test scores. That's really what the tests ulimately measure.

My kid attends a Title 1 with about 70% at risk kids. The test scores are what people on DCUM would call "a failing school." A large percentage of students score between a 1 and a 3 on the PARCC. Lots of 1s. People see that and say "the school is failing."

At the school, everyone is aware of these test scores and there are efforts made to address them. But the school isn't failing. Not as a school and it's not failing the at risk kids. The school does so much for these kids. It helps them get fed, provides a safe place for them, provides tutoring and after school programming. The teachers are caring and patient and for many of these kids, their teachers may be one of the few caring, patient adults they interact with. The school is going above and beyond.

The truth is that these kids simply do not have the resources to get high test scores. That is the conclusion I've come to after years of being at this school. Kids who are experiencing homelessness, parents in jail or prison, domestic violence, poverty and hunger, etc., are simply never going to get high test scores. On the pyramid of needs, they are still falling short on the first level of the pyramid. Perhaps occasionally a very gifted and motivated child with no learning disabilities at all and who has an unusual capacity for surviving trauma will break through and do very well on tests even though they have these issues. But that's a rare exception. Even with the school working very hard to help meet these kids' needs (physical, mental, social, academic), children in these situations are going to have, on average, low test scores. Period.

My own child is very bright but if she were experiencing the stuff these kids experience daily, she'd also have low test scores. She's a sensitive person who gets frightened easily, and when she has stress she stores it in her body and it takes work to help her let it go. If she were housing insecure, hungry every day, dealing with violence at home or a parent who was sick or just gone, she'd be getting 1s and 2s on PARCC. But she doesn't have any of that and she's super well supported at home. So she gets 4s and 5s.

When I look at the test scores for our school, that's what I see. I can see the kids who are supported and well-resourced and those are our 4s and 5s. I can see the kids who have fewer resources but might not have active trauma, or may be more resilient generally but dealing with a lot of trauma. They get 3s and 4s. And then there are a lot of kids who are typical, great kids, have a ton of obstacles and very limited resources outsides school, and they get 1s and 2s. The scores reflect the home lives of the kids. The school itself is great, and I would venture to say that it does more and is more successful at what it does than your average school with a largely high-SES student population, but our school has to do so many things that schools with well-off kids never have to do. But all of this is invisible on the test scores. The test scores just tell you what percent of kids at our school have parents and families who can support them and provide what they need to be successful on tests.

No, the test scores also tell you whether your kid who is at grade level or advanced has any chance in hell of getting an appropriate education, or whether the focus is going to be on kids who need remediation. My kids are also at a Title 1 ES now and it's wonderful in a whole variety of ways, but there are big gaps in their education and I can only do so much at home. I don't think my zoned middle school is necessarily "failing" because of low test scores and high truancy rates, but I sure think it would fail my kids. So do most of other the families zoned for it, including those who opt for other middle schools which also have high proportions of at-risk kids. People don't send their kids to most of the zoned middle schools and high schools in DC because they are accurately determining that their kids will have better experiences elsewhere. This is not that complicated.

What are the gaps? Not being argumentative, genuinely wondering. My kid is at a Title 1 and in 2nd grade and I really don't know of any big gaps in her education so far. And I'm a pretty well educated person. We sort of vaguely threaten to ourselves to leave the school every year but the experience has been so good that it doesn't make sense. Especially since unless we move, we'd just be going to a charter and when I look at both their test scores and demographics, I don't get the impression that it would be an improvement.

Maybe there's something I'm missing though, so I'd be curious to hear what educational needs people feel are not being met at their Title 1, especially for kids who are at/above grade level according to assessment scores like Dibels/iReady/PARCC.

[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:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

NP and courage is an odd choice to describe this. We are a middle class family in Ward 4 who sends their kids to our neighborhood school. But would I send my kids to the zoned HS? Nope. But courage has nothing to do with it- it’s a terrible high school. It’s not brave to send your kid to a school that won’t educate them.

Again there is a ton of data on this - the SES make-up of the student body is the single biggest indicator of how good a school will be. If all of the middle class families in Ward 4 suddenly had their kids attending say Wells and Coolidge rather than charters or Deal/J-R the school would immediately improve dramatically.

There is lots of evidence of this including locally - the exact same thing happened at Hardy which no one wanted to attend until suddenly Eaton was moved there and the school and its test scores improved immediately.

What is so bizarre about this to me as the parent of 2 J-R students is that J-R is not a great school at all. There are a lot of great teachers and students/families but it is not a rigorous school academically at all - both of my kids had more homework at Deal than they had at J-R.

My oldest is a sophomore in college and he and a lot of his friends (mostly male) were not prepared at all for the rigors of college - I think it was a shock that they were actually expected to read books for their classes.

And the facilities and behavior issues at J-R continue to be real problems.

All of which again begs the question about how much do these parents really even know about the neighborhood schools they refuse to send their kids to or the schools they oddly think are so much better.

The Maury situation shows what the DME office really thinks of middle class families who actually do this and how it can be yanked away any time. Private, charters or moving are the choices. WFH will allow my family to move once 9th grade is approaching.

This. This. This.

Also increasing the middle class SES makeup of a school by say 30% in ward 4 is going to do nothing with improving the school. Posters who think this are delusional, especially at the middle school level.

The focus is still and will always be on the bottom in DCPS. These kids who are 3+ grade levels will be the focus of all the resources and if anyone thinks that the middle school is going to miraculously offer any advance programming, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. I mean just look at JR and honors for all.

Get out of DCPS and their race to the bottom. End of story

It would likely improve the test scores and many people equate test scores with good schools. It might also lighten the load a bit for teachers -- it is extremely hard to prepare and plan for and instruct when the overwhelming majority of kids are coming behind grade level. Better scores and a better adult/teacher culture will attract more people and the school will then be deemed better.

This is so true. I wish we had better ways to talk about it. People have these very flat, unnuanced views about education because they don't understand these dynamics. So when we talk about "good schools" a lot to times we're just talking about schools where the majority of students have the resources at home to get good test scores. That's really what the tests ulimately measure.

My kid attends a Title 1 with about 70% at risk kids. The test scores are what people on DCUM would call "a failing school." A large percentage of students score between a 1 and a 3 on the PARCC. Lots of 1s. People see that and say "the school is failing."

At the school, everyone is aware of these test scores and there are efforts made to address them. But the school isn't failing. Not as a school and it's not failing the at risk kids. The school does so much for these kids. It helps them get fed, provides a safe place for them, provides tutoring and after school programming. The teachers are caring and patient and for many of these kids, their teachers may be one of the few caring, patient adults they interact with. The school is going above and beyond.

The truth is that these kids simply do not have the resources to get high test scores. That is the conclusion I've come to after years of being at this school. Kids who are experiencing homelessness, parents in jail or prison, domestic violence, poverty and hunger, etc., are simply never going to get high test scores. On the pyramid of needs, they are still falling short on the first level of the pyramid. Perhaps occasionally a very gifted and motivated child with no learning disabilities at all and who has an unusual capacity for surviving trauma will break through and do very well on tests even though they have these issues. But that's a rare exception. Even with the school working very hard to help meet these kids' needs (physical, mental, social, academic), children in these situations are going to have, on average, low test scores. Period.

My own child is very bright but if she were experiencing the stuff these kids experience daily, she'd also have low test scores. She's a sensitive person who gets frightened easily, and when she has stress she stores it in her body and it takes work to help her let it go. If she were housing insecure, hungry every day, dealing with violence at home or a parent who was sick or just gone, she'd be getting 1s and 2s on PARCC. But she doesn't have any of that and she's super well supported at home. So she gets 4s and 5s.

When I look at the test scores for our school, that's what I see. I can see the kids who are supported and well-resourced and those are our 4s and 5s. I can see the kids who have fewer resources but might not have active trauma, or may be more resilient generally but dealing with a lot of trauma. They get 3s and 4s. And then there are a lot of kids who are typical, great kids, have a ton of obstacles and very limited resources outsides school, and they get 1s and 2s. The scores reflect the home lives of the kids. The school itself is great, and I would venture to say that it does more and is more successful at what it does than your average school with a largely high-SES student population, but our school has to do so many things that schools with well-off kids never have to do. But all of this is invisible on the test scores. The test scores just tell you what percent of kids at our school have parents and families who can support them and provide what they need to be successful on tests.

No, the test scores also tell you whether your kid who is at grade level or advanced has any chance in hell of getting an appropriate education, or whether the focus is going to be on kids who need remediation. My kids are also at a Title 1 ES now and it's wonderful in a whole variety of ways, but there are big gaps in their education and I can only do so much at home. I don't think my zoned middle school is necessarily "failing" because of low test scores and high truancy rates, but I sure think it would fail my kids. So do most of other the families zoned for it, including those who opt for other middle schools which also have high proportions of at-risk kids. People don't send their kids to most of the zoned middle schools and high schools in DC because they are accurately determining that their kids will have better experiences elsewhere. This is not that complicated.

What are the gaps? Not being argumentative, genuinely wondering. My kid is at a Title 1 and in 2nd grade and I really don't know of any big gaps in her education so far. And I'm a pretty well educated person. We sort of vaguely threaten to ourselves to leave the school every year but the experience has been so good that it doesn't make sense. Especially since unless we move, we'd just be going to a charter and when I look at both their test scores and demographics, I don't get the impression that it would be an improvement.

Maybe there's something I'm missing though, so I'd be curious to hear what educational needs people feel are not being met at their Title 1, especially for kids who are at/above grade level according to assessment scores like Dibels/iReady/PARCC.

Writing is the biggest deficit for my kids. But they're also not learning enough math, like, multi-step multiplication or division problems. And across subjects, they should be learning faster. But it's fine. I don't think they're falling irreparably behind or anything. They read a lot on their own and I supplement for math. I also don't think every school with advanced kids is doing an amazing job of this at all, nor that it's completely impossible to focus on these when you have a lot of kids who are below grade level. But the bigger the range of student abilities, the harder it is to focus on kids who are already doing well. And I agree that's how it should be. But for middle school, it's a harder situation because there are more behavioral issues, there's more bifurcation of schools with a lot of kids at grade level vs. schools with almost none, and it becomes more difficult to teach your kid a whole curriculum at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

Solving Ward 4 capacity issues won’t solve the issues for kids in those gentrifying communities. Are you suggesting that there will be enough seats in those Ward 4 schools to widen the boundaries for many more families? (Not being argumentative; just trying to understand)

What Ward 4 capacity issues are you referring to? Coolidge and Roosevelt are grossly under enrolled. There is a chicken and egg issue in Ward 4 around MS capacity but that is easily solvable by increasing the capacity at Wells.

Again, citation please.

PP has no citation because the fact is Wells (middle that feeds to Coolidge) and Roosevelt are more over crowded than Deal/JR (JR now that MacArthur opened).

https://dme.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dme/publication/attachments/Appendix%20A%20-%20DCPS%20SY2021-22%20Enrollment%20Utilization%20Plans%20MFP%202022%20Supp_Final_0.xlsx

Macfarland is at 84% (same as Janney, and well under Hardy 64%). So really the talk should be how to get more kids into Hardy, but for some reason none of these DCUM warriors ever would make a post like that, right? Very easy to push brown kids east to fit your narrative.

dp--The "permanent capacity" numbers that DME uses are crap. A bunch of schools -- Hardy and J-R, for example, have numbers pulled out of the air, not reality.

Go walk around the schools during the day and then let's talk.

This 100%. I have no dog in this fight, but my elementary school is deemed 86% utilized even though there are multiple classes in what used to be closets and multiple admin/instructional coaches share tiny offices and others have none. We have a special on a cart because there's no classroom. It is lunacy to say the school is 86% utilized and I am convinced that number was either invented out of thin air or doesn't account for the fact we have multiple self-contained classes that are full, but small (e.g., 6 or 8 students depending on the age) and so it thinks those classrooms aren't sufficiently "full."

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

Solving Ward 4 capacity issues won’t solve the issues for kids in those gentrifying communities. Are you suggesting that there will be enough seats in those Ward 4 schools to widen the boundaries for many more families? (Not being argumentative; just trying to understand)

What Ward 4 capacity issues are you referring to? Coolidge and Roosevelt are grossly under enrolled. There is a chicken and egg issue in Ward 4 around MS capacity but that is easily solvable by increasing the capacity at Wells.

Again, citation please.

PP has no citation because the fact is Wells (middle that feeds to Coolidge) and Roosevelt are more over crowded than Deal/JR (JR now that MacArthur opened).

https://dme.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dme/publication/attachments/Appendix%20A%20-%20DCPS%20SY2021-22%20Enrollment%20Utilization%20Plans%20MFP%202022%20Supp_Final_0.xlsx

Macfarland is at 84% (same as Janney, and well under Hardy 64%). So really the talk should be how to get more kids into Hardy, but for some reason none of these DCUM warriors ever would make a post like that, right? Very easy to push brown kids east to fit your narrative.

You are using old data. Roosevelt used to share half of their building with Roosevelt Stay in 21-22. They now have the entire building to themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

NP and courage is an odd choice to describe this. We are a middle class family in Ward 4 who sends their kids to our neighborhood school. But would I send my kids to the zoned HS? Nope. But courage has nothing to do with it- it’s a terrible high school. It’s not brave to send your kid to a school that won’t educate them.

Again there is a ton of data on this - the SES make-up of the student body is the single biggest indicator of how good a school will be. If all of the middle class families in Ward 4 suddenly had their kids attending say Wells and Coolidge rather than charters or Deal/J-R the school would immediately improve dramatically.

There is lots of evidence of this including locally - the exact same thing happened at Hardy which no one wanted to attend until suddenly Eaton was moved there and the school and its test scores improved immediately.

What is so bizarre about this to me as the parent of 2 J-R students is that J-R is not a great school at all. There are a lot of great teachers and students/families but it is not a rigorous school academically at all - both of my kids had more homework at Deal than they had at J-R.

My oldest is a sophomore in college and he and a lot of his friends (mostly male) were not prepared at all for the rigors of college - I think it was a shock that they were actually expected to read books for their classes.

And the facilities and behavior issues at J-R continue to be real problems.

All of which again begs the question about how much do these parents really even know about the neighborhood schools they refuse to send their kids to or the schools they oddly think are so much better.

The Maury situation shows what the DME office really thinks of middle class families who actually do this and how it can be yanked away any time. Private, charters or moving are the choices. WFH will allow my family to move once 9th grade is approaching.

This. This. This.

Also increasing the middle class SES makeup of a school by say 30% in ward 4 is going to do nothing with improving the school. Posters who think this are delusional, especially at the middle school level.

The focus is still and will always be on the bottom in DCPS. These kids who are 3+ grade levels will be the focus of all the resources and if anyone thinks that the middle school is going to miraculously offer any advance programming, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. I mean just look at JR and honors for all.

Get out of DCPS and their race to the bottom. End of story

It would likely improve the test scores and many people equate test scores with good schools. It might also lighten the load a bit for teachers -- it is extremely hard to prepare and plan for and instruct when the overwhelming majority of kids are coming behind grade level. Better scores and a better adult/teacher culture will attract more people and the school will then be deemed better.

This is so true. I wish we had better ways to talk about it. People have these very flat, unnuanced views about education because they don't understand these dynamics. So when we talk about "good schools" a lot to times we're just talking about schools where the majority of students have the resources at home to get good test scores. That's really what the tests ulimately measure.

My kid attends a Title 1 with about 70% at risk kids. The test scores are what people on DCUM would call "a failing school." A large percentage of students score between a 1 and a 3 on the PARCC. Lots of 1s. People see that and say "the school is failing."

At the school, everyone is aware of these test scores and there are efforts made to address them. But the school isn't failing. Not as a school and it's not failing the at risk kids. The school does so much for these kids. It helps them get fed, provides a safe place for them, provides tutoring and after school programming. The teachers are caring and patient and for many of these kids, their teachers may be one of the few caring, patient adults they interact with. The school is going above and beyond.

The truth is that these kids simply do not have the resources to get high test scores. That is the conclusion I've come to after years of being at this school. Kids who are experiencing homelessness, parents in jail or prison, domestic violence, poverty and hunger, etc., are simply never going to get high test scores. On the pyramid of needs, they are still falling short on the first level of the pyramid. Perhaps occasionally a very gifted and motivated child with no learning disabilities at all and who has an unusual capacity for surviving trauma will break through and do very well on tests even though they have these issues. But that's a rare exception. Even with the school working very hard to help meet these kids' needs (physical, mental, social, academic), children in these situations are going to have, on average, low test scores. Period.

My own child is very bright but if she were experiencing the stuff these kids experience daily, she'd also have low test scores. She's a sensitive person who gets frightened easily, and when she has stress she stores it in her body and it takes work to help her let it go. If she were housing insecure, hungry every day, dealing with violence at home or a parent who was sick or just gone, she'd be getting 1s and 2s on PARCC. But she doesn't have any of that and she's super well supported at home. So she gets 4s and 5s.

When I look at the test scores for our school, that's what I see. I can see the kids who are supported and well-resourced and those are our 4s and 5s. I can see the kids who have fewer resources but might not have active trauma, or may be more resilient generally but dealing with a lot of trauma. They get 3s and 4s. And then there are a lot of kids who are typical, great kids, have a ton of obstacles and very limited resources outsides school, and they get 1s and 2s. The scores reflect the home lives of the kids. The school itself is great, and I would venture to say that it does more and is more successful at what it does than your average school with a largely high-SES student population, but our school has to do so many things that schools with well-off kids never have to do. But all of this is invisible on the test scores. The test scores just tell you what percent of kids at our school have parents and families who can support them and provide what they need to be successful on tests.

this absolutely appalling that you think poor kids cannot learn to read & write.

[Anonymous]

I'd say that if income was the only issue, many things are doable. But we know that's not the case in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd say that if income was the only issue, many things are doable. But we know that's not the case in DC.

+1, it's not just poverty.

And it's not that poor kids can't learn to read or write. It's that it's incredibly hard to learn academically when your basic needs (food, housing, safety, emotional support) are not being met. Schools that teach large numbers of at risk kids have to expend a ton of resources on helping to meet those needs, or accommodating/dealing with deficits that are a direct result of at risk factors. These kids get academic instruction and some of it sticks, some even have some support at home for reinforcement. But kids designated at risk have so many bigger issues than whether they get a 2 or a 3 or a 4 on the PARCC. I wish that were not the case, but it often is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'd say that if income was the only issue, many things are doable. But we know that's not the case in DC.

+1, it's not just poverty.

And it's not that poor kids can't learn to read or write. It's that it's incredibly hard to learn academically when your basic needs (food, housing, safety, emotional support) are not being met. Schools that teach large numbers of at risk kids have to expend a ton of resources on helping to meet those needs, or accommodating/dealing with deficits that are a direct result of at risk factors. These kids get academic instruction and some of it sticks, some even have some support at home for reinforcement. But kids designated at risk have so many bigger issues than whether they get a 2 or a 3 or a 4 on the PARCC. I wish that were not the case, but it often is.

Ok well, why should I think my child will get an education at their level in a classroom with such high needs and academics are basically an extra, where nobody thinks the kids can actually learn? That’s honestly horrible and makes me even more motivated to get my kid out of his T1 middle school.

[Anonymous]

Also at a Title 1. It really depends on the grade levels, school resources, admin, and behavioral issues of the kids in your cohort. If the admin supports differentiation and you don’t have a lot of behavioral issues in the classroom, good reavers can absolutely provide challenging work for the kids scoring 4s and 5s, as well as supporting the 1s and 2s. Our school has pull out support staff, so the classroom teacher doesn’t have to meet the needs of all kids all of the time. But that’s for elementary. PP is correct that once you get to middle and high school, the gap gets wider and the behavior increases. An elementary teacher can easily lesson plan for kids above grade level, but a high school science teacher needs separate AP classes to provide the same level of instruction.

[Anonymous]

Reavers = teachers

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm firmly of the belief that the boundaries just need to be reset. Bowser will never do it. Doesn't have the guts. But it's just pulling off a bandaid. So the whiners send their kids to St. Albans. Those who are in these schools who aren't multigenerational poor will demand more from them and they will change quickly. Some people don't remember that Deal was this thing that people shunned not that long ago. And now it's got every program you can think of and is massively overfilled.

The right thing in my opinion is to make MacFarland the default MS for every student between Cardozo and Takoma west of Brookland, get rid of feeder rights to middle school, make Oyster-Adams' middle school another elementary and end dual language at Oyster, where no concentration of Spanish speakers live (yes, yes, World Bank blah blah blah, those people don't live inordinately near Oyster) add dual language at Brightwood and Dorothy Height, etc.

But it's NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN. Good policy is subject to you all here, and DCUM says no, so Bowser obeys. The end.

Agreed.

And Hardy was also shunned - just 5 years ago.

They need to rip the bandage off and start over.

There is still a political price to be paid for all of this tinkering around the edges too - people are pissed and political capital is being spent and they aren't even solving the problem.

But here is the real political problem - in order to wholesale re-do the boundaries you need to take on two very powerful lobbies in DC - the charter school lobby and the real estate lobby both of whom benefit enormously from the current clusterfu(k of DCPS boundaries.

How do the boundaries impact the charter school lobby? Why should they care?

Because a lot of their students are middle class white kids from gentrifying neighborhoods whose parents don't have the courage to actually have their kids attend school in their own neighborhood - if you the MS/HS problem in Ward 4 they lose a lot of their customers.

NP and courage is an odd choice to describe this. We are a middle class family in Ward 4 who sends their kids to our neighborhood school. But would I send my kids to the zoned HS? Nope. But courage has nothing to do with it- it’s a terrible high school. It’s not brave to send your kid to a school that won’t educate them.

Again there is a ton of data on this - the SES make-up of the student body is the single biggest indicator of how good a school will be. If all of the middle class families in Ward 4 suddenly had their kids attending say Wells and Coolidge rather than charters or Deal/J-R the school would immediately improve dramatically.

There is lots of evidence of this including locally - the exact same thing happened at Hardy which no one wanted to attend until suddenly Eaton was moved there and the school and its test scores improved immediately.

What is so bizarre about this to me as the parent of 2 J-R students is that J-R is not a great school at all. There are a lot of great teachers and students/families but it is not a rigorous school academically at all - both of my kids had more homework at Deal than they had at J-R.

My oldest is a sophomore in college and he and a lot of his friends (mostly male) were not prepared at all for the rigors of college - I think it was a shock that they were actually expected to read books for their classes.

And the facilities and behavior issues at J-R continue to be real problems.

All of which again begs the question about how much do these parents really even know about the neighborhood schools they refuse to send their kids to or the schools they oddly think are so much better.

The Maury situation shows what the DME office really thinks of middle class families who actually do this and how it can be yanked away any time. Private, charters or moving are the choices. WFH will allow my family to move once 9th grade is approaching.

This. This. This.

Also increasing the middle class SES makeup of a school by say 30% in ward 4 is going to do nothing with improving the school. Posters who think this are delusional, especially at the middle school level.

The focus is still and will always be on the bottom in DCPS. These kids who are 3+ grade levels will be the focus of all the resources and if anyone thinks that the middle school is going to miraculously offer any advance programming, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. I mean just look at JR and honors for all.

Get out of DCPS and their race to the bottom. End of story

It would likely improve the test scores and many people equate test scores with good schools. It might also lighten the load a bit for teachers -- it is extremely hard to prepare and plan for and instruct when the overwhelming majority of kids are coming behind grade level. Better scores and a better adult/teacher culture will attract more people and the school will then be deemed better.

This is so true. I wish we had better ways to talk about it. People have these very flat, unnuanced views about education because they don't understand these dynamics. So when we talk about "good schools" a lot to times we're just talking about schools where the majority of students have the resources at home to get good test scores. That's really what the tests ulimately measure.

My kid attends a Title 1 with about 70% at risk kids. The test scores are what people on DCUM would call "a failing school." A large percentage of students score between a 1 and a 3 on the PARCC. Lots of 1s. People see that and say "the school is failing."

At the school, everyone is aware of these test scores and there are efforts made to address them. But the school isn't failing. Not as a school and it's not failing the at risk kids. The school does so much for these kids. It helps them get fed, provides a safe place for them, provides tutoring and after school programming. The teachers are caring and patient and for many of these kids, their teachers may be one of the few caring, patient adults they interact with. The school is going above and beyond.

The truth is that these kids simply do not have the resources to get high test scores. That is the conclusion I've come to after years of being at this school. Kids who are experiencing homelessness, parents in jail or prison, domestic violence, poverty and hunger, etc., are simply never going to get high test scores. On the pyramid of needs, they are still falling short on the first level of the pyramid. Perhaps occasionally a very gifted and motivated child with no learning disabilities at all and who has an unusual capacity for surviving trauma will break through and do very well on tests even though they have these issues. But that's a rare exception. Even with the school working very hard to help meet these kids' needs (physical, mental, social, academic), children in these situations are going to have, on average, low test scores. Period.

My own child is very bright but if she were experiencing the stuff these kids experience daily, she'd also have low test scores. She's a sensitive person who gets frightened easily, and when she has stress she stores it in her body and it takes work to help her let it go. If she were housing insecure, hungry every day, dealing with violence at home or a parent who was sick or just gone, she'd be getting 1s and 2s on PARCC. But she doesn't have any of that and she's super well supported at home. So she gets 4s and 5s.

When I look at the test scores for our school, that's what I see. I can see the kids who are supported and well-resourced and those are our 4s and 5s. I can see the kids who have fewer resources but might not have active trauma, or may be more resilient generally but dealing with a lot of trauma. They get 3s and 4s. And then there are a lot of kids who are typical, great kids, have a ton of obstacles and very limited resources outsides school, and they get 1s and 2s. The scores reflect the home lives of the kids. The school itself is great, and I would venture to say that it does more and is more successful at what it does than your average school with a largely high-SES student population, but our school has to do so many things that schools with well-off kids never have to do. But all of this is invisible on the test scores. The test scores just tell you what percent of kids at our school have parents and families who can support them and provide what they need to be successful on tests.

No, the test scores also tell you whether your kid who is at grade level or advanced has any chance in hell of getting an appropriate education, or whether the focus is going to be on kids who need remediation. My kids are also at a Title 1 ES now and it's wonderful in a whole variety of ways, but there are big gaps in their education and I can only do so much at home. I don't think my zoned middle school is necessarily "failing" because of low test scores and high truancy rates, but I sure think it would fail my kids. So do most of other the families zoned for it, including those who opt for other middle schools which also have high proportions of at-risk kids. People don't send their kids to most of the zoned middle schools and high schools in DC because they are accurately determining that their kids will have better experiences elsewhere. This is not that complicated.

Such an important point - the school you choose is about YOUR kids. As it should be. Yet there are numerous recommendations to restrict out of boundary seats, limit charters, redraw boundaries to push more families into under-enrolled schools, etc. The focus should be on improving programs so that there is greater demand, not eliminating options so parents have fewer choices. None of these recommendations say "here is the data that shows students will do better." It's only "here are the projections that the schools will have better enrollment." But if the outcomes for students aren't better, why bother?