Anonymous wrote:One factor that has stagnated SH a bit is Watkins’ decline. LT has massively improved in terms of IB buy-in and UMC buy-in during the period from ‘19-‘20 to now, but Watkins has gone downhill in both categories m. Additionally, increased IB buy-in for LT may actually paradoxically have the effect of decreasing the percentage of enrolled kids heading to SH.
I think people must be using "IB" as a proxy for something else. Maybe socioeconomic class? Or the distribution of IB students across grades has changed? Because the numbers don't support what you're saying.
Number of students living IB at Ludlow-Taylor
went from 439 in SY19-20 to 436 in SY24-25.
Number of students living IB and attending Ludlow-Taylor went from 263 in SY19-20 to 267 in SY24-25.
Where are you getting these figures? Because L-T was 35% in 2016 with an enrollment of 343 kids, so if it was really 263 kids by 2019, that is some crazy fast change and might suggest the poster is just off by like 1 year in terms of their thinking about a sharp increase.
And, in fact, based on their post, it seems like they're talking about 2017-2018 (the PK3 year of this year's 5th graders), so I would suspect they are correct and you are just looking at data from 2 years later.
Anonymous wrote:DCPS won’t change until people are willing to make policy decisions without the fear of being called “racist.”
Example 1: “Gifted” programs would keep middle and upper income families in neighborhood schools, improving academic outcomes (and providing low income academically advanced children a better education).
Example 2: Feeder patterns that concentrate higher performing elementary schools to improve middle and high schools. Feed all the hill middle schools into one school … magically you have a second Deal. Bet you would get a second Wilson out of that too.
But we can’t do either of those things, because it’s “racist.”
Regarding the suggestion to feed all Hill elementariness into one HS, I think there are other obstacles as well. Currently they feed to three schools and to create a single MS, you'd need a huge building. You need at least two MSs there for space reasons.
Also, while I agree that there is some dogma involved that prevents pushing for more opportunities for high achieving kids on the Hill, I also think you have conflicting goals of a lot of parents in the neighborhood. Even among parents of high achieving kids, you also have this attachment to neighborhood schools and walkability, and when you look at how far apart Jefferson and Eliot-Hine currently are, you can see that a lot of families on the Hill would have to sacrifice walkable school commutes to make this happen. among the UMC families I know who are choosing to attend their IB MS on the Hill, a major selling point is keeping the walkable commutes they've had in elementary which really become part of the culture of the neighborhood, and also help a lot when you have kids in elementary and MS. I think this is one of the reasons that the school where you are seeing the most buy in from IB families presently is Stuart-Hobson -- it's very close to the feeder elementary that also has the most IB buy in in the zone (L-T) and also very close to JOW (still not a ton of IB buy in but improving and likely to make a big jump when they open their new campus in 2026), and that's appealing for families who have gotten used to short walking and biking commutes for the last 6 or 7 years.
Likewise one reason Jefferson has struggled so much with getting buy in is that the feeder with the most IB buy in, Brent, is also the least convenient to that MS campus. But buy in at Amidon-Bowen is improving and that has helped -- families see the benefit of a nearby school and want to keep the vibes going.
I don't think your premise is totally wrong -- I absolutely think the resistance to tracking and better opportunities for higher achieving kids is due to a misguided belief that supporting academic achievers is racist. But specifically regarding the idea of a unified Hill middle school, the resistance may once have been due to misguided equity beliefs, but I don't think it is anymore. As all three Hill MSs have increased their IB buy in, and as the Hill builds off the success of schools like Brent, Maury, and L-T with success at Payne, Chisolm, JOW, and Amidon-Bowen, I think you will continue to see increased buy in at all three MSs. Which might actually lead to a better trajectory than Deal, which has constant issues with overcrowding, if the result is three strong MSs instead of just one.
And this is where "that's racist" will come out. First objection is "too many schools, so we won't have a big enough building." Ok.... feed only the schools that are actually on the Hill into one middle/high school: Watkins, Brent, Maury, LT, Payne. The middle and high school will be excellent, immediately.
Why won't that fly? It's "racist."
It won't fly because five schools is still too many. When you create an "excellent" middle school with an "excellent" high school, the IB capture rate will go way up.
If you think people will be fine with being kicked out of an excellent feeder pattern and reassigned to much worse one, think again. They will oppose this very hard and it won't go through.
It's also geographically nonsensical. If those 5 schools feed into one middle school, are you suggesting that all the schools on the fringes of Ward 6 feed into the same school? So JOW, Miner, Chisolm, Van Ness, and Amidon-Bowen would all go to the same middle school? That makes zero sense. JOW is literally 3 blocks from L-T. Miner is only a little further from Maury. Chisolm and Payne are pretty close as well. Meanwhile Van Ness and Amidon Bowen are way closer to Brent than to any of the other schools they'd be grouped with.
People would call that racist because it literally would be racist. You just cherry-picked the 5 whitest schools and ignored geography in order to group them together. Also Chisolm is actually much more desirable than Watkins at this point but it has a large Hispanic population because of the immersion program. So you can't even argue that you picked the best schools. Just the whitest ones. Good work.
Exhibit A of the race card problem.
Like it or not, the Hill is an actual neighborhood, and the schools listed are the zones that are actually in that neighborhood. DCPS gerrymandered SH, EH and Jefferson precisely to avoid having too many white kids in one school. Those school feeder patterns were not chosen because it makes the most geographic sense or because it was the smartest educational play.
JO isn't on the hill, and most of the boundary is nowhere near the Hill. Van Ness boundary - not on the Hill. Amidon Bowen boundary - not on the Hill.
But it doesn't matter, because the race issue will never be overcome in DC. So we'll just keep having three mediocre, at best, middle schools, and a shit high school.
What are the boundaries of the Capitol Hill neighborhood?
What characteristics define areas inside the boundary vs outside the boundary?
Why should the school system organize itself around a neighborhood boundary?
Well, DCPS is a system, like most, with "neighboorhood schools," so it follows that the schools are organized around neighborhood boundaries.
Why do most school systems organize around neighborhoods? Because community is good for students.
I'm not asking why schools organize around neighborhoods. I'm asking why they should organize around a specific boundary defined for other purposes. For example, we don't set school boundaries by census tract. We could, I guess, but would it actually meet the needs of the school system? The same question is valid for whatever boundary the PP is using to define Capitol Hill.
Lady, Capitol Hill isn’t some made up thing. This is not that hard. Open a maps app on your phone. Type in “Capitol Hill.” It will pull up a neighborhood. Just like NOMA, Kingman Park, Penn Quarter, Eckington, Logan Circle, Navy Yard are all neighborhoods.
Now pull up the boundary map. Watkins, Brent, Ludlow, Maury, Payne. Those are the by right schools that are on the Hill.
^^ To be clear, they would be the one who introduced the error in terms of years, not you. And I am just assuming it is the same poster who chimed in later.
Anonymous wrote:DCPS won’t change until people are willing to make policy decisions without the fear of being called “racist.”
Example 1: “Gifted” programs would keep middle and upper income families in neighborhood schools, improving academic outcomes (and providing low income academically advanced children a better education).
Example 2: Feeder patterns that concentrate higher performing elementary schools to improve middle and high schools. Feed all the hill middle schools into one school … magically you have a second Deal. Bet you would get a second Wilson out of that too.
But we can’t do either of those things, because it’s “racist.”
Regarding the suggestion to feed all Hill elementariness into one HS, I think there are other obstacles as well. Currently they feed to three schools and to create a single MS, you'd need a huge building. You need at least two MSs there for space reasons.
Also, while I agree that there is some dogma involved that prevents pushing for more opportunities for high achieving kids on the Hill, I also think you have conflicting goals of a lot of parents in the neighborhood. Even among parents of high achieving kids, you also have this attachment to neighborhood schools and walkability, and when you look at how far apart Jefferson and Eliot-Hine currently are, you can see that a lot of families on the Hill would have to sacrifice walkable school commutes to make this happen. among the UMC families I know who are choosing to attend their IB MS on the Hill, a major selling point is keeping the walkable commutes they've had in elementary which really become part of the culture of the neighborhood, and also help a lot when you have kids in elementary and MS. I think this is one of the reasons that the school where you are seeing the most buy in from IB families presently is Stuart-Hobson -- it's very close to the feeder elementary that also has the most IB buy in in the zone (L-T) and also very close to JOW (still not a ton of IB buy in but improving and likely to make a big jump when they open their new campus in 2026), and that's appealing for families who have gotten used to short walking and biking commutes for the last 6 or 7 years.
Likewise one reason Jefferson has struggled so much with getting buy in is that the feeder with the most IB buy in, Brent, is also the least convenient to that MS campus. But buy in at Amidon-Bowen is improving and that has helped -- families see the benefit of a nearby school and want to keep the vibes going.
I don't think your premise is totally wrong -- I absolutely think the resistance to tracking and better opportunities for higher achieving kids is due to a misguided belief that supporting academic achievers is racist. But specifically regarding the idea of a unified Hill middle school, the resistance may once have been due to misguided equity beliefs, but I don't think it is anymore. As all three Hill MSs have increased their IB buy in, and as the Hill builds off the success of schools like Brent, Maury, and L-T with success at Payne, Chisolm, JOW, and Amidon-Bowen, I think you will continue to see increased buy in at all three MSs. Which might actually lead to a better trajectory than Deal, which has constant issues with overcrowding, if the result is three strong MSs instead of just one.
And this is where "that's racist" will come out. First objection is "too many schools, so we won't have a big enough building." Ok.... feed only the schools that are actually on the Hill into one middle/high school: Watkins, Brent, Maury, LT, Payne. The middle and high school will be excellent, immediately.
Why won't that fly? It's "racist."
It won't fly because five schools is still too many. When you create an "excellent" middle school with an "excellent" high school, the IB capture rate will go way up.
If you think people will be fine with being kicked out of an excellent feeder pattern and reassigned to much worse one, think again. They will oppose this very hard and it won't go through.
It's also geographically nonsensical. If those 5 schools feed into one middle school, are you suggesting that all the schools on the fringes of Ward 6 feed into the same school? So JOW, Miner, Chisolm, Van Ness, and Amidon-Bowen would all go to the same middle school? That makes zero sense. JOW is literally 3 blocks from L-T. Miner is only a little further from Maury. Chisolm and Payne are pretty close as well. Meanwhile Van Ness and Amidon Bowen are way closer to Brent than to any of the other schools they'd be grouped with.
People would call that racist because it literally would be racist. You just cherry-picked the 5 whitest schools and ignored geography in order to group them together. Also Chisolm is actually much more desirable than Watkins at this point but it has a large Hispanic population because of the immersion program. So you can't even argue that you picked the best schools. Just the whitest ones. Good work.
Exhibit A of the race card problem.
Like it or not, the Hill is an actual neighborhood, and the schools listed are the zones that are actually in that neighborhood. DCPS gerrymandered SH, EH and Jefferson precisely to avoid having too many white kids in one school. Those school feeder patterns were not chosen because it makes the most geographic sense or because it was the smartest educational play.
JO isn't on the hill, and most of the boundary is nowhere near the Hill. Van Ness boundary - not on the Hill. Amidon Bowen boundary - not on the Hill.
But it doesn't matter, because the race issue will never be overcome in DC. So we'll just keep having three mediocre, at best, middle schools, and a shit high school.
What are the boundaries of the Capitol Hill neighborhood?
What characteristics define areas inside the boundary vs outside the boundary?
Why should the school system organize itself around a neighborhood boundary?
Well, DCPS is a system, like most, with "neighboorhood schools," so it follows that the schools are organized around neighborhood boundaries.
Why do most school systems organize around neighborhoods? Because community is good for students.
I'm not asking why schools organize around neighborhoods. I'm asking why they should organize around a specific boundary defined for other purposes. For example, we don't set school boundaries by census tract. We could, I guess, but would it actually meet the needs of the school system? The same question is valid for whatever boundary the PP is using to define Capitol Hill.
Lady, Capitol Hill isn’t some made up thing. This is not that hard. Open a maps app on your phone. Type in “Capitol Hill.” It will pull up a neighborhood. Just like NOMA, Kingman Park, Penn Quarter, Eckington, Logan Circle, Navy Yard are all neighborhoods.
Now pull up the boundary map. Watkins, Brent, Ludlow, Maury, Payne. Those are the by right schools that are on the Hill.
You're correct, but missing Chisholm. It is definitely on the Hill.
I think the truth is Brent wasn't zoned to SH entirely because of racial optics. If we were talking proximity, neighborhoods, any other sensible school boundary design related factor? Brent clearly goes to SH instead of Jefferson, which is not really walkable from the Brent zone in terms of distance but is really, really not walkable once the actual city layout is taking into account. No one is having their kids stroll under and along side a bunch of highways to get from Brent's zone to Jefferson. LOTS of kids from the Brent zone would walk to school at SH from their homes. It is really not surprising that Brent has long been the hold out in terms of buy in to Jefferson. DCPS really just messed that up and they ABSOLUTELY did it because they didn't want to create the "white" middle school with both Brent and Watkins, because those were the only two gentrified schools at the time.
Anonymous wrote:DCPS won’t change until people are willing to make policy decisions without the fear of being called “racist.”
Example 1: “Gifted” programs would keep middle and upper income families in neighborhood schools, improving academic outcomes (and providing low income academically advanced children a better education).
Example 2: Feeder patterns that concentrate higher performing elementary schools to improve middle and high schools. Feed all the hill middle schools into one school … magically you have a second Deal. Bet you would get a second Wilson out of that too.
But we can’t do either of those things, because it’s “racist.”
Regarding the suggestion to feed all Hill elementariness into one HS, I think there are other obstacles as well. Currently they feed to three schools and to create a single MS, you'd need a huge building. You need at least two MSs there for space reasons.
Also, while I agree that there is some dogma involved that prevents pushing for more opportunities for high achieving kids on the Hill, I also think you have conflicting goals of a lot of parents in the neighborhood. Even among parents of high achieving kids, you also have this attachment to neighborhood schools and walkability, and when you look at how far apart Jefferson and Eliot-Hine currently are, you can see that a lot of families on the Hill would have to sacrifice walkable school commutes to make this happen. among the UMC families I know who are choosing to attend their IB MS on the Hill, a major selling point is keeping the walkable commutes they've had in elementary which really become part of the culture of the neighborhood, and also help a lot when you have kids in elementary and MS. I think this is one of the reasons that the school where you are seeing the most buy in from IB families presently is Stuart-Hobson -- it's very close to the feeder elementary that also has the most IB buy in in the zone (L-T) and also very close to JOW (still not a ton of IB buy in but improving and likely to make a big jump when they open their new campus in 2026), and that's appealing for families who have gotten used to short walking and biking commutes for the last 6 or 7 years.
Likewise one reason Jefferson has struggled so much with getting buy in is that the feeder with the most IB buy in, Brent, is also the least convenient to that MS campus. But buy in at Amidon-Bowen is improving and that has helped -- families see the benefit of a nearby school and want to keep the vibes going.
I don't think your premise is totally wrong -- I absolutely think the resistance to tracking and better opportunities for higher achieving kids is due to a misguided belief that supporting academic achievers is racist. But specifically regarding the idea of a unified Hill middle school, the resistance may once have been due to misguided equity beliefs, but I don't think it is anymore. As all three Hill MSs have increased their IB buy in, and as the Hill builds off the success of schools like Brent, Maury, and L-T with success at Payne, Chisolm, JOW, and Amidon-Bowen, I think you will continue to see increased buy in at all three MSs. Which might actually lead to a better trajectory than Deal, which has constant issues with overcrowding, if the result is three strong MSs instead of just one.
And this is where "that's racist" will come out. First objection is "too many schools, so we won't have a big enough building." Ok.... feed only the schools that are actually on the Hill into one middle/high school: Watkins, Brent, Maury, LT, Payne. The middle and high school will be excellent, immediately.
Why won't that fly? It's "racist."
It won't fly because five schools is still too many. When you create an "excellent" middle school with an "excellent" high school, the IB capture rate will go way up.
If you think people will be fine with being kicked out of an excellent feeder pattern and reassigned to much worse one, think again. They will oppose this very hard and it won't go through.
It's also geographically nonsensical. If those 5 schools feed into one middle school, are you suggesting that all the schools on the fringes of Ward 6 feed into the same school? So JOW, Miner, Chisolm, Van Ness, and Amidon-Bowen would all go to the same middle school? That makes zero sense. JOW is literally 3 blocks from L-T. Miner is only a little further from Maury. Chisolm and Payne are pretty close as well. Meanwhile Van Ness and Amidon Bowen are way closer to Brent than to any of the other schools they'd be grouped with.
People would call that racist because it literally would be racist. You just cherry-picked the 5 whitest schools and ignored geography in order to group them together. Also Chisolm is actually much more desirable than Watkins at this point but it has a large Hispanic population because of the immersion program. So you can't even argue that you picked the best schools. Just the whitest ones. Good work.
Exhibit A of the race card problem.
Like it or not, the Hill is an actual neighborhood, and the schools listed are the zones that are actually in that neighborhood. DCPS gerrymandered SH, EH and Jefferson precisely to avoid having too many white kids in one school. Those school feeder patterns were not chosen because it makes the most geographic sense or because it was the smartest educational play.
JO isn't on the hill, and most of the boundary is nowhere near the Hill. Van Ness boundary - not on the Hill. Amidon Bowen boundary - not on the Hill.
But it doesn't matter, because the race issue will never be overcome in DC. So we'll just keep having three mediocre, at best, middle schools, and a shit high school.
What are the boundaries of the Capitol Hill neighborhood?
What characteristics define areas inside the boundary vs outside the boundary?
Why should the school system organize itself around a neighborhood boundary?
Well, DCPS is a system, like most, with "neighboorhood schools," so it follows that the schools are organized around neighborhood boundaries.
Why do most school systems organize around neighborhoods? Because community is good for students.
I'm not asking why schools organize around neighborhoods. I'm asking why they should organize around a specific boundary defined for other purposes. For example, we don't set school boundaries by census tract. We could, I guess, but would it actually meet the needs of the school system? The same question is valid for whatever boundary the PP is using to define Capitol Hill.
Lady, Capitol Hill isn’t some made up thing. This is not that hard. Open a maps app on your phone. Type in “Capitol Hill.” It will pull up a neighborhood. Just like NOMA, Kingman Park, Penn Quarter, Eckington, Logan Circle, Navy Yard are all neighborhoods.
Great, thanks for telling me what you consider Capitol Hill.
The only schools in this boundary are Brent, Peabody/Watkins, and Chisolm.
Anonymous wrote:One factor that has stagnated SH a bit is Watkins’ decline. LT has massively improved in terms of IB buy-in and UMC buy-in during the period from ‘19-‘20 to now, but Watkins has gone downhill in both categories m. Additionally, increased IB buy-in for LT may actually paradoxically have the effect of decreasing the percentage of enrolled kids heading to SH.
I think people must be using "IB" as a proxy for something else. Maybe socioeconomic class? Or the distribution of IB students across grades has changed? Because the numbers don't support what you're saying.
Number of students living IB at Ludlow-Taylor
went from 439 in SY19-20 to 436 in SY24-25.
Number of students living IB and attending Ludlow-Taylor went from 263 in SY19-20 to 267 in SY24-25.
Where are you getting these figures? Because L-T was 35% in 2016 with an enrollment of 343 kids, so if it was really 263 kids by 2019, that is some crazy fast change and might suggest the poster is just off by like 1 year in terms of their thinking about a sharp increase.
Anonymous wrote:DCPS won’t change until people are willing to make policy decisions without the fear of being called “racist.”
Example 1: “Gifted” programs would keep middle and upper income families in neighborhood schools, improving academic outcomes (and providing low income academically advanced children a better education).
Example 2: Feeder patterns that concentrate higher performing elementary schools to improve middle and high schools. Feed all the hill middle schools into one school … magically you have a second Deal. Bet you would get a second Wilson out of that too.
But we can’t do either of those things, because it’s “racist.”
Regarding the suggestion to feed all Hill elementariness into one HS, I think there are other obstacles as well. Currently they feed to three schools and to create a single MS, you'd need a huge building. You need at least two MSs there for space reasons.
Also, while I agree that there is some dogma involved that prevents pushing for more opportunities for high achieving kids on the Hill, I also think you have conflicting goals of a lot of parents in the neighborhood. Even among parents of high achieving kids, you also have this attachment to neighborhood schools and walkability, and when you look at how far apart Jefferson and Eliot-Hine currently are, you can see that a lot of families on the Hill would have to sacrifice walkable school commutes to make this happen. among the UMC families I know who are choosing to attend their IB MS on the Hill, a major selling point is keeping the walkable commutes they've had in elementary which really become part of the culture of the neighborhood, and also help a lot when you have kids in elementary and MS. I think this is one of the reasons that the school where you are seeing the most buy in from IB families presently is Stuart-Hobson -- it's very close to the feeder elementary that also has the most IB buy in in the zone (L-T) and also very close to JOW (still not a ton of IB buy in but improving and likely to make a big jump when they open their new campus in 2026), and that's appealing for families who have gotten used to short walking and biking commutes for the last 6 or 7 years.
Likewise one reason Jefferson has struggled so much with getting buy in is that the feeder with the most IB buy in, Brent, is also the least convenient to that MS campus. But buy in at Amidon-Bowen is improving and that has helped -- families see the benefit of a nearby school and want to keep the vibes going.
I don't think your premise is totally wrong -- I absolutely think the resistance to tracking and better opportunities for higher achieving kids is due to a misguided belief that supporting academic achievers is racist. But specifically regarding the idea of a unified Hill middle school, the resistance may once have been due to misguided equity beliefs, but I don't think it is anymore. As all three Hill MSs have increased their IB buy in, and as the Hill builds off the success of schools like Brent, Maury, and L-T with success at Payne, Chisolm, JOW, and Amidon-Bowen, I think you will continue to see increased buy in at all three MSs. Which might actually lead to a better trajectory than Deal, which has constant issues with overcrowding, if the result is three strong MSs instead of just one.
And this is where "that's racist" will come out. First objection is "too many schools, so we won't have a big enough building." Ok.... feed only the schools that are actually on the Hill into one middle/high school: Watkins, Brent, Maury, LT, Payne. The middle and high school will be excellent, immediately.
Why won't that fly? It's "racist."
It won't fly because five schools is still too many. When you create an "excellent" middle school with an "excellent" high school, the IB capture rate will go way up.
If you think people will be fine with being kicked out of an excellent feeder pattern and reassigned to much worse one, think again. They will oppose this very hard and it won't go through.
It's also geographically nonsensical. If those 5 schools feed into one middle school, are you suggesting that all the schools on the fringes of Ward 6 feed into the same school? So JOW, Miner, Chisolm, Van Ness, and Amidon-Bowen would all go to the same middle school? That makes zero sense. JOW is literally 3 blocks from L-T. Miner is only a little further from Maury. Chisolm and Payne are pretty close as well. Meanwhile Van Ness and Amidon Bowen are way closer to Brent than to any of the other schools they'd be grouped with.
People would call that racist because it literally would be racist. You just cherry-picked the 5 whitest schools and ignored geography in order to group them together. Also Chisolm is actually much more desirable than Watkins at this point but it has a large Hispanic population because of the immersion program. So you can't even argue that you picked the best schools. Just the whitest ones. Good work.
Exhibit A of the race card problem.
Like it or not, the Hill is an actual neighborhood, and the schools listed are the zones that are actually in that neighborhood. DCPS gerrymandered SH, EH and Jefferson precisely to avoid having too many white kids in one school. Those school feeder patterns were not chosen because it makes the most geographic sense or because it was the smartest educational play.
JO isn't on the hill, and most of the boundary is nowhere near the Hill. Van Ness boundary - not on the Hill. Amidon Bowen boundary - not on the Hill.
But it doesn't matter, because the race issue will never be overcome in DC. So we'll just keep having three mediocre, at best, middle schools, and a shit high school.
What are the boundaries of the Capitol Hill neighborhood?
What characteristics define areas inside the boundary vs outside the boundary?
Why should the school system organize itself around a neighborhood boundary?
Well, DCPS is a system, like most, with "neighboorhood schools," so it follows that the schools are organized around neighborhood boundaries.
Why do most school systems organize around neighborhoods? Because community is good for students.
I'm not asking why schools organize around neighborhoods. I'm asking why they should organize around a specific boundary defined for other purposes. For example, we don't set school boundaries by census tract. We could, I guess, but would it actually meet the needs of the school system? The same question is valid for whatever boundary the PP is using to define Capitol Hill.
Lady, Capitol Hill isn’t some made up thing. This is not that hard. Open a maps app on your phone. Type in “Capitol Hill.” It will pull up a neighborhood. Just like NOMA, Kingman Park, Penn Quarter, Eckington, Logan Circle, Navy Yard are all neighborhoods.
Great, thanks for telling me what you consider Capitol Hill.
The only schools in this boundary are Brent, Peabody/Watkins, and Chisolm.
LOL. The only thing more absurd than you relying on Google to define what counts as qualified neighborhoods is your blind ignorance in citing "NOMA" as part of the historical record on which to base your silly conclusion. NOMA was a term made up by real estate agents @20 years ago.
You have unintentionally made the point you're arguing against. We should not be defining school zones based on arbitrary sub neighborhood terms.
Anonymous wrote:DCPS won’t change until people are willing to make policy decisions without the fear of being called “racist.”
Example 1: “Gifted” programs would keep middle and upper income families in neighborhood schools, improving academic outcomes (and providing low income academically advanced children a better education).
Example 2: Feeder patterns that concentrate higher performing elementary schools to improve middle and high schools. Feed all the hill middle schools into one school … magically you have a second Deal. Bet you would get a second Wilson out of that too.
But we can’t do either of those things, because it’s “racist.”
Regarding the suggestion to feed all Hill elementariness into one HS, I think there are other obstacles as well. Currently they feed to three schools and to create a single MS, you'd need a huge building. You need at least two MSs there for space reasons.
Also, while I agree that there is some dogma involved that prevents pushing for more opportunities for high achieving kids on the Hill, I also think you have conflicting goals of a lot of parents in the neighborhood. Even among parents of high achieving kids, you also have this attachment to neighborhood schools and walkability, and when you look at how far apart Jefferson and Eliot-Hine currently are, you can see that a lot of families on the Hill would have to sacrifice walkable school commutes to make this happen. among the UMC families I know who are choosing to attend their IB MS on the Hill, a major selling point is keeping the walkable commutes they've had in elementary which really become part of the culture of the neighborhood, and also help a lot when you have kids in elementary and MS. I think this is one of the reasons that the school where you are seeing the most buy in from IB families presently is Stuart-Hobson -- it's very close to the feeder elementary that also has the most IB buy in in the zone (L-T) and also very close to JOW (still not a ton of IB buy in but improving and likely to make a big jump when they open their new campus in 2026), and that's appealing for families who have gotten used to short walking and biking commutes for the last 6 or 7 years.
Likewise one reason Jefferson has struggled so much with getting buy in is that the feeder with the most IB buy in, Brent, is also the least convenient to that MS campus. But buy in at Amidon-Bowen is improving and that has helped -- families see the benefit of a nearby school and want to keep the vibes going.
I don't think your premise is totally wrong -- I absolutely think the resistance to tracking and better opportunities for higher achieving kids is due to a misguided belief that supporting academic achievers is racist. But specifically regarding the idea of a unified Hill middle school, the resistance may once have been due to misguided equity beliefs, but I don't think it is anymore. As all three Hill MSs have increased their IB buy in, and as the Hill builds off the success of schools like Brent, Maury, and L-T with success at Payne, Chisolm, JOW, and Amidon-Bowen, I think you will continue to see increased buy in at all three MSs. Which might actually lead to a better trajectory than Deal, which has constant issues with overcrowding, if the result is three strong MSs instead of just one.
And this is where "that's racist" will come out. First objection is "too many schools, so we won't have a big enough building." Ok.... feed only the schools that are actually on the Hill into one middle/high school: Watkins, Brent, Maury, LT, Payne. The middle and high school will be excellent, immediately.
Why won't that fly? It's "racist."
It won't fly because five schools is still too many. When you create an "excellent" middle school with an "excellent" high school, the IB capture rate will go way up.
If you think people will be fine with being kicked out of an excellent feeder pattern and reassigned to much worse one, think again. They will oppose this very hard and it won't go through.
It's also geographically nonsensical. If those 5 schools feed into one middle school, are you suggesting that all the schools on the fringes of Ward 6 feed into the same school? So JOW, Miner, Chisolm, Van Ness, and Amidon-Bowen would all go to the same middle school? That makes zero sense. JOW is literally 3 blocks from L-T. Miner is only a little further from Maury. Chisolm and Payne are pretty close as well. Meanwhile Van Ness and Amidon Bowen are way closer to Brent than to any of the other schools they'd be grouped with.
People would call that racist because it literally would be racist. You just cherry-picked the 5 whitest schools and ignored geography in order to group them together. Also Chisolm is actually much more desirable than Watkins at this point but it has a large Hispanic population because of the immersion program. So you can't even argue that you picked the best schools. Just the whitest ones. Good work.
Exhibit A of the race card problem.
Like it or not, the Hill is an actual neighborhood, and the schools listed are the zones that are actually in that neighborhood. DCPS gerrymandered SH, EH and Jefferson precisely to avoid having too many white kids in one school. Those school feeder patterns were not chosen because it makes the most geographic sense or because it was the smartest educational play.
JO isn't on the hill, and most of the boundary is nowhere near the Hill. Van Ness boundary - not on the Hill. Amidon Bowen boundary - not on the Hill.
But it doesn't matter, because the race issue will never be overcome in DC. So we'll just keep having three mediocre, at best, middle schools, and a shit high school.
What are the boundaries of the Capitol Hill neighborhood?
What characteristics define areas inside the boundary vs outside the boundary?
Why should the school system organize itself around a neighborhood boundary?
Well, DCPS is a system, like most, with "neighboorhood schools," so it follows that the schools are organized around neighborhood boundaries.
Why do most school systems organize around neighborhoods? Because community is good for students.
I'm not asking why schools organize around neighborhoods. I'm asking why they should organize around a specific boundary defined for other purposes. For example, we don't set school boundaries by census tract. We could, I guess, but would it actually meet the needs of the school system? The same question is valid for whatever boundary the PP is using to define Capitol Hill.
Lady, Capitol Hill isn’t some made up thing. This is not that hard. Open a maps app on your phone. Type in “Capitol Hill.” It will pull up a neighborhood. Just like NOMA, Kingman Park, Penn Quarter, Eckington, Logan Circle, Navy Yard are all neighborhoods.
Now pull up the boundary map. Watkins, Brent, Ludlow, Maury, Payne. Those are the by right schools that are on the Hill.
You're correct, but missing Chisholm. It is definitely on the Hill.
I think the truth is Brent wasn't zoned to SH entirely because of racial optics. If we were talking proximity, neighborhoods, any other sensible school boundary design related factor? Brent clearly goes to SH instead of Jefferson, which is not really walkable from the Brent zone in terms of distance but is really, really not walkable once the actual city layout is taking into account. No one is having their kids stroll under and along side a bunch of highways to get from Brent's zone to Jefferson. LOTS of kids from the Brent zone would walk to school at SH from their homes. It is really not surprising that Brent has long been the hold out in terms of buy in to Jefferson. DCPS really just messed that up and they ABSOLUTELY did it because they didn't want to create the "white" middle school with both Brent and Watkins, because those were the only two gentrified schools at the time.
DC should index on what’s good for UMC blacks folks and that would solve lots of problems.
It is interesting to talk to families with college age children who live in the Hardy boundary. A decade ago, Hardy was less than 20% IB and 50% free lunch. There were students from all over the city, including Brent and other schools on the Hill. The younger grades were just then starting to be somewhat more heavily IB. Lots of IB families still thought private or moving were the only way to go. Now you cannot even get into Hardy out of bounds. Raise the possibility that the current Hill middle schools might already be a decent or improving option, and invite lots of posters that the area middle schools will never be acceptable without a single pan-Hill school, or a high school feed other than Eastern, or removing the lower scoring feeders etc.
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}