Why is Washington Latin MS now a Tier 2 school?

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05/05/2015 18:30

Subject: Re:Why is Washington Latin MS now a Tier 2 school?

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Anonymous

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Anonymous wrote:Dramatic much? Catastrophic decline? Hardly.

The decline does look bad, PP.

The percentage of kids scoring Advanced in reading and math at Latin MS increased dramatically in 2010, but has been on the decline ever since.

What caused the large increase in 2010? Was there a surge in middle class enrollment for the 2009-2010 school year? Is that the year Deal stopped taking kids zoned for Hardy? Is there another reason?

Anyway, since 2010, the number of kids scoring Advanced at Latin MS has been on the decline. This decline is not due to the departure of bright kids, though, at least not entirely. The median growth percentile has also been on the decline at Latin MS since 2010:

Year -- Reading MGP -- Math MGP
2011 -- 63.5% -- 52.2%
2012 -- 56.9% -- 44.8%
2013 -- 46.0% -- 46.0%
2014 -- 42.8% -- 39.8%

The MGP data point to a multi-year trend of Advanced kids falling behind at Latin MS. Why is this happening?

I started this thread and I am not sending a kid to Hardy. I hope very much to get one kid into Latin.
But I am concerned.

What was really interesting is that all[b] of the tier I schools I looked at, including Deal, had this huge spike in scores in 2010. Then the question became who kept hold of it, who moved forward, and who sank back down.

I only looked at the Tier I schools so I am not sure if the spike was universal, but if you compare it to say Washington Latin High School, where when our oldest was considering Latin back in the dark ages we were warned that so many peeled off to privates in 9th it would not solve our financial problems, if you look at their graph, they are slow and steady improvement. Deal has that spike in 2010 and then stays in the stratosphere.

But no Tier I school falls back down. And I found the focus info on another thread. As the announcement said, x # of schools have been Tier I since they opened (Washington Latin MS included until now, the high school since it opened, maintaining its status and getting better every year as more people stay), and once these schools make it they don't tend to fall back down. There was some mention of EL Haynes on another thread having once been Tier I and now being Tier 2 but I can't find that info.

I think I have seen some of the nastiest snobbiest posts from Latin parents here in my entire time on DCUM and I find that very discouraging as well. Laughing at a parent who has sent children to both schools - are you kidding me?

Interesting "dark ages" comment. Not sure what the PP is referring too. However, around 2010 quite a few high SES AA parents stopped sending the sons to Latin and began not considering applying due to the stereotyping that was occurring at the school (including comments made by Board members). This community started looking at Deal for which we are inbound and other schools both private and charter. It has developed the reputation in this community as only being a school that you can send your child if you can be present in the school on a daily or almost constant basis.

dark ages = 2010, when everyone who applied could still get in to Latin but in talking to high SES parents they said that most of the kids in our group were still going private in 9th grade. We were looking for a solution for 4 kids all the way through, so that was not it. What is so interesting to me is how the popularity has skyrocketed and the kids staying for high school increased at the same time that Latin started absolutely failing its advanced kids - so they took a bunch of highly scoring kids, and moved them DOWN from advanced to proficient. And [b]these are the kids moving on to high school now, where retaining them is such a feather in their cap.

Not AA, but I have heard the same thing about Washington Latin for AA kids much more recently than 2010 - no shade, just the unvarnished truth. That assumptions are being made and kids are being treated differently, and they certainly do not seem to be doing any better by their AA advanced kids - although I think the numbers kind of show you are correct perhaps, that high performing AA kids started going elsewhere. The AA population has decreased.

Latin allows you to helicopter parent your kid to the nth degree but you cannot change their color.

We do not have that problem (we are white), but had I sent my kid to Latin and watched their score go from advanced to proficient on the DC CAS I would have been pissed.

So we are back to the fundamental question, and all of us who are looking at Latin (some for the second time),
want to know what has happened at Washington Latin MS -

why was momentum lost, and why are they moving in the wrong direction - from advanced to proficient as opposed to the other way around. Especially those of us who have kids who have always scored advanced on the DC CAS since 3rd grade.

Washington Latin MS and HS were Tier I from the day they opened their doors (and that was a gradual process). They started in 2006 or 2007. I cannot begin to explain how atypical a progression this is for a charter school that everyone wants to get into NOW, including those charter schools that Latin would definitely consider "laughable" schools by comparison - like KIPP and DC PREP. All these Tier I schools - those that have been there from day I, and those that have just attained the status, show improvement - Latin MS is the only one going in the other direction:

hence the well deserved drop from Tier I to Tier II.
I challenge Washington Latin MS parents to find another school with a similar drop where it is "not a big deal"
whether it is just the pure descent on the FOCUS graphs or a Tier I to Tier II.
It is a big deal, and it makes a big difference to me.
Unlike all these trendy Charter schools that have only existed for a few years, Washington Latin has a long history.
And a lot of explaining to do if it wants to continue to recruit the right type of MS parents (academic, not racial)
WL MS parents - do your school a favor, raise a little bit of hell, even if you do it very very quietly. Your kids deserve it

Thanks for all the info -
I learned that the charter board evaluation system is actually fair, but that if you really want all the info from the day a school started, you don't go to the Charter Board, Learn DC, or OSSE - you go to Focus.

I am sorry if I sound old school - you can be loosey goosey in elementary school, because the kids who come from high SES backgrounds learn most of what they need to at home. Middle School is when the teachers are supposed to take over, find what sparks our kids intellectually and encourage them to run with it, and Latin on paper (meaning course descriptions, glossy fliers) still appears to be an intellectual paradise.

But the emperor has no clothes. Kudos to the Charter Board for calling them on it. I'm sure they got a lot of blow back. But the DC CAS scores over time tell us in no uncertain terms that they have been doing a disservice to their kids, especially the high performing ones. We have no more DC CAS.

But this is something I would like to see the administration of the MS address and explain because it does look bad
If they, like the Latin parents on this thread, consider themselves "above it" because of their waiting lists, I think they will be making a HUGE mistake short term as well as long term.....

These are objective statistics. Laugh all you want, but get to the bottom of it........

The 'achievement gap' is a nation-wide, longstanding trend. It's why Atlanta just had an en masse cheating scandal. It's one of the reasons given for Cahill to be abruptly dismissed from Wilson. I am sure Latin is working on closing it - though have any schools in DC with the same SES diversity succeeded totally?