Jefferson Academy Kool-Aid

[Anonymous]

It is one thing to 'commit' to an elementary school where you're going to be around for 7 or 8 years, more if you have multiple children.

By middle school things are both more complicated academically and socially - learning styles! learning disabilities! peer pressure! application or private high school! - and your kids will only be at a school for 3 years.

I don't have the answer. But it's really a lot harder for all these reasons and more.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Also, as the middle school population grows (or potential middle school population), schools on the rise start to attract other well prepared students from OOB (see the Maury parent comments from earlier). It will take brave and hardworking parents to get the ball rolling, but it sounds like there is a principal at Jefferson willing to work with them.

Also, this is all a bit insulting to current Jefferson students who are proficient/advanced. There is already a cohort.

All 15 of them?

Taking this question seriously. I'm not going to look up the exact numbers right now, but if you assume Jefferson is roughly 300 kids and 12% are proficient or advanced, that's 36 kids. Spread over 3 grades, that's 12 per grade. Not a huge number but certainly enough for advanced classes which I know they have in at least math. Brent kids could easily double that. If you want all proficient/advanced kids in your entire class, you are in the wrong neighborhood...

I looked it up, by grade. ELA only, which is the better score with 16% proficient or advanced (math is 9%). Of course these kids are all a year older now.

6th - 11 of 97 students;
7th - 16 of 84 students;
8th - 17 of 96 students.

Let's not play games. Of the 9% proficiency in math, which is a low bar, 0% are 5's, meaning "advanced." So even if we double the proficiency percentage to 18% with this hypothetical cohort of Brent students, that's still damn few who are truly advanced and a pathetic overall proficiency rate. And what of the optics and other social issues when the overwhelmingly white kids are placed in the "advanced" classes. Nothing there to worry about.

There are only a small handful of schools with >%15 over 5 and none with >%20 over 5. Even the best schools are more like in the 15% 5 range. That seems to be the pattern in math throughout DC but the number of advanced students in struggling schools is eye opening. Over 1/3 of schools have 0 advanced math students and roughly the same number have 1 or 2 students scoring 5 on math.

It seems like you moved the goalposts. I wasn't raising an issue about there not being 15% of students who are advanced. Someone made the point that there was enough of a cohort to offer "advanced" classes but the data shows that Jefferson has exactly one student who is a "Level 5" which can be inferred to mean "advanced." If the suggestion is that proficient students be segregated and tracked then just come out and say that so we can stop pretending that there is a cohort of G+T students at Jefferson.

PP bemoaned lack of advanced students among the 9% proficient. That's a common theme around DCPS (and charters)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, as the middle school population grows (or potential middle school population), schools on the rise start to attract other well prepared students from OOB (see the Maury parent comments from earlier). It will take brave and hardworking parents to get the ball rolling, but it sounds like there is a principal at Jefferson willing to work with them.

Also, this is all a bit insulting to current Jefferson students who are proficient/advanced. There is already a cohort.

All 15 of them?

Taking this question seriously. I'm not going to look up the exact numbers right now, but if you assume Jefferson is roughly 300 kids and 12% are proficient or advanced, that's 36 kids. Spread over 3 grades, that's 12 per grade. Not a huge number but certainly enough for advanced classes which I know they have in at least math. Brent kids could easily double that. If you want all proficient/advanced kids in your entire class, you are in the wrong neighborhood...

No, you're in the right neighborhood without much in the way of academic tracking/streaming, or any middle school test-in options. This is because politicians don't get voted out for failing to insist that DCPS challenges advanced and gifted kids appropriately in neighborhood schools in 6th-8th grades. Please vote the refuseniks and wimps out, and encourage other dissatisfied voters to do the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why not set up a comprehensive middle school on Capitol Hill spread out on two campuses? 6th grade at Stuart-Hobson and 7th and 8th grade at Elliott-Hine. Feeders would be JO Wilson, LT, Watkins, Brent, Maury, Tyler, SWS, Payne, Miner, Van Ness, and Amidon-Bowen. There could be a Spanish immersion track to support students from Tyler Bilingual as well as Hill families from LAMB and Mundo Verde looking for a neighborhood school for the MS years. Turn Jefferson into a test-in STEM MS.

Great question for Henderson, Grosso and Allen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not set up a comprehensive middle school on Capitol Hill spread out on two campuses? 6th grade at Stuart-Hobson and 7th and 8th grade at Elliott-Hine. Feeders would be JO Wilson, LT, Watkins, Brent, Maury, Tyler, SWS, Payne, Miner, Van Ness, and Amidon-Bowen. There could be a Spanish immersion track to support students from Tyler Bilingual as well as Hill families from LAMB and Mundo Verde looking for a neighborhood school for the MS years. Turn Jefferson into a test-in STEM MS.

Great question for Henderson, Grosso and Allen.

This idea has merit. Seriously. Something a politician can ( and should ) get behind. And it could be done in the spirit of "uniting ward 6 on the road to Eastern". It would eliminate these funding and feeder squabbles and create incentives for everyone to work together and share resources-- The school would be the size of Deal and have the per-pupiil funding to run robust programs in academics, remediation, sports, arts and drama. I feel like if we can get our neighborhood together in a middle school, amazing things could happen.

[Anonymous]

By the way, until the boundary reassignment process last year, the physical boundary of Deal was much bigger than ward 6 and there were nearly as many feeder schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not set up a comprehensive middle school on Capitol Hill spread out on two campuses? 6th grade at Stuart-Hobson and 7th and 8th grade at Elliott-Hine. Feeders would be JO Wilson, LT, Watkins, Brent, Maury, Tyler, SWS, Payne, Miner, Van Ness, and Amidon-Bowen. There could be a Spanish immersion track to support students from Tyler Bilingual as well as Hill families from LAMB and Mundo Verde looking for a neighborhood school for the MS years. Turn Jefferson into a test-in STEM MS.

Great question for Henderson, Grosso and Allen.

This idea has merit. Seriously. Something a politician can ( and should ) get behind. And it could be done in the spirit of "uniting ward 6 on the road to Eastern". It would eliminate these funding and feeder squabbles and create incentives for everyone to work together and share resources-- The school would be the size of Deal and have the per-pupiil funding to run robust programs in academics, remediation, sports, arts and drama. I feel like if we can get our neighborhood together in a middle school, amazing things could happen.

I'm asking, sincerely not snarkily, if it happened tomorrow would you be happy with the combined population of these schools as they stand today? I believe a majority of Capitol Hill elementary students are from outside of Ward 6, and a vast majority in the three middle schools. Would people miraculously start to send their high-performing kids to this comprehensive MS plan with the current cohorts?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why not set up a comprehensive middle school on Capitol Hill spread out on two campuses? 6th grade at Stuart-Hobson and 7th and 8th grade at Elliott-Hine. Feeders would be JO Wilson, LT, Watkins, Brent, Maury, Tyler, SWS, Payne, Miner, Van Ness, and Amidon-Bowen. There could be a Spanish immersion track to support students from Tyler Bilingual as well as Hill families from LAMB and Mundo Verde looking for a neighborhood school for the MS years. Turn Jefferson into a test-in STEM MS.

Great question for Henderson, Grosso and Allen.

This idea has been presented to city leaders and considered in various forms many many times. The leaders expressed a desire to standardize the entire system. Move fifth grade from Hobson into Watkins; dismantle the parts of the Cluster with SWS and Montessori being set up as stand alone; eliminate education campuses and set up regular ES/MS schools, etc.

With regard to Jefferson being a test in program, DCPS has a test in STEM program, and it is underutilized and not that strong. Also, what would you do with the kids from Southwest attending Jefferson in this new scenario? Have them drive another mile past Hobson to Eliot Hine (2 miles away versus half a mile for Jefferson) in order to cater to Hill families that are unwilling to enroll their kids in DCPS middle schools?

As Charles Allen says, we need everyone to pull in the same direction. The only way that happens is for (most of) Ward 6 to have one middle school - bonding everyone together and creating mutually shared goals plus economies of scale and critical mass of advanced students. How exactly to get there is the task at hand.

[Anonymous]

You can't get there as long as there are more politically-connected Ward 5, 7 and 8 parents on board at Stuart-Hobson than Ward 6 folk, and the Cluster endures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't get there as long as there are more politically-connected Ward 5, 7 and 8 parents on board at Stuart-Hobson than Ward 6 folk, and the Cluster endures.

what's that based on? you pulled that assumption out of something

[Anonymous]

15:28 -- Where is the DCPS test-in STEM program? How does one apply?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:15:28 -- Where is the DCPS test-in STEM program? How does one apply?

McKinley Tech
http://www.mckinleytech.org/index.jsp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can't get there as long as there are more politically-connected Ward 5, 7 and 8 parents on board at Stuart-Hobson than Ward 6 folk, and the Cluster endures.

what's that based on? you pulled that assumption out of something

I agree that ward 5, 7 and 8 parents like the Hill schools and Stuart Hobson exactly the way they are, and would make any change very difficult.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:15:28 -- Where is the DCPS test-in STEM program? How does one apply?

McKinley Tech
http://www.mckinleytech.org/index.jsp

its not a top school. Not by a long shot.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:OP, in the interests of fairness, I don't think anyone last night said Jefferson was the next Deal or that any of this would be easy. But they did let people know that the enrollment situation at Jefferson is improving, albeit it doesn't have nearly the demand as Basis or Latin. But demand is there which it isn't for Eliot-Hine or many other DCPS middle schools.

So you have done your due diligence in adding skepticism to the discussion. That is duly noted. Now how can we make a better middle school pathway for advanced/proficient students at Brent? I'm with the optimists who are working to improve Jefferson rather than throwing their hands up and getting a realtor or paying for private.

I would add that, yes, Hardy and Stuart-Hobson's test scores may improve faster than Jefferson's. But they are in demand now. So if Brent families would consider those schools now and the Hardy/SH aren't an option in the future, why not consider Jefferson if it gets to or could get to quickly the point Hardy is at now? It is my understanding that the proficient/advanced students at SH generally feel pretty good about their experience.

The fact that a school which has an enrollment of about 50 percent of its capacity has engineered a "waitlist" in order to create the perception that it is now "in demand" is too clever by half.

There's a lot of misconception about why schools offer OOB spots. Schools only offer OOB spaces with total confidence that the spaces will be filled and generate at least some waitlist. In the budgeting process the schools project enrollment and request budget accordingly. There's a strong disincentive to overestimating student enrollment because if the numbers don't materialize the schools lose the resources late in the process. Conversely, the principals are better served projecting realistically and almost conservatively because they can gain additional resources if the numbers demand it. They'd rather add if necessary late instead of completing their annual planning and subtracting resources at the beginning of the school year.

That's objectively interesting but ignores the reality that only a third of Jefferson students reside in the attendance zone. And the relaunch of Jefferson as a so-called "Academy" is a copout. Fully one-third of students tested at PARCC Level 1 - not meeting expectations- and were supposed to believe there is a viable IB MYP?

This is neither for nor against Jefferson, but the reason only a third of the students are inbounds is that Tyler is a brand new feeder and probably still sends its kids to underenrolled Eliot Hine which is much closer, Van Ness doesn't have a 5th grade yet, and Brent kids don't there. Leaving Amidon Bowen as the inbounds kids. So at least most of the kids have parents who care enough to lottery them into the 4th best DCPS...