Reply to Fix the Cluster/Stuart Hobson

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Reply to "Fix the Cluster/Stuart Hobson"

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[quote=Anonymous]The way Takoma Park and Eastern (Silver Spring) middle schools work offer excellent examples of how Hill middle schools could work.  Each of these MoCo schools suppots a test-in magnet program, Takoma for math/science and Eastern for communications/humanities, taking in 100 kids a year from around the county with 25 places reserved for neighborhood kids.

The application for the magnets is comprehensive and the county/magnet coordinators make a special effort to identify and include FARMs kids who can cope with magnet work.  MoCo offers gifted poor kids special opportunities to keep up with upper-middle-class peers, such as sponsoring them to participate in Johns Hopkins CTY summer camps to study subjects taught in the magnet programs.

But the "plebians" outside the magnets aren't complaining much because they and their parents can still choose from a full complement of honors/advanced courses, as well as "regular" courses, and remedial instruction/tutoring.  So a kid who is truly gifted/advanced in math at Takoma enters the magnet, one who is simply good at math takes honors courses, while one who is below proficient receives remediation/tutoring.  Nobody falls through the cracks and hardly anybody hits the road for charters or privates.

For example, at Takoma MS, a kid can take 6th or 7th grade algebra in the magnet, 7th grade algebra as an honors course, or 8th grade algebra as a regular class.  By contrast, SH has only recently begun offering 8th grade algebra as something of an honors course, leaving it a good 30 years behind Takoma in how its serving the brightest math-oriented IB students.

As a practical matter, unless Hill middle schools start offering MoCo and Fairfax standard offerings, high-SES families will continue to vote with their feet, peeling  off after elementary school in search of greener pastures.  When you're a professional who hears about colleagues and suburban friends with children no smarter than yours sending math-oriented kids to 6th and 7th grade algebra courses in public school, you tend to get nervous that DCPS will leave your DC in the dust.

You simply won't be able to attract most of the IB population to Hill middle schools by pretending that upper-middle-class families will be OK with a little more challenge.  You need to incentivize high-SES families to stay with programs on a par with those in the suburbs, because the suburbs are where they can easily afford to relocate if you don't.

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