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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No doubt, there are many potential reasons kids arrive at schools with below grade level skills. However, for parents considering sending their kids to Jefferson, the question is can Jefferson adequately teach my child given their resources and the cohort of students entering. Jefferson's response is differentiation in the classroom.[/quote]
Maybe more than differentiation in the classroom.  At a Brent PTA meeting several months ago, the Jefferson Academy vice principal did say that they'd be glad to offer "advanced classes," e.g. 7th grade algebra, if they had a cohort of students ready for them.

Henderson, Grosso, Allen and company don't seem to have their heads around the problem of funding pricey if-you-build-it-they-will-come renovations without also funding instructors/resources for honors classes (better than the at-grade level variant you find at Stuart Hobson), creating false narratives. The problem is quite simple: DCPS leaders and politicians aren't providing incentives to middle school principals to allocate funds for the advanced instruction needed to attract and retain cohorts of in-boundary students in gentrifying zones.

OK, so academic tracking along race lines was a serious problem in previous generations.  This time around, tracking could be done thoughtfully, with the sort of "flex tracking" with strong after-hours support you see at BASIS and Deal for math.
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There is definitely a "chicken and egg" dilemma at work here.  Hill parents don't trust DCPS to provide an adequate path for their kids. And after the Eastern debacle, where DCPS moved mountains to reconstitute, renovate and install IB at the "stroller brigade's" request, and they still didn't show up, Hill parents don't have much credibility with downtown either.[/quote]
Your story has holes.  It wasn't the "stroller brigade" pushing for Eastern.  If anything the stroller brigade wanted a viable comprehensive neighborhood middle school option that doesn't require lottery luck[/quote]
That's fair; fixing the high school before the middle schools didn't make much sense to me.[/quote]
Except they did fix middle schools.  Hobson got $40 million.  EH and Jefferson got additional $$ in the Ward 6 Middle School Reform Plan.  I'm not saying they did it right, but from leadership perspective they kow towed to gentrifiers.[/quote]

Ah, someone from Central Office chimes in.  Please tell us exactly what has been done to modernize Jefferson and Eliot-Hince since the "Reform Plan" was supposed to have been implemented.  My understanding is that neither DCPS nor DGS has been able to account for millions allocated for windows and other capital expenditures at EH.  It was a group of motivated parents who embarrassed Bowser into making some basic repairs to restrooms last year.  As for the Cluster, they got pretty much everything they wanted now that funds for the modernization of Watkins were reprogrammed so I will let them speak for themselves.  [/quote]

PS.  I also would take issue with the view that DCPS kowtowed to gentrified.  If anything, it kowtowed to the interests of families from Wards 7 and 8 who were active in the Cluster.  Some inbound families ultimately benefitted from the modernization of SH but then again DCPS pulled SWS from the Cluster and refused to consider granting proximity preference.  From all appearances, DCPS made sure that the majority of families moving on to SH for many years did not live on the Hill when Brent and Maury got pushed aside.  This was simply good ole fashioned Chocolate City politics. [/quote]

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