Reply to Capitol Hill Middle School and High School situation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Similar story for Maury and SWS grads at Eliot-Hine, but even less rosy. Situation only a little better for Watkins and Ludlow grads at Stuart Hobson.

The fact remains that more than 2/3 of high SES Hill families who went with DCPS for elementary school have left the system by 6th grade.

I don't see any reason for that to change in the next 5 years, possibly 10.[/quote]

As long as there’s no coherent effort to integrate them, it won’t happen. People can cry white privilege and Brookings however much they want, but any policymaker who actually thinks integration is a desirable goal will have to use carrots. [/quote]

Thing thing about America is that you have freedom to move. If your schools suck, you can move. Middle class AA families seem to move to PG/MoCo and upper class families move to NoVa, Western MoCo or NoVa. Unless DCPS makes a targeted effort to retain these middle and upper class families, the situation will be one of adverse selection. [b]DCPS figured it out in the Wilson/Deal/Hardy areas; they just refuse to do it on Cap Hill.[/b] [/quote]

Yes, because DCPS can't walk and chew gum at the same time.  Integrating Hardy is their current focus, probably a 10-year project.  Once they've integrated Hardy, they'll surely get to us, by which time our kids will be in college.

What happens on the Hill is that a really small number of high SES families don't mind that DCPS doesn't make a targeted effort to retain them at the middle school level.  They enroll in neighborhood middle schools anyway.  Their cooperation lets politicians off the hook.  It's easy to paint refusenik parents--the great majority of us--as the problem when a few families have embraced the current DCPS middle school arrangement, and those that don't aren't organized politically.[/quote]

What are you hoping DCPS will do? Track all the high preforming ES to one MS, or offer tracking or something else?[/quote]

DP.  I do think combinging at least two of the smaller middles schools, if not all three, would make sense on a number of levels.  I think "tracking" is a loaded work and unclear concept. What I would do if I were a policymaker *actually interested* in getting neighborhood buy-in is hold a series of open-ended focus groups to discover the pain points.  I would also make a commitment that all kids would have access to math and English classes that reflect their ability level, for all three years.  Simultaneously I would commit to an enriched math and English program for the lower performers that focused on providing additional resources to them (rather than a ham-handed "Algebra for All" approach that doesn't work.) And I would fund behavioral techs and evidence-based advisors to deal with behavioral issues.  [/quote]

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