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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm neighbors with 2 rising first graders from Peabody, and both families have told me that almost the entire class is going to Watkins. A few more classes like that and Watkins will be a different place.[/quote]

I'm the parent of a rising First Grader from Peabody who will be going to Watkins.  I currently only know of two kids (from a total of four classes) in the entire school NOT going to Watkins.  I'm sure there are more than a handful, but, honestly, I just don't know of more than two, and I've been asking....(and I presently haven't heard of anybody going to MV, though maybe my kid's in another circle.)

As for SES status, if it's any indicator, I've been to A LOT of birthdays that cost over $500.  And The school's starting to look  like a mini-Boden catalog.

There's also a visible demographic shift between my K child's class and my Pk3 child's.  (The PK3 class is diverse, but my impression--based on no hard-data, but impressions from fellow parents--is that it's more uniformlyl higher SES.)
[/quote]

I'm the parent of a rising 2nd grader at Watkins. The vast, vast majority of kids in PK4 have continued to 1st grade at Watkins, I haven't heard of any 1st graders who aren't continuing to 2nd (though I'm sure there will be some), and we've had many conversions with other parents (yes, lawyers, etc.) who really hope and plan for the cohort to continue through to Stuart Hobson.

If you're interested, see this relatively recent thread with several hundred posts: http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/461253.page (Watkins Parents: How pleased are you? How optimistic?)[/quote]

PP what are your impressions of Watkins so far? Do you feel like your child is getting a good education? Did your kid's class have any behavioral issues that you didn't feel were adequately addressed?

If you magically got into SWS or Brent tomorrow, would you stay at Watkins?[/quote]

Short version: yes, good education; impressed with academic progress ; from child reports, no behavioral issues beyond what you'd expect from pretty much any group of 6&7 year olds.

Long version: see earlier thread.

also https://twitter.com/MsDrummAP  https://twitter.com/MrLawsonAP http://www.capitolhillclusterschool.org/our-schools/watkins-elementary/new-at-watkins-elementary - obviously not a unbiased picture, but gives you a sense of things that are going on.

As to switching to SWS or Brent, would not switch because of continuity problems. If we had been able to start out in one of those schools, maybe. My sense is that upper elementary is more of a sure thing at those schools, but there wouldn't be the continuity through middle school (Stuart Hobson), and from what I've heard, having a good peer group is especially important at those ages.[/quote]

you do know that SH has a lower percentage of students who are proficient or better in math (and a lower percentage of kids who are advanced in math) than Jefferson, right? In reading, Stuart Hobson has 61% proficient and Jefferson has 45%, so there is admittedly a distinction there.  Jefferson has more than twice the in-bounds percentage of Stuart-Hobson, too. Learndc no longer seems to have the 2014 equity reports posted, but the most recent stats I could find showed a higher median growth percentile at Jefferson than Stuart-Hobson. So I'm not sure that S-H is the only middle school option for kids on the Hill that can provide a "good peer group." Unless you think kids need to be white to be good peers, in which case yes, there are about 40 at Stuart Hobson.  [/quote]

Jefferson is undeniably outperforming SH in student progress.  That likely reflects that the school is meeting the needs of its  students of color in a way that SH is not.  SH has always been fine for advanced students regardless of race, but there is a large performance gap along racial lines.  SH is bigger and provides at least some advanced coursework for those capable.  SH (and by extension its feeders) are not meeting the needs a lot of students.[/quote]

The stats don't bear out much of what you're saying. Yes, Jefferson is seeing more progress and meeting the needs of students of color better than SH.  But SH has a smaller percentage of kids who are advanced in math than Jefferson does.  I don't know what each school does for the couple dozen kids in each grade who are advanced in math and/or reading (separate classes? pull outs? in-class enrichment? all of these, if executed well, can be successful) whatever it is, it's working better at Jefferson than at SH.  You can tell this from the median growth percentiles.  Those are in the equity reports available at 
http://osse.dc.gov/node/739452. MGP is a measure of how much kids grow compared to kids throughout the district who had the same starting point.  So a kid who scored in the 25th percentile on last year's CAS is compared to the others who scored at that percentile to see who made more progress, and kids who were at the 90th percentile are compared to each other.  The whole idea is for it to be a way of comparing schools while excluding the fact that kids at some schools come in a lot more prepared than kids at other schools.

The DC average is 50.  Stuart-Hobson's overall MGP was 36 in math and 49 in reading.  Jefferson's overall was 57 in math and 54 in reading. You're right that SH's MGP is especially low for black students and those kids receiving FARMs.  But they are also lower than the DC average for white non-Hispanic students: 47 and 57 for math and reading, compared to DC averages of 59 and 62, respectively.  So even those kids are not progressing particularly well; they just came in higher and stagnated.  [/quote]

Jefferson is interesting. It used to have a really great reputation, but went downhill after the principle left (or so I understand). In the broader community, I think people still have a memory of it being a solid place, which may mean that ambitious OOB families seek it out.[/quote]

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