Reply to Brent vs. Maury vs. Ludlow-Taylor

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Give us a break. Most high SES families of all stripes who enroll at LT for ECE still leave by 4th or 5th grade.  But it was the very same story at Brent and Maury for the first decade after each of these schools started to "turn." LT will catch up soon enough, within 4 or 5 years.  It takes a lot longer for neighborhood parents in a gentrifying area to collectively feel confident about the upper ES grades in a DCPS school that new parents tend to think.  The reality is that embassy types are about the last neighborhood parents stay through 4th or 5th.  [/quote]

I actually bet the number of high SES kids at the schools in 5th grade isn’t as different as you think. LT sends some high SES kids to SH every year whereas Brent and Maury send almost none to their respective feeders.[/quote]

Not true about Maury. Significant numbers trying Eliot-Hine. [/quote]

Doesn't EH have like 20 white kids total? "Significant numbers" seems like a pretty big stretch there. My impression is that UMC POCs are even less likely to try these middle schools for reasons I totally understand.[/quote]

Maury has a small 5th grade class and a lot of them are enrolling. I expect this to continue with UMC Payne families too. I’m not trying to prove anything about race either way. Everyone would love to have a neighborhood MS so we and I assume most other families have an open mind. [/quote]

Honestly, if I were a family that had only been at Maury from PK to 5th, I too would have an open mind, because I would never have seen how chaotic a school can really be. As a OOB family new to Maury this year, I simply cannot believe how much nicer this school is compared to my IB. It actually makes me angry to know that such a vast difference can occur between schools that are within walking distance of one another.[/quote]

+1.  There was a day a few years back when I visited Deal MS and Jefferson Academy on the same day and I thought my head would explode with the stark difference in resourcing and school culture within the same school system. It’s when I realized DCPS Central Office is actually criminal in its neglect of a majority of its student population.[/quote]

I’ve never set foot in either school, but if there is a stark difference in physical plant resources, I agree that it’s criminal. School culture is a bit trickier since many aspects of culture (for better or worse) are imported into the school via the student body.  It’s just a hell of a lot easier to cultivate a strong(ish) academic culture at Deal vs EH/Jeff. But I suppose if we have to lift heaven and earth to do it, so be it.[/quote]

I am PP that is OOB for Maury. I’m not talking about the building. I’m talking about the school culture. The expectations of students, the behavior of the teachers, the attitude of the administration, the behavior of parents toward each other, etc. If you think you can move heaven and earth and change all of these things in the limited time your kid is at the school, good luck to you. [/quote]

School culture isn’t imported into the school via the student body. My family is the same as it always was. However, the experience we have now that we moved schools is completely different.[/quote]

Yes, but did all of the rest of your old school move along with you? That's the point. You're dropping into a new school culture, so it's different even though you alone are the same. Maury "culture" was still basically the same during the temporary relocation to E-H during construction, because the students and families were the same.[/quote]

Strongly disagree. I’m a teacher and have spent time in many educational settings. School culture is SET and MODELED by the adults in the building in explicit and nuanced ways. It is malleable and can change ( for better or worse ) in short order. [b]School culture is created through expectations and behaviors within the school, it is not dependent on the individual families or students coming to the school.[/b]

It’s the same way your office or workplace sets a tone or creates a culture no matter who the individual employees are. [/quote]
In theory.  Here on a Capitol Hill, in public schools with strong UMC buy-in by all races, school cultures are invariably acceptable, if not good or great.  In schools without strong UMC buy-in, school cultures are all over the map and a happy atmosphere can't compensate for weak or middling academics due to demographics/DCPS' aversion to test-in middle school programs.  I don't doubt that Jefferson's school culture is good, because the school's leadership seems to be first-rate.  Even so, UMC buy-in remains weak.[/quote]

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