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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There goes most of the 4th grade cohort from Maury, Brent and SWS on Cap Hill.  Between Latin 1, Latin 2 (despite not-so-hot building and location) and BASIS few will stay for 5th.  I get it, but it's too bad.[/quote]

I truly don't understand why creating more space in an open-enrollment middle school that has a proven record of educating kids well and sending them on to success in high school and beyond is "too bad". Why must we always tear down the good things happening educationally in our city?[/quote]

Because you don't want to understand, to see the forest for the trees. It's too bad that our highest-performing local elementary schools on Capitol Hill lose up to 2/3 of their 4th graders to BASIS because DCPS and the charters aren't aligned on the transition year to middle school.  Why must we always accept almost everything DC public schools dishes out passively as parents?

Of the 70 plus 4th graders at Brent this year, we'll probably have 15 or 20 left for 5th grade with the new Latin campus opening.  I get why the 4th grade parents go, not why things have to be this way in the big picture.  I highly doubt that most of the 4th grade parents would run off if they didn't have to get on the 5th-12th grade train at Latin or BASIS to stay in the city with confidence that their children can get a good public school education after Brent.  The Jefferson Academy boosters will jump on shortly, claiming that a fine education can be had at the by-right school, so no need to run.   Whatever.[/quote]

Middle School and Junior High School programs have always been fluid about what is the appropriate grade to transition from elementary.  It’s been an ongoing debate in education circles. I think you’ll find that Stuart Hobson also used to start in 5th grade.  Our family has found that fishy grade year to be a perfect time to transition to a new educational setting. Something about a 10-11 year old is ready for a bigger intellectual challenge, but also child-like enough to not be jaded and stamped yet with a self-vision of a “good” student or “bad”student.  It’s a perfect age to introduce new norms and school culture, and to also take a step up maturity-wise—maybe traveling independently to a school a bit farther from home. On foot, by bike or bus or metro.

It’s really a waste of energy to get caught up in whether these schools start in the year you’d like them to. There’s more at stake, including 8 years of secondary education. 
[/quote]

The problem is that given the huge outflux, everyone then plays the lottery. If they get in, then they feel like they have to go, because they don't know 1) who of their classmates might be attending their IB middle school and 2) as 4th grade families they aren't really in a position to evaluate a 6-8 middle school well. They figure, hey, lets try it, if we don't like it we can always go back to your IB school. So lots of kids wind up leaving who might otherwise not have chose to if they had stayed until 5th.[/quote]

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