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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Not a great week for the Brent community. Many 4th graders without older siblings at charters didn't land a spot at the public middle schools parents applied them to - Washington Latin, BASIS, Stuart Hobson, Hardy, 2 Rivers, Creative Minds, Inspired Teaching etc. It sounds like two dozen of the 60 currently have no DC public option other than Jefferson Academy. Some will get off wait lists by the start of school. Some won't. Brent's 5th grade of 18 will be larger in the fall as a result.  No telling how big just yet.

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Brent's PARCC proficiency is about 62% according to Myschool DC (averaging ELA and math scores).

Jefferson's is about 12% (which, it should be noted, is substantially higher than Elliot-Hine and only a little lower than Stuart-Hobson).

If those two dozen kids from Brent went to Jefferson and 60% of them were proficient, the school could go from its current rate of about 12 proficient 6th graders in a class of 100 (12%) to 26 out of 124 (21%) and its scores would be higher than Stuart-Hobson and on par with Hardy.

That's a heavy lift for Brent parents, I understand.  The kids who are most likely to be proficient are the least likely to take a chance on Jefferson.  But the school does have enough proficient kids in the feeder pattern to raise the test scores just through a cohort effect alone. And the school has expressed willingness to differentiate to meet the needs of whoever enrolls. [/quote]

This is so silly.  Families at Brent don't want their students to BE the academic strength at a middle school, they want to join a cohort with academic strength ( or mere proficiency ).  Which, frankly, is not asking a lot.  And it's not that they are asking for it in any begging/demanding sense, they are simply saying that is a condition which would have them looking at a middle school as a possibility[/quote]

+1000.  While I think her intentions are well-placed, the fact Natalie Gordon can pay lip service to differentiation ignores the realities of where resources will need to be directed.  That's not going to happen when kids are being reprimanded for having shirts that aren't tucked in, assuming they are one of the many of those who are chronically absent.  The number of at risk kids only adds to the complexity of the task of educating kids during the critical middle school period of development.

DCPS wants to focus on the "success stories" of kids who arrived at Jefferson several grades behind snd totally unprepared for middle school or anything much beyond.  It boils down to a game of MGP and other stats that look good in a press release.  Otherwise there isn't jack squat Rhee and her acolytes have accomplished in the past decade with respect to narrowing the achievement gap or providing a path forward for higher achieving kids.  Just take a look at the promises Henderson has made but not kept with respect to Jefferson.

The simple fact is you're never going to see two dozen Brent fifth graders enrolling at Jefferson when half of them peel off for Basis, Latin or other options after fourth.  You grab the golden ring when given the opportunity because there's very little more important than your child's education.  Of course, even if the magical thinking about a cohort of Brent being able to "flip" Jefferson was the case, the fact that Jefferson test scores might be elevated higher than those at SH (which presumably will continue to rise as more inbound families from the Cluster and Ludlow-Taylor also find themselves shutout of Latin and Basis) isn't saying all that much right now.  Can some families make it work?  Probably, and particularly if your kid is higher-achieving or needs remediation or other types of interventions.  Those in the middle will be left to sink or swim.  Jefferson, like Stuart-Hobson, is a dead-end in terms of the feed to Eastern and it makes little to no sense to invest so heavily in trying to make three years at a middle school potentially viable when the best possible outcome is maybe being admitted to SWW or possibly Banneker.  It's an absurd exercise in futility.  In the meantime, no modernization on the horizon and relatively few classroom teachers rated highly-effective is not a recipe for success when the Mayor and Henderson are fretting about what to name the Empowering Males HS instead of committing to a magnet STEM program that could jump-start Jefferson.

And where are the Tyler families in terms of the Jefferson equation?  [/quote]

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