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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]is it worth changing from a jefferson feeder to a hobson feeder?  distance is about the same.[/quote]

I'm sure you will hear from Jefferson boosters on here... but if you care about the size of the cohort of high performing kids & the size of the cohort of truly low performing kids, SH is a no brainer. ELA is where the huge difference is and that's the skill that's more transferable to the non-tracked classes like science & social studies. SH has 6% of kids getting 1s on PARCC... Jefferson has 26%. So, in one setting, your kid's class might have 1 or 2 kids *way* below grade level (illiterate or close to it, if we're being honest); in the other, it's fully 1/4th of the class. On the flip side, SH has over 50% of kids at grade level for ELA, so even the non-tracked classes are majority kids who have the tools to do the work; at Jefferson, it's just over 1/3.[/quote]

A few responses to this:

* You are judging the two schools based solely on 2018-19 PARCC data and no other factors. I would suggest that there is far more to consider when weighing school options, particularly since none of that test data reflects the performance or aptitude of [i]any[/i] of the kids who currently attend either school.

* While you are correct that the 2018-2019 data showed a significant difference in ELA proficiency (56% at Stuart-Hobson versus 37% at Jefferson), you did not mention that the math proficiency of the two schools was very similar that year (23% and 21%, respectively).

* The percentage of Jefferson students receiving a 1 in ELA in 2018-2019 was actually 23%, not 26%. I realize that it's a small difference -- and that it wasn't a good number in any case. But if you're going to rely solely on 2018-2019 PARCC data to judge the schools, at least be accurate, particularly if you're going to use phrases like "fully 1/4th."

* I would argue that math is more transferable to science than is ELA. And if f you're going to classify kids as "illiterate" for receiving a 1 on ELA, then how do you classify those who received a 1 in math in 2018-2019 (17% at Stuart-Hobson and 23% at Jefferson)?

* It bears repeating that all of these numbers are from 2018-2019 and do not in any way reflect the performance or aptitude of any of the current students at Jefferson or Stuart-Hobson.

* In the latest U.S. and World Report rankings, Jefferson is the considered third best standalone DCSP middle school, behind only Deal and Hardy. Stuart-Hobson is fourth in that category. Point being, those of us in Ward 6 have relatively good options for middle schools, despite all of the complaining of some on here.

* Regardless of which school may be "better," I don't think it's worth uprooting a kid from his or her current elementary school [i]just[/i] for a change in the feeder pattern. For the past couple of years, Stuart-Hobson has been relatively easy to get into through the lottery. For 2021-2022, it made 91 waitlist offers for sixth grade. The year before that it made 135. (Some of the current students at Jefferson received waitlist offers for Stuart-Hobson but remained with Jefferson, while some kids who had been Jefferson-bound switched to Stuart-Hobson. Each family had its own reasons for its decision.)

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