Reply to New opposition petition to the Maury-Miner boundary proposal from DME

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Reply to "New opposition petition to the Maury-Miner boundary proposal from DME"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Annoyingly, the article doesn't get to the heart of the matter: endemic low DCPS capacity and general incompetence.  The UMC and white parents come off as selfish, elitist jerks in the WaPo when the truth is that they know that Maury is only so wonderful even without it being merged with a Title 1 school. When you've finally got a functional school in a dysfunctional system, after years of struggle on the part of neighborhood parents, don't mess with it.  The inconvenient truth is that DCPS isn't doing a great job with the high SES kids they've got. [b]There's a reason that more than a third of the Maury 4th graders (and most of the Brent 4th graders) don't return for 5th grade, and it's not because DCPS inspires great confidence in most upper grades UMC Hill parents.   Risking killing a goose laying golden eggs won't improve matters. [/b] [/quote]

The reason for this is middle school & 5th grade being the charter entry year. I don't disagree with what you're saying overall, but the 5th grade exodus is 100% driven by DCPS & DCPCSes having different MS entry years and has nothing to do with the quality of the elementary schools.[/quote]

+1, it's also a problem that self-reinforces, because as some families leave these strong elementaries for 5th, it hollows out the 5th grade class (and often brings in an influx of new students at a point in elementary school where integrating them will be challenging). This leaves other families who have been there for years with a choice of staying, knowing that the 5th grade experience will be very different than prior years, or leaving, and some families choose to leave even though 5th is actually a weird year to move or go private.

100% agree with all of this. At our SH feeder it's even more frustrating, because lots of people are actually fine with SH but figure they might as well try out BASIS/Latin in 5th grade since they can always return for 6th and start SH on time anyway... and some do come back (usually families for whom BASIS doesn't prove to be a good fit).

Latin and BASIS starting at 5th has a lot of follow on effects that have really impacted elementaries in DC, or at least those outside the Deal or Hardy feeders.[/quote][/quote]

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