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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]hobson and JA are both at this point vast majority students from the designated feeder schools - it does appear that slowly and surely more and more students from those schools are attending each year[/quote]

Uh … this is because those feeder schools empty out after 4th grade and are back-filled with OOB students. The # of kids from feeder schools is a meaningless number because people leave after 4th for charters. But I’m sure you know that and are just being an intentionally obtuse booster. [/quote]

We just got an email today from Watkins inviting us to enroll for 5th (apparently they get emails from MySchoolDC and spam parents) because they’re hemorrhaging students from 4th grade.  [/quote]

I have no dog in this race but this is just a lazy take. You assume that that they are trying to fill seats "[i]because they’re hemorrhaging students from 4th grade[/i]" but even a cursory look at the WL data tells you that you are jumping to conclusions. They opened up 8 seats in the lottery and as of lottery day they had only one person on the WL for 5th grade. As of June 1 there were zero kids on the WL. If even two of those 8 lottery seats offered was declined then there wouldn't have had to be a single additional unexpected student leaving after 4th for the school to still need to fill open seats.

Serious question for PP: What is it about your makeup that motivates you to post things like this? What urge or need are you satisfying by just imagining negativity?  [/quote]

And as kids are getting spots at BASIS, Latin and Latin II, they are leaving Watkins.

I feel like you think it’s normal to have to fill more than one or two spots in a school. It’s not normal.  [b]Northwest schools do not have this problem.[/b] Because they’re not hemorrhaging students. [/quote]

To give you an idea, last year, the five JKLMM schools COMBINED took three children for 5th grade by count day. [/quote]

And your point is ...? I don't believe anyone here said that W6 is the same as NW.  Keep your focus - the point is that some familes are trying the W6 MSs and this appears to be increasing in number.  And, when I did the math, I was pleasantly surprised that Jefferson in fact WOULD have a strong cohort for my kid (as long as I'm not hung up on him being a different race from them ... )[/quote]

No family IB for Watkins, Brent, Maury, etc. is trying their IB middle school voluntarily. They are, to a person, doing it because they struck out in the lottery. My point is, that COULD be fixed, by changing the feeder pattern and creating a Deal-like middle school, where people would actually WANT to send their kids, not just be somewhere people were willing to “try” when the got a crap lottery pull. [/quote]

Oh please. The families enrolling have better options. I myself just turned down TR and ITS spots because I’d rather give Eliot-Hine a spot. Maybe they’d like to send their kid to Latin, or Sidwell, or the moon … but that doesn’t really say anything about the quality of IB schools. [/quote]

We all know that ITS and TR are just as shitty as EH. If you lotteried into Latin or BASIS, you would be headed there. [/quote]

Lotteries into Latin 1 maybe. Latin 2 or BASIS, maybe not.  [/quote]

Nobody is choosing EH over BASIS or Latin II. People universally are going to give both of those schools a try because they can always go back to their IB.

Look, people, I think we all want middle schools on the Hill to succeed. It does no good denying that there is a problem and pretending that people are “choosing” their IB. It’s not a real choice if your only other option is to move.

What I want is IB middle schools on the Hill that people actually WANT to attend.[/quote]

I can't speak to MS because we aren't there yet, but we are at a Title 1 school on the Hill and there are definitely families there who either don't bother to lottery or have chosen to stay at the school despite getting into desirable charters and even non-Title 1 Hill schools. I think people wind up in PK after striking out on the lottery and then find they like it, their kid makes friends, they recognize how nice it is to be able to walk to school, etc. I can easily see that extending to MS. At Title 1 schools, if your kid makes it to the upper grades, you don't see the attrition that you see at a school like Brent or Maury.

We have done the lottery a couple times since PK (K and 1st) but have turned down a few charter spots. In K the issue was that we were offered spots after the school year started and we did not want to disrupt. But the next year we got into an EOTR charter as well as Two Rivers and turned them both down. We were happy, our kid was doing well, there was no compelling reason to leave, and we realized we'd only done the lottery because we were expected to want out. But it turns out we didn't.

I think people who can't imagine that there are people out there actively choosing IB Title 1 schools, not just defaulting to them because of they struck out on the lottery, just don't know what it's like in these schools. It's a school. There are dedicated teachers, kids learning, active parent communities, events, etc. It's not some hellhole. It's probably pretty similar to what you experience at your non-Title 1 school or a charter. I get the concern about college preparedness and that's something I absolutely think about with MS and HS. I think the odds we'll go to Eastern are pretty slim unless something changes there before we get there, and that makes a charter appealing. But I could also see us moving out of the city for HS, or maybe swing a parochial school for 4 years. I don't think Latin or BASIS or ITS or whatever is so magically better than SH/EH/JA that it's like some punishment to go IB. I think as with our ES, we'd find a lot to love, we might even like it more than certain charter options (BASIS honestly sounds like a school I would really dislike, based on my values and education expectations, for instance, no matter how good they are getting kids to test well). In other words, our IB MS may in fact already be a school we actually WANT to attend.[/quote]

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