Reply to Brent vs. Maury vs. Ludlow-Taylor

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Give us a break. Most high SES families of all stripes who enroll at LT for ECE still leave by 4th or 5th grade.  But it was the very same story at Brent and Maury for the first decade after each of these schools started to "turn." LT will catch up soon enough, within 4 or 5 years.  It takes a lot longer for neighborhood parents in a gentrifying area to collectively feel confident about the upper ES grades in a DCPS school that new parents tend to think.  The reality is that embassy types are about the last neighborhood parents stay through 4th or 5th.  [/quote]

I actually bet the number of high SES kids at the schools in 5th grade isn’t as different as you think. LT sends some high SES kids to SH every year whereas Brent and Maury send almost none to their respective feeders.[/quote]

Not true about Maury. Significant numbers trying Eliot-Hine. [/quote]

Doesn't EH have like 20 white kids total? "Significant numbers" seems like a pretty big stretch there. My impression is that UMC POCs are even less likely to try these middle schools for reasons I totally understand.[/quote]

Maury has a small 5th grade class and a lot of them are enrolling. I expect this to continue with UMC Payne families too. I’m not trying to prove anything about race either way. Everyone would love to have a neighborhood MS so we and I assume most other families have an open mind. [/quote]

Honestly, if I were a family that had only been at Maury from PK to 5th, I too would have an open mind, because I would never have seen how chaotic a school can really be. As a OOB family new to Maury this year, I simply cannot believe how much nicer this school is compared to my IB. It actually makes me angry to know that such a vast difference can occur between schools that are within walking distance of one another.[/quote]

+1.  There was a day a few years back when I visited Deal MS and Jefferson Academy on the same day and I thought my head would explode with the stark difference in resourcing and school culture within the same school system. It’s when I realized DCPS Central Office is actually criminal in its neglect of a majority of its student population.[/quote]

I’ve never set foot in either school, but if there is a stark difference in physical plant resources, I agree that it’s criminal. School culture is a bit trickier since many aspects of culture (for better or worse) are imported into the school via the student body.  It’s just a hell of a lot easier to cultivate a strong(ish) academic culture at Deal vs EH/Jeff. But I suppose if we have to lift heaven and earth to do it, so be it.[/quote]

It’s gotten better at Jefferson, but no exaggeration—there were busted stagelights with glass and garbage strewn around the auditorium floor, exposed electrical wires hanging in the hallways, overflowing trash dumpsters one shredded nets on the “basketball court”.  Classrooms were dirty, desks broken musty textbooks on the bookshelves. No library to speak of. Half the classroom lights were out. Of course the adults in the building seemed demoralized. And precious 10-13 year olds trying to learn in the middle of that.  I’ve seen a lot, and the scene there made me cry.

Do you know what happened? Brent parents announced they were coming for a “look-see” at their feeder middle school and somehow the wheels started moving.  Work orders responded to, clean up and paint jobs, bulbs replaced within 2-3 weeks before the Brent parents came for their tour.  This is what I mean by criminal neglect by DCPS.

And I don’t agree with you about school culture—the adults in charge set the standards and the culture. It’s built through respect and consistency and love. I’ve seen excellent school culture in places with some of the most difficult, hard-to-reach students. [/quote]

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