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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DCPS won’t change until people are willing to make policy decisions without the fear of being called “racist.”

Example 1: “Gifted” programs would keep middle and upper income families in neighborhood schools, improving academic outcomes (and providing low income academically advanced children a better education).

Example 2: Feeder patterns that concentrate higher performing elementary schools to improve middle and high schools. Feed all the hill middle schools into one school … magically you have a second Deal. Bet you would get a second Wilson out of that too.

But we can’t do either of those things, because it’s “racist.”

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Regarding the suggestion to feed all Hill elementariness into one HS, I think there are other obstacles as well. [b]Currently they feed to three schools and to create a single MS, you'd need a huge building. You need at least two MSs there for space reasons.[/b]

Also, while I agree that there is some dogma involved that prevents pushing for more opportunities for high achieving kids on the Hill, I also think you have conflicting goals of a lot of parents in the neighborhood. Even among parents of high achieving kids, you also have this attachment to neighborhood schools and walkability, and when you look at how far apart Jefferson and Eliot-Hine currently are, you can see that a lot of families on the Hill would have to sacrifice walkable school commutes to make this happen. among the UMC families I know who are choosing to attend their IB MS on the Hill, a major selling point is keeping the walkable commutes they've had in elementary which really become part of the culture of the neighborhood, and also help a lot when you have kids in elementary and MS. I think this is one of the reasons that the school where you are seeing the most buy in from IB families presently is Stuart-Hobson -- it's very close to the feeder elementary that also has the most IB buy in in the zone (L-T) and also very close to JOW (still not a ton of IB buy in but improving and likely to make a big jump when they open their new campus in 2026), and that's appealing for families who have gotten used to short walking and biking commutes for the last 6 or 7 years.

Likewise one reason Jefferson has struggled so much with getting buy in is that the feeder with the most IB buy in, Brent, is also the least convenient to that MS campus. But buy in at Amidon-Bowen is improving and that has helped -- families see the benefit of a nearby school and want to keep the vibes going.

I don't think your premise is totally wrong -- I absolutely think the resistance to tracking and better opportunities for higher achieving kids is due to a misguided belief that supporting academic achievers is racist. But specifically regarding the idea of a unified Hill middle school, the resistance may once have been due to misguided equity beliefs, but I don't think it is anymore. As all three Hill MSs have increased their IB buy in, and as the Hill builds off the success of schools like Brent, Maury, and L-T with success at Payne, Chisolm, JOW, and Amidon-Bowen, I think you will continue to see increased buy in at all three MSs. Which might actually lead to a better trajectory than Deal, which has constant issues with overcrowding, if the result is three strong MSs instead of just one.[/quote]

And this is where "that's racist" will come out.  First objection is "too many schools, so we won't have a big enough building."  Ok.... feed only the schools that are actually on the Hill into one middle/high school: Watkins, Brent, Maury, LT, Payne.  The middle and high school will be excellent, immediately.

Why won't that fly?  It's "racist." [/quote]

It won't fly because five schools is still too many. When you create an "excellent" middle school with an "excellent" high school, the IB capture rate will go way up.

If you think people will be fine with being kicked out of an excellent feeder pattern and reassigned to much worse one, think again. They will oppose this very hard and it won't go through.[/quote]

It's also geographically nonsensical. If those 5 schools feed into one middle school, are you suggesting that all the schools on the fringes of Ward 6 feed into the same school? So JOW, Miner, Chisolm, Van Ness, and Amidon-Bowen would all go to the same middle school? That makes zero sense.  JOW is literally 3 blocks from L-T. Miner is only a little further from Maury. Chisolm and Payne are pretty close as well. Meanwhile Van Ness and Amidon Bowen are way closer to Brent than to any of the other schools they'd be grouped with.

People would call that racist because it literally would be racist. You just cherry-picked the 5 whitest schools and ignored geography in order to group them together. Also Chisolm is actually much more desirable than Watkins at this point but it has a large Hispanic population because of the immersion program. So you can't even argue that you picked the best schools. Just the whitest ones. Good work.[/quote]

Chisholm has 14% hispanic population. Wouldn't call that large[/quote]

It's more than double Watkin's Hispanic population, and Watkins has a higher percentage of white kids. Chisolm also has higher ELA scores that Watkins (Watkins has higher math scores). The schools are remarkably similar on other metrics. So it's weird that the PP didn't include it in the list of "high academic achieving" schools on the Hill. It does look like racism when you put those schools side by side. And actually, if you line JOW up next to Watkins, it's also not far off -- lower scores but not by much, and they've shown really impressive growth scores in recent years which speaks to quality teaching.

I am someone who rolls my eyes at a lot of the "equity" initiatives in DCPS that often really are just about lowering standards to try and pretend everyone is equal. I want to see more tracking and I want to see schools meeting the needs of high achieving students. But cherry picking the five whitest schools on the Hill and suggesting they, and only they, feed into a "high achieving" MS, with no plan at all for the remaining schools which are not even geographically near each other and several of which don't even appear to be substantially lower achieving than Watkins? That does in fact look racist on its face and is not a "solution" to anything except preventing rich white kids from having to attend school with anyone not like them.[/quote]

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