Reply to Capitol Hill Middle School and High School situation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]RE:  OPs questions about how Charters fit in to all of this.

Charters are fairly new to the party, but very important.  They here in 1996 after the School Reform Act passed in 1995.

Prior to Charter schools being legalized in DC, parents of all races who were seeking an alternative to their assigned neighborhood school practiced "school choice" in other ways.

What did this look like?:

It looked like many families using the Out of Boundary lottery to gain spots into a feeder system from elementary--->middle--->High School.

It looked like students heading to the upper northwest school that fed into Hardy or Deal and then to Wilson.

It looked like families from east of the Anacostia River ( and Maryland, don't forget Maryland ) using all the unused spots at Capitol Hill Elementary Schools  or at Eastern High School, all considered better than their assigned schools and convenient to federal jobs downtown.

It looked like white and black Capitol Hill Parents forming the Cluster Schools here on Ward 6:  Peabody--->Watkins---->Stuart Hobson---->Magnet HS or private

It looked like families forming a magnet Montessori program called Capitol Hill Montessori

It looked like families forming a Reggio Emilia early childhood program within Peabody called "School within a School"

It looked like families starting the Spanish Immersion Program at Tyler Elementary

It looked like a de-facto STEM magnet program at Jefferson Middle School that was extremely well-regarded by many Black families in the city and was eventually peeled off its normal feeder system to feed to....Wilson HS ( crazy, but it was only recently changed to Eastern).

It looked like a number of White and Black Capitol Hill families sending their children through Out of Boundary slots to Key Elementary in Georgetown which fed to Hardy MS and then Wilson HS.

It looked like the excellent magnet High Schools Ellington, SWW and Banneker.

So families in DC who had the interest and where-with-all to navigate it, there was always a degree of school choice within the DCPS system before charters.

During the 2000's a number of things happened at the same time:

1)the demographics on Capitol Hill began to shift toward more young families moving in and hoping to use the public schools

2) The School Reform movement gained steam including
-- the ability to form Charter Schools
--Universal free PK3 and PK4 began 
--Michelle Rhee arrived with her broom
--many school closings

Suddenly, it was more difficult for families living outside the zone to get a spot at the Cluster Schools, or at Key Elementary.

Suddenly, there was free, full-time childcare for 3 and 4 year-olds at the neighborhood DCPS schools---a real draw for dual-income families in houses that were beginning to become ridiculously expensive.

With these pressures on the system, Capitol Hill parents simultaneously formed Brent Neighbors to build a bridge for in-boundary families to attend Brent ES   AND many Capitol Hill families became involved on the ground floor of forming Two Rivers Public Charter School.

So the school choice options widened for Cap Hill parents beyond just the Cluster Schools or Key ES and this momentum built on itself as more Charter Schools appeared on the scene and more movements started at Maury, Ludlow-Taylor, Payne and JO Wilson for families living in those zones to use their in-boundary schools.

The momentum kept building, like a dialectic--more parents found options for educating their children in the public schools ( including Charter Schools ) so more families decided to stay and more families decided they could move in.

Now, city-wide, around 43% of public school children attend Charter Schools, and a larger percentage of children attend their in-boundary school ( at least in Ward 6/Capitol Hill).

How does this look at the Middle School level and High School level vis-a-vis Charters?  Well, as those in-boundary little kids using Brent and Maury began to approach 3rd, 4th, 5th grade, parents began to wonder what the next step would be:  Stuart Hobson? maybe--but slots weren't guaranteed, and maybe there was a better option out there somehow.

Parents began looking at Eliot-Hine and Jefferson, wondering if those were or could become good options for middle school, since they were the feeder middle schools for Maury and Brent, respectively.

Groups formed and began discussions with DCPS and Michelle Rhee about these feeder patterns and how these schools could "reform" to become desireable pulls for in-boundary families.

( That's a whole other story--but perhaps a digression )

At the same time as parents were sizing up Eliot-Hine and Jefferson with questions about Eastern HS ( which had a major reboot in that era ) on the high school horizon, parents began to look at Washington Latin--in Northwest as a promising option that would include middle AND high school solutions in one move.

Lots ( not all--Stuart Hobson was also drawing some---even Brent parents who hopped over to Watkins for the upper elementary grades to guarantee access in the feeder system) of Capitol Hill parents opted for Washington Latin, and soon after, BASIS opened downtown--so convenient--which also gave options for middle school and high school.

Then came DCI and Inspired Teaching and Montessori Bilingual... many of these Charter Schools began in 5th grade, so pulled those in-boundary fifth graders at the Capitol Hill Elementary Schools away before they considered seriously using Eliot-Hine or Jefferson.

Meanwhile--Two Rivers Charter School had a good hold on many Capitol Hill families and expanded through middle school. Now has opened a second campus.

And Washington Latin is set to open a second campus.

For sure, I've missed a lot of nuance and details and perspectives that others can fill in.  It's not a neat, easy linear story and so difficult to sum up.

But here's the rub:  Charter Schools have supplemented an informal school choice scenario that already existed and added to the positive momentum around public schooling in DC.  The neighborhood schools are doing better than ever, and public school population in general has far better rates of success on measures like graduation rates, PARCC scores and NAEP scores.

All of this continues to evolve, and we have yet to see how the cataclysm of the pandemic will affect the public school landscape.  It will have impacts, it's just unknowable at the moment what they will be.[/quote]

We moved to the Hill young and way before kids -- 2006. I remember going to Argonaut and parents having dinner pushing us to send our unborn kids to Maury. This posters thread is the bible of Hill schools.[/quote]

And where did you end up going for middle?[/quote]

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