Anonymous wrote:As a practical matter, unless Hill middle schools start offering MoCo and Fairfax standard offerings, high-SES families will continue to vote with their feet, peeling off after elementary school in search of greener pastures. When you're a professional who hears about colleagues and suburban friends with children no smarter than yours sending math-oriented kids to 6th and 7th grade algebra courses in public school, you tend to get nervous that DCPS will leave your DC in the dust.

You simply won't be able to attract most of the IB population to Hill middle schools by pretending that upper-middle-class families will be OK with a little more challenge. You need to incentivize high-SES families to stay with programs on a par with those in the suburbs, because the suburbs are where they can easily afford to relocate if you don't.

In order to assemble a strong cohort to one MS on the Hill, there need to be stronger elementary schools which means closing some elementary schools. Deal works because the feeder schools are 80% to 100% in boundary. Last data I saw, Watkins was around 30% in boundary.

Anonymous wrote:Here's a thought: sell Peabody to developers, use Ludlow-Taylor for PS3, PK4 and K for the Cluster, keep status quo at Watkins and let Maury and Brent feed to Stuart Hobson. Ludow-Taylor and Stuart Hobson are slated for immediate renovations and Peabody is a ridiculous configuration for small children and in primo real estate that would get top dollar.

How's that?

I like the idea of shifting the Peabody kids to LT, after the latter's building is renovated, but what about using Peabody as an extension of SH? It is often argued that there's no room at SH for Brent, Tyler and Maury families, so create the room by using Peabody's space more effectively. Maybe Peabody could house a test-in magnet MS program. There doesn't seem to be any hope of closing LT. See the long July LT thread if you have doubts.

To those who like EH's promising building and grounds, not practical to attempt to attract West hill parents that far East. I know that East Hill parents love their neighborhood, but affluent SE and Lincoln Park parents don't and you need them to support change in large numbers if you're serious about change.

I liked this quote from a Watkins parents at the end of the concurrent "Another Brent Question Thread" because it offers insight into high IB attrition in the Cluster. Obviously IB families should "own" Hill schools. I can't see how you could accomodate most in neighborhood middle schools without extensive tracking, given the vast low-SES/high-SES achievement gap in the city. Grabbing the property tax dollars of high-SES Hill residents, soon to be majority, to provide remedial education for OOB children without furnishing comensurate challenge for the offspring of those paying the bulk of the tax is fundamentally unfair.

But as long as high-SES families collectively allow city politicians to continue to "throw high-SES kids under the bus" by failing to organize to vote them out if they keep it up, they'll keep it up. It's worth considering that the most popular MS charter choice, Latin, hardly tracks, so if SH did extensively, in the long-run. a hill MS with a city-wide draw to a test-in magnet could become the "it" school both for high-SES families and low-SES families with high-performing students. I don't think this will happen, but with political will, it could.

"Yes. But I'm not active in PTA and so can't claim insight into what issues these proposals would run up against. I loved Peabody and have been okay with Watkins, but the older grades/middle school seem like such a crap shoot. Racial and class tensions seem palpable at times among the various parent groups. The PTA works hard but is dominated by white and higher income families and, I think, is discounted by other stakeholders for that reason. I wonder if the sheer number of families at Watkins makes change hard and, over time, families who push for higher standards peel off in dismay. There are so many different cohorts, all with their causes. Some parents vocally support gifted programs, for example. But push back comes from other quarters who feel, at least as strongly, that resources should be aimed at improving scores for lower performing children. I can't tell you how many times I've heard teachers and parents of older children urge me and others to support tracking for the upper grades. But for reasons not fully clear to me this seems politically unpalatable. Ultimately, who "owns" the school? I live in bounds and am committed to public schools but don't want to push my kid under the bus to make a point. So, like many others, unless things change, we'll likely switch to a charter, if we can get in, or maybe even move if that seems more economical than private school tuition. And, for what it is worth, my kid is smart but not exceptional. I would be willing to stay for something that is decent but not for something that is notably sub-par."

The way Takoma Park and Eastern (Silver Spring) middle schools work offer excellent examples of how Hill middle schools could work. Each of these MoCo schools suppots a test-in magnet program, Takoma for math/science and Eastern for communications/humanities, taking in 100 kids a year from around the county with 25 places reserved for neighborhood kids.

The application for the magnets is comprehensive and the county/magnet coordinators make a special effort to identify and include FARMs kids who can cope with magnet work. MoCo offers gifted poor kids special opportunities to keep up with upper-middle-class peers, such as sponsoring them to participate in Johns Hopkins CTY summer camps to study subjects taught in the magnet programs.

But the "plebians" outside the magnets aren't complaining much because they and their parents can still choose from a full complement of honors/advanced courses, as well as "regular" courses, and remedial instruction/tutoring. So a kid who is truly gifted/advanced in math at Takoma enters the magnet, one who is simply good at math takes honors courses, while one who is below proficient receives remediation/tutoring. Nobody falls through the cracks and hardly anybody hits the road for charters or privates.

For example, at Takoma MS, a kid can take 6th or 7th grade algebra in the magnet, 7th grade algebra as an honors course, or 8th grade algebra as a regular class. By contrast, SH has only recently begun offering 8th grade algebra as something of an honors course, leaving it a good 30 years behind Takoma in how its serving the brightest math-oriented IB students.

As a practical matter, unless Hill middle schools start offering MoCo and Fairfax standard offerings, high-SES families will continue to vote with their feet, peeling off after elementary school in search of greener pastures. When you're a professional who hears about colleagues and suburban friends with children no smarter than yours sending math-oriented kids to 6th and 7th grade algebra courses in public school, you tend to get nervous that DCPS will leave your DC in the dust.

You simply won't be able to attract most of the IB population to Hill middle schools by pretending that upper-middle-class families will be OK with a little more challenge. You need to incentivize high-SES families to stay with programs on a par with those in the suburbs, because the suburbs are where they can easily afford to relocate if you don't.

Anonymous wrote:How about scrapping the remodel at Stuart and move it to Eliot Hine that is bigger and has fields? Then there would be plenty of room for all the Hill schools to feed into SH>

Anonymous wrote:Because EH is in a sketchy neighborhood. I'm not sending my kid there.

What about the rest of us plebians? What if you can't get into SH?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about scrapping the remodel at Stuart and move it to Eliot Hine that is bigger and has fields? Then there would be plenty of room for all the Hill schools to feed into SH>

Because EH is in a sketchy neighborhood. I'm not sending my kid there.

I disagree. I live close to SH, but I'd rather have the big fields at E H. If EH had a really strong math and science program (on level of Takoma park middle, etc.) I'd Love to enroll my child at E H.

Anonymous wrote:How about scrapping the remodel at Stuart and move it to Eliot Hine that is bigger and has fields? Then there would be plenty of room for all the Hill schools to feed into SH>

Because EH is in a sketchy neighborhood. I'm not sending my kid there.

How about scrapping the remodel at Stuart and move it to Eliot Hine that is bigger and has fields? Then there would be plenty of room for all the Hill schools to feed into SH>

I'd bet DCPS is already setting up to unload Peabody. They already shoved SWS out and those were the parents most likely to push back.

Peabody has got to be on the chopping block, it's not even ADA accessible.

How about some creative thinking for the Hill and the middle school problems? The current feeders to Stuart Hobson are not working out that great (Watkins lost an entire 5th grade class to charters this year) and the Brent/Maury parents aren't happy about their MS options. Ludlow-Taylor has underrepresentation from neighborhood students and Peabody is bursting at the seams even without SWS.

Here's a thought: sell Peabody to developers, use Ludlow-Taylor for PS3, PK4 and K for the Cluster, keep status quo at Watkins and let Maury and Brent feed to Stuart Hobson. Ludow-Taylor and Stuart Hobson are slated for immediate renovations and Peabody is a ridiculous configuration for small children and in primo real estate that would get top dollar.

How's that?