Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our child.is graduating from Latin this year after 8 years. Hardly a booster - if there were a right time to complain it would be now. We are incredibly satisfied. WL, especially HS, was a choice. We went in knowing it would be stronger in some things than others. It gave us what we were hoping for. Our child was known, appreciated, challlenged and inspired. Our child was able to participate and grow in sports ( not crowded out) and find great satisfaction in a few clubs/activities. I can count on both hands the teachers/administrators our child considers mentors. My child made wonderful friends for life - a bunch that are representative of all of our city, not just parts. Latin was/is awesome. Thanks Latin

Would you mind sharing some of the colleges that students in your child's graduating class are attending?

I dont mind - though the school hasn't released this years list. Past years are posted jn the college counselor corner. I am guessing they will post this years soon .

"So, you don't care about the children at your school who started out advanced and are now only proficient?"

If I thought their education was being short-changed, then I would care. I do not think they are being shortchanged, ergo, I am unfazed by the test scores. I suppose narrowly construed, that means I "don't care" about the test scores specifically. That is not at all tantamount to saying I don't care about the education at Latin.

Anonymous wrote:"...but the kids who start out advanced at Latin MS are getting burned "

One of the happy Latin parents here--but you see, that's just it: they aren't being "burned." I speak only for myself, but I simply don't believe test scores indicate that my child (who, yes, is advanced) is being "burned." My child is reading great books, learning how to write, learning Latin, grappling with philosophy, doing science experiments, and will be on track to take BC calculus, along with many other APs, before graduation. On what planet is that being "burned"? It's far and away better than the education I received in MS/HS, and I am Ivy-educated, so somehow I think my Latin kid will do just fine in college. So you see, it's not that I don't care--it's that I simply disagree with your premise. Sort of a case of "who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

On a separate point, I used to think happiness in school was overrated, but the older my children get, the more convinced I become that in fact it is absolutely critical as a prerequisite for serious education.

So, you don't care about the children at your school who started out advanced and are now only proficient?

"...but the kids who start out advanced at Latin MS are getting burned "

One of the happy Latin parents here--but you see, that's just it: they aren't being "burned." I speak only for myself, but I simply don't believe test scores indicate that my child (who, yes, is advanced) is being "burned." My child is reading great books, learning how to write, learning Latin, grappling with philosophy, doing science experiments, and will be on track to take BC calculus, along with many other APs, before graduation. On what planet is that being "burned"? It's far and away better than the education I received in MS/HS, and I am Ivy-educated, so somehow I think my Latin kid will do just fine in college. So you see, it's not that I don't care--it's that I simply disagree with your premise. Sort of a case of "who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

On a separate point, I used to think happiness in school was overrated, but the older my children get, the more convinced I become that in fact it is absolutely critical as a prerequisite for serious education.

17:19 you are very boring and repetitive. Please stop with the essays. Your points are noted. Not everyone gives a fuck! Take your concerns to the admin of you want but for the love of God, stop trying to get current parents to do your leg work. Repeating over and over is not doing anything. Please go away!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our child.is graduating from Latin this year after 8 years. Hardly a booster - if there were a right time to complain it would be now. We are incredibly satisfied. WL, especially HS, was a choice. We went in knowing it would be stronger in some things than others. It gave us what we were hoping for. Our child was known, appreciated, challlenged and inspired. Our child was able to participate and grow in sports ( not crowded out) and find great satisfaction in a few clubs/activities. I can count on both hands the teachers/administrators our child considers mentors. My child made wonderful friends for life - a bunch that are representative of all of our city, not just parts. Latin was/is awesome. Thanks Latin

Would you mind sharing some of the colleges that students in your child's graduating class are attending?

http://latinpcs.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/WLPCS-College-Acceptances.pdf

Anonymous wrote:Not 15:19 but another happy Latin parent for all the reasons stated in that post. I find the hysteria over the scores to be overly dramatic. Latin (and Basis, or any other charter) is a lottery. All of the kids going to Deal are coming from solid elementaries. More and more so at Hardy as well. Not necessarily true at the charters-- u will get variation year to year. Also layer on the fact that when Latin began it was in upper NW, WOTP. Then it moved to 16th and then it moved eastwards again to its current location. My speculation is that for some parents at that time, Basis became more attractive-- due to location. Wonder if you compare scores to students primary residences over 2006-2014, what it would show.

for the millionth time - this is not about raw scores - Latin's raw scores are excellent.
Deal, Latin and Basis were the top 3 highest scores the last two years on the DC CAS
I bet before that it was Deal and Latin

The reason they fell from Tier I to Tier II was the failure of the kids to improve their scores from one year to the next - measured against kids at other schools who started out with similar scores the preceding year, from 2011-2014. They took, for example, the DC CAS scores of the kids who came to Washington Latin in 5th grade and compared them to how those kids with those scores had scored in 4th grade wherever they were before. After that, it is all on Latin.

Read the announcement from the Charter Board
Find me one other school that was Tier I day 1 and after almost ten years in dropped to Tier II
I am glad that you are happy
most kids at Latin are happy
I just think this is a wake up call
and I am glad that it seems that some Latin parents get it
there is no way to make the rest of you get it
or maybe to care about it
but the kids who start out advanced at Latin MS are getting burned

for middle school and high school, happiness is not enough - and they did it so well for the first four years, and then the MS started slipping - four years of not just a failure to improve kids scores from one year to another, but a steady decline, even if raw overall scores were going up -

a failure to have individual kids score higher than they did the previous year,
which the HS did, year after year, and all Tier I Charters do, year after year, because it counts for 40/100 points of their rating. And by contrast, each year at Washington Latin each individual kid did worse than they had the previous year on the DC CAS.

This is not a blip on the radar, it is a decline that has been going on since 2011.
They are smart people and good educators and extremely dedicated teachers.
I'm sure they can figure it out.
But since we are now onto the PARCC,
instead of just blowing it off like the person above is doing,
I think letting the MS know that you know what the significance of the scores are,
and letting them know that you care, is incredibly important.

It may be no big deal to you because your kids are happy and you "think" they are getting a great education.
And from the outside until this Tier drop made some people dig deeper that is what everyone thought.
But there is something going wrong with your MS, and the reason it is so clear it is going wrong is because before 2011 it was going right.

So you should care.

Care enough to look it up before you blow it off, and look up the graphs of some of the other Tier I charters mentioned, including your own HS, and Deal - since your DC CAS raw scores put you in the same range, compare the two graphs

http://focusdc.org/charter-facts -

I am not a math person, but I am a visual person. If you click on any of the bars they will give you the numbers, and you can break it up by race, whatever. Washington Latin MS must have changed something it was doing in 2011, because all these other schools continued to make progress after the still unexplained surge in scores that almost every school experienced in 2010, including Washington Latin- even the ones where their graphs are kind of towards the ceiling.... That is the only conclusion I can come up with. Washington Latin made a change that did not work in 2011 and they have not altered their course even though each year their MGP has gotten worse, and the number of advanced kids has declined. In ALL grades, not just 5th grade.

No it wouldn't matter if you were a Tier 2 MS if you always had been and you were making progress.
But what the graph shows is that even though overall your DC CAS scores are in the top 3 in the city,
your kids are not making progress from year to year - their scores are not getting better from year to year
- in fact your kids are making less individual progress than individual kids in the average school in Washington DC.

We are talking about Washington Latin MS here right? The one with the longest wait list, where now that everyone decides to stay for high school the high school will continue to improve? Because kids whose individual DC CAS scores which have declined, going from Advanced to Proficient, have all decided to stay now? Ought to be interesting.

Sorry about the sarcasm but I am one of the ones who started out believing the whole charter grading system had to be unfair because there was no way that Washington Latin MS could have dropped from Tier I to Tier 2 and bought the initial explanation that once you score so high it is hard to make progress.

But the actual evidence tells a very different story, and those at Latin MS should get an explanation.
And once they do, I would appreciate it if they shared it here.
How can you be blind to a 4 year decline and not find some way to turn it around?
I never thought Washington Latin was a school that would rest on its laurels but maybe I was wrong?

Anonymous wrote:Happy parents, I hear what you are saying, but man, it would bother me if kids were scoring so poorly on the DC CAS that our school slipped to Tier 2.

OMG somebody please stop the broken record. Okay it's been noted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not 15:19 but another happy Latin parent for all the reasons stated in that post. I find the hysteria over the scores to be overly dramatic. Latin (and Basis, or any other charter) is a lottery. All of the kids going to Deal are coming from solid elementaries. More and more so at Hardy as well. Not necessarily true at the charters-- u will get variation year to year. Also layer on the fact that when Latin began it was in upper NW, WOTP. Then it moved to 16th and then it moved eastwards again to its current location. My speculation is that for some parents at that time, Basis became more attractive-- due to location. Wonder if you compare scores to students primary residences over 2006-2014, what it would show.

Whoa. All the kids going to Deal do NOT come from solid elementary schools. With a 30% OOB rate that is more students than the entire enrollment of the Latin middle school and more than are enrolled in 6-8 at BASIS. You (and I) have no idea how prepared those kids are, how long they may have been at a feeder and not all feeders are actually top schools.

Deal does Ana amazing job with all their students. That shouldn't be discounted.

You do realize that 100% of the OOB population come from Janney, Lafayette, Murch, Hearst, Eaton (expired), Bancroft and Shepherd? All SOLID elementaries?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'll take Deal or Hardy over BASIS or Latin any day, thanks.

I wish Basis and Latin could mix the best of what each has - THAT would be an awesome school
Basis really does have piss poor English instruction although it is getting better
I also just wish there were more decent middle schools, because that is kind of where the rubber meets the road
if middle school is a wash, you cannot catch up in high school, whereas if ES was a wash, a good MS can fix that.....

BASIS has so much politics.
Quintile 5 results are already ready ... even though there is more than a month of school.

There are excellent students at BASIS who deserve to be on honors roll, while there are others who absolutely do not deserve to be there.

This is nonsense. From what I have seen all students are evaluated by objective quizzes and tests and as well as various projects at BASIS. There is no way to be on the honor roll if you do not do well in the quizzes and tests from what I can see of the grading policies.

Anonymous wrote:Our child.is graduating from Latin this year after 8 years. Hardly a booster - if there were a right time to complain it would be now. We are incredibly satisfied. WL, especially HS, was a choice. We went in knowing it would be stronger in some things than others. It gave us what we were hoping for. Our child was known, appreciated, challlenged and inspired. Our child was able to participate and grow in sports ( not crowded out) and find great satisfaction in a few clubs/activities. I can count on both hands the teachers/administrators our child considers mentors. My child made wonderful friends for life - a bunch that are representative of all of our city, not just parts. Latin was/is awesome. Thanks Latin

Would you mind sharing some of the colleges that students in your child's graduating class are attending?

Anonymous wrote:Not 15:19 but another happy Latin parent for all the reasons stated in that post. I find the hysteria over the scores to be overly dramatic. Latin (and Basis, or any other charter) is a lottery. All of the kids going to Deal are coming from solid elementaries. More and more so at Hardy as well. Not necessarily true at the charters-- u will get variation year to year. Also layer on the fact that when Latin began it was in upper NW, WOTP. Then it moved to 16th and then it moved eastwards again to its current location. My speculation is that for some parents at that time, Basis became more attractive-- due to location. Wonder if you compare scores to students primary residences over 2006-2014, what it would show.

Whoa. All the kids going to Deal do NOT come from solid elementary schools. With a 30% OOB rate that is more students than the entire enrollment of the Latin middle school and more than are enrolled in 6-8 at BASIS. You (and I) have no idea how prepared those kids are, how long they may have been at a feeder and not all feeders are actually top schools.

Deal does Ana amazing job with all their students. That shouldn't be discounted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'll take Deal or Hardy over BASIS or Latin any day, thanks.

I wish Basis and Latin could mix the best of what each has - THAT would be an awesome school
Basis really does have piss poor English instruction although it is getting better
I also just wish there were more decent middle schools, because that is kind of where the rubber meets the road
if middle school is a wash, you cannot catch up in high school, whereas if ES was a wash, a good MS can fix that.....

BASIS has so much politics.
Quintile 5 results are already ready ... even though there is more than a month of school.

There are excellent students at BASIS who deserve to be on honors roll, while there are others who absolutely do not deserve to be there.

Happy parents, I hear what you are saying, but man, it would bother me if kids were scoring so poorly on the DC CAS that our school slipped to Tier 2.

Anonymous wrote:Not 15:19 but another happy Latin parent for all the reasons stated in that post. I find the hysteria over the scores to be overly dramatic. Latin (and Basis, or any other charter) is a lottery. All of the kids going to Deal are coming from solid elementaries. More and more so at Hardy as well. Not necessarily true at the charters-- u will get variation year to year. Also layer on the fact that when Latin began it was in upper NW, WOTP. Then it moved to 16th and then it moved eastwards again to its current location. My speculation is that for some parents at that time, Basis became more attractive-- due to location. Wonder if you compare scores to students primary residences over 2006-2014, what it would show.

+ 1

I would be concerned about standardized test scores if the academics weren't solid, but they are. As a parent who sees the work being done day in and day out, IMO I'm a much better judge of the education being received than an outsider looking at test scores. Hey, is it possible that I (and all WL parents) are really being duped--that all the teachers are secretly imparting a mediocre education during the school day and selectively choosing all the meaningful work to send home where we see it? Theoretically possible that such a conspiracy is going on, but I doubt it!