Awesome work. Thanks very much for doing this.

The closest middle school calculations are mine, so all blame is mine. Definitely an area of complexity. I'll work on fixing O-A's multiple campus issue. Is anyone aware of any school or areas with similar issues? (More common issue with charters, but they're not included here.)

Does the information on the two closest middle schools (as part of Policy Example A) come from DME materials or the app's own calculations? This is an issue of uncertainty in the materials previously provided by the DME.

As my personal example, the Our DC Schools app shows the second closest middle school to my home is Oyster-Adams. However, the middle school campus of Oyster-Adams is further from my home than Hardy MS. Meanwhile, Oyster-Adams' elementary campus and Hardy MS are equidistant from my home (up to the tenth of a mile, at least). The details of a plan based on distance are more challenging than many may assume.

Good point. The data set does not allow that level of granularity at this time, but I will follow up with OSSE to see if it's possible to get new numbers that would show this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Chris, great app. Many thanks. Is there a way to use the data to show where the out-of-boundary students attending each school are from? ...

Glad you asked. We worked on a project to answer that question on last year. Find the answer to where student from your school live, or where students from your neighborhood go to school, using this tool: http://edu.codefordc.org

Yes, I love that tool. But it's exactly the one that got me thinking about the in-bounds vs out-of-bounds question. That tool shows which neighborhood clusters send students to each school, but does not differentiate on in-bounds vs out-of-bounds. For example, with Wilson high school (http://edu.codefordc.org/#!/school/463), I can see that 168 students come from the Brightwood/Crestwood/Petworth neighborhood cluster. But since the Zone Attendance boundary line for Wilson runs right through the middle of that neighborhood, I cannot tell what percentage of the 168 students are in-bounds for Wilson. Maybe it's 100%, and all 168 live in Crestwood ... or maybe it's only 5%, and the rest live in other out-of-boundary neighborhoods. The same "split cluster" problem applies to 177 students from the cluster south of that (Columbia Heights, Mt Pleasant, Pleasant Plains, Park View). Focusing just on those two clusters as an example, if we discovered that two-thirds of the Wilson students from those clusters (227 students) are out-of-boundary for Wilson, that might suggest that those neighborhoods are thriving and need more investment in their neighborhood high school (Roosevelt).

Any ideas on this score? Does the Code For DC data set allow this additional layer of granularity?

Glad you asked. We worked on a project to answer that question on last year. Find the answer to where student from your school live, or where students from your neighborhood go to school, using this tool: http://edu.codefordc.org

Chris, great app. Many thanks. Is there a way to use the data to show where the out-of-boundary students attending each school are from? The app does a great job showing where all students are from, but many of the origination neighborhoods are a mix of in-bounds and out-of-boundary areas. I ask because knowing where the most out-of-boundary students come from may help suggest where an alternative great school should be developed. I suspect from current app data that the answer is Columbia Heights/Shepard Park/Petworth, and Roosevelt, but I'd like to confirm.

Re: loading issues: I'm sorry it didn't work for you. It could very well not be your browser. There's rather a lot of data that needs to be downloaded to make all of the calculations work, and so it could just be taking a while. I'm going to work on improving our performance, as well as on better indicating what's happening when we're downloading data, in the very near future.

Re: the new Brookland MS; I will ask the question of DME. You're probably right, as the documents simply list it as "Brookland MS." Not to get too in the weeds, but these feeder pattern documents did not contain school codes, which can lead to matching errors like this. Thank you for flagging.

To my knowledge, the charter in the Burroughs/Bunker Hill choice set (Choice Set O, for those looking at the handouts) has not been specified in any document that I have seen.

I would agree on the importance of offering this information in multiple languages. And I know it's frustrating we're not there. If there is a bilingual parent adept at translation who could help us here, please reach out to me. At Code for DC, our long-term education project was built from day one to work in multiple languages; the short timeframe on which I needed to turn this project around, as well as the fact that the Advisory Committee's descriptions and examples are only in English, led to this project being only available in one language.

Re: CHEC and Cardozo not appearing in your nearest middle schools, it appears there was a bug that should now be fixed.

Anonymous wrote:did not work for me. Put my street address in, clicked on Get Started. Nothing happened.

Me either ...tried from different browsers ...no dice

Wonderful app. Thank you.

Do the DME plans take into account the Brookland MS opening in fall 2015? That is a different school entirely than Brookland EC at Bunker Hill as you have it listed. The BMS and McKinley MS are supposed to be the MS for groups of Ward 5 schools. This doesn't seem reflected in the materials I've seen (but I haven't seen them all).

What is the charter associated with Burroughs and Brookland @ Bunker Hill choice set? MMBethune, Stokes, YY, Lighthouse, Perry Street, and LAMB are all within those bounds.

Where is the Spamish translation of the DME materials?

I greatly respect the time and effort. But there are more than 3,000 children in bilingual Spanish-English DCPS and more if you add in charters. How are we supposed to provide feedback on an app that's only in English when Hispanics have the highest rates of internet use via mobile phone? I'm a fluent English speaker and proficient reader who follows education and it took me about 10 minutes just to read through the questions, let alone answer them in a thoughtful way with smiley faces.

I'm not an expert on surveys, but this seems to be what's called preaching to the choir. Collecting additional emotion-related data from customers who match your own profile who have already given you qualitative feedback creates an echo chamber of sorts.


As an IB parent for Oyster-Adams, it's really hard to take any of this seriously. But with more than 660 students with more than 60% Hispanics, the fastest growing demographic in DC, shouldn't the options be at least somewhat realistic? Even our principal, whether you like her or not, has said the Cardozo proposal is not an option and not just because of scores.

The status and viability of Oyster-Adams as the only K-8 dual immersion school and dual language only elementary schools like Bancroft and Powell need to be addressed even if nothing happens in the rest of the city. Oyster-Adams is an anomaly on several levels. Two buildings in two wards, 3rd and 4th grade a mile apart, middle school grades in an elementary designed building, and no bilingual elementary schools like Marie Reed a block from Adams feeding into the under-enrolled middle school grades. Add to that the fact that most teachers and administrators have clearly and repeatedly stated they want one building for a K-8 dual language immersion and special education inclusion school that they imagine. But neither location on it's own could support the 650+ students needed to be a viable K-8.

Other families may be facing similar challenges with understanding the logic, and lack thereof, of the process. But here are a few examples if you are IB for O-A.

Elementary Choice Set-
the O-A boundary would extend SOUTH but the choice set would move NORTH

Eaton ES
Hearst ES
Oyster Adams Bilingual School* (no explanation of asterisk)

Middle School Choice Set-
"The Advisory Committee has not provided a separate middle school choice set for your boundary." WHAT IF MY 6TH GRADER CAN'T SPEAK AND READ SPANISH?

MS closest schools-
"The two middle schools closest to your home are Oyster Adams Bilingual School and School Without Walls at Francis Stevens." WRONG - CHEC MS (LINCOLN) IS CLOSEST AND CARDOZO ALSO HAS MIDDLE SCHOOL. WHY GO TO SWW/FS FOR JUST MIDDLE?

Citywide HS lottery -
"The high school that you would or would not have guaranteed access to is Cardozo EC." WOULD OR WOULD NOT? HOW IS THAT A PROPOSAL?

Seeing the options explained this way has convinced me the whole effort needs to be put on ice for a while until some of the "inconsistencies," huge discrepancies in performance, and grandfathering options can be addressed. Meanwhile, at current charter growth levels, more than half of DC students will be out of the neighborhood game anyway.

To paraphrase Kaya Henderson just after her promotion, "we've gone data crazy."

Too bad the mayoral election isn't until November. I know who I'd vote for today and it wouldn't be a Democrat even though that's my registered party.

Genuine thank you to Code for DC. Please let us know when the Spanish version is available or when there is a video/audio format that is more concise and accessible to those with limited ability to speed read on an iPhone 5 screen.