Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:After reading your story, I'm wondering why you didn't see the writing on the wall for MS somewhere between 2014 and the present.

Our situation wasn't all that different from yours in 2014. We had bought a place IB for JO Wilson, before kids. We worked hard to spruce the house up, sold up, and bought a bigger fixer upper IB for Maury in 2014, now with 2 toddlers. We bought house #2 after sitting in on Brent, Maury, Watkins/Cluster and Ludlow PTA meetings, to get a feel for the lay of the land where rising Hill elementary schools were concerned. We attended open houses at Eliot-Hine and Stuart Hobson before we bought house #2. We started looking at PARCC scores for EH and SH and asking about advanced classes.

Several years ago, upon discovering that some Hill families were not getting off the BASIS 5th grade WL, and that Latin 1 was becoming very difficult to access, we started saving for parochial MS. We researched parochial school options as Plan B in case lottery luck wasn't in the cards, which was time consuming. We didn't get into BASIS, Latin 1 or Inspired Teaching last year, so returned to Maury for 5th. Our only option for 6th grade in the public system this past spring was DCI. We decided against the long, complicated commute and studying a random language. Our oldest will start at a parochial MS in VA in the fall, which we can afford.

It sounds like you didn't dig deep enough, you didn't look far enough ahead, took too much well-intentioned advice at face value.

I'm kinda stunned that you didn't get into ITS. I thought it was pretty much a lock for 5th, they make so many offers.

If you want ITS, the thing to do is try to lottery in every year starting in 3rd. Eventually it'll work out, but you really can't put all your chips on just the 5th grade lottery.

Well, I think your ability to stick around really depends on how picky you are about what kind of middle school and how far to travel for it. Here is our story-- we bought childless in 2010, zoned for Shaed (Edgewood). We knew the IB schools were very low-scoring and the charters were a mixed bag, but we loved the neighborhood and the short commute. Got re-zoned to Langley when Shaed closed, and by golly I loved Langley. Three happy years were spent there before getting into ITS and feeling like we had to take it. If my children were a little bit younger we'd probably still be at Langley. ITS has been fine. Now lotterying for Latin, maybe Latin II, and failing that, DCI for 6th (happy to accept beginner placement in any language). If those things don't work out we'll stick with ITS and try for Walls and Banneker, or McKinley Tech if DD is so inclined. Worst-case, we move to a condo in upper NW while renting out our townhouse here. The kids will like being close to school and all amenities for a while, maybe we'll get a building with a gym and pool or whatever.

I regret nothing, Langley and ITS have been great and we will have had short commutes for everyone in the family for 11 years. Edgewood is a wonderful neighborhood and whenever we sell, we'll do well.

Anonymous wrote:After reading your story, I'm wondering why you didn't see the writing on the wall for MS somewhere between 2014 and the present.

Our situation wasn't all that different from yours in 2014. We had bought a place IB for JO Wilson, before kids. We worked hard to spruce the house up, sold up, and bought a bigger fixer upper IB for Maury in 2014, now with 2 toddlers. We bought house #2 after sitting in on Brent, Maury, Watkins/Cluster and Ludlow PTA meetings, to get a feel for the lay of the land where rising Hill elementary schools were concerned. We attended open houses at Eliot-Hine and Stuart Hobson before we bought house #2. We started looking at PARCC scores for EH and SH and asking about advanced classes.

Several years ago, upon discovering that some Hill families were not getting off the BASIS 5th grade WL, and that Latin 1 was becoming very difficult to access, we started saving for parochial MS. We researched parochial school options as Plan B in case lottery luck wasn't in the cards, which was time consuming. We didn't get into BASIS, Latin 1 or Inspired Teaching last year, so returned to Maury for 5th. Our only option for 6th grade in the public system this past spring was DCI. We decided against the long, complicated commute and studying a random language. Our oldest will start at a parochial MS in VA in the fall, which we can afford.

It sounds like you didn't dig deep enough, you didn't look far enough ahead, took too much well-intentioned advice at face value.

I'm kinda stunned that you didn't get into ITS. I thought it was pretty much a lock for 5th, they make so many offers.

After reading your story, I'm wondering why you didn't see the writing on the wall for MS somewhere between 2014 and the present.

Our situation wasn't all that different from yours in 2014. We had bought a place IB for JO Wilson, before kids. We worked hard to spruce the house up, sold up, and bought a bigger fixer upper IB for Maury in 2014, now with 2 toddlers. We bought house #2 after sitting in on Brent, Maury, Watkins/Cluster and Ludlow PTA meetings, to get a feel for the lay of the land where rising Hill elementary schools were concerned. We attended open houses at Eliot-Hine and Stuart Hobson before we bought house #2. We started looking at PARCC scores for EH and SH and asking about advanced classes.

Several years ago, upon discovering that some Hill families were not getting off the BASIS 5th grade WL, and that Latin 1 was becoming very difficult to access, we started saving for parochial MS. We researched parochial school options as Plan B in case lottery luck wasn't in the cards, which was time consuming. We didn't get into BASIS, Latin 1 or Inspired Teaching last year, so returned to Maury for 5th. Our only option for 6th grade in the public system this past spring was DCI. We decided against the long, complicated commute and studying a random language. Our oldest will start at a parochial MS in VA in the fall, which we can afford.

It sounds like you didn't dig deep enough, you didn't look far enough ahead, took too much well-intentioned advice at face value.

Anonymous wrote:Ok, but if you bought a house between 2014 and today, you knew the deal with DCPS and lottery odds. All the data was available if you cared to look. To cite just one example,
Latin MS was impossible back then, too

So the rest of DCUM finds it “annoying” to listen to the complaints and occasional whines from this cohort now that Oscar and Genevieve are 8 and Eliot Hine is still Eliot Hine. You made your bed.

Well I will just speak to myself, but we bought in 2014 before we had kids and didn't really know that much about schools. I had a general idea about elementary. Our IB was a Title 1 and still is. We looked at a place IB for L-T (also Title 1 back then and incredibly close to where we actually bought) but we were already at the top of our price range and that place went for over, so we couldn't swing it. We didn't know much about MS.

Also, and to be clear I'm not blaming anyone for the situation we are in, but this is just to give you an idea of how this happens: we had several friends on the Hill who had kids at Brent at the time (IB). We couldn't afford anything IB for Brent, but they told us "oh Brent wasn't that great when we moved here -- I'm sure other schools will improve the same way Brent has." That was true for L-T and Maury but not for all schools. I'm really not sure how I was supposed to guess that Maury was going to become such a sought-after school -- it would not have occurred to me to find out when they were slated for a new facility and I'm not sure I would have known how to look that up back then anyway (keep in mind, I did not have kids!).

The other thing our Brent friends told us was that they were very excited to send their kids to either their IB (Jefferson) or S-H if they could lottery in. They told us these MSs were on the upswing and so was Eastern and it was only a matter of time, and weren't we lucky that we'd be able to take advantage of their efforts when our kids finally aged into those schools. Here's where those friend's kids attended MS: BASIS, Latin, MCPS, a private Catholic in VA, Massachusetts. Not one of those kids spent a single day at either Jefferson or S-H. But back when those kids were in 2nd/3rd grade, their parents were extremely enthusiastic about those schools. Well now my kids are in those grades. Our own IB has struggled to retain IB families and lost so many to charters. It might be on a Maury/L-T path but it also might not, and we'll be through it by the time that happens anyway. And looking at MS, we are far less inclined to tell new families that we are definitely going to our IB, and we certainly don't talk up Eastern, the way our friends did back in 2014. We saw what happened. We are more realistic, both for ourselves and for new families entering our school or considering it.

So... that's how it happens. Believe it or not, none of us has a crystal ball. Some people get lucky, some people think they can do something and it turns out they can't, and so on. Patting yourself on the back because you made what turned out to be a very fortuitous real estate choice and getting angry at families who are simply trying the best they can is a bad look, and I suspect it will come back to bite you.

Anonymous wrote:Why do people only mention Stuart Hobson? Isn’t Elliot Hines pretty good as well?

It was named as one of the 10 worst performing schools in DC in the first OSSE report 4ish years ago and got special money as a result. So.... no.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thomson used to attract a good cohort of low SES Chinese immigrant families. That hasn't been true for years. That group has left for MoCo. The remaining Asians, mostly little kids, are a mash. Indian, Nepali, Afghan, Vietnamese etc. It's true that East Asian immigrant families, and high SES Asian families of all stripes, essentially avoid every DCPS middle school but Deal, and there aren't many there.

I would guess any 1st gen family with any ambition avoids DCPS. I have had countless conversations about this with Uber drivers from everywhere. They all live in Fairfax. Even just ask your cleaning lady or landscaper where they live!

It makes sense especially since MD and VA have much better college options. Bowser has shown zero interest in improving UDC

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thomson used to attract a good cohort of low SES Chinese immigrant families. That hasn't been true for years. That group has left for MoCo. The remaining Asians, mostly little kids, are a mash. Indian, Nepali, Afghan, Vietnamese etc. It's true that East Asian immigrant families, and high SES Asian families of all stripes, essentially avoid every DCPS middle school but Deal, and there aren't many there.

I would guess any 1st gen family with any ambition avoids DCPS. I have had countless conversations about this with Uber drivers from everywhere. They all live in Fairfax. Even just ask your cleaning lady or landscaper where they live!

Some do MoCo for the schools too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do people only mention Stuart Hobson? Isn’t Elliot Hines pretty good as well?

No, it's not as good.

Elliott Hines is undergoing a real change w more IB families enrolling every year. I am a bitter PP but still considering it.

If you were really considering it you would know how to spell it, no?

oh, you got me.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What are you smoking? Where is the middle school bridge to Eastern for high SES families in Ward 6? Even a rock star principal can't stem the exodus after 4th grade.

You are not wrong but I still think the new principal, if DCPS doesn’t drive him out in a couple years, will be good for Eastern.
And that in turn will be good for the neighborhood. More people will be willing to take a chance with SH and EH if the high school is good. And that will improve these two middle schools. It will be a 5 year scenario though at the minimum. I feel bad that JR got stuck with the Eastern principal as he is meh.
And yes, I met him several times.

I think Hardy and Deal demonstrate that the only way to get neighborhood buy-in is to prioritize courting IB families. Unless the new Eastern principal wants to do that, not gonna happen. I’m sorry to say, increasing IB enrollment is no longer a professionally rewarded effort in DCPS. This is exceedingly clear and one big reason we will likely move.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do people only mention Stuart Hobson? Isn’t Elliot Hines pretty good as well?

No, it's not as good.

Elliott Hines is undergoing a real change w more IB families enrolling every year. I am a bitter PP but still considering it.

If you were really considering it you would know how to spell it, no?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do people only mention Stuart Hobson? Isn’t Elliot Hines pretty good as well?

No, it's not as good.

Elliott Hines is undergoing a real change w more IB families enrolling every year. I am a bitter PP but still considering it.

Anonymous wrote:Thomson used to attract a good cohort of low SES Chinese immigrant families. That hasn't been true for years. That group has left for MoCo. The remaining Asians, mostly little kids, are a mash. Indian, Nepali, Afghan, Vietnamese etc. It's true that East Asian immigrant families, and high SES Asian families of all stripes, essentially avoid every DCPS middle school but Deal, and there aren't many there.

I would guess any 1st gen family with any ambition avoids DCPS. I have had countless conversations about this with Uber drivers from everywhere. They all live in Fairfax. Even just ask your cleaning lady or landscaper where they live!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SH (and likely Jefferson) will gentrify like Hardy and become a more accepted neighborhood option eventually. Its rather hard to convince ppl to opt in and try it (flaws and all) when there continues to be a very strong, rather embedded neighborhood culture against doing so.

Got it, the strong embedded neighborhood culture hostile to UMC families enrolling is the crux of the problem at SH and Jefferson.

The problem can't possibly be the dearth of definite at-grade level humanities and science classes, or a transparent system for placing students in advanced classes.

Signed
Difficult Asian parents who, for some strange reason, won't enroll our children in middle schools that are 0% Asian

Yep. Somehow MoCo and NOVA do economically diverse schools with so much less drama. Pretty clear that the issue is DCPS as a whole does not care about attracting & retaining grade level kids. This is a shame, especially for capable kids who don’t have ability to “just move or go private.”

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did you think that DCPS would get its act together? If yes, what was the basis for your optimism? Fenty/Rhee might have pulled that one off eventually, but Gray and Bowser?

The school system may be improving, but I'm stating the obvious in noting that there haven't been high-performing by-right middle schools in Ward 6 since prior to Dc home rule. No brainer that none are in the works.

NP, but I did think that it was *possible* that Stuart-Hobson would improve sufficiently in the time from before my DD was conceived to when she entered 6th grade. That's 12 years. And I will say that it has improved somewhat, just not quite enough to make us choose it over our other options. But it isn't crazy that someone would think that 12 years could have some impact. Hardy wasn't always how it is now, right?

Unlike Hardy, SH's improvement has been bogged down by several highly problematic developments in the last decade. The writing has been on the wall for slow progress for almost 12 years.

*The rise of BASIS, Latin and DCI/DCI feeder language immersion schools, creaming off most high SES in-boundary DCPS families by 7th grade. No charters in Upper NW to draw away students from DCPS elementary schools.
*Unstable and generally weak leadership at SH. Three heads in five years, only one of them competent. Hardy's leadership has been exceptional for a decade, meaning many great teachers hired and retained.
*Staunch historic DCPS resistance to academic tracking outside math. Unlike SH, Hardy has the in-boundary students to attract a critical mass of well-prepared high SES families to humanities classes.

Teacher quality is really key. I do know a lot of happy SH families though, and I have no reason to think they are lying.

Right, oodles of families. Never mind that the % of white students is in the teens although at least 2/3 of the families with MS age children in the catchment area are white. That's like Hardy ten years ago. Do we have that long to wait for SH to take off with neighborhood families. I guess, so if your kid's a baby.

Well, I’m talking about the UMC (not just white) families that actually attended, obviously. If we were still IB for SH I’d be seriously considering it.