Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 09:54     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
Anonymous wrote:DCPS can't solve this.

We're losing the true middle class in DC -- and around the country.

We need more jobs, jobs with wage growth over time, and more affordable housing.




From 2015:

For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty/2015/01/15/df7171d0-9ce9-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html?utm_term=.5c9b78b10929
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 09:54     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
OP again, with an additional clarification ...

Strong test scores do not always equal strong schools. We all know this. There will be situations where a school with low test scores is great, and others where a school with high test scores is terrible. Also, the tests themselves are far from perfect. But despite all that, I think most people still use the test scores as a yardstick for measuring schools and as a stand-in for determining which schools and students are most successful.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 09:46     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
DCPS can't solve this.

We're losing the true middle class in DC -- and around the country.

We need more jobs, jobs with wage growth over time, and more affordable housing.


Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 09:45     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:no one gives a shit about the extracurriclars if the academics are a mess. But go on DCPS, Im sure adding in art classes and archery will totally get all those high SES parents of Brents 4th grade class to stick around for Jefferson.


OP here. I tend to agree. I'm sure we all have long wish lists of what our neighborhood schools are missing, and suggestions for how they could be improved. But what I'm really looking for, and I think what DCPS needs to hear, is about the key "dealbreaker" elements that caused us to reject our neighborhood schools.

Lots of people are saying test scores, and that makes sense to me. Yes, there may be situations where parents tempted to look OOB will stomach low test scores, for example if you know your local school is really good despite the test scores or if you don't have another good option. And on the flip side, I can imagine situations where parents might reject a high test score school, for example if it's in an inconvenient location. The break point where each parent decides probably depends on a lot of small personal factors that are specific to each family. It really seems like a school with low test scores just doesn't get the benefit of the doubt, so parents will look for ways to avoid those low test scores.

What do people think about that description of the problem? Generally true for most people (although obviously not every single person), or way off base?

As a for instance test case, if your local neighborhood schools (ES/MS/HS) started consistently hitting 35% proficient (level 4+5) in the PARCC scores, would you choose to attend them rather than going OOB? What if they reach 50% proficiency? Here are the 2016 PARCC scores by school for reference - https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/2016%20PARCC%20FINAL%20Results%20Press%20Deck%20FINAL.pdf If you look at page 11, you can see the PARCC scores for each school. The "% L4 + L5" column shows the total percentage of students testing proficient at each school.


Yes, I think you are getting at something with the benefit of the doubt idea. But it is more complicater than that.

35% 4s and 5s is actually more than I need. 20% would be fine, as long as most of the others are 3s. Too many 1s is a red flag that the school is failing to adequately serve a large high-needs population. I am fine with low income kids being the majority of students, but only if DCPS gives them what they need to succeed (or at least get 2s and 3s).

Still, ultimately without a good middle school feeder, people will leave when they can. To me, these are the necessary conditions:

1) Good test scores, or middling scores and great faculty, adequate number of peers at my child's level academically.
2) Lack of serious behavior problems in my child's age group
3) Good middle school feeder. High school not a necessity as we can hope for McKinley, Walls, etc.
4) Programming I want, high quality not pretend, academically and after school.

Must have all 4 of those things or people will leave when they can.

Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 09:31     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
Anonymous wrote:no one gives a shit about the extracurriclars if the academics are a mess. But go on DCPS, Im sure adding in art classes and archery will totally get all those high SES parents of Brents 4th grade class to stick around for Jefferson.


OP here. I tend to agree. I'm sure we all have long wish lists of what our neighborhood schools are missing, and suggestions for how they could be improved. But what I'm really looking for, and I think what DCPS needs to hear, is about the key "dealbreaker" elements that caused us to reject our neighborhood schools.

Lots of people are saying test scores, and that makes sense to me. Yes, there may be situations where parents tempted to look OOB will stomach low test scores, for example if you know your local school is really good despite the test scores or if you don't have another good option. And on the flip side, I can imagine situations where parents might reject a high test score school, for example if it's in an inconvenient location. The break point where each parent decides probably depends on a lot of small personal factors that are specific to each family. It really seems like a school with low test scores just doesn't get the benefit of the doubt, so parents will look for ways to avoid those low test scores.

What do people think about that description of the problem? Generally true for most people (although obviously not every single person), or way off base?

As a for instance test case, if your local neighborhood schools (ES/MS/HS) started consistently hitting 35% proficient (level 4+5) in the PARCC scores, would you choose to attend them rather than going OOB? What if they reach 50% proficiency? Here are the 2016 PARCC scores by school for reference - https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/2016%20PARCC%20FINAL%20Results%20Press%20Deck%20FINAL.pdf If you look at page 11, you can see the PARCC scores for each school. The "% L4 + L5" column shows the total percentage of students testing proficient at each school.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 09:10     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
no one gives a shit about the extracurriclars if the academics are a mess. But go on DCPS, Im sure adding in art classes and archery will totally get all those high SES parents of Brents 4th grade class to stick around for Jefferson.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 09:09     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:And because of the way that DC allocates per pupil funding, Deal will always be the monster school that can offer everything, and all the other middle schools will pale in comparison. If they could tweak the formula somehow so that Deal got less incremental money for each student over a certain number, and the other middle schools were funded based on their capacity not their enrollment, some of the funding inequity would balance.
And then DCPS schools would have NO reason to ever improve, as money doesn't follow the student. (Deal and Wilson are getting screwed already with per pupil funding). Then more students would seek to go to charters...
What are you talking about? Money does follow the student. A school gets a baseline amount for every student enrolled. On top of that, a school gets additional funds if a high number of students live in poverty, are not native English speakers or have special needs.
Different poster responding to answer your question. I assume what PP meant by money not following the students was the first PP's tweak-the-formula proposal that funding should be based on capacity not enrollment. Key parts of each comment underlined. HTH
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 08:06     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
Anonymous wrote:Extra-curriculars isn't not about the money, it's about a large enough student body so you can get a critical mass of students interested in an activity.

A school with 40-60 students per grade is simply not going to be able to support more than 1-2 sports teams, a school play or a debate team unless they all decide to get involved in the same activity.


Especially if they don't want the same activities. They can't afford and don't have enough kids for activities appealing to low-income and high-income people both
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 08:06     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:And because of the way that DC allocates per pupil funding, Deal will always be the monster school that can offer everything, and all the other middle schools will pale in comparison. If they could tweak the formula somehow so that Deal got less incremental money for each student over a certain number, and the other middle schools were funded based on their capacity not their enrollment, some of the funding inequity would balance.
And then DCPS schools would have NO reason to ever improve, as money doesn't follow the student. (Deal and Wilson are getting screwed already with per pupil funding). Then more students would seek to go to charters...



What are you talking about? Money does follow the student. A school gets a baseline amount for every student enrolled. On top of that, a school gets additional funds if a high number of students live in poverty, are not native English speakers or have special needs.

The upper northwest schools get a lot because their w rollmenta are large, and the high needs schools get more per students because their students need more.



The funding for high needs students isn't actually enough to cover their true needs. And the wealthy parents in upper NW give so much that the equity gap gets even bigger.


The parents simply aren't giving that much beyond elementary school.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 08:05     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:And because of the way that DC allocates per pupil funding, Deal will always be the monster school that can offer everything, and all the other middle schools will pale in comparison. If they could tweak the formula somehow so that Deal got less incremental money for each student over a certain number, and the other middle schools were funded based on their capacity not their enrollment, some of the funding inequity would balance.
And then DCPS schools would have NO reason to ever improve, as money doesn't follow the student. (Deal and Wilson are getting screwed already with per pupil funding). Then more students would seek to go to charters...



What are you talking about? Money does follow the student. A school gets a baseline amount for every student enrolled. On top of that, a school gets additional funds if a high number of students live in poverty, are not native English speakers or have special needs.

The upper northwest schools get a lot because their w rollmenta are large, and the high needs schools get more per students because their students need more.



The funding for high needs students isn't actually enough to cover their true needs. And the wealthy parents in upper NW give so much that the equity gap gets even bigger.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 07:58     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
Extra-curriculars isn't not about the money, it's about a large enough student body so you can get a critical mass of students interested in an activity.

A school with 40-60 students per grade is simply not going to be able to support more than 1-2 sports teams, a school play or a debate team unless they all decide to get involved in the same activity.
Anonymous
Post 06/12/2017 07:47     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:And because of the way that DC allocates per pupil funding, Deal will always be the monster school that can offer everything, and all the other middle schools will pale in comparison. If they could tweak the formula somehow so that Deal got less incremental money for each student over a certain number, and the other middle schools were funded based on their capacity not their enrollment, some of the funding inequity would balance.
And then DCPS schools would have NO reason to ever improve, as money doesn't follow the student. (Deal and Wilson are getting screwed already with per pupil funding). Then more students would seek to go to charters...



What are you talking about? Money does follow the student. A school gets a baseline amount for every student enrolled. On top of that, a school gets additional funds if a high number of students live in poverty, are not native English speakers or have special needs.

The upper northwest schools get a lot because their w rollmenta are large, and the high needs schools get more per students because their students need more.

Anonymous
Post 06/11/2017 21:00     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
Anonymous wrote:And because of the way that DC allocates per pupil funding, Deal will always be the monster school that can offer everything, and all the other middle schools will pale in comparison. If they could tweak the formula somehow so that Deal got less incremental money for each student over a certain number, and the other middle schools were funded based on their capacity not their enrollment, some of the funding inequity would balance.
And then DCPS schools would have NO reason to ever improve, as money doesn't follow the student. (Deal and Wilson are getting screwed already with per pupil funding). Then more students would seek to go to charters...
Anonymous
Post 06/11/2017 20:53     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
OP, it's the same at all schools. Some combination of weak leadership, incompetent administration, uneven teaching staff, lack of desirable programming, typical problems of poverty, low test scores, and behavior problems. DC underfunds schools generally, and at many schools there are not enough high-income parents to carry the rest financially.

If DCPS got serious about canning all the incompetent morons downton and at each school (teachers and admins both) they would save a lot of money and that would help, but the city council needs to get serious about adequate funding or nothing will ever change.
Anonymous
Post 06/11/2017 20:52     Subject: OOB for Wilson feeders: What is your neighborhood school missing?
My IB is missing high performing peers which leads to high academic standards in class and also missing high SES families. Hats probably the biggest issue. The problems caused by high poverty are insurmountable once it's the tipping point.