And of course, Hardy offers art and music opportunities that do not exist at other DC middle schools - so to the extent there are weaknesses, there are corresponding strengths.

pp (13:41),

With regard to items 1 and 2...

I think foreign language is a judgement call. Deal starts language in sixth grade, I get it. But Latin doesn't start modern language until grade 8 - and does not offer Spanish at all. Hardy starts with language in 7th. Maybe they should start a year earlier, and maybe they should have more options - but their language program does not strike me as a huge weakness.

With regard to #2, Hardy started an accelerated math program this year, and it gives students the opportunities they need -- advanced students at Hardy will be able to move ahead with the same speed as advanced students at other schools.

Like I said, change is happening.

Anonymous wrote:When IB families are polled about what keeps them from enrolling their DCPS ES kids at Hardy, the response is frequently the large number of OOB kids.

Where are links to these so-called polls of IB Hardy families who did not choose Hardy? I think you pulled your "poll results" straight from your own biases. Provide documentation, please. Neither I nor any of my neighbors were ever polled on this subject. If I had been asked, I can assure you that my reason for choosing a different school was NOT the large number of OOB kids at Hardy. In fact, the reasons I did not send my kids to Hardy were:

1. Inadequate foreign language program.
2. Inadequate math program.
3. Disorder in the administration.
4. Toxic environment produced by obnoxious parents on both sides of the Pope debacle.

I am so happy to hear from a current Hardy parent a few posts ago that there has been progress on numbers 3 and 4. When there's similar progress on the academic front, I think you will see more in-boundary families considering Hardy very seriously. And most of us will be perfectly happy to have OB students attend.

I hope you're right -- and assuming it does happen, I hope it's recognized as the result of fixing a very badly bungled turnaround effort.

Hardy is changing already - and I say that as an in-boundary parent with a sixth grader attending there. My sense is the thing that scared parents off the most in the last couple of years was uncertainty - who was going to be the principal? Were the parents united behind the principal, and did the principal have the power and authority to impose tough standards on teachers and students?

Those questions are answered now. Dr. Stefanus is in place, with no controversy and the support of the IB and OOB parents. The year is going well - Dr. Stefanus has created a good safe, and supportive environment.

Those changes alone -- combined with the demographics increasing populations of in-boundary students in the Hardy feeder schools - will result in more IB students attending Hardy. But I don't think those will be the only changes - I fully expect to see test scores going up this year, and that will start a cycle that makes the school even more attractive to IB families.

It won't happen overnight, but this transition has already started.

I don't think there is any way to know the real ratio at Deal because OOB kids from the elementary feeder schools are automatically eligible to attend Deal. At the same time, I don't think Deal had any 6th grade OOB slots for kids coming from elementaries outside of Deal's boundaries.

I think in the next 2-3 years though, Deal will be overwhelmingly IB, mostly because of the increase in IB students at the feeder schools.

What the IB/OOB ratio at Deal? Would that be acceptable to Hardy IB parents?

If you want to limit OOB enrollment, then go to the principal who is right now setting up the lottery # of slots available for 2012-13. Convince her to input a smaller number of slots in the OOB lottery.

Then, in the summer, if the school doesn't have the numbers, she'll go to the waitlist and try to fill the school. But knowing there are fewer OOB students coming in, work the IB neighborhoods and get students enrolled.
what can't happen is underenrollment, because funding will be cut, and teachers will be reallocated to schools where there are students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Isn't this the beginning and end of the discussion? There's an existing middle school that is not fully enrolled with in-bounds middle school students. Why on earth should DCPS build another middle school in that same in-bounds area?

Because Hardy is already full of OOB kids, and even if it could successfully fill up with IB kids, it would take years of gradual change - test scores first, then more IB kids, leading to higher test scores, leading to more IB kids, in an upward spiral. If there were a blank slate/empty school available, more IB parents would be willing to take the risk.

The thing to do would be to guarantee the school would be 100% IB in the first three years, no more than 10% OOB in the fourth, fifth and sixth years, and no more than 20% OOB for the three years after that, even if it meant the school was under-subscribed at first. Parents would be guaranteed a critical mass of IB kids at the school for the full duration of their child's attendance at the school. After three full cycles of student attendance, I think the school could stand on its own without manufactured exclusivity.

Ward 3 parents with high achieving kids want to send those kids to school with other high achieving kids. They want their kids' classmates' parents to be educated and involved. If the school became a high performer it could then "afford" to let in OOB kids, because if the school were a high performer the OOB kids would be more likely to be high achievers with educated/involved parents. So it would be a great school for the IB families, and a great school for the OOB families too. And yes, it wouldn't be very fair or nice to OOB families that they didn't have the same shot at the school as the IB families, but sometimes making something fair and nice just means it turns to crud for everyone.

While the PP has taken a lot of flack for her post, there is merit to her proposal.

DCPS has invested millions into Hardy with the aim of attracting IB families. When IB families are polled about what keeps them from enrolling their DCPS ES kids at Hardy, the response is frequently the large number of OOB kids. It is quite possible that the only way to build Hardy into a strong neighborhood MS is to limit or eliminate the OOB kids.

IB families believe that the large number of OOB kids leads to problems that undermine the caliber of the education. The following article describing problems at Hardy from early this year lends support to this position: http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/dc/outrage-over-safety-issues-at-hardy-middle-school-011211. Limited OOB enrollment at Hardy would be a natural consequence of the DCPS plan to turn Hardy into an attractive MS for IB families anyway. Why not just cut to the chase to jump-start the process, as PP suggests?

DCPS believes in neighborhood schools with good reason. People tend to self-segregate by SES, especially when it comes to housing. Thus, the kids in neighborhood schools tend to be of similar SES, eliminating the problems that arise when kids with widely varying SES are educated in the same school.

Of course, this practice often leads to a disparity in the caliber of the education between schools in high SES neighborhoods and those in low SES neighborhoods. However, the differences in SES might well be the most significant cause of the disparity. High SES kids have more support at home. Their parents have the time to help with homework and projects. If their kids fall behind, they have money to hire tutors. If their kids need additional occupational, physical or speech therapy, they can afford private therapists rather than rely on the in-school services provided by DCPS.

Those kids also have more support at school. Most of the families that would enroll their kids IB at Hardy have contributed from several hundred to $1,500 per kid per year to their ES PTAs to support assistants in the classroom, building and grounds improvements, large library collections, additional photocopiers in the school office, etc. Note that the additional support for kids at high SES neighborhood schools does not come from DCPS. On the contrary, with their lower FARMS and special ed numbers, DCPS per pupil costs at high SES schools are lower than those at low SES schools.

DCPS funding is not a zero-sum game. Since he DCPS budget is based on total enrollment, enrolling more kids from high SES families do not take resources away from kids from low SES families. On the contrary, given the lower cost of educating these kids, increasing enrollment among these families increases the funding that DCPS can apply to supporting kids from low SES families. Of course, the increase in the DCPS budget would have to come from somewhere. However, high SES families bear the lion's share of the tax burden in DC, and the additional costs would simply be shifted back to them in the form of higher property and income tax rates, which most would be happy to pay if they could thereby avoid paying for private school.

More important, however, is the fact that high SES families have political clout in DC. It is better for DCPS if these families are invested in public education rather than opting out and into private school. Thus, DCPS should adopt policies to increase enrollment among high SES families, including limiting or eliminating OOB enrollment at Hardy for a few years as PP proposes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
For any school - what do you suppose accounts for score levels? Check out various DCPS schools and you'll see it's SES status of the families. THis is not listed in OSSE, but you can figure it out pretty well by checking the location of the school and its racial/ethnic makeup -- not just in DC but in any public school district in the US.

This is the other big lie. If this were true, why even have teachers? Why do people shell out big bucks for private school and test prep if the outcomes are determined in advance?

Is SES important? Sure. Is it the only factor? Absolutely not. Are there such things as good schools, bad schools and in-between schools? You bet.

I'd be the last one to say that test scores are the best measurement of a quality of a school, but to say that school quality doesn't exist does a disservice to the good teachers and well-run schools that are out there.

there are several big lies in this last post, e.g. "outcomes are determined in advance," "SES is the only factor" "School quality "doesn't exist."

None of that was said above. I believe this is called a straw-man argument.

SES doesn't determine anything in advance - it shapes it along the way -- with all the advantages that educated, well-off parents can provide to their kids.

Anonymous wrote:
For any school - what do you suppose accounts for score levels? Check out various DCPS schools and you'll see it's SES status of the families. THis is not listed in OSSE, but you can figure it out pretty well by checking the location of the school and its racial/ethnic makeup -- not just in DC but in any public school district in the US.

This is the other big lie. If this were true, why even have teachers? Why do people shell out big bucks for private school and test prep if the outcomes are determined in advance?

Is SES important? Sure. Is it the only factor? Absolutely not. Are there such things as good schools, bad schools and in-between schools? You bet.

I'd be the last one to say that test scores are the best measurement of a quality of a school, but to say that school quality doesn't exist does a disservice to the good teachers and well-run schools that are out there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:before going on about how to get Hardy's scores up - go to the OSSE site and check scores over a period of years by racial/ethnic group. Do the same for Deal and you will see there's not much difference, suggesting that when the ethnic mix changes, so will the scores.

This is the big lie. In every sub-category Deal outperforms Hardy, often by substantial margins.

Anyone who checks OSSE can see for themselves. Be sure to check for 3 -4 years to include the time before Pope left.

For any school - what do you suppose accounts for score levels? Check out various DCPS schools and you'll see it's SES status of the families. THis is not listed in OSSE, but you can figure it out pretty well by checking the location of the school and its racial/ethnic makeup -- not just in DC but in any public school district in the US.

Anonymous wrote:before going on about how to get Hardy's scores up - go to the OSSE site and check scores over a period of years by racial/ethnic group. Do the same for Deal and you will see there's not much difference, suggesting that when the ethnic mix changes, so will the scores.

This is the big lie. In every sub-category Deal outperforms Hardy, often by substantial margins.

I'm waiting right now for the poster who regularly tells EOP parents to fix schools in our own wards, rather than seeking slots in better schools.

"Palisaides parents, she'll say, "you appear to have broken your school. Why on earth is fixing it anyone's problem but your own?"

before going on about how to get Hardy's scores up - go to the OSSE site and check scores over a period of years by racial/ethnic group. Do the same for Deal and you will see there's not much difference, suggesting that when the ethnic mix changes, so will the scores.

IB Hardy parents have gotten two of the things they said they wanted - the end of Principal Pope and the end of the application process.

The third is the end to so many OOB students. This is something they can do on their own by enrolling their kids.

Instead, they ask for more DCPS intervention -- to spend millions building of another middle school.