Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think 10 years after it opens, Euclid might be marginally acceptable. Frances EC and several charters will still be substantially better.

Any thoughts on MacFarland?

MacFarland is on a long-term trend toward gentrification because of its neighborhood. In ten years it will look like Bancroft, BMPV, or Powell. Right now, if you were in MacFarland, you would see the number of white (or white-appearing, e.g., including White Hispanic and mixed background) students is significant, and their parents are engaged in the school. Ten years from now, that will mean a full-on money-raising PTO and all of that. There will be much fewer English-language learners with very little English, and there will be less Black students.

Long-term, the neighborhoods of Petworth/16H/Upper Ward 1 that support MacFarland are becoming much more expensive. As it is I am surprised at how long Spanish speakers have persisted. Rents cannot be good compared to say just east of DC in Chillum or Hyattsville or wherever. Given its housing stock I think of this neighborhood long-term turning into another version of the WOTP rowhouse areas: expensive starter homes for families that later move out of DC.

In addition, Wells is becoming popular and unavailable for many. For those who can't get into DCI, Wells, etc., at least some will come to MacFarland.

A downside will probably be wariness of Roosevelt, which I think will persistently not be able to focus resources on students who don't need remedial assistance to get to minimal high school competence. Coolidge is further along in this regard, and I would be surprised if there isn't another citywide high school with advanced programming in 10 years (along with McKinley Tech growing into a third 'high income family choice.')

People in Petworth have been hoping MacFarland will improve for decades. It will never actually gain momentum due to it feeding to Roosevelt.

+100

Sorry to say this. I’ve lived in Takoma/Brightwood/16th st heights for over 15 years. Almost none of the schools people have gotten excited about in that time have remained on an upward trajectory. Powell? Bruce-Monroe? Takoma? EL Haynes? Nope nope nope. Whittier and Wells have boosters on here, but they are still woefully behind wotp schools.

It’s anecdotal but Takoma seems to be on the upswing. Based on who we talk to in the area, parents sending in boundary there (or Whittier) instead of feeling real pressure for charter.

Almost our entire neighborhood goes to Takoma as their IB.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think 10 years after it opens, Euclid might be marginally acceptable. Frances EC and several charters will still be substantially better.

Any thoughts on MacFarland?

MacFarland is on a long-term trend toward gentrification because of its neighborhood. In ten years it will look like Bancroft, BMPV, or Powell. Right now, if you were in MacFarland, you would see the number of white (or white-appearing, e.g., including White Hispanic and mixed background) students is significant, and their parents are engaged in the school. Ten years from now, that will mean a full-on money-raising PTO and all of that. There will be much fewer English-language learners with very little English, and there will be less Black students.

Long-term, the neighborhoods of Petworth/16H/Upper Ward 1 that support MacFarland are becoming much more expensive. As it is I am surprised at how long Spanish speakers have persisted. Rents cannot be good compared to say just east of DC in Chillum or Hyattsville or wherever. Given its housing stock I think of this neighborhood long-term turning into another version of the WOTP rowhouse areas: expensive starter homes for families that later move out of DC.

In addition, Wells is becoming popular and unavailable for many. For those who can't get into DCI, Wells, etc., at least some will come to MacFarland.

A downside will probably be wariness of Roosevelt, which I think will persistently not be able to focus resources on students who don't need remedial assistance to get to minimal high school competence. Coolidge is further along in this regard, and I would be surprised if there isn't another citywide high school with advanced programming in 10 years (along with McKinley Tech growing into a third 'high income family choice.')

People in Petworth have been hoping MacFarland will improve for decades. It will never actually gain momentum due to it feeding to Roosevelt.

+100

Sorry to say this. I’ve lived in Takoma/Brightwood/16th st heights for over 15 years. Almost none of the schools people have gotten excited about in that time have remained on an upward trajectory. Powell? Bruce-Monroe? Takoma? EL Haynes? Nope nope nope. Whittier and Wells have boosters on here, but they are still woefully behind wotp schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think 10 years after it opens, Euclid might be marginally acceptable. Frances EC and several charters will still be substantially better.

Any thoughts on MacFarland?

MacFarland is on a long-term trend toward gentrification because of its neighborhood. In ten years it will look like Bancroft, BMPV, or Powell. Right now, if you were in MacFarland, you would see the number of white (or white-appearing, e.g., including White Hispanic and mixed background) students is significant, and their parents are engaged in the school. Ten years from now, that will mean a full-on money-raising PTO and all of that. There will be much fewer English-language learners with very little English, and there will be less Black students.

Long-term, the neighborhoods of Petworth/16H/Upper Ward 1 that support MacFarland are becoming much more expensive. As it is I am surprised at how long Spanish speakers have persisted. Rents cannot be good compared to say just east of DC in Chillum or Hyattsville or wherever. Given its housing stock I think of this neighborhood long-term turning into another version of the WOTP rowhouse areas: expensive starter homes for families that later move out of DC.

In addition, Wells is becoming popular and unavailable for many. For those who can't get into DCI, Wells, etc., at least some will come to MacFarland.

A downside will probably be wariness of Roosevelt, which I think will persistently not be able to focus resources on students who don't need remedial assistance to get to minimal high school competence. Coolidge is further along in this regard, and I would be surprised if there isn't another citywide high school with advanced programming in 10 years (along with McKinley Tech growing into a third 'high income family choice.')

People in Petworth have been hoping MacFarland will improve for decades. It will never actually gain momentum due to it feeding to Roosevelt.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My prediction: The list of the best schools in the city, at every level, will be increasingly dominated by charters.

Only for middle school.

DCPS is by far the leader for elementary. High School is split.

No for elementary EOTP. It’s the immersion charters. Families that don’t get in then settle for DCPS.

Nope. Definitely not true on Capitol Hill.

OK, CH may be the exception but it is a very, very small part of EOTP.

Some CH families do choose immersion over DCPS but not majority.

No, it's actually you who are focusing on one specific slice of EOTP. Other parts -- CH included -- have different stories, but few of them are immersion charter-focused. Shepherd, Ross, Reed, Bancroft, Maury, Brent, Ludlow-Taylor, Chisholm, Payne, Watkins and Van Ness are all schools where DCPSes are the preferred destinations (either the IB itself or a nearby one). EOTR few kids are in immersion and the ones that are are mostly in/hoping for Chisholm.

Folks in Brookland, Eckington, Brentwood, Edgewood are heading to immersion (and other, e.g., Lee) charters because they're the closest good options. The charters that folks EOTR attend are not immersion, but they choose them for the same reason. For anyone close enough to Capitol Hill or WOTP, those DCPSes are typically the closest good options and so the first choice. As CH has gentrified, there are now many more CH ESes on the list and so more good spots for OOBers; same thing with the DCPS ESes along the North Cap corridor.

As a general matter, I think most people think -- and the test scores certainly bear out -- that DPCSes are the best-performing ESes.

Yeah agree. I know US News is somehow debatable, but all 10 of the top elementary schools are DCPS, with 6 WOTP and 4 EOTP (Ross, Shepherd, Maury, Brent).

And if anyone looked at that "who is beating 3rd grade expectations" chart, charter schools like Yu Ying and LAMB that have very low poverty rates have startling low 3rd grade reading scores -- they are underperforming relative to demographics.


Middle school is a different story, because DCPS really doesn't seem to have that figured out, curricularly.

But they come back in high school, with many DCPS schools offering sufficient challenge (Walls, Banneker, JR, MacArthur and McKinley Tech)

Ok, well kids at those immersion schools are learning everything via a second language. When the teacher is teaching them about ecosystems or conjunctions or Native American history or whatever, the teacher is not doing it in English.

But aren't they also learning English in those charters? I thought those charters switched to dual language by 3rd grade.

At LAMB, they switch back and forth, with one day in Spanish and the next in English. Janney, Key and other elementary schools have higher test scores than LAMB, but I'm not sure how to interpret that because it seems like comparing apples and oranges. If one school is delivering all of its lessons in the students' native language and the second school delivers half of those same lessons in a foreign language, then I guess I would expect the first school to have higher scores because it's inherently easier to learn everything in your own language. But I guess I'd think the students at the second school are more impressive because the degree of difficulty there is just so much higher.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think 10 years after it opens, Euclid might be marginally acceptable. Frances EC and several charters will still be substantially better.

Any thoughts on MacFarland?

MacFarland is on a long-term trend toward gentrification because of its neighborhood. In ten years it will look like Bancroft, BMPV, or Powell. Right now, if you were in MacFarland, you would see the number of white (or white-appearing, e.g., including White Hispanic and mixed background) students is significant, and their parents are engaged in the school. Ten years from now, that will mean a full-on money-raising PTO and all of that. There will be much fewer English-language learners with very little English, and there will be less Black students.

Long-term, the neighborhoods of Petworth/16H/Upper Ward 1 that support MacFarland are becoming much more expensive. As it is I am surprised at how long Spanish speakers have persisted. Rents cannot be good compared to say just east of DC in Chillum or Hyattsville or wherever. Given its housing stock I think of this neighborhood long-term turning into another version of the WOTP rowhouse areas: expensive starter homes for families that later move out of DC.

In addition, Wells is becoming popular and unavailable for many. For those who can't get into DCI, Wells, etc., at least some will come to MacFarland.

A downside will probably be wariness of Roosevelt, which I think will persistently not be able to focus resources on students who don't need remedial assistance to get to minimal high school competence. Coolidge is further along in this regard, and I would be surprised if there isn't another citywide high school with advanced programming in 10 years (along with McKinley Tech growing into a third 'high income family choice.')

Anonymous wrote:Which school is "UMC" or what does UMC mean?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peabody/Watkins decline in IB participation reflects a lot of people peeling off for L-T, Maury, or Brent when they can get in by lottery (and in many cases they have proximity preference due to the very weird Peabody/Watkins boundary).

But it actually really surprises me that they are still 52% IB. I would have predicted lower. I would love to see that broken down by campus (does it just reflect the continued popularity of Peabody for ECE?). 52% puts it only slightly below L-T (55%) and Brent (60%), which is not what I would have expected.

Can you link to the data that you're looking at?

Scroll to the bottom for an .xlsx spreadsheet: https://edscape.dc.gov/page/enrollments-dcps-boundary-00

Yes, consistent with my prior belief, this data shows L-T has a IB participation rate of 61.2%, while Brent has 72.1%, so 10% and 20% more than Watkins (at the correctly described 52.1%). That's why I was confused... Also, both L-T and Brent (even more so) get affected by ECE kids who don't get in and therefore *can't* (as opposed to choose not to) participate; Peabody/Watkins increasingly does not have this phenomenon.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peabody/Watkins decline in IB participation reflects a lot of people peeling off for L-T, Maury, or Brent when they can get in by lottery (and in many cases they have proximity preference due to the very weird Peabody/Watkins boundary).

But it actually really surprises me that they are still 52% IB. I would have predicted lower. I would love to see that broken down by campus (does it just reflect the continued popularity of Peabody for ECE?). 52% puts it only slightly below L-T (55%) and Brent (60%), which is not what I would have expected.

Can you link to the data that you're looking at?

Scroll to the bottom for an .xlsx spreadsheet: https://edscape.dc.gov/page/enrollments-dcps-boundary-00

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Peabody/Watkins decline in IB participation reflects a lot of people peeling off for L-T, Maury, or Brent when they can get in by lottery (and in many cases they have proximity preference due to the very weird Peabody/Watkins boundary).

But it actually really surprises me that they are still 52% IB. I would have predicted lower. I would love to see that broken down by campus (does it just reflect the continued popularity of Peabody for ECE?). 52% puts it only slightly below L-T (55%) and Brent (60%), which is not what I would have expected.

Can you link to the data that you're looking at?

Anonymous wrote:Peabody/Watkins decline in IB participation reflects a lot of people peeling off for L-T, Maury, or Brent when they can get in by lottery (and in many cases they have proximity preference due to the very weird Peabody/Watkins boundary).

But it actually really surprises me that they are still 52% IB. I would have predicted lower. I would love to see that broken down by campus (does it just reflect the continued popularity of Peabody for ECE?). 52% puts it only slightly below L-T (55%) and Brent (60%), which is not what I would have expected.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For elementary schools, here's where the IB participation rate has increased the most from SY19-20 to SY24-25 by percentage point change:
-Garrison 25% to 44%
-Hyde-Addison 63% to 81%
-Bancroft 60% to 75%
-Payne 37% to 50%
-John Lewis 22% to 33%

And where the IB participation rate decreased the most from SY19-20 to SY24-25 by percentage point change:
-John Francis 79% to 58%
-Leckie 28% to 15%
-Ross 87% to 76%
-Thomson 50% to 39%
-Cleveland 37% to 26%
-Tubman 39% to 29%
-Peabody/Watkins 62% to 52%

Some honorable mentions (based on percent change) at schools with low boundary participation rates:
-Whittier 19% to 26%
-Burroughs 21% to 26%

Tubman's in a swing space. That decrease is likely temporary.

I'm surprised by Ross/Thomson/John Francis. Doesn't John Francis have a brand new building? Why the drop in inbound participation? And Thomson? With Thomson, part of that might be nearby options (Garrison/Seaton) being more appealing, but hard to imagine people picking either of those over Ross or John Francis.

PP here - oh, actually I bet I know what's up with JF - they JUST moved to their new building. Probably people who left because they didn't like the swing space often don't come back - they've settled in elsewhere. So they're still seeing the hit from having been in the swing space (which was pretty far away, IIRC).

Maybe. They rebounded from 46% in SY23-24 to 58% SY24-25. Also keep in mind these are elementary-specific numbers.

For the middle school the boundary participation rate has actually increased from 34% in SY19-20 to 40% in SY24-25.

But now that Seaton etc have IB rights there, isn't it the same kids being counted as IB when they were OOB last year?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For elementary schools, here's where the IB participation rate has increased the most from SY19-20 to SY24-25 by percentage point change:
-Garrison 25% to 44%
-Hyde-Addison 63% to 81%
-Bancroft 60% to 75%
-Payne 37% to 50%
-John Lewis 22% to 33%

And where the IB participation rate decreased the most from SY19-20 to SY24-25 by percentage point change:
-John Francis 79% to 58%
-Leckie 28% to 15%
-Ross 87% to 76%
-Thomson 50% to 39%
-Cleveland 37% to 26%
-Tubman 39% to 29%
-Peabody/Watkins 62% to 52%

Some honorable mentions (based on percent change) at schools with low boundary participation rates:
-Whittier 19% to 26%
-Burroughs 21% to 26%

Tubman's in a swing space. That decrease is likely temporary.

I'm surprised by Ross/Thomson/John Francis. Doesn't John Francis have a brand new building? Why the drop in inbound participation? And Thomson? With Thomson, part of that might be nearby options (Garrison/Seaton) being more appealing, but hard to imagine people picking either of those over Ross or John Francis.

PP here - oh, actually I bet I know what's up with JF - they JUST moved to their new building. Probably people who left because they didn't like the swing space often don't come back - they've settled in elsewhere. So they're still seeing the hit from having been in the swing space (which was pretty far away, IIRC).

Maybe. They rebounded from 46% in SY23-24 to 58% SY24-25. Also keep in mind these are elementary-specific numbers.

For the middle school the boundary participation rate has actually increased from 34% in SY19-20 to 40% in SY24-25.