Anonymous wrote:
Of course she's right. There is no room, no thought, no plan in the system whereby poor or OOB children are to be kept out of a school. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. And when maybe half of them overall can read on grade level? Nor should there be.

You need to get it into your heads that if you want to build a moat around your snowflake, then send him to private school. DCPS absolutely will not keep those bad OOB kids away from him. DCPSs job is educate everybody, and considering how badly they do that job, don't think for a second that DCPS is going to keep kids out of Hardy just for you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting stats, pp. Thanks for posting. Yeah, you should definitely not send your kids there.

But how about not sending your kids there and not whining about it? I have no problem with people who feel that Hardy is not the right environment for their child and want to send the kid elsewhere. But the whining that goes on on this thread and practically every other thread about Hardy? So tiresome.

You're right. I guess I am whining about the fact that my IB middle school is 87% OOB and 55% FARMs. What I'd like is for DCPS to take decisive action to fix this situation.

Either Hardy is a neighborhood school or it is a city-wide school.

If it's a neighborhood school, DCPS should cap OOB enrollment at something like 25% so that IB families have a reasonable chance of turning the school around within a couple of years.

If it's a city-wide school, DCPS should eliminate the neighborhood preference. At least those of us zoned for Hardy could then lobby to start a real neighborhood school in a new building somewhere else.

Basically separating Hardy back into its former Gordon and Hardy components. At one point, "old" Hardy was a popular choice among IB students. That changed when it was forcibly merged into Gordon (and Gordon kept the Hardy name)

The original Hardy Elementary School, named for early 20th-century educator Rose Hardy, opened on Foxhall Road 80 years ago. In 1974, it was converted to a middle school. In 1996, Superintendent Franklin Smith closed the Foxhall building and moved the school to its current location at 1819 35th St. NW in Georgetown, the former Carlos Rosario Adult Education Center. Before 1980, when the council renamed it Carlos Rosario, the facility had been known as Gordon Junior High. Smith closed all adult education programs in 1996, clearing the way for Hardy to move into the building.

The Carlos Rosario
International Public
Charter School opened in
1998, becoming the first
adult public charter school
in the nation. The school
has its roots in the
Program of English Instruction for Latin Americans (PEILA) established in
1970 by Carlos Manuel Rosario. In 1978, PEILA relocated to the Gordon
building in Georgetown, merged with the Americanization Program and
was renamed the Gordon Center. In 1992, the school was renamed the
Carlos Rosario Adult Education Center. In 1996, the Carlos Rosario Adult
Education Center was forced to close. Two years later, after the budget
crisis was resolved, the school reopened as the Carlos Rosario International
Public Charter School. In 2000, the school expanded to six locations to
accommodate high demand. In 2001, school administrators signed a longterm
lease agreement with the DC government to renovate and occupy the
former Wilson Teachers College building at 1100 Harvard Street NW. The
grand opening and dedication occurred in 2004.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
You're right, PP. The issue is school quality. A 55% FARMs middle school is likely to have a detrimental impact on a middle class kid, and family supports will not be enough to compensate:


http://www.prrac.org/pdf/annotated_bibliography_on_school_poverty_concentration.pdf

But if more IB students attend, either through more of the existing IB students choosing to attend, as already seems to be the case, or through more new market rate housing with at least 2BRs, that would in itself reduce the % of FARMs.

Note, the old profile gives Hardy a FARMS % if 55. If the above mentioned claims on IB in the 6th grade are correct, that percentage should already be lower for the 6th grade.

So, we're back to the grassroots effort: Let's improve Hardy by all agreeing to enroll our IB kids so that we drive the FARMs rate down (mostly by driving out the FARMs kids).

However, since the transformation can't happen overnight, the plan is really more like: Let's sacrifice the educational experiences of IB middle schoolers for some as of yet undetermined number of years so that future IB middle schoolers will have access to a high quality neighborhood middle school.

Oh, my God, the drama. As if going to a just-okay middle school for three years is going to doom your child forever. You think your kid won't be able to keep up with the Deal kids once they all wind up at Wilson together? Have a little faith in yourself and your children. You can overcome this dreadful setback!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Oh, my God, the drama. As if going to a just-okay middle school for three years is going to doom your child forever. You think your kid won't be able to keep up with the Deal kids once they all wind up at Wilson together? Have a little faith in yourself and your children. You can overcome this dreadful setback!

Is that really true, though?

How many IB Hardy kids place into the advanced classes at Wilson? How many IB Deal kids place in?

DCPS does not publish IB/OOB breakdowns for the DC CAS. However, vast majority of the white kids at both schools are probably IB, so let's use them as a proxy for IB:

74% of the white kids at Deal scored advanced in math on the DC CAS last year, but only 46% of the white kids at Hardy did.

52% of the white kids at Deal scored advance in reading on the DC CAS last year, but only 29% of the white kids at Hardy did.

Research suggests that sending middle class kids to high-poverty schools has a deleterious effect on the educational outcomes of those middle class kids, and the DC CAS results for Hardy appear to bear this out.

Time to inject some reality here - and some god news for parents of IB families that decide to send their kids to Hardy.

I know just about every IB 8th grader that graduated from Hardy last year - probably about 25 (this includes half a dozen or so kids some commenters on this board would not describe as IB families because they live east of the park and lotteried into Hardy feeders).

These kids are doing great. I'd say about ten ended up at School Without Walls. Another couple ended up at Duke Ellington. About half a dozen ended up at prestigious privates like St. Johns and Sidwell. The rest are attending Wilson - and by all accounts are doing quite well - placing into honors classes, geometry in 9th grade, Spanish II or III, and ottherwise on par with their peers from Deal.

So no, your IB kids who go to Hardy will do just fine thank you very much.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

OK, PP. What do you think would happen if 200 IB kids left Deal at the end of the year? Would the principal make those spots available in the OOB lottery?

Kind of an odd question, but I'll try. This year? No, the school is 300 kids over capacity right now. Once the addition is finished? Yes, he'd have to.

But what are you getting at?

I'm just suggesting that the Deal principal is probably familiar with the research and would try hard to keep FARMs enrollment below 25% if at all possible. He would probably fight to minimize the number of OOB spots available if his IB enrollment dropped for some reason.

If all of the OOB kids at Deal come from the feeders, then perhaps the fact that Deal is only 21% FARMs reflects the collective efforts of the Deal feeder principals to control their OOB lottery slots. Do the feeders pack their 4th and 5th grades to capacity with OOB kids? Probably not.

School capacity does not determine enrollment. Hardy has the capacity for 650, I think, but has only around 350 kids. Why is that? Could Hardy handle being 75% FARMs?

You're giving everyone way too much credit. It's just happy accident the demographics work out for Deal.

The reality is the opposite of what you hypothesize. There is unrelenting pressure on Deal and its feeders to take more kids. Enrollment moves in one direction only, upward. There is a ratchet where facilities grow to meet enrollment, and then enrollment grows to match facilities.

Maybe you're right, PP. Perhaps it's just a coincidence.

Of course she's right. There is no room, no thought, no plan in the system whereby poor or OOB children are to be kept out of a school. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. And when maybe half of them overall can read on grade level? Nor should there be.

You need to get it into your heads that if you want to build a moat around your snowflake, then send him to private school. DCPS absolutely will not keep those bad OOB kids away from him. DCPSs job is educate everybody, and considering how badly they do that job, don't think for a second that DCPS is going to keep kids out of Hardy just for you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

OK, PP. What do you think would happen if 200 IB kids left Deal at the end of the year? Would the principal make those spots available in the OOB lottery?

Kind of an odd question, but I'll try. This year? No, the school is 300 kids over capacity right now. Once the addition is finished? Yes, he'd have to.

But what are you getting at?

I'm just suggesting that the Deal principal is probably familiar with the research and would try hard to keep FARMs enrollment below 25% if at all possible. He would probably fight to minimize the number of OOB spots available if his IB enrollment dropped for some reason.

If all of the OOB kids at Deal come from the feeders, then perhaps the fact that Deal is only 21% FARMs reflects the collective efforts of the Deal feeder principals to control their OOB lottery slots. Do the feeders pack their 4th and 5th grades to capacity with OOB kids? Probably not.

School capacity does not determine enrollment. Hardy has the capacity for 650, I think, but has only around 350 kids. Why is that? Could Hardy handle being 75% FARMs?

You're giving everyone way too much credit. It's just happy accident the demographics work out for Deal.

The reality is the opposite of what you hypothesize. There is unrelenting pressure on Deal and its feeders to take more kids. Enrollment moves in one direction only, upward. There is a ratchet where facilities grow to meet enrollment, and then enrollment grows to match facilities.

Maybe you're right, PP. Perhaps it's just a coincidence.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Oh, my God, the drama. As if going to a just-okay middle school for three years is going to doom your child forever. You think your kid won't be able to keep up with the Deal kids once they all wind up at Wilson together? Have a little faith in yourself and your children. You can overcome this dreadful setback!

Is that really true, though?

How many IB Hardy kids place into the advanced classes at Wilson? How many IB Deal kids place in?

DCPS does not publish IB/OOB breakdowns for the DC CAS. However, vast majority of the white kids at both schools are probably IB, so let's use them as a proxy for IB:

74% of the white kids at Deal scored advanced in math on the DC CAS last year, but only 46% of the white kids at Hardy did.

52% of the white kids at Deal scored advance in reading on the DC CAS last year, but only 29% of the white kids at Hardy did.

Research suggests that sending middle class kids to high-poverty schools has a deleterious effect on the educational outcomes of those middle class kids, and the DC CAS results for Hardy appear to bear this out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting stats, pp. Thanks for posting. Yeah, you should definitely not send your kids there.

But how about not sending your kids there and not whining about it? I have no problem with people who feel that Hardy is not the right environment for their child and want to send the kid elsewhere. But the whining that goes on on this thread and practically every other thread about Hardy? So tiresome.

You're right. I guess I am whining about the fact that my IB middle school is 87% OOB and 55% FARMs. What I'd like is for DCPS to take decisive action to fix this situation.

Either Hardy is a neighborhood school or it is a city-wide school.

If it's a neighborhood school, DCPS should cap OOB enrollment at something like 25% so that IB families have a reasonable chance of turning the school around within a couple of years.

If it's a city-wide school, DCPS should eliminate the neighborhood preference. At least those of us zoned for Hardy could then lobby to start a real neighborhood school in a new building somewhere else.

Anonymous wrote:IB families abandoned Hardy years ago. I think if IB families today are upset about the school today, they need to put the blame where it belongs - to their predecessors.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting stats, pp. Thanks for posting. Yeah, you should definitely not send your kids there.

But how about not sending your kids there and not whining about it? I have no problem with people who feel that Hardy is not the right environment for their child and want to send the kid elsewhere. But the whining that goes on on this thread and practically every other thread about Hardy? So tiresome.

You're right. I guess I am whining about the fact that my IB middle school is 87% OOB and 55% FARMs. What I'd like is for DCPS to take decisive action to fix this situation.

Either Hardy is a neighborhood school or it is a city-wide school.

If it's a neighborhood school, DCPS should cap OOB enrollment at something like 25% so that IB families have a reasonable chance of turning the school around within a couple of years.

If it's a city-wide school, DCPS should eliminate the neighborhood preference. At least those of us zoned for Hardy could then lobby to start a real neighborhood school in a new building somewhere else.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Interesting stats, pp. Thanks for posting. Yeah, you should definitely not send your kids there.

But how about not sending your kids there and not whining about it? I have no problem with people who feel that Hardy is not the right environment for their child and want to send the kid elsewhere. But the whining that goes on on this thread and practically every other thread about Hardy? So tiresome.

You're right. I guess I am whining about the fact that my IB middle school is 87% OOB and 55% FARMs. What I'd like is for DCPS to take decisive action to fix this situation.

Either Hardy is a neighborhood school or it is a city-wide school.

If it's a neighborhood school, DCPS should cap OOB enrollment at something like 25% so that IB families have a reasonable chance of turning the school around within a couple of years.

If it's a city-wide school, DCPS should eliminate the neighborhood preference. At least those of us zoned for Hardy could then lobby to start a real neighborhood school in a new building somewhere else.

Anonymous wrote:Interesting stats, pp. Thanks for posting. Yeah, you should definitely not send your kids there.

But how about not sending your kids there and not whining about it? I have no problem with people who feel that Hardy is not the right environment for their child and want to send the kid elsewhere. But the whining that goes on on this thread and practically every other thread about Hardy? So tiresome.