Anonymous wrote:I'd say it's a third about safety, a third about academics, and a third about Hill high SES parents not wanting their children in school with a couple hundred poor minority kids from tough neighborhoods over the river and way up in NE. Discuss your true feelings about the SH set-up and open yourself up to attack, so few in-boundary do. Same with Hardy.

But the feedback I get from families who actually enroll in SH has been increasingly positive, even last year. New principal gets high marks from parents, students and teachers. The naysayers are always Hill residents who turn up their nose and have little to no first hand experience with the school. I hear far less about families fleeing Stuart than BASIS fwiw.

There's plenty of room for academic improvement, hardly unique to public MS in DC

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We lotteried twice for SH from OOB. Got in easily a couple of years ago but not more recently. When we saw we weren't going to get in by the time school starts, we withdrew, wouldn't have wanted to switch after the start of school. We're now at a different Hill middle school we ranked lower but turned out very well.

I call. s on that you are at a different DCPS Hill middle school that you ranked lower but turned out very well. Would love to know which that one is - EH? Jefferson isn’t on the Hill. Two Rivers isn’t DCPS. Nothing else to rank.

PP didn't say that they were at another DCPS middle school. Could be Two Rivers. Could be Friendship Chamberlain. But if it's DCPS, could be CHM@L. People forget they have a middle school (and they are super sketchy about whether they'll take kids without prior Montessori experience).

I'd say it's a third about safety, a third about academics, and a third about Hill high SES parents not wanting their children in school with a couple hundred poor minority kids from tough neighborhoods over the river and way up in NE. Discuss your true feelings about the SH set-up and open yourself up to attack, so few in-boundary do. Same with Hardy.

^^^^ It's all about safety, or in this case the lack thereof. Why's it so hard to demand a safe environment?

Anonymous wrote:One kid there now in all honors classes, one headed there next year. Love the new principal -- this year is IMMENSELY better than last year. Huge improvement in staff morale, school climate, parent communication. Kiddo walks to school with friends, absolutely loves the band program, is challenged academically, and happy to go to school -- hard to argue with that.

That's nice. We live six blocks from SH, in the Maury District, so no access to SH short of spectacular lottery luck.

Total BS that parents who refuse to try the school (mainly because they look down their noses at the mostly low SES students) are the real problem in this calculus.

Anonymous wrote:We lotteried twice for SH from OOB. Got in easily a couple of years ago but not more recently. When we saw we weren't going to get in by the time school starts, we withdrew, wouldn't have wanted to switch after the start of school. We're now at a different Hill middle school we ranked lower but turned out very well.

I call. s on that you are at a different DCPS Hill middle school that you ranked lower but turned out very well. Would love to know which that one is - EH? Jefferson isn’t on the Hill. Two Rivers isn’t DCPS. Nothing else to rank.

One kid there now in all honors classes, one headed there next year. Love the new principal -- this year is IMMENSELY better than last year. Huge improvement in staff morale, school climate, parent communication. Kiddo walks to school with friends, absolutely loves the band program, is challenged academically, and happy to go to school -- hard to argue with that.

Anonymous wrote:What about Asian kids? Shall our children be the only Asian kids at SH, or at least the only ones in their grade? Whoopee, what a joy. Some years SH attracts 0% Asian kids, some years 1%. Forget it.

no - they should be the only Asian students at another school

What about Asian kids? Shall our children be the only Asian kids at SH, or at least the only ones in their grade? Whoopee, what a joy. Some years SH attracts 0% Asian kids, some years 1%. Forget it.

What a breeze to say, "Well, you see, I'm planning to send my child to SH." If I had a $20 bill for every time I've heard that when I arrived in the neighborhood 25 years ago when it didn't come to pass, at least not through 8th grade, I could afford a private for almost middle schooler.

No, Hardy isn't madly flipping. The school is still struggling mightily to attract in-boundary families. At this rate, Hobson won't attain the current Hardy buy-in rate for another decade. Maybe the Deal rate in 20 years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure, if SH were a solid choice, the in-boundary population wouldn't have been beating down the doors to get in to Washington Latin, BASIS, privates, and even Hardy and DCI, to stay in the neighborhood in the last five years.

There are 2 or 3 SH booster threads like this one on DCUM every year, without that changing anything. The in-boundary/high SES percentage increases by 2 or 3 percentage points annually. At this glacial pace, in 20 years, the school will finally be good enough to attract most in-boundary families.

Everybody in-boundary I know who uses the school is farther on the left politically than we are, and we're definitely on the left.

At the current pace, the school will be 20% white in what, 3 years? Add in some high SES POC's, and its got to be at least 25% high SES? Isn't that the point at which it likely flips completely in a couple of more years? Isn't that basically where Hardy is now?

Is race your only metric for quality? Appears so. I've said this on many threads before - Cluster parent including SH and on to Walls.

Glad to have a SH parent join in! I'd love to hear more about your experiences.

But, I'm a (white) SH enthusiast who's planning on sending my child there, and I think that's a bit harsh reaction. The percentage of children who are white does provide some useful information.

I want my child to both have a diverse, well-behaved peers, but also with a significant share who are at his (on or above grade) academic level. It's harder to get the latter in a very poor school.

Clearly, the share of academically successful students is going to be lower among poorer children. (Obligatory caveat: It's not a great predictor; every child should be judged individually, etc.) I see from the profile that SH is 47% economically disadvantaged and 11% white. My impression is that the bulk of the white students are going to be academically on track or advanced, both because they have the familial support and because they are coming from richer families who are more likely to be able to send them to different schools if they are not doing well at SH. Of the economically disadvantaged, many are behind, and because the threshold for economic disadvantage is quite low, even among noneconomically disadvantaged nonwhite students, there will be fewer (but still some? many?) from high SES families.

My impression is that with around 130 kids per grade, there are dozens to many dozens of academically advanced students per grade, depending on how you define it. For example, about 20 percent of math and about 40 percent of ELA PARCC scores are 4/5. However, as the school noted, 45% of students come in 2 or more math levels behind.

88% of white kids were proficient in ELA and 74% in math. So more than 1 in 4 white kids at SH can't score a 4 on the PARCC. Some might have special needs. Others just didn't do too well on the test. I don't know enough about the school to say why. I know kids who went there (from OOB, gasp!) and did fine and went on to SWW and then to very selective colleges. And they were black, and male.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure, if SH were a solid choice, the in-boundary population wouldn't have been beating down the doors to get in to Washington Latin, BASIS, privates, and even Hardy and DCI, to stay in the neighborhood in the last five years.

There are 2 or 3 SH booster threads like this one on DCUM every year, without that changing anything. The in-boundary/high SES percentage increases by 2 or 3 percentage points annually. At this glacial pace, in 20 years, the school will finally be good enough to attract most in-boundary families.

Everybody in-boundary I know who uses the school is farther on the left politically than we are, and we're definitely on the left.

At the current pace, the school will be 20% white in what, 3 years? Add in some high SES POC's, and its got to be at least 25% high SES? Isn't that the point at which it likely flips completely in a couple of more years? Isn't that basically where Hardy is now?

Is race your only metric for quality? Appears so. I've said this on many threads before - Cluster parent including SH and on to Walls.

To clarify, I do not think even SES should be the only metric for quality. But I was responding someone focused on that and IB percent. But even if you thought my response was about MY metrics, how could you read it to be about race only, when it was explicitly not?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure, if SH were a solid choice, the in-boundary population wouldn't have been beating down the doors to get in to Washington Latin, BASIS, privates, and even Hardy and DCI, to stay in the neighborhood in the last five years.

There are 2 or 3 SH booster threads like this one on DCUM every year, without that changing anything. The in-boundary/high SES percentage increases by 2 or 3 percentage points annually. At this glacial pace, in 20 years, the school will finally be good enough to attract most in-boundary families.

Everybody in-boundary I know who uses the school is farther on the left politically than we are, and we're definitely on the left.

At the current pace, the school will be 20% white in what, 3 years? Add in some high SES POC's, and its got to be at least 25% high SES? Isn't that the point at which it likely flips completely in a couple of more years? Isn't that basically where Hardy is now?

Is race your only metric for quality? Appears so. I've said this on many threads before - Cluster parent including SH and on to Walls.

Glad to have a SH parent join in! I'd love to hear more about your experiences.

But, I'm a (white) SH enthusiast who's planning on sending my child there, and I think that's a bit harsh reaction. The percentage of children who are white does provide some useful information.

I want my child to both have a diverse, well-behaved peers, but also with a significant share who are at his (on or above grade) academic level. It's harder to get the latter in a very poor school.

Clearly, the share of academically successful students is going to be lower among poorer children. (Obligatory caveat: It's not a great predictor; every child should be judged individually, etc.) I see from the profile that SH is 47% economically disadvantaged and 11% white. My impression is that the bulk of the white students are going to be academically on track or advanced, both because they have the familial support and because they are coming from richer families who are more likely to be able to send them to different schools if they are not doing well at SH. Of the economically disadvantaged, many are behind, and because the threshold for economic disadvantage is quite low, even among noneconomically disadvantaged nonwhite students, there will be fewer (but still some? many?) from high SES families.

My impression is that with around 130 kids per grade, there are dozens to many dozens of academically advanced students per grade, depending on how you define it. For example, about 20 percent of math and about 40 percent of ELA PARCC scores are 4/5. However, as the school noted, 45% of students come in 2 or more math levels behind.

Anonymous wrote:Sure, if SH were a solid choice, the in-boundary population wouldn't have been beating down the doors to get in to Washington Latin, BASIS, privates, and even Hardy and DCI, to stay in the neighborhood in the last five years.

There are 2 or 3 SH booster threads like this one on DCUM every year, without that changing anything. The in-boundary/high SES percentage increases by 2 or 3 percentage points annually. At this glacial pace, in 20 years, the school will finally be good enough to attract most in-boundary families.

Everybody in-boundary I know who uses the school is farther on the left politically than we are, and we're definitely on the left.

BS -- there are a million BASIS booster threads that try to high jack any serious discussion of DCPS middle schools. Even the Latin set seems less strident and obnoxious about it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sure, if SH were a solid choice, the in-boundary population wouldn't have been beating down the doors to get in to Washington Latin, BASIS, privates, and even Hardy and DCI, to stay in the neighborhood in the last five years.

There are 2 or 3 SH booster threads like this one on DCUM every year, without that changing anything. The in-boundary/high SES percentage increases by 2 or 3 percentage points annually. At this glacial pace, in 20 years, the school will finally be good enough to attract most in-boundary families.

Everybody in-boundary I know who uses the school is farther on the left politically than we are, and we're definitely on the left.

At the current pace, the school will be 20% white in what, 3 years? Add in some high SES POC's, and its got to be at least 25% high SES? Isn't that the point at which it likely flips completely in a couple of more years? Isn't that basically where Hardy is now?

Is race your only metric for quality? Appears so. I've said this on many threads before - Cluster parent including SH and on to Walls.