Mari’s Top Math Schools for White Boys

So I wrote I’d post this later.

This comes out of my interest in looking at scores for African American boys based on what I read in the Diverse Schools Dilemma. The author’s main point was for middle and upper middle class white parents, instead of looking at a school’s test scores overall, look at measurements for white students when they are the minority. The idea was to say that minority-majority schools aren’t necessarily bad for white students. In other words, white families don’t need to move for a good education for their kids.

I decided to switch it up for my son. He’s bi-racial, and there really isn’t any data for bi-racial boys. He’s half white, half black we think (adopted), therefore I looked at data for African American boys. That was my earlier post.

For poops and giggles, I decided to look at the data for white boys, to compare. But limited it to PARCC math scores between 2016 and 2019, because I didn’t feel like doing that much work. I limited it to schools that had 50% or more boys scoring 4+ (met or exceeded expectations). Then I took the top ten for that category (ex. Grade 3). These are my results.

BASIS DC PCS
Brent Elementary School
Capitol Hill Montessori School @ Logan
Deal Middle School
District of Columbia International School
Eaton Elementary School
Hardy Middle School
Hearst Elementary School
Hyde-Addison Elementary School @ Meyer
Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS
Janney Elementary School
Key Elementary School
Lafayette Elementary School
Ludlow-Taylor Elementary School
Mann Elementary School
Maury Elementary School @ Eliot-Hine
Murch Elementary School
Murch Elementary School @ UDC
Oyster-Adams Bilingual School
Ross Elementary School
School Without Walls @ Francis-Stevens
School Without Walls High School
School-Within-School @ Goding
Shepherd Elementary School
Stoddert Elementary School
Stuart-Hobson Middle School (Capitol Hill Cluster)
Washington Latin PCS – Middle School
Washington Latin PCS – Upper School
Washington Yu Ying PCS
Watkins Elementary School (Capitol Hill Cluster)
Woodrow Wilson High School

There are a few things I noticed. There aren’t many schools where a lot of kids of European decent (I’m just going to write WB- white boys from here out) are failing. Also this does not include schools where WBs are fewer than 10, like Seaton. For both AA boys and WBs, some top schools are top schools with 5 stars because of girl power. I made another table just for African American students (boys and girls) and some schools that were great for African American girls weren’t necessarily great for the boys. If you compare the lists for boys, there are some schools that are good for both, BASIS DC, Shepard Elementary, Deal Middle School, Hyde-Addison Elementary School @ Meyer, Lafayette Elementary School, School Without Walls High School, and Stoddert Elementary School. Lastly, there are a number of DCPS schools on this and the other list. But more DCPS schools on this list than the other.

Why the difference? I don’t know. I have some opinions, but that’s another post that I don’t want to write.

Mari’s Top Schools for African American Males

I’ve been putting most of my education posts on the City Mom’s Blog. There is a post I have planned but it needs data and the format for it doesn’t fit City Moms. So I’m dumping it here.

A book review inspired me to look deep in the test data particularly for African American boys. So looking at schools (pulling from OSSE’s data for 2016-2019) where there were 10 or more Black boys taking the PARCC test, where 50% or more met or exceeded expectations. If there were more than 10 schools that came up I picked the top 10 or 11 if the last two were even.

Top Schools for Black Boys PARCC Math

Barnard Elementary School
BASIS DC PCS
Benjamin Banneker High School
Center City PCS – Brightwood
Center City PCS – Congress Heights
Center City PCS – Trinidad
DC Prep PCS – Benning Elementary School
DC Prep PCS – Benning Middle School
DC Prep PCS – Edgewood Middle School
DC Scholars PCS
Deal Middle School
Eaton Elementary School
Hope Community PCS – Lamond
Hyde-Addison Elementary School @ Meyer
Ketcham Elementary School
KIPP DC – Heights Academy PCS
KIPP DC – KEY Academy PCS
KIPP DC – Lead Academy PCS
KIPP DC – Promise Academy PCS
KIPP DC – Quest Academy PCS
KIPP DC – Spring Academy PCS
KIPP DC – WILL Academy PCS
Lafayette Elementary School
McKinley Technology High School
Payne Elementary School
School Without Walls High School
Sela PCS
Shepherd Elementary School
Stoddert Elementary School
West Education Campus
Whittier Education Campus

Top Schools for Black Boys PARCC ELA

Barnard Elementary School
BASIS DC PCS
Benjamin Banneker High School
Capital City PCS – High School
DC Prep PCS – Benning Middle School
DC Prep PCS – Edgewood Middle School
Deal Middle School
District of Columbia International School
Eaton Elementary School
Elsie Whitlow Stokes Community Freedom PCS
Hope Community PCS – Lamond
Janney Elementary School
Key Elementary School
Lafayette Elementary School
Langdon Elementary School
Ludlow-Taylor Elementary School
Mann Elementary School
McKinley Technology High School
Shepherd Elementary School
Stoddert Elementary School
Two Rivers PCS – 4th St

Just for fun, I’ll post the top schools for White boys in math in DC later.

Same old house, new and improved and expensive

A minor irritation I have with some essays on gentrification and housing is a complete failure to acknowledge investment and disinvestment in physical structures.

This is an August 2004 PropertyQuest picture of 1504 3rd Street NW. I have an earlier one from 2003.150X3rdSt.jpg

Anyway, it sold in August for $765,000. According to the data on Redfin, it sold in 1991 for $76,750. Between 2001-2006 this shell of a house kept getting listed and delisted. I’m not going to do any in-depth research to determine if it changed hands in that period, but in December 2006 it sold for $250,000. Then in 2007 it sold for about $450K, by this time it had definitely been renovated. This year it came back on the market and sold in the mid $700K range.

When someone takes this house and other houses in the neighborhood and just sees prices, what are they thinking? Do they think the rise in price is just arbitrary and an effort to keep lower-income households priced out?

What I witnessed was investment coming into the neighborhood. That house in 2003-2004 was a shell, unfit for human habitation. That was a result of disinvestment when it wasn’t worth it for the owner to maintain the structure.  Shaw had experienced a lot of disinvestment. After the riots in 1968, many businesses didn’t return. Some residents and landlords just abandoned the neighborhood because it wasn’t worth the money to them to fix the damage.

To take a shell from being unfit to being desirable takes capital, investment. Someone paid to buy cabinetry, flooring, windows, paint, drywall, electrical wires, PVC pipes, HVAC system, framing, appliances, and a roof. Plus the labor to install these things. Having renovated my house and another property, I can say this is not cheap. At the very least $100K went into making the house livable.

Well the house was already renovated by 2007, can I justify the $300K-$400K price hike between 2007 and 2019? I can’t tell if the rear deck was already there, but it was the neighborhood that changed in the period that made it more valuable. What happened between 2007 and now? Big Bear, a few blocks away opened up. Then the Bloomingdale Farmers Market about a year later. Nightly gunshots became less of a thing. There are a handful of sit down restaurants within walking distance, 3 that have had or have Michelin mentions. Two with 1 Michelin star within, biking…longer walking distance. Also, other houses in the neighborhood have been renovated and owners have a financial incentive to maintain their properties. But does that justify the price increase? How much is a safer (2019 TC is way safer than 2004 TC) neighborhood worth? How much is it worth to have places to take friends/dates that are a nice stroll back to your place? Schools have improved, and as a parent, it is worth a few thousand to have a plethora of Pre-K choices in walking distance.  As a homeowner, there is a disappointing difference between what you can refinance and what is a possible sales price. The improvements in the neighborhood have allowed us to refinance the house to fix it up, but the value to bank says the house is worth was much, much lower than what was selling around us. But all that is meaningless if all you care about is keeping the price of housing down.

1957 Church Survey: St. Augustine Catholic Church

I mentioned this one earlier this month, well its school, as it is one of 3 private schools in Shaw. Anywho, St. Augustine is at 1717 15th St NW, on the upper end of the neighborhood.

It was a big church with a chunk of the parishioners (50%) in the urban renewal survey area. I’m a convert to the church, but the sense I get is back then, when this survey was conducted, there were parish districts and you were supposed to go to the church for the district you lived in. Another interesting thing about the demographics is that it had a tiny white population, 3%, while the rest was Black. It is still a predominately African American Catholic Church.

Anyway, here’s the 1957 survey for St. Augustine:

CS 30 St Augustine by Mm Inshaw on Scribd

Wrong perp for the crime

I went to the impromptu August 7th ANC 5E meeting at Friendship 7th Day Adventist and there was something at the meeting that’s been bugging me. Nope. It wasn’t the ABRA case invovling Pub and the People.

Nope.

The thing that’s been bugging me is Robert Brannum’s resolution that he included in the meeting packet, to be voted on at a later date by the 5E ANC. I’ve embedded the proposal below:

Advisory Neighborhood Commission 5E Resolution No 2019 by Mm Inshaw on Scribd


One of the things that bugs me (and it a very tiny bug) is that the focus is on non-local incidents by non-local perps/ white supremacists. The beauty of the ANC system is that it is HYPER-local. It is about things occuring in the immediate neighborhood. In walking distance. This is not local.

A larger bug is the fact that crimes against gay men in Shaw and transgender women in NE have not been allegedly commited by white supremists. In April 2018, a gay couple was brutally beaten on the 2200 block of 10th St NW. From the grainy video, it looks like they were attacked by 3 black guys. A few months ago, a gay man, with his boyfriend was beaten very badly by a group of teens on the 1300 block of U St NW. Two teens are juviniles so no info there but the “adult” was a 19 year old Marcus Britt of Fort Washington, MD. That’s in PG County, bet money he’s of African descent. They were not charged with a hate crime. The alleged killer of a Black trans woman killed near the DC border (that’s what Eastern Avenue is) is not white.

Did you know fewer than half of LGBT hate crime arrests in DC are dismissed? Eleanor Holmes Norton enquired about that.

Sadly, the message the city and this resolution is indirectly saying is that if you are Black, you have a license to beat up people in the LGBT community in DC. It would help if the resolution denounced hate crimes commited by anyone, even teenage POCs.

Schools in Shaw- Public, Charter, and Private


Private
Believe it or not, there are private schools in Shaw. I found three.

Ujamaa-1554 8th St NW. This is an African-centric school. According to one source, it is a K-9 school. But looking at their alumni testimonials the school did teach at the high school level. Website

Emerson Preparatory– 1816 12th St NW 4th Floor. According to the school’s Wikipedia page it moved to the Shaw neighborhood in 2017, from Dupont Circle. It is a private day high school. Website

St. Augustine Catholic– 1421 V St NW. This is on the north end of Shaw and is the remaining Catholic School, because once upon a time Immaculate Conception at 8th and N had a school. Like Ujamaa, it is predominately African-American. It is a pre-K to 8th grade school. Website

Public Charter
There are several, so this is just a basic list.

City Center-Shaw-711 N St NW. Grades: Pre-K4 to 8. Website
Friendship-Armstrong-111 O St NW. Grades: PK3 to 6. Website
KIPP-Grow-421 P St NW. Grades: Pre-K3 to K. Website
KIPP-Lead-421 P St NW. Grades: 1 to 4. Website
KIPP-Will-421 P St NW. Grades: 5 to 8. Website
Meridian– 2120 13th St NW. Grades: Pre-K3 to 6. Website
Mundo Verde– 30 P St NW. Grades: Pre-K3 to 5. Website

DC Public
These are the DCPS schools physically in the bounds of Shaw, not the schools that service students in Shaw.
Cleveland Elementary– 1825 8th St NW. Grades: Pre-K3 to 5. Website
Dunbar High– 101 N St NW. Grades: 9 to 12. Website
Garrison Elementary-1200 S St NW. Grades: Pre-K3 to 5.  Website
Seaton Elementary– 1503 10th St NW. Grades: Pre-K3 to 5. Website

Did I miss a school?

1957 Church Survey- Vermont Avenue Baptist

I should sneak a Shaw church in this run of random churches. Vermont Avenue Baptist is at 1630 Vermont Avenue NW.

In 1957 Vt Av was a HUGE church claiming 3,600 members. They had 3 Sunday services with over two thousand congregants showing up on any given Sunday. It was a predominately white collar Black church with 41% living in the urban renewal area. About half the membership lived in the rest of DC. So about 1000 people coming in on Sunday, where did they park?

CS 20 Vermont Ave Baptist by Mm Inshaw on Scribd

1957 Church Survey: Southern Baptist Church- Random Church Not in Shaw

When you think Southern Baptist, what comes to mind? A Black church? Probably not, but that’s just what we have here. Southern Baptist Church at 134 L St NW. If memory serves me right, I believe there’s a bus in their parking lot that says “We Love Black People.” The church sits in NoMa so, not in Shaw.

Anyway there isn’t a lot of information in the 1957 survey, except they are a black church, they had a huge membership (1,300 souls), and the church was newish then.

CS 15 Southern Baptist by Mm Inshaw on Scribd