Tag: schools

Shaw School Review: Cleveland Elementary School

Taken September 2019. Cleveland Elementary

1825 8th St. NW

Type of school: Public
Grades: Pre-K 3 to 5

PreK3: 29;  PreK4: 44; K: 42; 1st: 37; 2nd: 35; 3rd: 40; 4th: 39; 5th: 38

Before School care: No
After School care: Yes, Fee
Enrollment: 304 (2018-19)
Permanent DCPS Programmatic Capacity, 346; Unfilled Seats, 42 (2018-19)
Cost Per Pupil- $11,029 (300 students 2019-2020 General Education)

Boundaries

Percent of in-boundary participation: 29.1% (2017-18)

Schools attended by in-boundary students (2017-18)

Name of School # of Students
Seaton Elementary School 25
KIPP DC – Lead Academy PCS 22
Thomson Elementary School 17
Friendship PCS – Armstrong 13
KIPP DC – Grow Academy PCS 10

Physical Activity Time: Grades K-5: 75 Minutes/week

PARCC Scores 2018-19, % meeting & exceeding expectations
Black White Hispanic Asian
ELA 2018-19 20.3% N/A 29.7% n<10
Math 2018-19 20.3% N/A 40.5% n<10
Males ELA 10.8% N/A 21.1% N/A
Males Math 24.3% N/A 42.1% N/A

Mari’s 2cents: I’m taking the participation rate with a grain of salt because I’m not sure if they are counting Pre-K kids who have to lottery into the boundary and space is limited. I have another table for other institutions that take OSSE money for Pre-K so there is that. Also notice which schools students are going to instead of Cleveland, Seaton (DCPS), KIPP Lead and Grow, Friendship-Armstrong, and Thompson (DCPS), these are schools in Shaw or close to it. Two of them are other DCPS schools, so it isn’t that DCPS schools aren’t fitting a need, just that particular one. I’m including unfilled seats because someone tweeted about a horrible number of unfilled seats in Ward 5. Forty-two seats seem small and I suspect those are spread out to the higher grades as the peak number of kids is below 1st grade. Cleveland has a dual language program for Spanish and English which looks very interesting and appealing. But you want to know what’s even more appealing? It’s like almost across the street from the Shaw metro.

Sources:

2018-19 School Year Annual Enrollment Audit Report Supplemental Tables
EdScape_Chapter 3 Facilities_Facility Enrollment and Utilization_6
http://dcpsbudget.ourdcschools.org/
https://www.dcschoolreportcard.org/schools/1-0224
https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/23/
Detailed 2018-19, 2017-18, 2016-17 PARCC And MSAA Performance
FY1718_Public School Enrollments per DCPS Boundary

Shaw School Review: Dunbar High School

Dunbar High School DC (new building).jpg
By DC Public Schools – http://profiles.dcps.dc.gov/school_images/full_size/dunbar.jpg, Public Domain

101 N Street NW, Washington, DC 20001

Type of school: Public
Grades: 9-12
Enrollment: 667 (2018-19)
Permanent DCPS Programmatic Capacity, 1135; Unfilled Seats, 468 (2018-19)
Boundaries

Dunbar HS boundaries

Percent of in-boundary participation: 52%

Schools attended by in-boundary students (2017-18)

NAME OF SCHOOL # of Students
McKinley Technology High School 128
Woodrow Wilson High School 109
Washington Mathematics Science Technology PCHS 90
Columbia Heights Education Campus 9-12 (CHEC) 88
Duke Ellington School of the Arts 87
Paul PCS – International High School 83
KIPP DC – College Preparatory Academy PCS 82
Benjamin Banneker High School 75
Cardozo Education Campus 70
Washington Leadership Academy PCS 69
Friendship PCS – Collegiate Academy 65
School Without Walls High School 65
Washington Latin PCS – Upper School 59
Goodwill Excel Center PCS 53
Capital City PCS – High School 53
Luke C. Moore High School 52
Eastern High School 48
District of Columbia International School 46
Roosevelt High School 42
E.L. Haynes PCS – High School 39
Ron Brown College Preparatory High School 37
Cesar Chavez PCS for Public Policy – Capitol Hill 35
Phelps Architecture, Construction and Engineering High School 35
Coolidge High School 34
Kingsman Academy PCS 32
IDEA PCS 30
Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS 29
Cesar Chavez PCS for Public Policy – Parkside High School 28
Washington Metropolitan High School 28
Richard Wright PCS for Journalism and Media Arts 27
H.D. Woodson High School 14
BASIS DC PCS 14
Ballou High School 13
Maya Angelou PCS – High School 12
SEED PCS of Washington DC 10

Physical Activity Time: 160 minutes a week

Before Care/ After Care: None

PARCC by Race

PARCC Scores 2018-19, % meeting & exceeding expectations
Black White Hispanic Asian
ELA 2018-19 16.5% N/A n<10 N/A
Math 2018-19 .5% N/A n<10 n<10
Males ELA 13.4% N/A n<10 N/A
Males Math .9% N/A n<10 n<10

 

Mari’s 2 cents: I’m playing around with the format of this so bear with me.  The boundaries of Dunbar cover a huge swath of Ward 5, but cuts out portions of the Truxton Circle/ Shaw neighborhood where it resides. I can understand why so many students would prefer to go to McKinley Technology High School, an application DCPS high school, as it is far closer to the red line that serves the ward. That and McKinely has better test scores. The next largest number of kids go to Wilson, which is on the other side of the red line, and it too has better scores. But, Dunbar has a great football team and a beautiful building. The school is 96% black and so there are so few of the other racial categories, there is no test data when there are fewer than 10 or 25 students.

Sources:
https://edscape.dc.gov/page/facilities-unfilled-seats
https://www.dcschoolreportcard.org/schools/1-0467
http://profiles.dcps.dc.gov/Dunbar+High+School
https://www.myschooldc.org
https://dcps.dc.gov/node/1018342
https://www.tablesgenerator.com/html_tables#

No such thing as a bad school in DC

Old Dunbar High School being demolished in 2013

I think there are but I don’t know if I really want to bother with petty fights with people who feel the need to defend failure. No one is free to say that since a school fails to have a decent bell curve of failing and excelling students and is skewed towards failure, that maybe it could be a bad school. Nor can you point to low in-boundary participation, the mismatch of demographics between the school and the neighborhood, and empty seats and say that people/parents are saying something in their actions.

Personally, I know that acknowledging problems is the first step to recovery and towards success. Doesn’t guarantee success, but it helps to stop the self-deception.

There are some great public schools in the District of Columbia, not all of them charters.  Shepherd Elementary School in upper northwest, does an awesome job of educating black boys. Over 70% of Shepard’s African American boys, between 2016-2019, approached, met and exceeded expectations on PARCC scores in math and ELA. Sadly, this is rare.

The number of schools where black boys fail to meet or even partially meet expectations are many. So many. Both charters and DCPS. But I’m not going to name them for they have their defenders.

I get it. Education is hard. There is a mix of building issues, the kinds of families (students and parents) a school attracts, the staff who come and stay, and the leadership. These need to be in balance. But you can’t fix the problem and try to figure out what is out of wack if you won’t even identify what is a bad school.

I’ll be exploring Shaw schools, and I will name names.