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Every month or so, a parent reaches out to me to discuss schools. In honor of #Edfest, which is a chance to interview potential schools for your children based on couple-minute interactions, I want to share some info. This is free advice, take it or leave it.
The first question is usually, “Can I send my kids to public schools in DC?” And my answer is YES. While many of us continue to hold the system’s feet to the fire on a number of issues, there are a lot of good people doing great things in DC’s public schools.
Keep in mind that each charter org is like its own district with its own set of rules. There have been some breach of trust issues (like cover-up of sexual assault), so make sure that you research the charter org and you’re comfortable with who is behind it before enrolling.
Typically, parents associate school quality with test scores. That’s when I have to say that test scores usually (but not always) tell you more about the income of students’ families than school quality. If you want to send your kids to an affluent school, then test scores fine.
Most parents will express a desire for more than just a high-income school and often feel a loss as to how to assess school quality. In my humble experience, the best way is to observe a classroom and see for yourself the instruction and teacher-student interactions.
If you’re okay with what’s happening in the classroom, then the school is good enough for your child.
You can also attend parent group meetings prior to enrolling your child to figure out if you even like these people. Community for your child is important, but community for you as the parent is also important.
If you want data for your decisions, you can see the learning rates (median growth percentiles) for students in grades 4 and up at various schools, but these measures are imperfect, so don’t base decisions solely on this measure.
Median growth percentiles can be found here in the School STAR Metric Scores tab of 2019 cross-tabulated file: https://osse.dc.gov/page/dc-school-report-card-resource-library
For quality of preschool teachers, you can look at the CLASS scores in schools. These measures should also be taken with a grain of salt These can be found here in the same file and tab as above: School STAR Metric Scores tab of 2019 cross-tabulated file https://osse.dc.gov/page/dc-school-report-card-resource-library
As @Evan_Yeats pointed out, definitely ask about class sizes in PK classes because there is variation across schools because not all schools follow the Headstart model.
Other factors that are likely important are (a) how long has the principal been in the role, (b) what % of teachers remain in the school over time, and (c) number of disciplinary incidents per student. You can see (b) in the School Report Card Only Metrics tab of the same file.
But what are my chances of getting in? If you’re looking for dual language, your chances are not very good, unfortunately. If dual language is your #1, look to dual language schools EOTR where your chances of getting in are higher.
You can search for characteristics (like dual language) of various schools here and look for when your match=1 on the right hand side: http://find.myschooldc.org/
Many/most of the open PK spots go to siblings. So if a school has two PK3 classrooms for a total of 30 students, maybe half of those will go to non-siblings. And there are other preferences that might be ahead of you if you don’t have any preferences.
You can see each school’s list of preferences by clicking on a school from http://find.myschooldc.org/ and then looking for “lottery preferences” on right hand side.
DCPS tells you exactly how many seats went to students with various preferences here: https://enrolldcps.dc.gov/node/61
Charters don’t give you this information (yet) but if the waitlist numbers are high, that means you have a low chance of getting in. You want to make sure that you don’t only put high-demand schools on your list because you may not get into any of them.
Also important to keep in mind that things can change over time, like schools can add or subtract classrooms from year to year, and you can ask about that if you speak to school representatives.
If this feels like a lot, that's because it is. Just because we have a system of "choice" doesn't necessarily mean that it's easier for families.
If you take away anything from thread, please take away the point to not further segregate schools by selecting schools based on test scores. Just because we've been conditioned to think of school quality in terms of test scores doesn't make it true.
Almost forgot- @empowerk12 puts a lot of these data in a dashboard here: https://www.empowerk12.org/data-dashboard-source/star-student-group-comparison
