Whose happy with Jackson Reed this year. Considering new Macarthur school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with basically everything above, except that I think all kids with ivy+ aspirations do supplement in terms of academics and/or enrichments. You can do well at JR and go to UVA without supplementing, but for kids without a hook, Ivy admission requires supplementing of some or many varieties.

I doubt this for UVA. It is incredibly difficult to get in out of state or even from NOVA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with basically everything above, except that I think all kids with ivy+ aspirations do supplement in terms of academics and/or enrichments. You can do well at JR and go to UVA without supplementing, but for kids without a hook, Ivy admission requires supplementing of some or many varieties.

I doubt this for UVA. It is incredibly difficult to get in out of state or even from NOVA.

DS class of 22, accepted to UVA and an Ivy. Wilson grad with no supplementing.

[Anonymous]

Your child never did any activities or programs or camps or anything outside of school? Is that what you mean by no supplementing?

Or do you just mean no test prep?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is my Q:

Eighth grader is currently IB for JR. Student wants to have some options: apply for SWW and Banneker and try to lottery into MacA.

Would Student need to play the lottery just for MacA? Are the application school completely separate? Or are they also part of the lottery?

MacArthur is not an application school. It is a neighborhood school with boundary rights similar to JR. Deal and Oyster 8th graders get a lottery preference. Hardy students are considered in boundary. So you would just need to add them to your MyschoolDC list after your top choices.

So the only school this student would list in the lottery would be MacA if they are out of boundary? No application schools (Banneker, SWW) are listed in the lottery? The applications are separate?

It’s just one application. The application schools have supplements, which you complete through the My School lottery site. You rank the schools in your preference order without regard to whether they are application programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree with basically everything above, except that I think all kids with ivy+ aspirations do supplement in terms of academics and/or enrichments. You can do well at JR and go to UVA without supplementing, but for kids without a hook, Ivy admission requires supplementing of some or many varieties.

I doubt this for UVA. It is incredibly difficult to get in out of state or even from NOVA.

My DS’s best friend went to UVA without any extra help. he freely admits JR (then Wilson) was a breeze and he had almost no work. That said, he is pre-med now and doing pretty darn well.

[Anonymous]

What do you all mean by outside help? Don’t most kids do some practice for ACT/SAT? Do extracurricular activities?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is my Q:

Eighth grader is currently IB for JR. Student wants to have some options: apply for SWW and Banneker and try to lottery into MacA.

Would Student need to play the lottery just for MacA? Are the application school completely separate? Or are they also part of the lottery?

MacArthur is not an application school. It is a neighborhood school with boundary rights similar to JR. Deal and Oyster 8th graders get a lottery preference. Hardy students are considered in boundary. So you would just need to add them to your MyschoolDC list after your top choices.

Why do Deal and Oyster 8th graders get a lottery preference?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is my Q:

Eighth grader is currently IB for JR. Student wants to have some options: apply for SWW and Banneker and try to lottery into MacA.

Would Student need to play the lottery just for MacA? Are the application school completely separate? Or are they also part of the lottery?

MacArthur is not an application school. It is a neighborhood school with boundary rights similar to JR. Deal and Oyster 8th graders get a lottery preference. Hardy students are considered in boundary. So you would just need to add them to your MyschoolDC list after your top choices.

Why do Deal and Oyster 8th graders get a lottery preference?

in hopes of reducing numbers at J-R.

[Anonymous]

Why don’t they feed oyster into MacArthur?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why don’t they feed oyster into MacArthur?

For the next two years, new 9th graders coming out of Hardy can choose between the 2 schools. Presumably, some of these students will choose J-R, some will choose Macarthur.

After two years, new 9th graders coming from Hardy will all feed to Macarthur. They will more or less fill up Macarthur. There isn't space there for Ouster to be fed in automatically.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I believe it. Top privates care about results vs. equity.

Oh right, I’m sure they let the kids sink or swim when it comes to college admissions.

Probably not an issue because of the the clear high expectations.

Not a "F" = 63%, no work "WS" = 50%, "tardy" is actually 5 minutes after the tardy bell, and any missing assignment must be allowed to be completed at any time with an 8% max deduction.

yup. My kid goes to a "big3" private that starts at 8am. If you walk into the kid's ELA class a minute late on a day that an assignment is due, it is dropped by 5%.
8:01 arrival? That 90% is now an 85%. It took my kid one paper to start arriving to school by 7:50 (to allow a buffer zone for whatever might come up).

But the earlier point was that you’re paying for what you want to be a leg up for a kid at a big three and then get upset that any kids at JR get into good colleges or believe they shouldn’t because they’ve had what your view as an inferior education and throw around claims that kids at JR aren’t prepared for college (with “prepared” being what the big three has sold parents as “the best”) when you really don’t know but you want to feel that your “superior” (bought and paid for) experience essential means your kids are the only ones worthy of select colleges.

Let’s be truthful here. The kids at JR now getting into top colleges, parents have been supplementing a lot most of the way thru DCPS from middle school and up.



The Deal/JR great days are gone. It’s gone downhill since the honors for all. Many families with top students are abandoning ship much earlier or who would not in the past.

We have two strong students at JR. What counts as supplementing? The only thing we’ve done is gotten a tutor when a kid has struggled with a subject (math), which has happened maybe twice in the last six years. I assume people in private school do the same.

But if you mean we have to teach our kids things they aren’t learning in school, we’ve never done that. And I don’t think I know anyone who does? Most of the parents at JR seem pretty hands off.

It’s obvious you have a false sense of security. Massive grade inflation and everyone gets A’s. Classes are way too easy until you get to AP and even those classes are not too rigorous when over 1/2 the kids at the school can’t even get a 3 on the exam.

Above is not specific to JR. It’s a systemic problem in DCPS.

Do I? According to JR’s class of 2022 profile, only 26 students (5.6%) had an unweighted 4.0. There were 93 AP Scholars, 42 AP Scholars with Honors, and 99 Scholars with Distinction. Seems like these talking points are BS.

To be fair, about a quarter of the class had GPAs between 3.5 and 3.99 (unweighted). So there seems to be an abundance of As, but nowhere near "massive grade inflation".

How many weighted GPAs above 4.0?

Why does that matter? Top colleges care about performance and rigor. Rigor they can see from the AP courses on the transcript, performance from the unweighted GPA.

I'm curious. You or another PP posted a bunch of select stats. I'd be interested in a fuller picture, as it is relevant to the above discussion.

The stats are from the school profile, which doesn’t give the distribution of weighted GPAs. I think it’s smart of JR to give just the unweighted distribution, because it’s giving top colleges the stats they actually want. A kid with a 4.0 unweighted and a lot of APs is actually rare at JR, and the college admissions for those kids reflect that.

High unweighted GPAs are valuable for merit discounts at schools like WVU, which is valuable to a different tranche of JR students. The system at JR serves both groups well.

Private schools are playing a different game; they’re sending their second-tier students full pay to second-tier SLACs. They don’t need grade bumps in GPA because the admissions offices at those schools add points for having attended a rigorous high school (or, more cynically, for having attended an expensive high school).

No, they're send the 4th tier to second tier liberal arts colleges. First tier to Ivies, second tier to University of Chicago and similar, third tier to top 50 universities.
I know you probably don't care but the misinformation bothers me. My kid is at STA (other kid at DCPS). Last year, class of 70 kids. 20 to the Ivies, 12 to University of Chicago itself, 25 more to top 30 universities. Second tier liberal arts colleges pull up the rear.

You always have to know how many STA kids were legacy....sure JR has some legacies, but not nearly the same. I believe in the 2021 graduation cycle, Sidwell had like 30 kids get into Ivies and 29 were legacy.

[Anonymous]

People from JR are leagues too though.

[Anonymous]

Yes. “Shockingly”, many of us who graduated from top
Universities want to support and be a part of the public school system. Our kids are at JR too.

[Anonymous]

I have a question about the 200 student 9th grade limit that they’ve mentioned for MacArthur. I think there are currently 200 8th graders at Hardy? We are thinking about switching from private to attend MacArthur (I love the idea of a smaller public, neighborhood high school). We are in-boundary and the DCPS website says that we can choose between JR and MacArthur (I know JR is a great school but the large size is not what we are hoping for). Is there a chance that some in-boundary kids won’t be able to go to MacArthur if they hit that 200 student count with existing Hardy students? Or would our kid definitely have a spot?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a question about the 200 student 9th grade limit that they’ve mentioned for MacArthur. I think there are currently 200 8th graders at Hardy? We are thinking about switching from private to attend MacArthur (I love the idea of a smaller public, neighborhood high school). We are in-boundary and the DCPS website says that we can choose between JR and MacArthur (I know JR is a great school but the large size is not what we are hoping for). Is there a chance that some in-boundary kids won’t be able to go to MacArthur if they hit that 200 student count with existing Hardy students? Or would our kid definitely have a spot?

I think generally if you are in-bounds you are entitled to enroll. The cap would come into play for OOB spots.