applying to private school from DCPS isn't easy; my advice: if you want to move, do it early on

[Anonymous]

Does the "not hard" poster supplement math? Just curious...I am not against supplementation but that is interesting if other schools didn't cover topics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not familiar yet with PARCC scores, but it's striking to read that a 99% in the DCPS standardized test (PARCC) translates into 30% in the private school one (SSAT). Can other parents comment on this?

It doesn't translate that way, but also the tests do not align -- PARCC is testing a grade level, middle school SSAT is testing a range of grades (5-7). For high school, our DC did very little prep; never even took a full practice test. The SSAT scores were completely consistent with DC's top PARCC scores. DC got no rejections. Actually, DC did better on the SSAT than on the ELA part of the PARCC and thought the SSAT was easier than PARCC. There was nothing in the math part of the SSAT that DC had not learned in school, so the score there was pure test performance. There was no knowledge gap. I will add that in the interviews, ADs consistently had enthusiastic comments about their experiences with kids admitted from DCPS schools.

What school were you coming from? Kids at our JKLM bombed the ssat and isee. A large amount of the math was brand new to them. I know because I studied it with my child and it was all parents talked about. Our kids had never seen the concepts before.

What grade? The SSAT for middle school is the same test for 5th through 7th graders, so you would expect to see new stuff if you are a 5th grader, unless you are tracked to 7th grade math.

The 5th graders at our JKLM had never seen much the SSAT math before but it was the same for the ISEE. The kids all did badly, despite many having top PARCC scores.
I was the one who studied with my child and he/she had never seen a number of the concepts before (even for the ISEE which was normed to be a 4th/5th grade test).
None of us (parents) could figure out what went wrong in their math curriculum. These are smart kids, who have 4's in math and good if not great PARCC scores but who did horribly on the SSAT and ISEE without a signifiant amount of tutoring
and test prep. Many of the kids ended up taking the SSAT/ISEE 4 or 5 times to get their scores up!
It was eye opening and I'm still not sure why it happened. This is from one of the most popular JKLM schools.

SSAT is SO not hard. I've done quant sample with my 5th grade non-JKLM DCPS student who finished it without errors and 6 minutes to spare. You people are absurd.

huh. My JKLM student and classmates had never been taught a lot of what was on the test. In the fall of 5th they hadn't done any work with negative numbers, fractions, etc.

Really? Which school? Most of 4th grade math is fractions. What did your kids do in 4th grade if not fractions? Were they not using the DCPS books? They move on to decimals in fall of 5th.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not familiar yet with PARCC scores, but it's striking to read that a 99% in the DCPS standardized test (PARCC) translates into 30% in the private school one (SSAT). Can other parents comment on this?

It doesn't translate that way, but also the tests do not align -- PARCC is testing a grade level, middle school SSAT is testing a range of grades (5-7). For high school, our DC did very little prep; never even took a full practice test. The SSAT scores were completely consistent with DC's top PARCC scores. DC got no rejections. Actually, DC did better on the SSAT than on the ELA part of the PARCC and thought the SSAT was easier than PARCC. There was nothing in the math part of the SSAT that DC had not learned in school, so the score there was pure test performance. There was no knowledge gap. I will add that in the interviews, ADs consistently had enthusiastic comments about their experiences with kids admitted from DCPS schools.

What school were you coming from? Kids at our JKLM bombed the ssat and isee. A large amount of the math was brand new to them. I know because I studied it with my child and it was all parents talked about. Our kids had never seen the concepts before.

What grade? The SSAT for middle school is the same test for 5th through 7th graders, so you would expect to see new stuff if you are a 5th grader, unless you are tracked to 7th grade math.

The 5th graders at our JKLM had never seen much the SSAT math before but it was the same for the ISEE. The kids all did badly, despite many having top PARCC scores.
I was the one who studied with my child and he/she had never seen a number of the concepts before (even for the ISEE which was normed to be a 4th/5th grade test).
None of us (parents) could figure out what went wrong in their math curriculum. These are smart kids, who have 4's in math and good if not great PARCC scores but who did horribly on the SSAT and ISEE without a signifiant amount of tutoring
and test prep. Many of the kids ended up taking the SSAT/ISEE 4 or 5 times to get their scores up!
It was eye opening and I'm still not sure why it happened. This is from one of the most popular JKLM schools.

SSAT is SO not hard. I've done quant sample with my 5th grade non-JKLM DCPS student who finished it without errors and 6 minutes to spare. You people are absurd.

huh. My JKLM student and classmates had never been taught a lot of what was on the test. In the fall of 5th they hadn't done any work with negative numbers, fractions, etc.

Is this common, that JKLM students are not being taught negative numbers or fractions by 5th grade?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not familiar yet with PARCC scores, but it's striking to read that a 99% in the DCPS standardized test (PARCC) translates into 30% in the private school one (SSAT). Can other parents comment on this?

It doesn't translate that way, but also the tests do not align -- PARCC is testing a grade level, middle school SSAT is testing a range of grades (5-7). For high school, our DC did very little prep; never even took a full practice test. The SSAT scores were completely consistent with DC's top PARCC scores. DC got no rejections. Actually, DC did better on the SSAT than on the ELA part of the PARCC and thought the SSAT was easier than PARCC. There was nothing in the math part of the SSAT that DC had not learned in school, so the score there was pure test performance. There was no knowledge gap. I will add that in the interviews, ADs consistently had enthusiastic comments about their experiences with kids admitted from DCPS schools.

What school were you coming from? Kids at our JKLM bombed the ssat and isee. A large amount of the math was brand new to them. I know because I studied it with my child and it was all parents talked about. Our kids had never seen the concepts before.

What grade? The SSAT for middle school is the same test for 5th through 7th graders, so you would expect to see new stuff if you are a 5th grader, unless you are tracked to 7th grade math.

The 5th graders at our JKLM had never seen much the SSAT math before but it was the same for the ISEE. The kids all did badly, despite many having top PARCC scores.
I was the one who studied with my child and he/she had never seen a number of the concepts before (even for the ISEE which was normed to be a 4th/5th grade test).
None of us (parents) could figure out what went wrong in their math curriculum. These are smart kids, who have 4's in math and good if not great PARCC scores but who did horribly on the SSAT and ISEE without a signifiant amount of tutoring
and test prep. Many of the kids ended up taking the SSAT/ISEE 4 or 5 times to get their scores up!
It was eye opening and I'm still not sure why it happened. This is from one of the most popular JKLM schools.

SSAT is SO not hard. I've done quant sample with my 5th grade non-JKLM DCPS student who finished it without errors and 6 minutes to spare. You people are absurd.

huh. My JKLM student and classmates had never been taught a lot of what was on the test. In the fall of 5th they hadn't done any work with negative numbers, fractions, etc.

Is this common, that JKLM students are not being taught negative numbers or fractions by 5th grade?

No. It is so far removed from reality that it has to be a troll.

[Anonymous]

Janney is doing fractions right now (mid 5th grade year).
They have never taught anything about negative numbers except maybe to introduce the concept but the kids have never used them in any way.

[Anonymous]

5th grade math at Janney this year: (from the objectives on the report card and mirrored by our experience in doing homework nightly).

-multiplying numbers by powers of 10
-writing and rounding decimals
-multiplying and dividing multi-digit whole numbers to hundreths
-adding and subtracting fractions by finding a like denominator
-solving addition and subtraction word problems
-multiplying and dividing fractions of a whole. Diving wholes by fractions.
-solving real-world word problems, including area using mult of fractions of mixed numbers
-defining volume, using cubes to measure volume.

No negative number work. None at all. My kid had no idea what negative numbers are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not familiar yet with PARCC scores, but it's striking to read that a 99% in the DCPS standardized test (PARCC) translates into 30% in the private school one (SSAT). Can other parents comment on this?

It doesn't translate that way, but also the tests do not align -- PARCC is testing a grade level, middle school SSAT is testing a range of grades (5-7). For high school, our DC did very little prep; never even took a full practice test. The SSAT scores were completely consistent with DC's top PARCC scores. DC got no rejections. Actually, DC did better on the SSAT than on the ELA part of the PARCC and thought the SSAT was easier than PARCC. There was nothing in the math part of the SSAT that DC had not learned in school, so the score there was pure test performance. There was no knowledge gap. I will add that in the interviews, ADs consistently had enthusiastic comments about their experiences with kids admitted from DCPS schools.

What school were you coming from? Kids at our JKLM bombed the ssat and isee. A large amount of the math was brand new to them. I know because I studied it with my child and it was all parents talked about. Our kids had never seen the concepts before.

What grade? The SSAT for middle school is the same test for 5th through 7th graders, so you would expect to see new stuff if you are a 5th grader, unless you are tracked to 7th grade math.

The 5th graders at our JKLM had never seen much the SSAT math before but it was the same for the ISEE. The kids all did badly, despite many having top PARCC scores.
I was the one who studied with my child and he/she had never seen a number of the concepts before (even for the ISEE which was normed to be a 4th/5th grade test).
None of us (parents) could figure out what went wrong in their math curriculum. These are smart kids, who have 4's in math and good if not great PARCC scores but who did horribly on the SSAT and ISEE without a signifiant amount of tutoring
and test prep. Many of the kids ended up taking the SSAT/ISEE 4 or 5 times to get their scores up!
It was eye opening and I'm still not sure why it happened. This is from one of the most popular JKLM schools.

SSAT is SO not hard. I've done quant sample with my 5th grade non-JKLM DCPS student who finished it without errors and 6 minutes to spare. You people are absurd.

huh. My JKLM student and classmates had never been taught a lot of what was on the test. In the fall of 5th they hadn't done any work with negative numbers, fractions, etc.

At least you know what they are learning. I have no idea. I just look into "what a 5th grader in Europe should know" and good to go. Taught DC % in 5 minutes. Will ask about negative numbers today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:5th grade math at Janney this year: (from the objectives on the report card and mirrored by our experience in doing homework nightly).

-multiplying numbers by powers of 10
-writing and rounding decimals
-multiplying and dividing multi-digit whole numbers to hundreths
-adding and subtracting fractions by finding a like denominator
-solving addition and subtraction word problems
-multiplying and dividing fractions of a whole. Diving wholes by fractions.
-solving real-world word problems, including area using mult of fractions of mixed numbers
-defining volume, using cubes to measure volume.

No negative number work. None at all. My kid had no idea what negative numbers are.

Re: negative numbers, I'm parent to a much younger kid, but I'm a little surprised. My kid's not strong in math herself thus far, but she had classmates in our EOTP school working on negative numbers last year in K.

From what I understand from the parents, often it was the kids themselves who were curious, so the parents taught them the concept. So I'm surprised the notion of negative numbers hasn't come up yet for 5th graders.

[Anonymous]

Folks - the Common Core standards have negative numbers as a 6th grade objective.

You can look this stuff up. http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Practice/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5th grade math at Janney this year: (from the objectives on the report card and mirrored by our experience in doing homework nightly).

-multiplying numbers by powers of 10
-writing and rounding decimals
-multiplying and dividing multi-digit whole numbers to hundreths
-adding and subtracting fractions by finding a like denominator
-solving addition and subtraction word problems
-multiplying and dividing fractions of a whole. Diving wholes by fractions.
-solving real-world word problems, including area using mult of fractions of mixed numbers
-defining volume, using cubes to measure volume.

No negative number work. None at all. My kid had no idea what negative numbers are.

Re: negative numbers, I'm parent to a much younger kid, but I'm a little surprised. My kid's not strong in math herself thus far, but she had classmates in our EOTP school working on negative numbers last year in K.

From what I understand from the parents, often it was the kids themselves who were curious, so the parents taught them the concept. So I'm surprised the notion of negative numbers hasn't come up yet for 5th graders.

It's not in the common core curriculum until after 5th. These DC public schools follow that curriculum RELIGIOUSLY. What you see above is the Janney 5th grade math curriculum. If kids are interested in more this year, they can join math club at lunch. Otherwise, that's what they get.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have not had the perception from this forum that it's "easy" to get into a private school.

There are regularly posts about DCPS that insinuate that switching to private is easy

I'm not seeing such posts regularly.

[Anonymous]

Oh this is really fascinating!

The stuff on the SSAT is all 6th grade common core stuff. (or at least 50%) of it.
DCPS students (unless their parents teach them) have just never seen these concepts (which is why they all need tutoring to take the SSAT by mom and dad or an outside tutor OR they were informally tutored all along by their parents).


Spring of 5th grade concepts (taught after the kids take the SSAT):

-Summarize and describe distribution (i.e. making a line plot---have yet to learn this in class and we're in March)
-Graph points on the coordinate plane to solve real-world and mathematical problems. (introduction of the axis----my 5th grader has yet to learn this in class and we're in March)


6th grade common core concepts (at total list). These are all over the SSAT. Essentially this is the lower level SSAT which kids take to enter 6th grade. Except Common core doesn't introduce any of them until 6th.


-Understand ratio concepts and use ratio reasoning to solve problems.
-Apply and extend previous understandings of multiplication and division to divide fractions by fractions.
-Compute fluently with multi-digit numbers and find common factors and multiples.
-Apply and extend previous understandings of numbers to the system of rational numbers. (i.e. the first time negative numbers are taught!)
-Apply and extend previous understandings of arithmetic to algebraic expressions.
-Reason about and solve one-variable equations and inequalities.
-Represent and analyze quantitative relationships between dependent and independent variables.
-Solve real-world and mathematical problems involving area, surface area, and volume.
-Statistics and probability: Develop understanding of statistical variability.
-Statistics and probability: Summarize and describe distributions.

The SSAT is full of probability questions. These were completely new to my DCPS 5th grader.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not familiar yet with PARCC scores, but it's striking to read that a 99% in the DCPS standardized test (PARCC) translates into 30% in the private school one (SSAT). Can other parents comment on this?

It doesn't translate that way, but also the tests do not align -- PARCC is testing a grade level, middle school SSAT is testing a range of grades (5-7). For high school, our DC did very little prep; never even took a full practice test. The SSAT scores were completely consistent with DC's top PARCC scores. DC got no rejections. Actually, DC did better on the SSAT than on the ELA part of the PARCC and thought the SSAT was easier than PARCC. There was nothing in the math part of the SSAT that DC had not learned in school, so the score there was pure test performance. There was no knowledge gap. I will add that in the interviews, ADs consistently had enthusiastic comments about their experiences with kids admitted from DCPS schools.

What school were you coming from? Kids at our JKLM bombed the ssat and isee. A large amount of the math was brand new to them. I know because I studied it with my child and it was all parents talked about. Our kids had never seen the concepts before.

What grade? The SSAT for middle school is the same test for 5th through 7th graders, so you would expect to see new stuff if you are a 5th grader, unless you are tracked to 7th grade math.

The 5th graders at our JKLM had never seen much the SSAT math before but it was the same for the ISEE. The kids all did badly, despite many having top PARCC scores.
I was the one who studied with my child and he/she had never seen a number of the concepts before (even for the ISEE which was normed to be a 4th/5th grade test).
None of us (parents) could figure out what went wrong in their math curriculum. These are smart kids, who have 4's in math and good if not great PARCC scores but who did horribly on the SSAT and ISEE without a signifiant amount of tutoring
and test prep. Many of the kids ended up taking the SSAT/ISEE 4 or 5 times to get their scores up!
It was eye opening and I'm still not sure why it happened. This is from one of the most popular JKLM schools.

SSAT is SO not hard. I've done quant sample with my 5th grade non-JKLM DCPS student who finished it without errors and 6 minutes to spare. You people are absurd.

huh. My JKLM student and classmates had never been taught a lot of what was on the test. In the fall of 5th they hadn't done any work with negative numbers, fractions, etc.

Is this common, that JKLM students are not being taught negative numbers or fractions by 5th grade?

No. It is so far removed from reality that it has to be a troll.

not a troll and 4th grade. DC scored nearly perfect on PARCC too. just not a big deal. Finished 1/2 test eyeballing without even writing anything down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not familiar yet with PARCC scores, but it's striking to read that a 99% in the DCPS standardized test (PARCC) translates into 30% in the private school one (SSAT). Can other parents comment on this?

It doesn't translate that way, but also the tests do not align -- PARCC is testing a grade level, middle school SSAT is testing a range of grades (5-7). For high school, our DC did very little prep; never even took a full practice test. The SSAT scores were completely consistent with DC's top PARCC scores. DC got no rejections. Actually, DC did better on the SSAT than on the ELA part of the PARCC and thought the SSAT was easier than PARCC. There was nothing in the math part of the SSAT that DC had not learned in school, so the score there was pure test performance. There was no knowledge gap. I will add that in the interviews, ADs consistently had enthusiastic comments about their experiences with kids admitted from DCPS schools.

What school were you coming from? Kids at our JKLM bombed the ssat and isee. A large amount of the math was brand new to them. I know because I studied it with my child and it was all parents talked about. Our kids had never seen the concepts before.

What grade? The SSAT for middle school is the same test for 5th through 7th graders, so you would expect to see new stuff if you are a 5th grader, unless you are tracked to 7th grade math.

The 5th graders at our JKLM had never seen much the SSAT math before but it was the same for the ISEE. The kids all did badly, despite many having top PARCC scores.
I was the one who studied with my child and he/she had never seen a number of the concepts before (even for the ISEE which was normed to be a 4th/5th grade test).
None of us (parents) could figure out what went wrong in their math curriculum. These are smart kids, who have 4's in math and good if not great PARCC scores but who did horribly on the SSAT and ISEE without a signifiant amount of tutoring
and test prep. Many of the kids ended up taking the SSAT/ISEE 4 or 5 times to get their scores up!
It was eye opening and I'm still not sure why it happened. This is from one of the most popular JKLM schools.

SSAT is SO not hard. I've done quant sample with my 5th grade non-JKLM DCPS student who finished it without errors and 6 minutes to spare. You people are absurd.

huh. My JKLM student and classmates had never been taught a lot of what was on the test. In the fall of 5th they hadn't done any work with negative numbers, fractions, etc.

Is this common, that JKLM students are not being taught negative numbers or fractions by 5th grade?

No. It is so far removed from reality that it has to be a troll.

not a troll and 4th grade. DC scored nearly perfect on PARCC too. just not a big deal. Finished 1/2 test eyeballing without even writing anything down.

If your child is scoring 100% on the middle level (5th-7th grade) SSAT in 4th grade with one eye closed and half the time you have an prodigy math genius on your hands.
SSAT score reports used to come with a predictive SAT score. A perfect or even 99% on the math SSAT is predictive of a 790-800 math SAT. If your child is doing it in half the time and a
grade level early you are looking at a 800 SAT by 8th grade.

[Anonymous]

I think that poster meant the PARCC was done in half the time.