Parents of DCPS HS graduates - were your kids prepared for college?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Right, you care, but very few other J-R stakeholders must. The stakeholders include J-R parents, IB homeowners, DC ed leaders, Ferebee, Bowser, the city council members. Now in Fairfax and Arlington, many parents and ed leaders must care because, traditionally, roughly one-third of TJ students have been PSAT/NMSQT Semifinalists annually.

I am not following...TJ is the top HS in the country and is a STEM magnet that attracts the best and brightest across Northern VA. If you use TJ as the benchmark, then by default every other school in the DMV doesn't care (other than maybe Blair Magnet...but only the magnet part of Blair)...including Sidwell where only 4% are NMSFs.

No other school in the DMV even comes remotely close to the %age of NMSFs at TJ.

[Anonymous]

Sidwell's graduating class is roughly 120 students. They get 10 or 12 Semifinalists most years, sometimes as many as 14 or 15, so more like 10% of the class.

The difference between roughly .45% of J-R students as Semifinalists vs. 10% at Sidwell, around 15% in the 2 Blair Magnets and 30% at TJ are such vast chasms that it might behoove stakeholders to wonder why and set about improving matters.

[Anonymous]

DCPS just isn’t interested in PSAT/NMSQ. PRE Covid, maybe a little, now, no.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell's graduating class is roughly 120 students. They get 10 or 12 Semifinalists most years, sometimes as many as 14 or 15, so more like 10% of the class.

The difference between roughly .45% of J-R students as Semifinalists vs. 10% at Sidwell, around 15% in the 2 Blair Magnets and 30% at TJ are such vast chasms that it might behoove stakeholders to wonder why and set about improving matters.

Sidwell had exactly 5 this past year...let's not make s**t up here. So, 5/120 = 4.2%. Again, on that basis is Maret's 1 NMSF or 1% a vast chasm?

[Anonymous]

NP. The reality is that seminfinalist numbers are down all over DC as compared to a decade back. When my son graduated from Sidwell in 2014, he was one of 14. His BF from Key and Deal was one of 3 at Wilson that same year. Look it up.

[Anonymous]

The percentage of NMSQ Semifinalists isn't actually a bad barometer of neighborhood high school quality. In the better suburban neighborhood schools in this area, like the "W" schools in MCo and half a dozen in Fairfax, the % is between 2 and 4%. At J-R, it's under 1%, year after year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The percentage of NMSQ Semifinalists isn't actually a bad barometer of neighborhood high school quality. In the better suburban neighborhood schools in this area, like the "W" schools in MCo and half a dozen in Fairfax, the % is between 2 and 4%. At J-R, it's under 1%, year after year.

Presidential Scholars (which are largely based on SAT scores which are more relevant for college) is also a good proxy...maybe better because all kids above a certain score qualify vs. the NMSF curve. I think the cutoff is like 1550.

Unfortunately, DC is at a disadvantage for NMSF. Our selection index at 224 is the highest in the country vs. the lowest at West Virginia which is 207.

[Anonymous]

Maryland's 2023 cut-off is 222, VA's 221. DC's current cut-off is just 1 or 2 points higher, 223. J-R's lamentable performance can't be explained by the higher DC cut-off. With no GT ES programs in DCPS, no honors MS classes in DCPS outside math, and Honors for All at J-R in 9th grade, is it any wonder that they J-R produced but one Semifinalist this year?

[Anonymous]

https://www.compassprep.com/national-merit-semifinalist-cutoffs-class-of-2023-archive/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sidwell's graduating class is roughly 120 students. They get 10 or 12 Semifinalists most years, sometimes as many as 14 or 15, so more like 10% of the class.

The difference between roughly .45% of J-R students as Semifinalists vs. 10% at Sidwell, around 15% in the 2 Blair Magnets and 30% at TJ are such vast chasms that it might behoove stakeholders to wonder why and set about improving matters.

JR isn’t a magnet or private school. The better comparator is to an MCPS HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The percentage of NMSQ Semifinalists isn't actually a bad barometer of neighborhood high school quality. In the better suburban neighborhood schools in this area, like the "W" schools in MCo and half a dozen in Fairfax, the % is between 2 and 4%. At J-R, it's under 1%, year after year.

I hate to be that person, but you do need to adjust these for at-risk percentages. Not all kids are NM candidates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maryland's 2023 cut-off is 222, VA's 221. DC's current cut-off is just 1 or 2 points higher, 223. J-R's lamentable performance can't be explained by the higher DC cut-off. With no GT ES programs in DCPS, no honors MS classes in DCPS outside math, and Honors for All at J-R in 9th grade, is it any wonder that they J-R produced but one Semifinalist this year?

Again…are you saying that Maret and WIS also have terrible academics since they also have only 1 NMSF? SJC has zero…so are you at least saying JR exceeds SJC?

[Anonymous]

Maret and WIS enroll many foreign, and foreign language-oriented, students who don't bother with the PSAT. SJC's graduating class is half the size of J-Rs and emphasizes sports (not as academic as some of the other parochial high schools in the area). Still, I'm surprised by their paucity of semifinalists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maret and WIS enroll many foreign, and foreign language-oriented, students who don't bother with the PSAT. SJC's graduating class is half the size of J-Rs and emphasizes sports (not as academic as some of the other parochial high schools in the area). Still, I'm surprised by their paucity of semifinalists.

You are really scraping the barrel of mental gymnastics to somehow explain away the performance of supposed top private schools. Maret has over 95% of the class attending a US college and very similar demographics to the other DC privates. SJC is 60% of the size of JR and has a Scholars program (50 kids per class) which is almost entirely based on entrance exam performance at the top 1% - 2%. For some reason these privates get a free pass but JR still sucks...I get it.

[Anonymous]

PPs are missing the forest for the trees in this argument. J-R doesn't suck. What happens at J-R is that top sophomores and juniors aren't strongly encouraged or prepped to take the PSAT, although good scholarship money rides on a top score. By contrast, in the burbs, top students are generally pushed to compete for NM scholarship monies. Same at some of the top privates, not so much for the scholarships but to burnish college applications. The PSAT problem at J-R is yet another manifestation of the age-old DCPS problem of not pushing talented kids to aim high in college admissions as a general rule. The job is left to families in DCPS.