Outplacement directors that speak in code or total silence; can anyone translate ?

[Anonymous]

But isn't this "secretive" and "hidden" in the sense that a school is never going to tell a family, "we're not pushing your kid very hard at the meetings with school X"? Nor will they tell the family, "the reason we're not pushing is DH is a PITA." Bear in mind, the school has probably already told the family something like, "we don't think your kid is a good fit for school X," but if the family insists on applying anyway, then it's up to the school to promote the kid, or not. The thing is, logic does tell you this will happen, but you never know whether it's happening to your kid, which is OP's problem.

I see these two descriptions as very different. The first PP is acknowledging that ODs have other agendas besides just doing exactly what each parent requests. And most of those other agendas are pretty reasonable and understandable. The second PP is positing that all other agendas must include a zero-sum game of promoting one child over another, and that there are ugly motives for choosing which child gets promoted.


No, that was my post, and you are distorting it. Where did I say anything about a zero-sum game? I'm really sick of you -- please stop.

[Anonymous]

13:14 went to the Debating School of Sleaze. Seriously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

But isn't this "secretive" and "hidden" in the sense that a school is never going to tell a family, "we're not pushing your kid very hard at the meetings with school X"? Nor will they tell the family, "the reason we're not pushing is DH is a PITA." Bear in mind, the school has probably already told the family something like, "we don't think your kid is a good fit for school X," but if the family insists on applying anyway, then it's up to the school to promote the kid, or not. The thing is, logic does tell you this will happen, but you never know whether it's happening to your kid, which is OP's problem.

I see these two descriptions as very different. The first PP is acknowledging that ODs have other agendas besides just doing exactly what each parent requests. And most of those other agendas are pretty reasonable and understandable. The second PP is positing that all other agendas must include a zero-sum game of promoting one child over another, and that there are ugly motives for choosing which child gets promoted.

No, that was my post, and you are distorting it. Where did I say anything about a zero-sum game? I'm really sick of you -- please stop.

Why don't you help me understand what you mean then? Here are the two examples you gave: "we're not pushing your kid very hard at the meetings with school X" and "the reason we're not pushing is DH is a PITA." To me, those sound like a zero-sum game of pushing one child over another. If that's not what you meant, please help me understand you better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Why don't you help me understand what you mean then? Here are the two examples you gave: "we're not pushing your kid very hard at the meetings with school X" and "the reason we're not pushing is DH is a PITA." To me, those sound like a zero-sum game of pushing one child over another. If that's not what you meant, please help me understand you better.

A zero-sum game is when one individual/group's gain is exactly balanced by another individual/group's loss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero%E2%80%93sum_game. This is obviously very different from the mechanics in the quote you clipped.

Maybe it's because I have a math/econ background that it's obvious to me, but you also have a clear pattern of distorting/insulting instead of making arguments.

I repeat - please, please go away and let the grownups talk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

... there's a difference between an agenda which may differ from the parents', and an agenda which is somehow secretive and inherently unfair, or that is favoring other children over yours.

I agree wholeheartedly with these two comments. I especially agree with the last point about how "differing agendas" doesn't mean unfair or favoring other children over yours. It's precisely the attitude of "someone's getting more favorable treatment than I am!" that I find objectionable in many of the extreme claims from page 1 of this thread.

I think "differing agendas" could actually mean "unfair," although I'm still thinking this over. Think about the examples earlier in the thread from somebody (not me) about the 4 corporate lawyers' daughters who have similar GPAs and sports. The school will promote 1 or 2 of these girls, and they will probably select which to promote based on the parents' expected contribution to the next school.

Is this fair, or not, if the girls themselves are identical? Maybe it is fair, if the ability to volunteer/donate/not be PITA is an attribute that the family as a whole brings to the next school. But then again, the ability to donate/volunteer is often linked to income and having a SAHM. Also, from the point of view of these identical girls, it's not fair.

(And please point us to where somebody posted, "somebody's getting more favorable treatment than I am!" This sort of distortion isn't helpful to the discussion.)

I apologize if my comment suggested someone on this thread had literally written "someone's getting more favorable treatment than I am!" -- that's not what I meant at all. That was my description of an attitude, or maybe "fear" is a better word.

If you want examples of this attitude, your comment provides a good one about the PP who assumed that if four lawyers' daughters were applying, the OD would pick only two to promote. And here are a couple other examples from page 1 of PPs expressing fear that one child is getting promoted over another by ODs:

... if Beauvoir has 4 such candidates and one set of parents is a PITA and another set of parents are major donors with other kids potentially in the pipeline, I could certainly see them being more interested in family B getting the exmission result of their dreams than family A. And it can be rationalized as a sort of victimless crime (or even a blessing in disguise) if the decisionmaker is pretty confident that the daughter in family A will do just as well (or better) in a school that isn't her parents' first choice.

Your current school has several opportunities to talk to the schools your kid is applying to. ... they talk enthusiastically about ... what some families are going to contribute (in money and/or volunteering) to the next school "family." And maybe their faces don't light up quite as much, or at least they give less airtime, for some other kids.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the apology, and I'm sorry if I get brittle sometimes. As you've seen there's another poster who distorts/insults without engaging.

OK, the 2nd quote you cited (not mine originally) was the quote I was referring to. So we're on the same page in the sense of talking to each other, instead of talking past each other like with that other irritating poster....

I think we've agreed that, logically, schools have their own long-term interests. They want to send kids to the next school that the next school will appreciate. I think you may have written this yourself a page or two ago, but correct me if I'm wrong.

What comes next is just logic too, or it seems so to me. It follows (to me at least) that the school is not going to promote equally every single kid who wants to apply to Sidwell. It is going to tell some families that Sidwell "is not a good fit for you." But it can't stop determined families from applying to Sidwell anyway, and then what does it do? It knows that if family X gets in, with the PITA dad and the kid who looks good on paper but is probably a budding drug addict, Sidwell is going to look askance at future applicants from your school. The question is, what does your school do next, to make sure Sidwell doesn't take the 12-year-old pot experimenter? My answer is, I think your school gives a tepid promotion.

But if you have a better explanation of what your school will do in this case, I'm (sincerely) interested and might even be relieved. (I think you're use of the word "fear" is appropriate, and probably describes where OP is right now. As I said, my kid went from a K-6 to an elite school, so we didn't experience this particular emotion.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why don't you help me understand what you mean then? Here are the two examples you gave: "we're not pushing your kid very hard at the meetings with school X" and "the reason we're not pushing is DH is a PITA." To me, those sound like a zero-sum game of pushing one child over another. If that's not what you meant, please help me understand you better.

A zero-sum game is when one individual/group's gain is exactly balanced by another individual/group's loss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero%E2%80%93sum_game. This is obviously very different from the mechanics in the quote you clipped.

Maybe it's because I have a math/econ background that it's obvious to me, but you also have a clear pattern of distorting/insulting instead of making arguments.

I repeat - please, please go away and let the grownups talk.

Right -- in your example, the OD's promotion of one child (a gain) is exactly balanced by the OD's corresponding non-promotion of another child (a loss). If you'd like to propose a different term besides "zero-sum," I'm happy to adopt it instead. But instead of debating the term "zero-sum," why not talk substance?

How do you think I distorted your position? You were assuming that one child gets promoted over another, weren't you? And I think that's very different from the other agendas the other PP described. Do you disagree?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Right -- in your example, the OD's promotion of one child (a gain) is exactly balanced by the OD's corresponding non-promotion of another child (a loss). If you'd like to propose a different term besides "zero-sum," I'm happy to adopt it instead. But instead of debating the term "zero-sum," why not talk substance?

How do you think I distorted your position? You were assuming that one child gets promoted over another, weren't you? And I think that's very different from the other agendas the other PP described. Do you disagree?

You know, I have no interest in talking to you. If you don't get my point after all these pages, you don't get it. If it sounds like I'm swatting a fly away, that would be right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

How do you think I distorted your position? You were assuming that one child gets promoted over another, weren't you? And I think that's very different from the other agendas the other PP described. Do you disagree?

Stop harassing her and read her posts at 13:22 and 14:10 for her thinking on this. She also admits that she's still thinking about some of these issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It follows (to me at least) that the school is not going to promote equally every single kid who wants to apply to Sidwell. It is going to tell some families that Sidwell "is not a good fit for you." But it can't stop determined families from applying to Sidwell anyway, and then what does it do? It knows that if family X gets in, with the PITA dad and the kid who looks good on paper but is probably a budding drug addict, Sidwell is going to look askance at future applicants from your school. The question is, what does your school do next, to make sure Sidwell doesn't take the 12-year-old pot experimenter? My answer is, I think your school gives a tepid promotion.

I think I see one spot where you and I are not seeing quite eye-to-eye. You seem to start from the premise that an OD will not promote with equal effort all its applicants -- that it will "play favorites" in effect. (Please forgive me if I'm distorting you in any way.) But I don't accept that proposition. I certainly agree that most ODs will talk to the family, suggest other alternative schools, and perhaps dissuade a family from applying to a bad-fit school. But my assumption (and my experience) is that ODs will try to give equal effort to all candidates. To use your example, I believe that OD will want as many students accepted at Sidwell as possible, so she will highlight the positives of every student, including even the 12-year-old she suspects might have experimented with pot.

And ultimately, I think the OD's advocacy carries fairly minimal weight in the scheme of things. Whether the 12-year-old you describe will be admitted to Sidwell likely depends far more on his grades, his test scores, his interview, his teachers' recommendations, his personal statement, his extracurriculars, etc etc etc. The OD can't change the record; she only can marshal the facts. I'm fairly certain that Sidwell's AD has plenty of experience with seeing past puffery from various ODs, and getting down to the underlying facts.

If the ODs did have so much power that they could submarine a student's application (despite stellar underlying grades, tests, interviews, etc), and so much authority/autonomy that they were permitted to submarine an application based on such subjective ideas as whether a child's father is a PITA, then I'd be pretty disturbed by that situation. But I really don't think they have that much power. Also, my experience with most people at various local private schools (ADs, ODs, teachers, etc) is that they generally are most interested in doing what's right for the children.

But that's just my experience / outlook. Yours may be different.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the thoughtful response!

I think maybe we are starting from some different assumptions. I don't actually know who's right, so what comes next will be more in the form of questions....

What is the problem facing the school's OD?
- try to make sure Sidwell takes as many applicants as possible from your school, based on her experience that some years they take 4 and some years they take 0, so she wants this to be a year when they take 4, or
- assume that Sidwell will only take 1-2 kids from each school's graduating class, in a normal year, so try to make sure that they take the best kids and not the kid she suspects is already into pot, or the family with the PITA dad that will drive Sidwell absolutely nuts.

Then, how much power does the school's OD have?
- very little, because schools base their decisions more on the record (test scores, student interview, teacher recommendations, extracurriculars) than anything said by an OD whose job it is to suck up and plug everyone, after all. Or,
- more than you'd think, because by spending more time on one kid, or seeming more enthusiastic, a good Sidwell AD can see the difference. (Yes, this sounds conspiracy-theory like, and I'm sure I'll be accused of this, but it doesn't have to be deliberate, it could be a natural change in tone.)

No answers here. In fact, I'm sure the answers vary widely on a school-by-school and case-by-case basis.

[Anonymous]

I'd agree with you that the answers may vary widely by school and situation. But to answer your alternatives:

For question 1, I think the answer is most likely to be B. I've never encountered a school that has any guaranteed/expected numbers of slots at Sidwell (or any other school).** And even if Sidwell generally takes 1-2 from OD's school, she certainly would love to increase that to 3-4 acceptances. So as a result, it seems our fearless OD will want to promote all her candidates in most situations.**

For question 2, I again think the answer is B. I'm sure most ODs do like some children better than others (if only subconsciously), just like some teachers do. And I'm sure that favoritism exhibits itself in their comments. But I suspect that minor favoritism has a lot more to do with how likable the child is than with things like how much the parents gave at some auction. And as to how much power the OD has, I again suspect it's less than the teachers have, even though the teachers are potentially prone to the same bias.

But again, you're surely right that different schools and different ODs may have different perceptions of their roles and different ways of dealing with students.



I am embarrassed my post has endnotes!:

**Just so we don't get accused of bias or "Big 3'ism" here, let me make clear that although our discussion is citing Sidwell as our example, it really could be any school we're discussing. I assume you agree.

**I refer to "most situations" because I can imagine a fairly extreme and unusual situation where a student/family is just absolutely terrible ... absolutely hated by the entire school community ... perhaps a situation involving sexual assault or something. And in that sort of situation, I could see the AD, the admin, and teachers all tipping off Sidwell that this is someone you don't want to admit. Of course, in such an extreme situation, the student likely would have been counseled out entirely, so it would not be an issue.

[Anonymous]

15:45 here again. I made a mistake. For both questions, I think the more common answer is A, not B. I think I need some coffee ....

[Anonymous]

Endnotes, that's great! Yes, I agree, we are referring to any school not just the top 3.

I can see the "maximize acceptances" strategy. Perhaps I've been reading too many college admissions books these days, though, because I can also see the point that Sidwell isn't going to take too many students from a single K-6 school. That is, if 10 kids apply to Sidwell (and I think maybe 8 kids applied from our K-6 in DC's year), even if all are truly exceptional kids, it's virtually certain that Sidwell is not going to take all 10, so the OD might have the *opportunity* (note the weasel word) to help some kids out.

Perhaps we may disagree on matters of degree. I can see an OD tipping off Sidwell for something besides sexual assault, for example if the family would in some less blatant way reflect really badly on the feeder school.

I can also see an OD volunteering info that isn't available in the application packet, along the lines of "this family gave very generously at the auction" because they know the next school would appreciate such generosity. Although I suppose that's not favoritism, it's facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:15:45 here again. I made a mistake. For both questions, I think the more common answer is A, not B. I think I need some coffee ....

Yes, I did make the connection....