Does anyone here actually send their kid to Hayfield/Edison/West Potomac/5 or lower GS high schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This debate is such a great example of people desperate to justify their life choices and comfirmation bias in action. . Most people want to give their kid a great education. So they end up having to convince themselves and everyone else they are. Sending your kid to a GS 4 school? Most people would feel like pretty shitty parents if they could afford to better, maybe with a longer commute and didn't. So they find ways to convince themselves that they have made a good choice. Ditto the GS 9 parents. They need to convince themselves that the premium they paid for their house was worth it. And the TJ parents, who need to feel like all the extra work and pressure (and carpooling) gives their kids a superior education. And the private school parents, who need to feel like they are getting a better education for their extra 40k a year.

When the reality is probably in the middle. A kid will have better teachers, peers and more challenging classes at a better high school. But for most kids, not enough to make or break their ability to succeed in life. Only a handful of kids-- SN, profoundly GT, etc. really need GS8 or GS 3 or TJ or private.

But don't kid yourself. This is about you making peace with your own decisions.

That would be why teachers want their kids at the middle of the pack schools...
Lbss, Robinson...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This debate is such a great example of people desperate to justify their life choices and comfirmation bias in action. . Most people want to give their kid a great education. So they end up having to convince themselves and everyone else they are. Sending your kid to a GS 4 school? Most people would feel like pretty shitty parents if they could afford to better, maybe with a longer commute and didn't. So they find ways to convince themselves that they have made a good choice. Ditto the GS 9 parents. They need to convince themselves that the premium they paid for their house was worth it. And the TJ parents, who need to feel like all the extra work and pressure (and carpooling) gives their kids a superior education. And the private school parents, who need to feel like they are getting a better education for their extra 40k a year.

When the reality is probably in the middle. A kid will have better teachers, peers and more challenging classes at a better high school. But for most kids, not enough to make or break their ability to succeed in life. Only a handful of kids-- SN, profoundly GT, etc. really need GS8 or GS 3 or TJ or private.

But don't kid yourself. This is about you making peace with your own decisions.

That would be why teachers want their kids at the middle of the pack schools...
Lbss, Robinson...

LB and Robinson are great, of course, but my kids had several English and math teachers at McLean whose own kids went there as well.

[Anonymous]

"We have to show growth on our SLO, not proficiency. If we are ever judged by proficiency, I am gone from my Title One school. It's a constant catch up game. Students come in below grade level and while they make good progress during the school year, they lose it every summer and then we start all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.


How do they loose it?
I don't understand this. Maybe title 1 schools shouldn't have summer break.


It's lose, not loose. How do students lose the progress they made during the school year? They go home and play Xbox for 10-12 weeks. While your kids are going to the library and doing summer reading or just reading for fun, my students might read the back of a cereal box. While you send your kids to camp and go on vacations and trips to museums, etc, my students might go to Chuck E. Cheese or down the street to the park. Your kids might do summer workbooks or study math facts or do online summer work, my kids don't do the assigned summer work even when incentives are offered. They all have Internet access to our free online reading program but very few of them read online during the summer. This is the summer slide and it's worse for lower income students. This article is a few years old, but it is still very true today. "The conclusion: while students made similar progress during the school year, regardless of economic status, the better-off kids held steady or continued to make progress during the summer--but disadvantaged students fell back. By the end of grammar school, low-income students had fallen nearly three grade levels behind, and summer was the biggest culprit. By ninth grade, summer learning loss could be blamed for roughly two-thirds of the achievement gap separating income groups."

I swiped the above posts from another thread but this is similar to what I've seen at our Title 1 school without the summer incentives. The school has pretty much given up on those since non-targeted groups were the only ones doing the work. When the school is greater than 40% poverty (ours is now at 60%) there is no energy for anything else. So, yes, like the OP, I wonder when much focus is on lower performing students to keep the state at bay (when the school doesn't reach targets year after year) if students will be properly prepared for the upper grades and beyond.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"We have to show growth on our SLO, not proficiency. If we are ever judged by proficiency, I am gone from my Title One school. It's a constant catch up game. Students come in below grade level and while they make good progress during the school year, they lose it every summer and then we start all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat.


How do they loose it?
I don't understand this. Maybe title 1 schools shouldn't have summer break.


It's lose, not loose. How do students lose the progress they made during the school year? They go home and play Xbox for 10-12 weeks. While your kids are going to the library and doing summer reading or just reading for fun, my students might read the back of a cereal box. While you send your kids to camp and go on vacations and trips to museums, etc, my students might go to Chuck E. Cheese or down the street to the park. Your kids might do summer workbooks or study math facts or do online summer work, my kids don't do the assigned summer work even when incentives are offered. They all have Internet access to our free online reading program but very few of them read online during the summer. This is the summer slide and it's worse for lower income students. This article is a few years old, but it is still very true today. "The conclusion: while students made similar progress during the school year, regardless of economic status, the better-off kids held steady or continued to make progress during the summer--but disadvantaged students fell back. By the end of grammar school, low-income students had fallen nearly three grade levels behind, and summer was the biggest culprit. By ninth grade, summer learning loss could be blamed for roughly two-thirds of the achievement gap separating income groups."

I swiped the above posts from another thread but this is similar to what I've seen at our Title 1 school without the summer incentives. The school has pretty much given up on those since non-targeted groups were the only ones doing the work. When the school is greater than 40% poverty (ours is now at 60%) there is no energy for anything else. So, yes, like the OP, I wonder when much focus is on lower performing students to keep the state at bay (when the school doesn't reach targets year after year) if students will be properly prepared for the upper grades and beyond.

Carlin springs in Arlington has had tremendous success with an over 60% farms population. It can be done. Everything else is just excuses.