Sidwell Paid a family $50K and agree to change grades??????????

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I call BS.

It is clear these particular parents have significant entitlement issues. The lawsuit clearly illustrates this.

Are you saying they didn't know their place?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are PPs saying that she only applied to reach schools? She should have gotten into Spelman. Secondly, the mistakes in calculating her math grades are a big effing deal.

Nigerian-Americans are still URMs. Sidwell knows this. A look at Harvard’s C/O 2023 confirms this. I think this case is a net positive for current and future students, as the school will probably do a better job of accurately reporting grades now. It makes me wonder if there are FA families who have had similar experiences with little, if any, recourse.

I dont think she applied to Spelman on time. So that changes the analysis a good bit. And the point was she may have been viewed as Nigerian rather than Nigerian-American (i.e., as a non-citizen, a category that does not receive the URM boost).

She’s a US citizen. What do we call US born kids with Irish parents? American. She was URM, not an international candidate. First and second generation kids of African parents appear are a norm at HYP and you can best believe that the schools are counting them as AA.

I don't think they're counted as AA necessarily. But they're counted as black, and black kids are underrepresented minorities at these schools irrespective of their background.

For example, I'm black with West Indian roots, 1st-gen American. My kid is black, with one African parent. Still counts as an underrepresented minority--and despite being well-educated, our kid has already had discriminatory comments made to her at her private about the color of her skin. We know other similarly well-educated 1st-gen black families who've had similar incidents at their privates, even changing schools because of it in some cases.

AA and Black are the same category in this case. I say this as an AA/Black with at least a dozen generations in this country. There’s a separate thread about how many of the Black students in the incoming class of Harvard are first or second generation Americans. I served on a scholarship panel for the Greater Washington Urban League last year and noticed a similar trend as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are PPs saying that she only applied to reach schools? She should have gotten into Spelman. Secondly, the mistakes in calculating her math grades are a big effing deal.

Nigerian-Americans are still URMs. Sidwell knows this. A look at Harvard’s C/O 2023 confirms this. I think this case is a net positive for current and future students, as the school will probably do a better job of accurately reporting grades now. It makes me wonder if there are FA families who have had similar experiences with little, if any, recourse.

I dont think she applied to Spelman on time. So that changes the analysis a good bit. And the point was she may have been viewed as Nigerian rather than Nigerian-American (i.e., as a non-citizen, a category that does not receive the URM boost).

She’s a US citizen. What do we call US born kids with Irish parents? American. She was URM, not an international candidate. First and second generation kids of African parents appear are a norm at HYP and you can best believe that the schools are counting them as AA.

I don't think they're counted as AA necessarily. But they're counted as black, and black kids are underrepresented minorities at these schools irrespective of their background.

For example, I'm black with West Indian roots, 1st-gen American. My kid is black, with one African parent. Still counts as an underrepresented minority--and despite being well-educated, our kid has already had discriminatory comments made to her at her private about the color of her skin. We know other similarly well-educated 1st-gen black families who've had similar incidents at their privates, even changing schools because of it in some cases.

AA and Black are the same category in this case. I say this as an AA/Black with at least a dozen generations in this country. There’s a separate thread about how many of the Black students in the incoming class of Harvard are first or second generation Americans. I served on a scholarship panel for the Greater Washington Urban League last year and noticed a similar trend as well.

PP here and agree with your observations. Generally speaking, first-gen black people in America haven’t experienced the same set of obstacles as black Americans that have been here for several generations. It even starts before birth—for example, I read in an article that Africans are at lower risk for low birthweight and preterm birth than AAs. There are definitely some commonalities and shared experiences between the groups, but also some differences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are PPs saying that she only applied to reach schools? She should have gotten into Spelman. Secondly, the mistakes in calculating her math grades are a big effing deal.

Nigerian-Americans are still URMs. Sidwell knows this. A look at Harvard’s C/O 2023 confirms this. I think this case is a net positive for current and future students, as the school will probably do a better job of accurately reporting grades now. It makes me wonder if there are FA families who have had similar experiences with little, if any, recourse.

I dont think she applied to Spelman on time. So that changes the analysis a good bit. And the point was she may have been viewed as Nigerian rather than Nigerian-American (i.e., as a non-citizen, a category that does not receive the URM boost).

She’s a US citizen. What do we call US born kids with Irish parents? American. She was URM, not an international candidate. First and second generation kids of African parents appear are a norm at HYP and you can best believe that the schools are counting them as AA.

I don't think they're counted as AA necessarily. But they're counted as black, and black kids are underrepresented minorities at these schools irrespective of their background.

For example, I'm black with West Indian roots, 1st-gen American. My kid is black, with one African parent. Still counts as an underrepresented minority--and despite being well-educated, our kid has already had discriminatory comments made to her at her private about the color of her skin. We know other similarly well-educated 1st-gen black families who've had similar incidents at their privates, even changing schools because of it in some cases.

AA and Black are the same category in this case. I say this as an AA/Black with at least a dozen generations in this country. There’s a separate thread about how many of the Black students in the incoming class of Harvard are first or second generation Americans. I served on a scholarship panel for the Greater Washington Urban League last year and noticed a similar trend as well.

PP here and agree with your observations. Generally speaking, first-gen black people in America haven’t experienced the same set of obstacles as black Americans that have been here for several generations. It even starts before birth—for example, I read in an article that Africans are at lower risk for low birthweight and preterm birth than AAs. There are definitely some commonalities and shared experiences between the groups, but also some differences.

PP again, with one other thought—I grew up entirely around AAs; my parents were the only immigrants around. I later attended an HBCU for undergrad. If you see me on the street—and many other 1st-gen kids like me--I’m indistinguishable from AAs whose ancestors arrived here under different circumstances. I have no accent, unlike my parents, and my name is not clearly “foreign.” First-gen black Americans can still be subject to implicit (and explicit) bias just based on appearance. So I would not rule out that this girl may have experienced some sort of subtle discrimination that perhaps would not have happened had her family been white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are PPs saying that she only applied to reach schools? She should have gotten into Spelman. Secondly, the mistakes in calculating her math grades are a big effing deal.

Nigerian-Americans are still URMs. Sidwell knows this. A look at Harvard’s C/O 2023 confirms this. I think this case is a net positive for current and future students, as the school will probably do a better job of accurately reporting grades now. It makes me wonder if there are FA families who have had similar experiences with little, if any, recourse.

I dont think she applied to Spelman on time. So that changes the analysis a good bit. And the point was she may have been viewed as Nigerian rather than Nigerian-American (i.e., as a non-citizen, a category that does not receive the URM boost).

She’s a US citizen. What do we call US born kids with Irish parents? American. She was URM, not an international candidate. First and second generation kids of African parents appear are a norm at HYP and you can best believe that the schools are counting them as AA.

Crazy enough, someone born with an African parent and never got to know him and with a white mom who actually raised him, together with her white parents, is counted by many as AA.

It's like magic.

Except people like you claimed he wasn’t even an American.

[Anonymous]

And would have sent him to the back of the bus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The parents are crazy. The suit is absurd. DMV entertainment at its finest.

The lack of awareness of your entitlement is real.

It’s her parents who seem to act as the entitled ones. Entitled scammers.

If she had been the white daughter of a managing partner with the same stats and attitude my guess is they would have handled her situation very differently. I do not think it’s entitled of her parents to call out what happended. Or should they have just been grateful they got to play in the game?

I'm a white SFS parent and I think there might be some truth in this, but I also have to say that every year there are white students who hit a wall in math when they reach the US. Often these are "lifers", whose parents respond indignantly when their kids are moved to a less intense math class. To some extent, this is the result of parents pushing their kids along the most demanding math track, but it's also the result of the math department making inconsistent decisions about placement (which the math teachers will acknowledge). You see the same dynamic of some parents pushing hard for what they believe is best for their kids (or, less benignly, what they feel they and their child are entitled to) and the school responding inconsistently and without transparency in the course of the college application process and in disciplinary situations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I'm a white SFS parent and I think there might be some truth in this, but I also have to say that every year there are white students who hit a wall in math when they reach the US. Often these are "lifers", whose parents respond indignantly when their kids are moved to a less intense math class. To some extent, this is the result of parents pushing their kids along the most demanding math track, but it's also the result of the math department making inconsistent decisions about placement (which the math teachers will acknowledge). You see the same dynamic of some parents pushing hard for what they believe is best for their kids (or, less benignly, what they feel they and their child are entitled to) and the school responding inconsistently and without transparency in the course of the college application process and in disciplinary situations.

I don't think this is entirely accurate, and perhaps it merits its own thread, but there are some kids who are obvious math prodigies and there are others who are more humanities focused. But for the kids in between, it is a hard line to know whether one belongs in the Math 1 track or one of the other tracks. I am not sure there is indignence about switching tracks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are PPs saying that she only applied to reach schools? She should have gotten into Spelman. Secondly, the mistakes in calculating her math grades are a big effing deal.

Nigerian-Americans are still URMs. Sidwell knows this. A look at Harvard’s C/O 2023 confirms this. I think this case is a net positive for current and future students, as the school will probably do a better job of accurately reporting grades now. It makes me wonder if there are FA families who have had similar experiences with little, if any, recourse.

I dont think she applied to Spelman on time. So that changes the analysis a good bit. And the point was she may have been viewed as Nigerian rather than Nigerian-American (i.e., as a non-citizen, a category that does not receive the URM boost).

She’s a US citizen. What do we call US born kids with Irish parents? American. She was URM, not an international candidate. First and second generation kids of African parents appear are a norm at HYP and you can best believe that the schools are counting them as AA.

Crazy enough, someone born with an African parent and never got to know him and with a white mom who actually raised him, together with her white parents, is counted by many as AA.

It's like magic.

Except people like you claimed he wasn’t even an American.

Wrong -- I am not even American myself, just pointing out the absurdities in your racial framework.

[Anonymous]

Good thing the current U.S. President and First Lady picked a much better school for their child. Kudos to them for making the effort.

[Anonymous]

PP is a dope/troll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you translate this for the non-legal people? Did the Supreme Court rule against Sidwell?

Didn't rule against them, but in the complaint it says that Sidwell agreed to pay the family $50,000 and change grades as part of an earlier settlement. I didn't realize grades were for sale or could be part of a settlement. Seems extremely dishonest and unfair to other hardworking children without litigious parents.

Routine at most privates.

Not really. Sidwell did shell out $50K as a nuisance payment to settle (which companies do all the time with employment lawsuits), and corrected an apparent mistake in grading, but it's dishonest of you to suggest that any kind of causal relationship existed between those two things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are PPs saying that she only applied to reach schools? She should have gotten into Spelman. Secondly, the mistakes in calculating her math grades are a big effing deal.

Nigerian-Americans are still URMs. Sidwell knows this. A look at Harvard’s C/O 2023 confirms this. I think this case is a net positive for current and future students, as the school will probably do a better job of accurately reporting grades now. It makes me wonder if there are FA families who have had similar experiences with little, if any, recourse.

I dont think she applied to Spelman on time. So that changes the analysis a good bit. And the point was she may have been viewed as Nigerian rather than Nigerian-American (i.e., as a non-citizen, a category that does not receive the URM boost).

She’s a US citizen. What do we call US born kids with Irish parents? American. She was URM, not an international candidate. First and second generation kids of African parents appear are a norm at HYP and you can best believe that the schools are counting them as AA.

I don't think they're counted as AA necessarily. But they're counted as black, and black kids are underrepresented minorities at these schools irrespective of their background.

For example, I'm black with West Indian roots, 1st-gen American. My kid is black, with one African parent. Still counts as an underrepresented minority--and despite being well-educated, our kid has already had discriminatory comments made to her at her private about the color of her skin. We know other similarly well-educated 1st-gen black families who've had similar incidents at their privates, even changing schools because of it in some cases.

AA and Black are the same category in this case. I say this as an AA/Black with at least a dozen generations in this country. There’s a separate thread about how many of the Black students in the incoming class of Harvard are first or second generation Americans. I served on a scholarship panel for the Greater Washington Urban League last year and noticed a similar trend as well.

PP here and agree with your observations. Generally speaking, first-gen black people in America haven’t experienced the same set of obstacles as black Americans that have been here for several generations. It even starts before birth—for example, I read in an article that Africans are at lower risk for low birthweight and preterm birth than AAs. There are definitely some commonalities and shared experiences between the groups, but also some differences.

PP again, with one other thought—I grew up entirely around AAs; my parents were the only immigrants around. I later attended an HBCU for undergrad. If you see me on the street—and many other 1st-gen kids like me--I’m indistinguishable from AAs whose ancestors arrived here under different circumstances. I have no accent, unlike my parents, and my name is not clearly “foreign.” First-gen black Americans can still be subject to implicit (and explicit) bias just based on appearance. So I would not rule out that this girl may have experienced some sort of subtle discrimination that perhaps would not have happened had her family been white.

Is Sidwell racist? Does Sidwell have a history of keeping qualified AA students back from the higher math tracks? Before we start shouting racism we need to ask these kinds of questions.

Plenty of white kids are held back from top tracks at schools all across the country. That's clearly not racism. Plenty of pushy, ambitious white parents have been a pain in the neck to school administration across the country. That's not racism, is it? Plenty of teachers have written mediocre college recs for white students they didn't like because, well, that's what recs are for. You're expected to be honest in the college recs.

I see no evidence whatsoever that what may have happened at Sidwell was motivated by racism or any anti-Nigerian, anti-immigration attitudes. I see every evidence that a clash of personalities and a pushy, aggressive family ruined relationships and possibly made it difficult to fairly evaluate the girls' academic progress, but the end result is much more the family's own fault than the school's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are PPs saying that she only applied to reach schools? She should have gotten into Spelman. Secondly, the mistakes in calculating her math grades are a big effing deal.

Nigerian-Americans are still URMs. Sidwell knows this. A look at Harvard’s C/O 2023 confirms this. I think this case is a net positive for current and future students, as the school will probably do a better job of accurately reporting grades now. It makes me wonder if there are FA families who have had similar experiences with little, if any, recourse.

I dont think she applied to Spelman on time. So that changes the analysis a good bit. And the point was she may have been viewed as Nigerian rather than Nigerian-American (i.e., as a non-citizen, a category that does not receive the URM boost).

She’s a US citizen. What do we call US born kids with Irish parents? American. She was URM, not an international candidate. First and second generation kids of African parents appear are a norm at HYP and you can best believe that the schools are counting them as AA.

I don't think they're counted as AA necessarily. But they're counted as black, and black kids are underrepresented minorities at these schools irrespective of their background.

For example, I'm black with West Indian roots, 1st-gen American. My kid is black, with one African parent. Still counts as an underrepresented minority--and despite being well-educated, our kid has already had discriminatory comments made to her at her private about the color of her skin. We know other similarly well-educated 1st-gen black families who've had similar incidents at their privates, even changing schools because of it in some cases.

AA and Black are the same category in this case. I say this as an AA/Black with at least a dozen generations in this country. There’s a separate thread about how many of the Black students in the incoming class of Harvard are first or second generation Americans. I served on a scholarship panel for the Greater Washington Urban League last year and noticed a similar trend as well.

PP here and agree with your observations. Generally speaking, first-gen black people in America haven’t experienced the same set of obstacles as black Americans that have been here for several generations. It even starts before birth—for example, I read in an article that Africans are at lower risk for low birthweight and preterm birth than AAs. There are definitely some commonalities and shared experiences between the groups, but also some differences.

PP again, with one other thought—I grew up entirely around AAs; my parents were the only immigrants around. I later attended an HBCU for undergrad. If you see me on the street—and many other 1st-gen kids like me--I’m indistinguishable from AAs whose ancestors arrived here under different circumstances. I have no accent, unlike my parents, and my name is not clearly “foreign.” First-gen black Americans can still be subject to implicit (and explicit) bias just based on appearance. So I would not rule out that this girl may have experienced some sort of subtle discrimination that perhaps would not have happened had her family been white.

Is Sidwell racist? Does Sidwell have a history of keeping qualified AA students back from the higher math tracks? Before we start shouting racism we need to ask these kinds of questions.

Plenty of white kids are held back from top tracks at schools all across the country. That's clearly not racism. Plenty of pushy, ambitious white parents have been a pain in the neck to school administration across the country. That's not racism, is it? Plenty of teachers have written mediocre college recs for white students they didn't like because, well, that's what recs are for. You're expected to be honest in the college recs.

I see no evidence whatsoever that what may have happened at Sidwell was motivated by racism or any anti-Nigerian, anti-immigration attitudes. I see every evidence that a clash of personalities and a pushy, aggressive family ruined relationships and possibly made it difficult to fairly evaluate the girls' academic progress, but the end result is much more the family's own fault than the school's.

Your opinions are not necessarily the facts. And they do not prove or disprove racism.

[Anonymous]

Neither does any other "opinion" on this entire thread. What might be an indication is that they lost twice in court.