Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Sidwell recruits aggressively for some sports, has a two track system of classes for athletes, and allows them to leave midday for outside training. Very few schools make such exceptions.
Must be new because it wasn't true a few years ago
That’s because it’s not true. People constantly post lies about Sidwell on DCUM. It’s the school (almost) everyone loves to hate.
You would have us believe that Sidwell has had nationally ranked basketball teams without aggressive recruiting?
Sidwell obviously recruits for basketball, tennis, and soccer. However, Sidwell does not have “a two track system of classes for athletes.” The only classes that have lower and upper “levels” are foreign language (5-7 levels, depending on the language), math (3 levels), and science (2 levels). The recruited athletes are in higher or lower levels of these three classes, just like some non-athletes at Sidwell. All students take the same English and history classes.
I have two children in the US, and they are both top students. They have had English, history, and language classes with some of the recruits (including basketball recruits). Were the recruits generally great students? No, not the ones my children had as class mates. However, the athletes were not
given special treatment (that my children were aware of). Some of those athletes received D’s and F’s on assignments and tests, and one of my children witnessed a recruited basketball player begging for an extension on a paper, after class. The teacher told him that he waited too long to make the request, so his paper would go down a letter grade for each day it was late.
Coach Singletary has been quoted in various newspaper articles saying that it’s actually more difficult for him to recruit basketball players because of Sidwell’s academic standards. Anecdotally, one of Sidwell’s girl basketball recruits told one of my children that she should have gone to St. John’s “because it would have been easier” academically.