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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Missed in all these arguments is the fact that Sidwell and maybe other schools decide who they will “push” for
Certain schools. This is really troubling. I naively thought a school would write a recommendation and calculate grades based on a. Everyone equal formula. This clearly did not happen and it should put all parents on notice that you really have to advocate. This would also be a question you ask as part of due diligence once your child is accepted to any hs. There is a reason this family is pushing this suit after the child has already graduated Penn. Maybe paying it forward.

Naive after three kids but I ahve to admit I did not know this either. They rank kids for a school against each other and not on their own merits, from what i can tell. Pits kids and families against each other, which does not seem very Quaker. Not sure why the school just cant speak to each kids own abilities and not rank them against each other.

[Anonymous]

This is nothing new for African American parents.
My mother noticed my grades were being deflated in elementary school! She averaged all my math grades and came up with a much higher average. The teacher apologized, corrected the “error” and we all moved on.. In high school, the black kids were the only ones whose test scores (every few years, we sat exams that were graded blind by external correctors) whose grades magically increased when the grading was blind. At the end of high school, my college counselor didn’t agree with the mix of schools I applied to. My mother read the counselor the riot act, the school did right by me and I got into H/Y/P.

This happens to many, many upper middle class black kids. You just never hear about here because their parents don’t sue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Missed in all these arguments is the fact that Sidwell and maybe other schools decide who they will “push” for
Certain schools. This is really troubling. I naively thought a school would write a recommendation and calculate grades based on a. Everyone equal formula. This clearly did not happen and it should put all parents on notice that you really have to advocate. This would also be a question you ask as part of due diligence once your child is accepted to any hs. There is a reason this family is pushing this suit after the child has already graduated Penn. Maybe paying it forward.

Naive after three kids but I ahve to admit I did not know this either. They rank kids for a school against each other and not on their own merits, from what i can tell. Pits kids and families against each other, which does not seem very Quaker. Not sure why the school just cant speak to each kids own abilities and not rank them against each other.

Agreed. And with the preference for athletes and URMs, schools don’t want a situation where no white kid who isn’t an athlete gets in. That would anger white parents and probably threaten the school’s financials long term.

[Anonymous]

The colleges require class ranks. Many schools, including Sidwell, do not have class ranks. As such, they have to provide some measure within the institution. What would you propose?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The colleges require class ranks. Many schools, including Sidwell, do not have class ranks. As such, they have to provide some measure within the institution. What would you propose?

At GDS everyone is ranked first in the class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Missed in all these arguments is the fact that Sidwell and maybe other schools decide who they will “push” for
Certain schools. This is really troubling. I naively thought a school would write a recommendation and calculate grades based on a. Everyone equal formula. This clearly did not happen and it should put all parents on notice that you really have to advocate. This would also be a question you ask as part of due diligence once your child is accepted to any hs. There is a reason this family is pushing this suit after the child has already graduated Penn. Maybe paying it forward.

Naive after three kids but I ahve to admit I did not know this either. They rank kids for a school against each other and not on their own merits, from what i can tell. Pits kids and families against each other, which does not seem very Quaker. Not sure why the school just cant speak to each kids own abilities and not rank them against each other.

Agreed. And with the preference for athletes and URMs, schools don’t want a situation where no white kid who isn’t an athlete gets in. That would anger white parents and probably threaten the school’s financials long term.

At least with the Trump Supreme Court, race-based affirmative action lis likely to be ruled unconstitutional within a few years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Missed in all these arguments is the fact that Sidwell and maybe other schools decide who they will “push” for
Certain schools. This is really troubling. I naively thought a school would write a recommendation and calculate grades based on a. Everyone equal formula. This clearly did not happen and it should put all parents on notice that you really have to advocate. This would also be a question you ask as part of due diligence once your child is accepted to any hs. There is a reason this family is pushing this suit after the child has already graduated Penn. Maybe paying it forward.

Naive after three kids but I ahve to admit I did not know this either. They rank kids for a school against each other and not on their own merits, from what i can tell. Pits kids and families against each other, which does not seem very Quaker. Not sure why the school just cant speak to each kids own abilities and not rank them against each other.

Agreed. And with the preference for athletes and URMs, schools don’t want a situation where no white kid who isn’t an athlete gets in. That would anger white parents and probably threaten the school’s financials long term.

At least with the Trump Supreme Court, race-based affirmative action lis likely to be ruled unconstitutional within a few years.

Doesn’t matter. The schools want what they want. And that is classes that are balanced (gender, race, athletics, geography). Not sure I’d want my child to go to a school without Hispanic and Black kids. That would really detract from the experience in my mind. Also, with this new adversity index on the SAT coming out, the numbers shouldn’t change too drastically (wealthy black kids are still quite likely to live in poor neighborhoods).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The entitlement is appalling. As a public school parent, I wonder if I too could sue my child’s school for big bucks for failing to “support” their college applications? This just betrays this family’s (and many families’) belief that 12 years of tuition buys you admission to a selective college. She didn’t even apply to any safeties. Sorry, that’s not how the wider world works.

Hi public school parent. The school sent fabricated transcripts to college. That was one point of contention.

Fabricated?

[Anonymous]

When she applied for college, unfortunately she was compared with her peer students from Sidwell. For example, if other NMSF students or students ranked higher were applying the same ivy (very likely because her college list includes all best schools), she may be the bottom one in that particular applicant pool. The school has to offer the true information for AO to compare. You can’t blame the school to tell the truth. It could be totally different if she was in a different school with the same academic profile where she ranked at top 1.

This is my question on this situation. Did the counselor tell the family the above? In looking at her ranking, scores, etc, I would say her list was full of reaches and did not have safety or match schools. If that was on the counselor then the parents have standing to be upset, if the family decided they knew where she should apply then the lawsuit has no standing.

[Anonymous]

I think the parents tried to make the case that she should have been eligible and a very strong candidate from an affirmative action point of view. (Court case mentions that parents were upset the school counselor referred to her Nigerian heritage even though she was born in U.S. because they feared it might make her ineligible for affirmative action.) As one of the top 14 African American PSAT scorers, as a state champion athlete etc. and, frankly, as a student of one of the most elite schools in the Country, she should have been a very viable candidate for all those schools from an affirmative action perspective. As a URM, she had great credentials, especially when compared against peer URMs from DC. That’s what a lot of posters keep missing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is nothing new for African American parents.
My mother noticed my grades were being deflated in elementary school! She averaged all my math grades and came up with a much higher average. The teacher apologized, corrected the “error” and we all moved on.. In high school, the black kids were the only ones whose test scores (every few years, we sat exams that were graded blind by external correctors) whose grades magically increased when the grading was blind. At the end of high school, my college counselor didn’t agree with the mix of schools I applied to. My mother read the counselor the riot act, the school did right by me and I got into H/Y/P.

This happens to many, many upper middle class black kids. You just never hear about here because their parents don’t sue.

Same for my spouse—counselor at an elite boarding school pushed hard for Dartmouth, to the point where spouse’s parents thought something funny was going on. Parents pushed back, and spouse applied to and attended Stanford.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is nothing new for African American parents.
My mother noticed my grades were being deflated in elementary school! She averaged all my math grades and came up with a much higher average. The teacher apologized, corrected the “error” and we all moved on.. In high school, the black kids were the only ones whose test scores (every few years, we sat exams that were graded blind by external correctors) whose grades magically increased when the grading was blind. At the end of high school, my college counselor didn’t agree with the mix of schools I applied to. My mother read the counselor the riot act, the school did right by me and I got into H/Y/P.

This happens to many, many upper middle class black kids. You just never hear about here because their parents don’t sue.

Same for my spouse—counselor at an elite boarding school pushed hard for Dartmouth, to the point where spouse’s parents thought something funny was going on. Parents pushed back, and spouse applied to and attended Stanford.

Hardly slumming it to apply to Dartmouth, clearly the counselor believed in your husband. Dartmouth isn’t a shoo in for anyone.

[Anonymous]

Dartmouth is not where you send an AA kid. Rather hostile environment, almost any other top schools is preferable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All these folks sounding so indignant about how the family reacted would probably work the system if their kid were shut out.

Most parents would have accepted school advice not to have their kid apply to all Ivys and reach schools like Duke. Stupid and entitled doesn’t make it the school’s fault. And it sure as hell doesn’t amount to a federal civil rights case!

+1 Seems like the parents were idiots to sign off on a slate of highly selective schools and then were shocked when their kid didn't get in.

She applied on her own after a year and got in. Ooops! She clearly is Ivy material. She is now an Ivy graduate.

So what are her damages?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The entitlement is appalling. As a public school parent, I wonder if I too could sue my child’s school for big bucks for failing to “support” their college applications? This just betrays this family’s (and many families’) belief that 12 years of tuition buys you admission to a selective college. She didn’t even apply to any safeties. Sorry, that’s not how the wider world works.

She is a Sidwell lifer. $40Kx 12!
how much did you pay for your public school tuition?

Before you make your tuition assumptions, consider that her family probably managed to get substantial financial aid from the school.

And then turned around and sued.