Sidwell vs GDS upper school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But BTW, it actually appears that GDS does compete in the AMC contests on a regular basis, since a handful of GDS students won recognition from AMC in each of the past six years.

Not really a conclusion you can draw from the data -- individuals can sign up and provide school affiliations. So you don't know if a 0 means no participation vs. participation but no recognition. And that's a crucial distinction if you want to compare/rank schools.

The zero means nobody with honors. All these schools participate in the AMC sequence. If you look, you can see that the numbers of honored kids are small (compared to TJ, Blair, Exeter, for example), and relatively even across the DC privates; probably not a significant difference across many years. GDS right now has some really top kids, as evidenced by 2010 data. A few years ago it was Sidwell that shined more, and St. Albans often is right there. What I can tell you is that currently there is a lot of excitement, relatively, at GDS about the math team, participation in lots of meets (Princeton, Duke, Harvard, as well as the local area meets, in which lots of kids participate and in which the school has really done incredibly well - for example, first at Princeton last year in the B division). In contrast, right now Sidwell seems pretty "meh" about all this, and doesn't field a team except for the local private school meets. You don't have to care about math and this may not be important in your choice of school - many don't - but if this is important to your US child, it is safe to say there is a difference right now (as well as nationally ranked debaters, as someone else noted).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, I'm not that PP and I didn't say that every single poster on this thread is a teen, did I? Obviously there are parents posting here.

It also should be obvious on threads like this (Does Maret have smarter boys or does St. Albans? Which School Has The Better Lacrosse Program, GPrep or Landon? ) you get a lot of smart, invested students posting in the evening hours.

If you're really disbelieving that kids are posting and you honestly believe it's 50-something parents who post all these posts about the minutiae of sports stats and which student placed 3rd vs. 4th in at the biochem competition ... that's fascinating. That parents are so, so very invested in their kids' peers that they even know that level of detail and care so much that they post it at 9 pm

Of course kids post on the Private Schools Forum frequently -- no big news there, but your post suggested that the posts on this thread were almost all from kids, not parents (e.g., "no effing way" that there are that many parents of high school kids here). I disagree about this particular thread. If you're not the psychic poster, my apologies and I withdraw my amazement at your powers of detection.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Probably just a variation on that theme, but I think that a kid who rebels against competition as a motivator would be better off at GDS and a kid who does his/her best in competition would be better off at Sidwell.

No first-hand knowledge of GDS, so can't comment on that, but ITA about Sidwell -- that's been our experience with 2 very competitive sons who've thrived there.

[Anonymous]

Sidwell is the better school unless your arty.

[Anonymous]

Your arty what? Maybe the English isn't so great either???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But BTW, it actually appears that GDS does compete in the AMC contests on a regular basis, since a handful of GDS students won recognition from AMC in each of the past six years.

Not really a conclusion you can draw from the data -- individuals can sign up and provide school affiliations. So you don't know if a 0 means no participation vs. participation but no recognition. And that's a crucial distinction if you want to compare/rank schools.

The zero means nobody with honors. All these schools participate in the AMC sequence.

Not in every category. Not in every year. Again, a "0" can mean that no one signed up, that one kid (or a few kids) signed up and didn't get honors, or that the whole class took the exam and no one got honors. These are three very different scenarios and the data doesn't differentiate between them.

Yes, anybody who's kid is seriously into math can figure out that GDS is a great place to be right now (but they'd know that based on a totally different set of data than that presented here). What concerns me is when this relatively uninformative data gets trotted out to make broader claims -- e.g. about a school's curriculum -- and people who aren't in a position to evaluate the data accept it as objective evidence and a basis for comparing math instruction at various schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But BTW, it actually appears that GDS does compete in the AMC contests on a regular basis, since a handful of GDS students won recognition from AMC in each of the past six years.

Not really a conclusion you can draw from the data -- individuals can sign up and provide school affiliations. So you don't know if a 0 means no participation vs. participation but no recognition. And that's a crucial distinction if you want to compare/rank schools.

The zero means nobody with honors. All these schools participate in the AMC sequence.

Not in every category. Not in every year. Again, a "0" can mean that no one signed up, that one kid (or a few kids) signed up and didn't get honors, or that the whole class took the exam and no one got honors. These are three very different scenarios and the data doesn't differentiate between them.

I don't understand what you're saying because it does not make sense in this context. GDS received a "0" in various years/categories, but it clearly sent students to the AMC contests on those years. For example, in 2007 & 2008, no one at GDS took Distinguished Honors on the AMC12, so it received a "0" for those years. But clearly some GDS students took the test those years because some GDS students received regular Honors in 2007 & 2008 for AMC12. Sidwell is in the same position.

Maybe what you're saying might make sense for the AMC10 category which seems to be less-well-attended by many schools since it is focused on younger kids. Or maybe you're not really trying to question the GDS results, but rather the results of some other unnamed school that has more zeros in more years. Maybe I'm just not understanding you.

I hope no one is taking this data as an summary of a school's entire curriculum (as you suggest); that would be foolish. This data is merely a weak proxy, best used in conjunction with other information.

[Anonymous]

The data is a weakish proxy, yes, but I still argue tells you something. Can it suggest kids there are capable at/excited about math? Yes. That, combined with the extent of the curriculum - which when it goes above BC Calculus tells you there are enough kids there over the years to take the more advanced courses, suggesting strength - is worth something. If you care about math, which a lot of folks don't.

[Anonymous]

18:03, the data doesn't differentiate between the type of zeros, you're right. Both Sidwell and GDS offer each test each year, so it will not be that nobody takes it.

Also, you can't get to AIME w/o a high score on AMC, so AMC is a qualifying test, and both these are qualifiers for USAMO. That is why there are many zeros in both AIME and USAMO, and in those cases it is often because nobody qualified.

[Anonymous]

One last thing about the Sidwell math scores .... often the highest scores are from the Chinese visiting students (since they have some exchange students).

[Anonymous]

If at every school, every kid was compelled to take these tests (i.e. every one s/he qualified for), then you'd have a basis of comparison. Although the comparison still wouldn't be of the various schools' curricula, since performance at this level may well be a function of schooling elsewhere (China, Norwood, CTY, local university), private tutoring, home environment, admissions criteria, how much additional practice/coaching/instruction kids on the math team get, etc. -- rather than math learned/taught at the school in question.

And that's before we get to the question of what relationship, if any, there is between how a school's most talented math students do in competitions and how/how well the school teaches math to all of its students. People can care about math in a variety of different ways. The idea that AMC/USAMO/IMO/AIME results are the gold standard for assessing a school's math instruction is a kind of tunnel vision.

[Anonymous]

``One last thing about the Sidwell math scores .... often the highest scores are from the Chinese visiting students (since they have some exchange students).''

Wow. You are soooooooooo pathetic.

And this is stupid debate started by someone claiming that GDS was hands down better than Sidwell in math and science. I don't think that person carried the day, but this is growing a little weird and I urge everyone to stand down and move to another topic. I don't think the person who said the thing about Sidwell Chinese students has anything to do with the GDS or Sidwell communities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:ttps://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AnukIDABt_JKdDdZYXlQbnFUQ0VfMHRpTFp1SUIxS2c&hl=en&pli=1#gid=0

According to this, GDS is not particularly strong in math

Actually, I think this is the claim that started the discussion.

[SAM2]

Anonymous wrote:One last thing about the Sidwell math scores .... often the highest scores are from the Chinese visiting students (since they have some exchange students).

Ah yes, led to victory by the lesser-known "Tobin" and "Fernandez" branches of the Huang Dynasty .... Very crafty of Sidwell. Darn those Chinese ringers!

Gimme a break.

[Anonymous]

SAM2, usually your posts are pretty reasonable and credible. But here you're just wrong - check the archives.

Having said that, 19:58 is right about most of what she or he says. It is just one metric, and the OP should look broadly at what both schools offer. Both have strengths and weaknesses.