s/o - DC privates are not filled with gifted kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

3. Since admissions are competitive, the student body should be more uniformly high-performing, so that the range between the extremes is smaller.

I think this gets at OP's premise, way back when 5 pages ago.

You would think this, but you might be wrong. At least in the early grades. I have been truly surprised at the range in *apparent* ability in my child's class.

I am pretty sure -- no, I am certain -- that this gaping difference in abilities is a logical and direct result of the school's intentional pursuit of a diverse student body. In every sense of that word. Also, the guaranteed sibling admission policy, barring psychosis or profound mental retardation.

This is the OP....you hit the nail on the head!

A frequent PP chiming in here: Yes! The Lower Schools in this town are not selecting on academic ability, all the drama over WPPSI scores on this board notwithstanding. They are selecting on parental social status, and kids with rich, prominent parents are not necessarily the highest academic performers
I would add strongly: in our experience, it has nothing to do with diversity. (Some of our school's ahem "diverse" students are also some of its academic stars.)

Well, for starters, I don't buy OP's underlying premise: "I've also heard that ERBs in top DC privates in lower grades usually rank the top performers around the 80th percentile which equates to an IQ around 115 to 120 tops."

1. OP's statement that some school admin told her in a dinner party conversation that his school's top students are in the 80th percentile doesn't strike me as a particularly rigorous basis for this thread.

2. When OP somehow translates that dinner party comment into a calculation that the top students have IQs of about "115 to 120 tops," that starts to sound fishy to me. First, how do you make this conversion from ERB to IQ? Is there a conversion table you used? And second, are you really telling me that the "top performers" at local private schools generally miss the base level for giftedness (130 IQ) by at least 10 points? That does not strike me as likely.

3. And even if you accept OP's premise as true, I still think the overall range of abilities from the top of the class to the bottom is a lot smaller at a typical DC private school than at a typical public school. Indeed, if the top performers are really only "80th percentile" students, as OP claims, then that suggests the range to the bottom of the class might even be smaller than what I'd guess. As a result of the smaller range, the private school teachers should have less trouble offering differentiated instruction tailored to each child.

[Anonymous]

So are you saying that DC privates are filled with gifted kids? Do you realize how statistically improbable it is anyways?

A child with an IQ of 130 to 140 is capable of working two to five years above grade level. These schools are not teaching to this range currently.....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Well, for starters, I don't buy OP's underlying premise: "I've also heard that ERBs in top DC privates in lower grades usually rank the top performers around the 80th percentile which equates to an IQ around 115 to 120 tops."

1. OP's statement that some school admin told her in a dinner party conversation that his school's top students are in the 80th percentile doesn't strike me as a particularly rigorous basis for this thread.

2. When OP somehow translates that dinner party comment into a calculation that the top students have IQs of about "115 to 120 tops," that starts to sound fishy to me. First, how do you make this conversion from ERB to IQ? Is there a conversion table you used? And second, are you really telling me that the "top performers" at local private schools generally miss the base level for giftedness (130 IQ) by at least 10 points? That does not strike me as likely.

3. And even if you accept OP's premise as true, I still think the overall range of abilities from the top of the class to the bottom is a lot smaller at a typical DC private school than at a typical public school. Indeed, if the top performers are really only "80th percentile" students, as OP claims, then that suggests the range to the bottom of the class might even be smaller than what I'd guess. As a result of the smaller range, the private school teachers should have less trouble offering differentiated instruction tailored to each child.

Re. 1: Agree that dinner party chat is not hard data, but her chat "data" squares with the hard data I have from admins at my school and one other

Re. 2: She (I assume she is a woman, but who knows) is extrapolating from 80th percentile ERBs to 80th percentile IQ, which is about 113-120. This is roughly correct.

Re. 3: She is not is saying that the "top performers" are the 80th percentile. Rather, she is saying that these schools cluster around the 80th percentile and therefore teach to it. Her point - one with which I strongly agree - is that the kids who are in the 98+ percentile are largely ignored in area Lower Schools. These kids are way ahead of the 80th percentile in their abilities (take a look at a bell curve and you'll see what I mean, or read about the differences in Level 1 and Level 3 gifted kids). Given DCs demographics, you wouldn't be surprised to find 3-5 of these kids (or more!) in every grade in the private schools here. So you might expect schools to differentiate appropriately to them. But they don't. Which is bizarre.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So are you saying that DC privates are filled with gifted kids? Do you realize how statistically improbable it is anyways?

I'm not sure what you mean by "filled with gifted kids." If you mean that 95% will ultimately test at IQs of 130 or higher, then I doubt it. Just because I disagree with OP's base premise that the "top performers" are around the 80th percentile, doesn't mean I'm claiming that all DC private school students are gifted. But I'm betting it's more than just a couple kids.

And yeah, I think a pretty fair sized percentage of students at local private schools are capable of working 2+ years above the standard Maryland / Virginia / DC curriculum levels. When I compare what my child's classroom is doing right now against the Maryland standard curriculum, they're aiming at goals that are at least one full grade ahead of schedule. And that's the standard goal for the whole class.

[Anonymous]

I'm just going based on what OP wrote: "ERBs in top DC privates in lower grades usually rank the top performers around the 80th percentile." Maybe OP can clarify.

19:01, if sounds like you and I agree there are at least significant numbers of very capable children. But we might disagree on whether there is appropriate differentiation. Perhaps it's just that some schools are better at it than others.

[Anonymous]

What I'm taking away from this is that private school is a good place for kids in the 90-98th pctile. First, private schools will have at least a handful of these kids in a class, and fewer kids at the bottom end, so to the extent differentiation is possible, it's more possible in private schools. Second, these kids probably won't get into magnets, which are for the top 2%. If your hone school is Whitman, the 90-95th pctile kid will have lots of company and few problems being challenged, but this isn't true of many other MoCo publics.

I'm not sure about the reliability of the ERB data either, or whether it translates directly to IQ scores. I doubt it, because ERBs are also a function of how well a school is teaching - in fact, that's why they're used for school accreditation. It would seem wrong to accredit schools based on the IQ of the student body, if that is really what the ERB measures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

3. Since admissions are competitive, the student body should be more uniformly high-performing, so that the range between the extremes is smaller.

I think this gets at OP's premise, way back when 5 pages ago.

You would think this, but you might be wrong. At least in the early grades. I have been truly surprised at the range in *apparent* ability in my child's class.

I am pretty sure -- no, I am certain -- that this gaping difference in abilities is a logical and direct result of the school's intentional pursuit of a diverse student body. In every sense of that word. Also, the guaranteed sibling admission policy, barring psychosis or profound mental retardation.

I am glad, PP, that you note that the "gaping difference in abilities" is a difference in "apparent" abilities. In lower grades, some children are a year or even more younger than their classmates. Not such a big deal in high school, but when you are talking about a summer birthday 5 year old vs a early autumn (or possibly red-shirted) 6 year old, that's a pretty big difference. I put no faith in your ability to figure out what a student's true ability is based on classroom or other observation.

If you were to observe my younger child, one of those dreaded not psychotic and not profoundly mentally retarded (does anyone even use that term anymore?) siblings, you may go home all smug about how he, a struggling emerging reader, is holding back your special snowflake or whatever other motivation you might have for making such incredibly offensive statements here about young children. If it would be accurate to predict IQ by adding the parents' IQs together and dividing by two, he has a predicted IQ of 155. I am not at all troubled by what he might be struggling with right now at his tender age. After all, I was the struggling summer birthday kid in kindergarten, too, and I am not exactly out on the streets begging for my next meal. Your reference to "diversity" as a reason for why you suspect a diversity of IQs is also incredibly awful and offensive.

As to another poster's point that rich parents may not be academic, do you really think everyone with a highly gifted IQ feels the need to run around sounding academic and pursuing careers that would satisfy the DCUM mob of their credentials? I don't know how many kids in a typical class would test as gifted, but the generalizations on this thread are crazy. If I wanted my kids to be hung up on that label, I'd move to MoCo and get them labelled so they could go along on that special "gifted" track. My husband and I made another choice for our children, which was to place them in a school that didn't use those labels. Neither of us liked living with the label and thought education had to be about more than that.

[Anonymous]

If you were to observe my younger child, one of those dreaded not psychotic and not profoundly mentally retarded (does anyone even use that term anymore?) siblings, you may go home all smug about how he, a struggling emerging reader, is holding back your special snowflake or whatever other motivation you might have for making such incredibly offensive statements here about young children. If it would be accurate to predict IQ by adding the parents' IQs together and dividing by two, he has a predicted IQ of 155. I am not at all troubled by what he might be struggling with right now at his tender age. After all, I was the struggling summer birthday kid in kindergarten, too, and I am not exactly out on the streets begging for my next meal. Your reference to "diversity" as a reason for why you suspect a diversity of IQs is also incredibly awful and offensive.

you are very touchy.

1. you'd better believe that "profound mental retardation" is a phrase used by the clinicians who ... work with profoundly retarded children. Like my nephew. I'm not Charlie Sheen calling someone a 'retard' and 'gay' -- it's a clinical term, and it's accurately used in the post that set you off. Put away the PC club.

2. You assume I'm talking about 4.5 yr old emerging readers or something. Don't know why. I'm not (my eldest is significantly older), and I'm basing my impressions on time spent with older kids in the classroom, in discussion in my car, and talking with their parents who discuss their academic abilities. I feel comfortable that I have a handle on their abilities at this point in time in an academic setting -- which is all we're discussing here. Someone may discover the next thing after stem cells when she's 56, but that has nothing to do with the actual topic at hand.

3. Why is it offensive to acknowledge that when you are seeking to admit 3 red-haired students whose last names begin with a /Z/, and who have a mole on their shins, and that's your primary objective, that you will secondarily compose a class of diverging academic abilities? This is what my school does, it's not a secret. It's in the mission statement, for goodness sake. I think you think I'm talking about skin tone or something; I'm not.

[Anonymous]

I can't figure out what the point of this thread is, and why OP is cavalierly tossing around one ERB datapoint as a proxy for IQ. I have an idea, though.

What concerns me is that giving more resources to my kid, who is high on your "levels" and very resourceful on his own, means taking it away from other kids. I don't think anybody here wants to acknowledge this. One PP even tried to argue that highly gifted kids deserve more resources because they are the next Gates and Zuckerbergs. As if the high IQ kids in the class are somehow more "deserving" than the kids who will go on to be mid-level managers. Yes, I agree with the idea that every kid deserves a good education, but the reality is that more teacher time for a tiny minority means less teacher time for everybody

[Anonymous]

... everybody else, and I'm uncomfortable with that.

It's partly this unspoken agenda that makes me uncomfortable with advocates for the gifted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
What concerns me is that giving more resources to my kid, who is high on your "levels" and very resourceful on his own, means taking it away from other kids. I don't think anybody here wants to acknowledge this. One PP even tried to argue that highly gifted kids deserve more resources because they are the next Gates and Zuckerbergs. As if the high IQ kids in the class are somehow more "deserving" than the kids who will go on to be mid-level managers. Yes, I agree with the idea that every kid deserves a good education, but the reality is that more teacher time for a tiny minority means less teacher time for everybody

First, I don't think it is a zero sum game, especially in wealthy private schools. You've got the kids breaking up into groups anyway; why not cluster them by ability when they do? At the extreme end: you have 2 or three or more classrooms in each grade, you could group those classes by ability or shake them up for each subject.

Second, as to who deserves teacher time - I don't begrudge at all the time devoted to the child struggling to learn to read, struggling to understand fractions, etc. A single kid might take up an hour or more of resource teacher time every day. The teacher spends extra time with the kid who is the behavioral problem; I understand that. Please don't begrudge the 4-5 kids who get pulled out with a resource teacher to get what they need to have the same experience as the average kid.

Finally, the PP wasn't arguing that gifted kids deserved more resources because they were smart; she/he was arguing that it was silly to argue that society would be better served by dumbing everyone down rather than letting kids move at an appropriate pace.

[Anonymous]

Sorry - I'd also add that you can do all kinds of things to accommodate these kids that don't take away from other students - just let them move up a grade or two for subjects they excel in. Go back to letting kids skip a grade, especially if they are socially adept. Let the kid do an online program. Give them a more advanced book to read. Make their assignment harder. There are a zillion ways to do this to improve on the existing system. I will confess to being perplexed as to why the (Lower) schools don't already do a lot of these things.

[Anonymous]

There is no guaranteed sibling policy at any school in DC. There is a sibling preference -- not the same thing. I have seen many instances of young siblings -- who were not psychotic or profoundly MR -- who were not admitted to their older sibling's school because the school knew for whatever reason that ti would not be a good fit. No guarantees. Not anywhere.

And BTW, we can debate the phrase "mental retardation" but when you use it in the same phrase as "psychosis" yeah, you are hurling insults. You know very well that children who have profound MR are not applying to these schools, siblings or otherwise. You used it as an insult. Maybe you thought it was cute. Most of us think that people with profound disabilities are not something we should laugh at.

[Anonymous]

Between the parents who think that they need to redshirt for private K and the parents who complain that private school elementary is not challenging enough, are the administrators and teachers who have to deal with the parents who complain that the school is not run in the way that best suits their particular child.

If you don't trust the school, for which you are shelling out $30K/year/child, to do what is best for your child; or if you think that public magnet schools are doing a better, job; why don't you place your child in the better alternative?

I'm paying the tuition that I do because I believe that the school and its teachers are doing/will continue to do an excellent job of educating children, including mine. I accept that there are going to be great years and not-so-great years. I don't think that my observations as a parent and a few articles that I read online trump the experience of two decades in the elementary school classroom. If I have concerns, I voice them to the teachers; and they are very responsive. I don't have the hubris to suggest major curriculum changes based upon the needs of my children alone and some gossip that I hear about ERB scores.

[Anonymous]

ITA, 22:18. Nice post.