Blair pyramid or Kennedy pyramid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So OP should want to send her children to a school where only 35% of those who were deemed by the school to be ready for AP instruction (already a very small minority of the school population) can pass the national exam? Yet it is a "good" school? Even Wheaton passes 61% vs. Kennedy's 36%. Looking only at FARMS students, 65% at Blair pass one exam, while at Kennedy 45% pass an exam.

In 2016-17 (the most recent year of available data), 339 graduates took an AP (or IB) test. There were 328 students in grade 12 in 2016-2017. So that's 103%. Clearly something is going on with these numbers. But we can compare it to the number of students in grade 12 in 2016-2017, which is 412, or 82% - not typically a percentage that people would consider "a very small minority of the school population".

Also, the number reported is not percentage of students who took the AP test and got at least a 3. It's percentage of graduates. So, 28% of Kennedy graduates took an AP test and scored at least a 3. That's 1 in 4, which certainly suggests that the number of academically-minded kids at Kennedy HS is plenty big enough for an academically-minded kid to find a cohort.

Comparable numbers for Blair and Wheaton are 101%/94%/53% and 107%/88%/42%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:....and she is back replying to her own flawed analysis. She's no different than Trump constantly insisting that his crowds were bigger than Obama. Blair's magnet program pulls from the entire county and the humanities magnet pulls from the entire DCC. There is no advantage to being in-boundary. In fact, some areas of Northwood are closer to Blair than in-bound areas for Blair.

The rest of Blair is no different than any other DCC school. In some ways its worse due to overcrowding, being so large and too much focus on the magnets. At least the other DCC schools focus on all their students not just the ones from OOB.

No, Blair's SMACS magnet does not pull from the entire county.

To apply to the Blair program, students must live in one of the following high school clusters:

Bethesda-Chevy Chase
Winston Churchill
Walter Johnson
Richard Montgomery
Rockville
Sherwood
Walt Whitman
Thomas S. Wootton
Northeast Consortium
Downcounty Consortium

Right. DCUM is always forgetting that for students in the upcounty, the SMACS program is at Poolesville HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:....and she is back replying to her own flawed analysis. She's no different than Trump constantly insisting that his crowds were bigger than Obama. Blair's magnet program pulls from the entire county and the humanities magnet pulls from the entire DCC. There is no advantage to being in-boundary. In fact, some areas of Northwood are closer to Blair than in-bound areas for Blair.

The rest of Blair is no different than any other DCC school. In some ways its worse due to overcrowding, being so large and too much focus on the magnets. At least the other DCC schools focus on all their students not just the ones from OOB.

No, Blair's SMACS magnet does not pull from the entire county.

To apply to the Blair program, students must live in one of the following high school clusters:

Bethesda-Chevy Chase
Winston Churchill
Walter Johnson
Richard Montgomery
Rockville
Sherwood
Walt Whitman
Thomas S. Wootton
Northeast Consortium
Downcounty Consortium

Right. DCUM is always forgetting that for students in the upcounty, the SMACS program is at Poolesville HS.

Forgetting or trying to make the point that CAP is more restricted yet both are open to Kennedy catchment without getting bogged down in such detail? Is it oversimplifying to assume upcounty doesn't read a DCC thread for these assurances???? Feel free to start some Poolesville-thumps-Wootton thread to draw off the trolls. You don't have to feel neglected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:....and she is back replying to her own flawed analysis. She's no different than Trump constantly insisting that his crowds were bigger than Obama. Blair's magnet program pulls from the entire county and the humanities magnet pulls from the entire DCC. There is no advantage to being in-boundary. In fact, some areas of Northwood are closer to Blair than in-bound areas for Blair.

The rest of Blair is no different than any other DCC school. In some ways its worse due to overcrowding, being so large and too much focus on the magnets. At least the other DCC schools focus on all their students not just the ones from OOB.

No, Blair's SMACS magnet does not pull from the entire county.

To apply to the Blair program, students must live in one of the following high school clusters:

Bethesda-Chevy Chase
Winston Churchill
Walter Johnson
Richard Montgomery
Rockville
Sherwood
Walt Whitman
Thomas S. Wootton
Northeast Consortium
Downcounty Consortium

Right. DCUM is always forgetting that for students in the upcounty, the SMACS program is at Poolesville HS.

Forgetting or trying to make the point that CAP is more restricted yet both are open to Kennedy catchment without getting bogged down in such detail? Is it oversimplifying to assume upcounty doesn't read a DCC thread for these assurances???? Feel free to start some Poolesville-thumps-Wootton thread to draw off the trolls. You don't have to feel neglected.

NP here: to add another perspective, historically CAP is dominated by Eastern, TPMS, SSIMS and a few Sligo students. These middle schools feed to Einstein, Blair, and Northwood.

[Anonymous]

Forgetting or trying to make the point that CAP is more restricted yet both are open to Kennedy catchment without getting bogged down in such detail? Is it oversimplifying to assume upcounty doesn't read a DCC thread for these assurances???? Feel free to start some Poolesville-thumps-Wootton thread to draw off the trolls. You don't have to feel neglected.

You call it getting bogged down in such detail, I call it being factual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One way to better understand the quality of education of one school or another is to perform more granular apples to apple analysis. Simple averages for standardized state test that GS uses for its ratings only serves to identify which high-schools draw a higher percentage of affluent kids. A better approach is to look at the granular data. When you isolate for race which is proxy a for socioeconomic status there is not much of a disparity between the performance of kids of the same backgrounds across these schools. For example, when you compare average SAT scores for MCPS schools for a larger demographic common to all these schools the GS narrative falls apart and it becomes clear they're not all that different.

Blair 1326
Walter Johnson 1275
Wooton 1262
Churchill 1257
Wheaton 1173
Einstein 1148
Kennedy 1088

https://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/reports/2017/1771102HS%20Princ_SAT%20Partic_Perf%20Class%20of%202017.pdf

It might help to know how good or bad these mean SAT scores are so you can judge whether the differences in performance are big or small. These scores correspond to the following percentiles for the 2016 SAT exam (which is the one most students in the class of 2017 took per the report cited by the PP).

Blair 1326 (88th percentile)
Walter Johnson 1275 (82nd percentile)
Wooton 1262 (81st percentile)
Churchill 1257 (80th percentile)
Wheaton 1173 (67th percentile)
Einstein 1148 (62nd percentile)
Kennedy 1088 (50th percentile)

Regarding The PP who did the analysis of Blair SAT scores minus the magnet students. Very interesting analysis and as you point out makes Blair comparable to the W schools and far ahead of the other DCC schools.

But they didn't do the blair scores without just the magnet, they did the Blair score without the magnets or the Black and latino kids. But Blair is a mostly poor and minority school so I am not sure what that cherry picked sat tells us. They also left off the schools that did better on that stat so it just looks like Kool Aid to these eyes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

But they didn't do the blair scores without just the magnet, they did the Blair score without the magnets or the Black and latino kids. But Blair is a mostly poor and minority school so I am not sure what that cherry picked sat tells us. They also left off the schools that did better on that stat so it just looks like Kool Aid to these eyes.

The percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced meals is 36.3. Roughly one third. I have never encountered any circumstance where people described 1/3 as "mostly".

It is true that only about 1 in 5 students at Blair is white. But I'm not understanding what you're getting at, when you point this out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But they didn't do the blair scores without just the magnet, they did the Blair score without the magnets or the Black and latino kids. But Blair is a mostly poor and minority school so I am not sure what that cherry picked sat tells us. They also left off the schools that did better on that stat so it just looks like Kool Aid to these eyes.

The percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced meals is 36.3. Roughly one third. I have never encountered any circumstance where people described 1/3 as "mostly".

It is true that only about 1 in 5 students at Blair is white. But I'm not understanding what you're getting at, when you point this out.

+1 not the SAT poster. But saying that the school is mostly poor is BS. 1/3 is not a majority.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Forgetting or trying to make the point that CAP is more restricted yet both are open to Kennedy catchment without getting bogged down in such detail? Is it oversimplifying to assume upcounty doesn't read a DCC thread for these assurances???? Feel free to start some Poolesville-thumps-Wootton thread to draw off the trolls. You don't have to feel neglected.

You call it getting bogged down in such detail, I call it being factual.

Now, I'd call it anal to the point of disfunction. This is not a thread about the magnet--you might try interacting with the world with more nuance, or at least learn to butt out. But please, since you're here, tell me the one about how 32.7 under-qualified local students are admitted into the Takoma magnet yet there is no set aside at Eastern or whatever the up county equivalents are. And wait, does Blair do that? It's all so foggy....surely OP has bought that house and put her kids thru college by now, but let's keep this thread going.

[Anonymous]

But they didn't do the Blair scores without just the magnet, they did the Blair score without the magnets or the Black and latino kids. But Blair is a mostly poor and minority school so I am not sure what that cherry picked sat tells us. They also left off the schools that did better on that stat so it just looks like Kool Aid to these eyes.

It is also very misleading to cherry pick out the top 5% of Blair and compare it to much larger percentages for the other schools. Since the link didn't provide the raw scores and whether someone was in the magnet, the poster basically made up numbers to come up with her answer for Blair without the magnet. The SAT poster is basically full of BS.

The other issue regarding the AP tests for Kennedy is that Kennedy has no magnet program so it doesn't get the pass rates for magnet kids. Kennedy also does a good job in encouraging kids who might not pass the exam but have potential and solid grades to take an AP course which isn't a bad thing. If MCPS required more exams in earlier years the more disadvantaged kids would have more experience with this type of test so I do think if MCPS ever gets it act together that those pass rates could be pulled up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One way to better understand the quality of education of one school or another is to perform more granular apples to apple analysis. Simple averages for standardized state test that GS uses for its ratings only serves to identify which high-schools draw a higher percentage of affluent kids. A better approach is to look at the granular data. When you isolate for race which is proxy a for socioeconomic status there is not much of a disparity between the performance of kids of the same backgrounds across these schools. For example, when you compare average SAT scores for MCPS schools for a larger demographic common to all these schools the GS narrative falls apart and it becomes clear they're not all that different.

Blair 1326
Walter Johnson 1275
Wooton 1262
Churchill 1257
Wheaton 1173
Einstein 1148
Kennedy 1088

https://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/reports/2017/1771102HS%20Princ_SAT%20Partic_Perf%20Class%20of%202017.pdf

Interesting - by looking at the largest cohort common to these schools you're able to reduce socioeconomic differences and get a clearer grasp of how these schools stack up. I'd often thought this was true.

[Anonymous]

Interesting - by looking at the largest cohort common to these schools you're able to reduce socioeconomic differences and get a clearer grasp of how these schools stack up. I'd often thought this was true.[code]

What on earth are you talking about or are you just intent on being a fool? How are 110 students the largest common cohort at Blair?

[Anonymous]

The real SAT numbers for the top 10 schools. Since QO, NW and WM are so close I included all 3.

Poolesville 1337
Whitman 1310
BCC 1258
Chruchill 1276
Wootton 1240
WJ 1233
RM 1219
Blair 1174
QO 1163
Watkins Mill 1154 / Northwest 1153

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The real SAT numbers for the top 10 schools. Since QO, NW and WM are so close I included all 3.

Poolesville 1337
Whitman 1310
BCC 1258
Chruchill 1276
Wootton 1240
WJ 1233
RM 1219
Blair 1174
QO 1163
Watkins Mill 1154 / Northwest 1153

?

What makes these "the real numbers"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The real SAT numbers for the top 10 schools. Since QO, NW and WM are so close I included all 3.

Poolesville 1337
Whitman 1310
BCC 1258
Chruchill 1276
Wootton 1240
WJ 1233
RM 1219
Blair 1174
QO 1163
Watkins Mill 1154 / Northwest 1153

Where did you get those scores? Is that for 2018?
I believe that Blair 2018 score is 1308 for the whole school. The magnet is 1536.