Walls- Is it really as great as people say
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Anonymous
Those are matriculations, not admits. |
Anonymous
Not true any more. |
Anonymous
Are you kidding me?! Walls has 51% White students. That’s more than half! |
Anonymous
It's the typical scapegoat argument. If I can't get a job, it's because an immigrant took my spot. If my kid can't get into Walls, it's because a minority took my kid's spot. Think critically about this. Could there be ANY other reason? 
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Anonymous
It's not true anymore because the bar is higher for all students. They didn't need a 4.0 to qualify in the past. Now they do. |
Anonymous
Last GPA cut-off was 3.86. |
Anonymous
Serious question, is getting a 3.8 in a DCPS middle school really that difficult? You can retake ever test and hand in assignments late. |
Anonymous
Basically depends on your maturity level and, barring that, the amount of helicoptering your parents are willing to do. |
Anonymous
Which is why this serves as a bar to disruptive students - they aren't going to care/take the time to do this. So the 3.86 GPA cut off serves well as a screening tool! |
Anonymous
No, it's not at all. It basically screens in the motivated and ones attentive parents and screens out those with actual learning disabilities. My current 8th grader basically never did homework last year at Deal. We'd check ASPEN and see a dozen "WS" grades and grades ranging from C to F. He'd meet with the teachers and then spend a week turning in all the work and retaking a few tests. We did this 4 times. He ended up with straight As every quarter and a 4.0 Cleary this wasn't working so we actually moved him to rigorous private for 8th grade and now he does every assignment nightly as they don't accept any late work ever. (He got in because he has a sibling that attends and the school only requires 6th grade grades (also a 4.0) and the first quarter of 7th (which my kid had raised to all As before we submitted to the private) for application to 8th grade. We're going to apply this kid to Walls. Not sure yet what we'll do if he gets in. |
Anonymous
It’s also pretty effective at screening out boys. |
Anonymous
Motivation is the key as well as parent support! That's true for all the top schools. SWW isn't gone to hand hold. It's very much a sink or swim environment. Sounds like your kid was just gaming the system and knew what he could get away with. |
Anonymous
True enough. Over 30% of Walls 9th graders are below grade level in math. To get accepted to Walls, these kids presumably received straight As in 7th grade math even though they were/are below grade level. So, yes, Walls' vaunted GPA cut-off means that almost a third of the kids admitted to the school are not even meeting DCPS' minimal expectations for proficiency. |
Anonymous
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I have a sophomore at Walls (so admitted after the test was scrapped). She said that when she started at Walls, it felt like about 10% of the kids weren't a great fit, in her opinion. They had trouble keeping up with the workload and some openly said they only attended because their parents made them. A few of them have since left.
I realize there are plenty of very qualified kids who would have loved to go to Walls but they didn't get the chance. But that doesn't mean that the vast majority of kids there aren't still very capable and engaged. |
Anonymous
Where are you getting this 30% metric from and do you have a kid at the school? |