Five Ivy League colleges vie for DC student (Banneker HS)

[Anonymous]

I think this is one of those issues that we won't agree about. Personally, the fact that they single out one, poor student in DC that accomplished what he should have as a motivated and intelligent student. Why not highlight many DC student accomplishments? I believe the way it's being portrayed suggests that he shouldn't have been able to achieve what he did because of his color, single Mom, etc. As though people expect him & his peers to fail but he succeeded! It seems patronizing and thinly-veiled racism.

[Anonymous]

Good God, all of the tit-for-tat on white versus black. Why don't we call a spade a spade here: I was excited to read this article because it's rare to find a young, black male, growing up in a poor, crime-ridden area and attending a sub-par school where the dropout and graduation rates are well beyond acceptable, succeed against those odds and be accepted to not one but five Ivy League schools. Good for him for persevering. He's a good-news story for Banneker, for the colleges who have accepted him, and, most importantly, for himself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this is one of those issues that we won't agree about. Personally, the fact that they single out one, poor student in DC that accomplished what he should have as a motivated and intelligent student. Why not highlight many DC student accomplishments? I believe the way it's being portrayed suggests that he shouldn't have been able to achieve what he did because of his color, single Mom, etc. As though people expect him & his peers to fail but he succeeded! It seems patronizing and thinly-veiled racism.

Ok, please pay attention: Many people DO believe that Avery should not have been able to achieve what he did because of his color, single-parent family, etc. Many people DO expect kids like him to fail. This viewpoint is indeed patronizing and it's BLATANT racism. Exhibit A: The comment up-thread that suggests that Avery took the seat of 5 more-deserving white kids. That statement alone is racism in it's purest form.

Why not highlight "many" DC students' accomplishments? How many poor kids (Ward 8 resident) from single-parent homes do you know who were admitted to 5 Ivy League schools this year? With high board scores and a 4.3 GPA (with an IB diploma to boot)? From a high poverty, Title I school (61% FARMs)? If it's more that 0, please contact the media immediately because I'm sure they'll be happy to do a story on those legions of students as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good God, all of the tit-for-tat on white versus black. Why don't we call a spade a spade here: I was excited to read this article because it's rare to find a young, black male, growing up in a poor, crime-ridden area and attending a sub-par school where the dropout and graduation rates are well beyond acceptable, succeed against those odds and be accepted to not one but five Ivy League schools. Good for him for persevering. He's a good-news story for Banneker, for the colleges who have accepted him, and, most importantly, for himself.

+1000 except the sub-par school, maybe generally sub-par school system. What more is there to say, really some people on DCUM love misery and are plain racist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good God, all of the tit-for-tat on white versus black. Why don't we call a spade a spade here: I was excited to read this article because it's rare to find a young, black male, growing up in a poor, crime-ridden area and attending a sub-par school where the dropout and graduation rates are well beyond acceptable, succeed against those odds and be accepted to not one but five Ivy League schools. Good for him for persevering. He's a good-news story for Banneker, for the colleges who have accepted him, and, most importantly, for himself.

+1000 except the sub-par school, maybe generally sub-par school system. What more is there to say, really some people on DCUM love misery and are plain racist.

Banneker is our "stem" school, but the avg SAT score is below the national avg. It is also admission only, and 99% AA. So..... not really possible for kids of any other race to go there, does not look like from the SATs that the kids are all that smart/educated, and it is ranked in US News & World report very very low - type it in, see what you get. The one thing that seems good about this story is that the kid appears like he will be able to hack it in the Ivies although they did not mention what his actual standardized test scores were, but obviously the IB program there cannot possibly be that rigorous or the school would be ranked higher, the SATs would be higher, and the exmissions in general would be better. So I hope he actually can hack it - spelling bees are ultimately about memorizing the spelling of numerous arcane antediluvian words that are no longer in our lexicon, not about intelligence. While people can argue whether SATs measure intelligence, Banneker and SWW's DC CAS scores are fantastic but their ratings nationally suck so we know DC CAS is irrelevant. I just hope he can rapidly compensate for his poor education. I had a lot of friends come in to Princeton having been admitted as Engineers only to realize that they were so far behind they could never catch up, or that they really did not have natural talent they just thought so because they were in a crappy school and they were the best there...............

The most important thing I ever did as a Princeton students was be part of a sit in where we demanded a 9th semester of financial aid - so many of these kids come unprepared without realizing it, get paralyzed and fail out, and at the time if they dropped out to avoid having the grades on their transcript or flunked a lot of classes there was no way for them to come back financially. We changed that.

But I hope the summer program they offer now to high risk kids (kids from bad high schools, mostly minority, and athletes who got recruited for athletics not academics) is better on education. It certainly gave people a community to commiserate with, but not that many solutions at the time for what really turned out to be shitty educations - not knowing how to write 5 paragraph essays, analyze text, do research, cite sources, much less go from their precalculus classes to calculus at Princeton.

That being said, I hear the AP exams are a lot harder now - don't know if it is true - but if it was it would give the schools and the kids another way to evaluate whether or not they were prepared for an Ivy League school. A lot would have benefited from a post senior year at a good school but it wasn't as if they could pay for it. Many rich kids did it to get IN to good colleges after having messed up in high school, but I never heard of any of my friends doing anything - even going to community college might not have been such a bad idea...........

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I feel sorry for the five equally qualified white kids who got rejected so this sob story could play out.

This kid cannot go to 5 schools, so he will pick one. And so, 4 kids will be picked up from the waitlists and be offered admissions to 4 colleges. The 4 kids who will get these seats may very well be from other races - not just white. So, you are assuming too much.

Now, these 5 white kids that you personally know and who you think need to get into an Ivy League college, have not walked in this child's shoes. Even if they have the exact same academic stats, they probably did not have to overcome the extremely uneven playing field that this kid had to - race, SES, school, opportunities, and a single paycheck (and parent).

That's what makes what he has achieved incredible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I saw this thread had continued on for several pages, I thought we had gotten back to the ongoing debate as to whether Banneker was suitable for the children of the well-off DCUMers. Surprised at first to see that the focus was on whether this young man deserved his 5 acceptances and the ensuing publicity. But I guess I shouldn't be.

At any rate, I know that Banneker won't suit every child, but isn't it at least conceivable now that it's worth investigating more closely for your own kids instead if rejecting it out of hand?

I think you need to go back to reading comprehension 101. People were discussing the media attention, not the accomplishment. I'll give you the bi-line: white people are shocked that an accomplished African American gets into Ivy colleges.

Ooooh, darling pp, maybe you had better work on your reading comprehension.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good God, all of the tit-for-tat on white versus black. Why don't we call a spade a spade here: I was excited to read this article because it's rare to find a young, black male, growing up in a poor, crime-ridden area and attending a sub-par school where the dropout and graduation rates are well beyond acceptable, succeed against those odds and be accepted to not one but five Ivy League schools. Good for him for persevering. He's a good-news story for Banneker, for the colleges who have accepted him, and, most importantly, for himself.

+1000 except the sub-par school, maybe generally sub-par school system. What more is there to say, really some people on DCUM love misery and are plain racist.

Banneker is our "stem" school, but the avg SAT score is below the national avg. It is also admission only, and 99% AA. So..... not really possible for kids of any other race to go there, does not look like from the SATs that the kids are all that smart/educated, and it is ranked in US News & World report very very low - type it in, see what you get. The one thing that seems good about this story is that the kid appears like he will be able to hack it in the Ivies although they did not mention what his actual standardized test scores were, but obviously the IB program there cannot possibly be that rigorous or the school would be ranked higher, the SATs would be higher, and the exmissions in general would be better. So I hope he actually can hack it - spelling bees are ultimately about memorizing the spelling of numerous arcane antediluvian words that are no longer in our lexicon, not about intelligence. While people can argue whether SATs measure intelligence, Banneker and SWW's DC CAS scores are fantastic but their ratings nationally suck so we know DC CAS is irrelevant. I just hope he can rapidly compensate for his poor education. I had a lot of friends come in to Princeton having been admitted as Engineers only to realize that they were so far behind they could never catch up, or that they really did not have natural talent they just thought so because they were in a crappy school and they were the best there...............

The most important thing I ever did as a Princeton students was be part of a sit in where we demanded a 9th semester of financial aid - so many of these kids come unprepared without realizing it, get paralyzed and fail out, and at the time if they dropped out to avoid having the grades on their transcript or flunked a lot of classes there was no way for them to come back financially. We changed that.

But I hope the summer program they offer now to high risk kids (kids from bad high schools, mostly minority, and athletes who got recruited for athletics not academics) is better on education. It certainly gave people a community to commiserate with, but not that many solutions at the time for what really turned out to be shitty educations - not knowing how to write 5 paragraph essays, analyze text, do research, cite sources, much less go from their precalculus classes to calculus at Princeton.

That being said, I hear the AP exams are a lot harder now - don't know if it is true - but if it was it would give the schools and the kids another way to evaluate whether or not they were prepared for an Ivy League school. A lot would have benefited from a post senior year at a good school but it wasn't as if they could pay for it. Many rich kids did it to get IN to good colleges after having messed up in high school, but I never heard of any of my friends doing anything - even going to community college might not have been such a bad idea...........

This kid did IB courses. And the IB exams are graded outside this country - in Europe. SO, it does not matter which school they go to in the US, their papers are being graded by impartial graders outside this country. That is precisely the reason, IB kids have to work so hard because they are not adhering to the standards of the education system here. And AP is easy compared to IB.

He will not be needing remedial courses in any Ivy League college he chooses - and that's why they are offering him scholarships. He is more than capable and the college will not have to waste time, energy, money to get him up to par.

IF he was a rising sports star and got admissions in the Ivy colleges based on his skills in the sports arena, it would have been more palatable to the haters. To think he made it because of his academic merit is killing these jealous cats!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good God, all of the tit-for-tat on white versus black. Why don't we call a spade a spade here: I was excited to read this article because it's rare to find a young, black male, growing up in a poor, crime-ridden area and attending a sub-par school where the dropout and graduation rates are well beyond acceptable, succeed against those odds and be accepted to not one but five Ivy League schools. Good for him for persevering. He's a good-news story for Banneker, for the colleges who have accepted him, and, most importantly, for himself.

+1000 except the sub-par school, maybe generally sub-par school system. What more is there to say, really some people on DCUM love misery and are plain racist.

Banneker is our "stem" school, but the avg SAT score is below the national avg. It is also admission only, and 99% AA. So..... not really possible for kids of any other race to go there, does not look like from the SATs that the kids are all that smart/educated, and it is ranked in US News & World report very very low - type it in, see what you get. The one thing that seems good about this story is that the kid appears like he will be able to hack it in the Ivies although they did not mention what his actual standardized test scores were, but obviously the IB program there cannot possibly be that rigorous or the school would be ranked higher, the SATs would be higher, and the exmissions in general would be better. So I hope he actually can hack it - spelling bees are ultimately about memorizing the spelling of numerous arcane antediluvian words that are no longer in our lexicon, not about intelligence. While people can argue whether SATs measure intelligence, Banneker and SWW's DC CAS scores are fantastic but their ratings nationally suck so we know DC CAS is irrelevant. I just hope he can rapidly compensate for his poor education. I had a lot of friends come in to Princeton having been admitted as Engineers only to realize that they were so far behind they could never catch up, or that they really did not have natural talent they just thought so because they were in a crappy school and they were the best there...............

The most important thing I ever did as a Princeton students was be part of a sit in where we demanded a 9th semester of financial aid - so many of these kids come unprepared without realizing it, get paralyzed and fail out, and at the time if they dropped out to avoid having the grades on their transcript or flunked a lot of classes there was no way for them to come back financially. We changed that.

But I hope the summer program they offer now to high risk kids (kids from bad high schools, mostly minority, and athletes who got recruited for athletics not academics) is better on education. It certainly gave people a community to commiserate with, but not that many solutions at the time for what really turned out to be shitty educations - not knowing how to write 5 paragraph essays, analyze text, do research, cite sources, much less go from their precalculus classes to calculus at Princeton.

That being said, I hear the AP exams are a lot harder now - don't know if it is true - but if it was it would give the schools and the kids another way to evaluate whether or not they were prepared for an Ivy League school. A lot would have benefited from a post senior year at a good school but it wasn't as if they could pay for it. Many rich kids did it to get IN to good colleges after having messed up in high school, but I never heard of any of my friends doing anything - even going to community college might not have been such a bad idea...........

This kid did IB courses. And the IB exams are graded outside this country - in Europe. SO, it does not matter which school they go to in the US, their papers are being graded by impartial graders outside this country. That is precisely the reason, IB kids have to work so hard because they are not adhering to the standards of the education system here. And AP is easy compared to IB.

He will not be needing remedial courses in any Ivy League college he chooses - and that's why they are offering him scholarships. He is more than capable and the college will not have to waste time, energy, money to get him up to par.

IF he was a rising sports star and got admissions in the Ivy colleges based on his skills in the sports arena, it would have been more palatable to the haters. To think he made it because of his academic merit is killing these jealous cats!

Ivies don't offer merit scholarships. His are purely needs-based.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good God, all of the tit-for-tat on white versus black. Why don't we call a spade a spade here: I was excited to read this article because it's rare to find a young, black male, growing up in a poor, crime-ridden area and attending a sub-par school where the dropout and graduation rates are well beyond acceptable, succeed against those odds and be accepted to not one but five Ivy League schools. Good for him for persevering. He's a good-news story for Banneker, for the colleges who have accepted him, and, most importantly, for himself.

+1000 except the sub-par school, maybe generally sub-par school system. What more is there to say, really some people on DCUM love misery and are plain racist.

Banneker is our "stem" school, but the avg SAT score is below the national avg. It is also admission only, and 99% AA. So..... not really possible for kids of any other race to go there, does not look like from the SATs that the kids are all that smart/educated, and it is ranked in US News & World report very very low - type it in, see what you get. The one thing that seems good about this story is that the kid appears like he will be able to hack it in the Ivies although they did not mention what his actual standardized test scores were, but obviously the IB program there cannot possibly be that rigorous or the school would be ranked higher, the SATs would be higher, and the exmissions in general would be better. So I hope he actually can hack it - spelling bees are ultimately about memorizing the spelling of numerous arcane antediluvian words that are no longer in our lexicon, not about intelligence. While people can argue whether SATs measure intelligence, Banneker and SWW's DC CAS scores are fantastic but their ratings nationally suck so we know DC CAS is irrelevant. I just hope he can rapidly compensate for his poor education. I had a lot of friends come in to Princeton having been admitted as Engineers only to realize that they were so far behind they could never catch up, or that they really did not have natural talent they just thought so because they were in a crappy school and they were the best there...............

The most important thing I ever did as a Princeton students was be part of a sit in where we demanded a 9th semester of financial aid - so many of these kids come unprepared without realizing it, get paralyzed and fail out, and at the time if they dropped out to avoid having the grades on their transcript or flunked a lot of classes there was no way for them to come back financially. We changed that.

But I hope the summer program they offer now to high risk kids (kids from bad high schools, mostly minority, and athletes who got recruited for athletics not academics) is better on education. It certainly gave people a community to commiserate with, but not that many solutions at the time for what really turned out to be shitty educations - not knowing how to write 5 paragraph essays, analyze text, do research, cite sources, much less go from their precalculus classes to calculus at Princeton.

That being said, I hear the AP exams are a lot harder now - don't know if it is true - but if it was it would give the schools and the kids another way to evaluate whether or not they were prepared for an Ivy League school. A lot would have benefited from a post senior year at a good school but it wasn't as if they could pay for it. Many rich kids did it to get IN to good colleges after having messed up in high school, but I never heard of any of my friends doing anything - even going to community college might not have been such a bad idea...........

This kid did IB courses. And the IB exams are graded outside this country - in Europe. SO, it does not matter which school they go to in the US, their papers are being graded by impartial graders outside this country. That is precisely the reason, IB kids have to work so hard because they are not adhering to the standards of the education system here. And AP is easy compared to IB.

He will not be needing remedial courses in any Ivy League college he chooses - and that's why they are offering him scholarships. He is more than capable and the college will not have to waste time, energy, money to get him up to par.

IF he was a rising sports star and got admissions in the Ivy colleges based on his skills in the sports arena, it would have been more palatable to the haters. To think he made it because of his academic merit is killing these jealous cats!

Ivies don't offer merit scholarships. His are purely needs-based.

He was offered admission because of his academic merit, and he was offered scholarships because of need. People are jealous because they are used to seeing many AA students celebrated and getting into colleges because of their sports skills, and being offered need-based scholarships.

[Anonymous]

I thought Banneker was the DCPS Magnet/IB school while McKinley Tech was the STEM school.

[Anonymous]

While people can argue whether SATs measure intelligence, Banneker and SWW's DC CAS scores are fantastic but their ratings nationally suck so we know DC CAS is irrelevant.

Hmmm. Interesting. I didn't know that. And I'm not being facetious. They're just one datapoint in assessing school quality in our family, but reading in this forum leads one to believe that the CAS scores are everything to most DC parents.

Are you saying they're irrelevant in assessing a school's ability to prep kids for college, or something else?

I'm more interested in opinions about testing than the scores. I think scores don't tell us enough and the obsession with them is more detrimental than anything else. In NYC, families across every demographic are protesting the testing: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/nyregion/standing-up-to-testing.html?ref=nyregion

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I saw this thread had continued on for several pages, I thought we had gotten back to the ongoing debate as to whether Banneker was suitable for the children of the well-off DCUMers. Surprised at first to see that the focus was on whether this young man deserved his 5 acceptances and the ensuing publicity. But I guess I shouldn't be.

At any rate, I know that Banneker won't suit every child, but isn't it at least conceivable now that it's worth investigating more closely for your own kids instead if rejecting it out of hand?

No, Banneker is not worth investigating and DC CAS scores mean nothing - or if they mean something, the only thing that matters is how many kids score advanced, and whether that is surprising given their SES. One of the reasons this story got SO much publicity is because he comes from Banneker, and while it is ranked 2nd in DC by US News & World Report (after SWW, in the 200s, 77% AA but only 18% FARMS), it is ranked 461 nationally and that it is ranked so high kind of scares me. Actually really makes me question the rankings completely except maybe the top 100 or so...........

Here are the stats from US NEWS on Banneker, which we know has SAT scores lower than the NATIONAL AVERAGE in the entire country, of all kids who take the SAT, although it is one of the few admission only schools in DC, which again means the DC CAS means nada....
But the stats do explain why this was such an incredible feat for this kid to get into these colleges, AND the IB diploma does prove that he, unlike most students at Banneker, is ready for college - even a top college.

College readiness: less than 50%
rank: 461 (explain THAT to me please?)
percent minority: 100%
interesting stat: 70% female, 30% male
classified as magnet not STEM
Title I school (although I thought that meant at least 40% FARMS and they also say SWW is Title I - not true)
DC CAS (only math available) 69% proficient, 39% advanced - why is this meaningless? maybe the advanced part is not, especially given the high FARMS population, but usually it is only meaningful as a floor below which a parent will not go, not anything to brag about. OTOH, Janney had 50% advanced math & English last year

DC has the lowest avg NAEP scores in the entire country compared both to every state and every urban district they chose to measure, although white students in DC have the highest scores in the country, avg black score 50 pts lower, avg Latino score slightly less, gap between FARMS and whites has DOUBLED in ten years while the other gaps have remained the same.............

AP exams (also why DC CAS worthless probably and why college readiness is so bad)
82% took one or more AP exam,
36% passed rate, of those who took more (the 36%?) avg pass was 1.9 APs

Why this kid is qualified to do well in Ivy League and how he proved it was obtaining an IB diploma
17% of students participated in IB program (took at least one IB exam)
100% passed at least one (clearly a self selecting group)
60% pass rate
average person took 8 IB exams
53.3% of participants got IB diploma, which was 8.9% of the student population

that plus GPA plus presumably stellar AP exam grades plus spelling bee and who knows what else makes him the exception at Banneker, and in DCPS/DCPCS. He may or may not qualify for FARMS, but HYP only offer need based scholarships - GW may offer merit.

I think the fact that he is the child of a single mother might have played a role, more so because he is a boy, he clearly typifies the DC profile - AA and poor, in a "magnet" school that is not great, but he found a way out and is clearly qualified to attend any college or university in the country, and those things make this news because it is not the norm in DC - our white kids from Wilson may make it to the Ivy League, but that is not news.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Good God, all of the tit-for-tat on white versus black. Why don't we call a spade a spade here: I was excited to read this article because it's rare to find a young, black male, growing up in a poor, crime-ridden area and attending a sub-par school where the dropout and graduation rates are well beyond acceptable, succeed against those odds and be accepted to not one but five Ivy League schools. Good for him for persevering. He's a good-news story for Banneker, for the colleges who have accepted him, and, most importantly, for himself.

+1000 except the sub-par school, maybe generally sub-par school system. What more is there to say, really some people on DCUM love misery and are plain racist.

Banneker is our "stem" school, but the avg SAT score is below the national avg. It is also admission only, and 99% AA. So..... not really possible for kids of any other race to go there, does not look like from the SATs that the kids are all that smart/educated, and it is ranked in US News & World report very very low - type it in, see what you get. The one thing that seems good about this story is that the kid appears like he will be able to hack it in the Ivies although they did not mention what his actual standardized test scores were, but obviously the IB program there cannot possibly be that rigorous or the school would be ranked higher, the SATs would be higher, and the exmissions in general would be better. So I hope he actually can hack it - spelling bees are ultimately about memorizing the spelling of numerous arcane antediluvian words that are no longer in our lexicon, not about intelligence. While people can argue whether SATs measure intelligence, Banneker and SWW's DC CAS scores are fantastic but their ratings nationally suck so we know DC CAS is irrelevant. I just hope he can rapidly compensate for his poor education. I had a lot of friends come in to Princeton having been admitted as Engineers only to realize that they were so far behind they could never catch up, or that they really did not have natural talent they just thought so because they were in a crappy school and they were the best there...............

The most important thing I ever did as a Princeton students was be part of a sit in where we demanded a 9th semester of financial aid - so many of these kids come unprepared without realizing it, get paralyzed and fail out, and at the time if they dropped out to avoid having the grades on their transcript or flunked a lot of classes there was no way for them to come back financially. We changed that.

But I hope the summer program they offer now to high risk kids (kids from bad high schools, mostly minority, and athletes who got recruited for athletics not academics) is better on education. It certainly gave people a community to commiserate with, but not that many solutions at the time for what really turned out to be shitty educations - not knowing how to write 5 paragraph essays, analyze text, do research, cite sources, much less go from their precalculus classes to calculus at Princeton.

That being said, I hear the AP exams are a lot harder now - don't know if it is true - but if it was it would give the schools and the kids another way to evaluate whether or not they were prepared for an Ivy League school. A lot would have benefited from a post senior year at a good school but it wasn't as if they could pay for it. Many rich kids did it to get IN to good colleges after having messed up in high school, but I never heard of any of my friends doing anything - even going to community college might not have been such a bad idea...........

That's incorrect. Banneker is 87% AA.

[Anonymous]

So sad that this celebratory post turned into this sick nonsense (not all posts, but really people). Hope he doesn't read this DCUM shows its true colors.