I know it's more fun to just argue about this stuff without any verifiable factual constraints, but if anyone is interested in actually reading about how this all works, I'd recommend this guy: http://faculty.education.uiowa.edu/dlohman/ .

I think Lohman would agree that the tests are less accurate at very young ages, maybe correctly predicting only about 25% of those that will continue to test as "gifted" 10-15 years later (which is actually a pretty impressive prediction if you think about it). But I think he'd say that by the time kids reach 3rd or 4th grade, he can make some fairly good predictions about their future giftedness designations.

I don't know (or care) who the most well-known firm in DC for IQ testing is, so I'm not really qualified to judge whether someone like Lohman speaks with more experience in the area. I'll let others address that.

Carry on.

Anonymous wrote:... The Post cited a "2002 SAT cheating episode in which eight members of the lacrosse team were suspended while two non-athletes were forced to leave the school." This couldn't be more far from the truth, 4 members of the lacrosse team were involved with the scandal ....

All the press I've seen consistently says eight were involved, not four.
http://fwd4.me/VGZ ("... said the eight students admitted to cheating on the SAT exam")
http://fwd4.me/VGa ("One week later, the eight male students came forward and admitted cheating.")
http://fwd4.me/VGc ("8 Students Suspended For SAT Cheating")
http://fwd4.me/VGd ("In mid-November, eight boys ... came forward and confessed, the suit says.")

Anonymous wrote:@8:51 I wonder how accurate that is? it would be interesting to know, from a statistical perspective, how skewed the average is vs. the regular population.

Not that it's important, just interesting.

I've also been thinking about that same question for a while now with only moderate success. I did some analysis a while back with the Department of Education data on standardized tests, and posted it somewhere on DCUM. I think the result was that the top 10% scoring DC/MD/VA students had average scores that were somewhere in the top half of the states, but certainly not anything particularly impressive. I think I also once found some nice reports on the College Board SAT website that compared the SAT scores for different states, and perhaps even the 25th and 75th percentile scores. I seem to recall that report also suggested that DC/MD/VA students are somewhere in the middle of the pack. I did not save a copy, but I'm sure the data is still out there somewhere. My vague recollection is that Massachusetts really did well in both of those studies.

I think it's all very hard to analyze because the data is mostly statewide, and that lumps together poorly performing students with really strong students. That's why I looked at the DOE data on just the top-10% scoring students, so I could cull out data from others.

If others want to investigate further, I'm happy to supply you with what research I found previously.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Although I understand the benefits of anonymous posting, much of the silly input not to mention sock puppeting could be done away with if folks had to login with at least a stable pseudonym.

Doing that would grind activity and participation to a halt. Sure, it might scare off some of the trolls, but it would also deter a lot of legit posters from contributing.

I disagree. Most other message boards require logins, and many with logins have very healthy participation. In fact, I think DCUM might be the only message board I know of that does not require logins.

Many thanks to the PPs for the info on entry dates. I've incorporated various entry year numbers. I looked at the NCES data on class sizes, and was able to use it for some schools. But for others, the numbers jump around so much that I was uncomfortable relying too heavily. Maybe the jumps were the result of under enrollment. I can't really tell for sure. If others who actually have kids at those schools can look at the numbers and say whether they're generally accurate, it would help a lot. Thanks for the info. Have a nice summer.

Washington Post article on reasons for Georgetown Prep's removal from IAC football: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62133-2004Dec13.html

Anonymous wrote:

SAM2 wrote:How do both teams get "banners" in 2005, 2009, and 2010? Is lacrosse one of those everyone-gets-a-trophy sports?

The way the IAC sets up, there is a regular season winner and the IAC tournament winner. If you win the tournament, but don't win the regular season, you share the IAC title with the regular season winner (or vice versa).

Thanks for the info. I had no idea. Is Wikipedia right that there are only six teams in the IAC competing for those banners?

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I know there are parents in DC who send their kids to more than one of the schools I mentioned. Perhaps none of them are reading this message! ... Is the early grades curriculum more substantive at Beauvoir or Maret or Sidwell?

OP, of course there are parents here with kids at each of those schools, and of course people have opinions about those different schools and their curricula. But your original question is really just asking for blatant comparison on a very subjective and amorphous basis. First, as someone already pointed out, it's really hard for anyone to make credible comparisons unless she's actually had a child in K-2nd in more than one of these schools. (And if someone has been at more than one of these schools in K-2nd, that's a pretty significant switch, and there's a good chance there's more to that story, which might skew the answer you get from that person.) Second, I can pretty much guarantee that if someone tries to answer your question and "rates" the curriculum at each of those schools, the whole thread will quickly fall into a big free-for-all, because other parent will feel compelled to defend their schools against criticism. If you're looking for useful info, you won't find it this way.

I'd recommend:
(1) Go to each school's website and read it's curriculum for K-2nd. I recall that most are pretty extensive.
(2) Search the DCUM archives. I know there have been other discussions of curriculum at these schools, and also discussions of how rigorous a curriculum can/should be for younger grades.
(3) Start over by asking specific and pointed questions about each individual school and it's curriculum. For example, something like this -- "GDS parents, I notice the K-2nd math curriculum posted here ____ [INSERT LINK] is very strong on teaching fractions early. Do your children effectively absorb the lessons that early?" Or else "Beauvoir parents, I notice the Beauvoir curriculum is very extensive and detailed. Do you find it to be a rigorous program academically, or is that detail just meant as a map? Are you happy with how rigorous Beauvoir's program is at these younger grades?"

I know it's a lot more work to do all this than just to ask for a simple comparison, but the responses you'll get will be lots more useful. And of course you're free to ignore my advice and proceed however you want -- free to be you and me, and all that. Good luck.

Anonymous wrote:omg. can we start a post on hating dan snyder. that would be awesome and endless.

I'm all for that. Dan Snyder's so dumb he thinks a quarterback is a refund. And while we're at it, can we hate on Albert Haynesworth too? I can't decide which of those two frustrates me more.

How do both teams get "banners" in 2005, 2009, and 2010? Is lacrosse one of those everyone-gets-a-trophy sports?

I agree -- get some. It may feel like a waste of money if nothing happens, but you should be so lucky.

And you can get lots of umbrella coverage for pretty low cost. According to these articles, $200/yr for $1-2m in umbrella coverage, and about $600/yr for $5m, which is far cheaper than the measly $20-30k auto insurance policy you have:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/business/businessspecial3/18insure.html
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/insurance/insureyourhome/p35349.asp

Anonymous wrote:I'd love to see a table of entry years (PS all the way through HS) and available slots, at least for the 20-30 schools that get the most play on these boards.

That's a good idea. I started a tracking list here: http://fwd4.me/Jes ("Entry Grades" tab). I'll fill it in as I come across data. Once I have some data, I'll put it into the main body of the FAQ somewhere.

In the meantime, it would be a big help if others who are more familiar with particular schools' entry years/numbers can post links to those years. I don't know where to find that stuff without digging through each school's website. Thanks for the good idea.

Anonymous wrote:Too many people seem to assume boys are somehow retarded in their development and are "defective girls". Certainly, they're not all that bad are they? I realize many grow up to be man-child husbands...but really now?

I'm not totally sure if your question if serious or facetious. I think the answer is that boys just develop at a different pace than girls. Indeed, although boys develop more slowly in the early years, they seem to exceed girls' abilities (slightly) in the later years in spatial reasoning and related fields (like math). There's a great discussion of this in "Pink Brain, Blue Brain" by Lise Eliot.

Since boys are developing more slowly in early years, this seems to lead many schools to holding boys back in early grades, so that their skills are more closely matched to the girls. If people rebel against redshirting boys, then I guess two further/different solutions could be (1) to promote girls ahead in early grades, instead of holding boys back, or (2) to hold boys back in early years, and then promote them forward in later years. The second doesn't seem feasible, but the first might make sense.

oops, accidentally posted & cannot figure out how to delete post -- apologies

There's a website called "WikiMaps" or "WikiMapia" or something like that, and it's a pretty good tool for identifying buildings like that.