Reply to DCPS National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists 2017

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DCPS is really competing on an uneven playing field here. I'm not sure there is much that DC public schools can do to change these numbers in a system that is rigged against them.

Students are scored where they go to school, not where they live. So every student at the top private schools here is competing in DC. DC has the highest cutoff score to qualify as a NM scholar in the nation.

As a population, these kids in private school make up a substantial number of high-achieving high school juniors in the District. If there was a northern Virginia cut-off score, or a Manhattan one, or a Boston one, the distribution of those areas might be different. But DC public school students are competing directly with a[b] whole lot of elite private school students [/b]in a system where the number of available "slots" is small because DC is a dense, small urban place.[/quote]

OP.  True to some extent, but I'm hearing excuses in the mix.  DCPS has complained to the College Board along these lines since the NMSS was established. Your arguments whitewash impediments to student achievement at the high end in both DCPS and DCPC. The fact is that our parallel school systems DCPS reject formal GT programming for ES and MS in a city that hasn't bothered to pass a law on GT education. MD and VA passed such laws in the 80s.

The reality is that about the only above grade-level classes in the system before 10th grade teach math, and science at BASIS. Now we've got "honors for all" in 9th grade at Wilson, which isn't helpful. Moreover, the percentage of white students at Walls has been kept roughly constant for more than 20 years, even as the number of white applicants has more than doubled in that timeframe. Applications to Boston Latin, TJ and the NYC magnets don't include an interview, which can be used to identify minority applicants; Walls requires an interview.

If we had GT, we'd almost certainly have more NMSS. Not boatloads more, but more. Those "elite DC private school students" often WERE DCPS students at the ES level. They went to JKLM schools, Oyster, Brent etc. DCPS still loses most of the strongest ES students along the way because our school system doesn't meet their needs well after elementary school.  [b]I'm not a BASIS booster, but I'd wager than within five years, that program will be producing more NMSS than the other DC public schools combined.  [/b]
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Really? Despite the massive homework load at Basis and its emphasis on testing, their percentage of students who tested at level 5 in English this year (PARCC) was 11.9%*, much lower than at Deal (29.3%), Latin (24.5%), and DC International charter (17.2%), and not much better than Hardy (10.7%), a school that still loses a lot of students to Basis. In math, Basis did have the most score at level 5, but counting levels 4+5, Deal and Latin both came within a few percentage points of Basis (Basis 59%, Deal 55%, Latin 53%).

Keeping in mind that Basis is all about the test scores per their mission, my takeaway is that their tactics and philosophy actually aren't producing scores all that much better than the other higher-scoring DCPS charter and middle schools.

Basis has the additional problem that many kids who can go to Wilson or get into Walls/Banneker flee Basis. Even if they eventually do start to show big gains for middle schoolers, many kids will leave for high school in order to have a more well-rounded experience at a bigger school.

*all numbers from the Northwest Current https://currentnewspapers.com/city-sees-continued-parcc-progress-as-gaps-remain/

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