Reply to PoC in Walt Whitman High School

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As a multiethnic foreigner, I can assure you, OP, that ethnic and national diversity is NOT a problem. Also, economic diversity is not a problem either! There are kids who show up to school driving brand new Jeeps and Teslas, and others, like my kids, who take the bus and if they drove, would have a 12 year old Mazda or nothing at all. Everyone finds their friend group. It's the silver lining of large publics - there's always someone who likes what you like.

NIH is closest to Walter Johnson HS: it's overcrowded but an excellent school! Bethesda-Chevy Chase HS is in downtown Bethesda and slightly less rigorous (fewer APs, but IB program). Walt Whitman HS is as good if not better than WJ, but further away from NIH to the west (a little more homogeneous rich white kids than WJ and BCC).[/quote]
ethnic diversity is not the same as racial diversity.

-non white person

Also, what makes you say BCC is less "rigorous"? By what measure is it "less rigorous"?

We don't live in BCC cluster but I'm curious what measure you are using to define "rigorous"?
[/quote]

To me ethnic is just a better word for racial because it encompasses a greater number of possibilities, PP. There are multiple ethnic origins and cultures inside broad categories of skin colors, and I'm allergic to the uniquely American habit of just defining people by black/white: it completely ignores all the finer points of cultural and regional identity.

To your other question, yes, with years of comparing notes between my friends and I (whose kids go to these three schools), we've come to the conclusion that teacher quality for core classes is higher at WJ and WW. Some core teachers at BCC are apparently terrible, and this materially impacts the students' content mastery and grades. Conversely, I've never heard of a terrible core class teacher at WJ and WW. There are also way more AP offerings at WJ and WW. BCC has the IB programme, which is great for some kids, but the concern is that US college admissions officers might not correctly weigh IB exam scores compared to AP scores. The IB is a European invention, and over there, getting a perfect score is rare. That philosophy has been transferred to IB exam scoring. Whereas if you don't get a 5/5 on an AP exam, you missed something. So I'm not sure the IB scores are as valued as AP scores, if you see what I mean. Students taking the full IB diploma are also locked into a list of courses, instead of being able to select their AP courses a la carte.

Now there's also the question of "big fish, little pond" vs "little fish, big pond" regarding college admissions: admissions officers consider applicant's course choices relative to what their school offers. The large range of advanced courses offered at WJ and WW would tend to push kids to take as many as possible, to prove they've taken advantage of the available selection. This makes for a high-pressure environment. But since there are fewer at BCC, students cannot be faulted for taking AP Calc BC AND multi-variable calculus, since most years the latter is not even offered, due to lack of demand (you could also ask yourself why demand is lower than at the other two schools).

But the bottom line is that they're all SOLID schools, where OP's kids will get a great education. I'm just parsing details because I know some of us here like that sort of thing ;-)
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