Reply to Does anyone here actually send their kid to Hayfield/Edison/West Potomac/5 or lower GS high schools?

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Reply to "Does anyone here actually send their kid to Hayfield/Edison/West Potomac/5 or lower GS high schools?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]No one on these threads is more smug than people posting about their "elite" GS 9 schools. You all want to go on and on about your cohorts and high achieving peer pressure. 
You are dumb.
You are also hurting your kids. 
But keep piling on all that pressure. 
We'll just be over here at our lesser schools with happy and successful kids. Carry on.
[/quote]

I posted earlier about the pass rates at Hayf and West Po.  I didn't post the pass rates for the higher end schools... but just FYI -- the pass rates for the higher SES schools are 25-30% points higher across the board.  In some AP classes, it is 35-65% higher.  Yes, there are always 25+ percent of the AP class takers who pass the exam at the lower tier schools (sometimes it is more like 65%).... but frequently, the higher SES schools have pass rates 35-65% higher.  What if your kid is in that gap?  We're not talking about kids who are in the middle or low end of the entire 11th-12th grade class.  We're talking about the subset of kids willing to take harder AP classes.... there is a gap among those kids where more of the higher-motivated kids are failing the AP exams at some schools compared to other schools.  No one has addressed this discrepancy.

It does not really move the discussion forward to bicker and present anecdotes about how kid A or kid B did really well and got into UVA/Swarthmore/Stanford.  Let's look at the bigger picture and address the data in a way that makes sense.  No one knows for sure how their children will do at either a high or low SES school until they actually go there.  Instead of single data points, let's talk about observable facts relating to larger groups of kids.  Anyone care to explain the AP pass data?[/quote]

[b]Don't you think that's it's because kids are taking these classes that aren't ready[/b]?
I don't know what you're wanting to hear on this. Enough kids are passing, so there is learning happening. It's not a bad thing for traditionally less successful students to push themselves out of their comfort zone. Maybe they only get a 2 on the test, but it expands their horizons in the process. [/quote]

I think that could be true for some of the AP classes where there are really high numbers of kids taking them (it's a "try AP class" -- Engl Lang. for instance).  But, the "they aren't ready" doesn't make sense to me when it's a much smaller group of kids willing to take a harder AP class -- like AP Calc AB or Chemistry for instance.  How can you say the 46 kids who took Calc AB (with only 30% passing) weren't ready to take it?  Aren't those the top of the class (yes, I know there are some who take Calc BC).  In the higher SES schools, you have 125-150  kids taking Calc AB and they still have 80% passing (or more).  Shoot -- even FALLS CHURCH only had 44 kids taking Calc AB and they had 95% passing (yes, 95%).  How can you square that with Hay consistently passing only 25-30% each year or even West Po passing 55%?

In Chemistry AP, you only have 30 kids even willing to take it at Hay, and yet only 9 kids (30%) pass the exam.... compare with other schools where 75-95% pass.  Why would the very top kids who have shown a willingness to take the hardest science classes NOT be able to pass the same exam that other kids at other schools are taking?  These are the cream of the crop kids -- not the "challenge index" kids.  If you were picking a school, would you want to take a risk with the school that consistently has 25% passing or 85% of their kids passing?  Seriously, I'm not trying to diminish your child's experience if s/he rocked it at a lower SES school --- you are the winners for sure -- but if you are picking one school (at great expense to buy a house), do you want to take a risk that even if your kid is among the top academic cohort, the chances of passing are not nearly as good.[/quote]

It doesn't matter because  the outcome is the same. Approx. 30% of qualified applicants from all of these schools get into UVA. There are plenty of of other good schools, but we'll use that as our measure. 
So what is the point? Maybe your kid doesn't pass the AP calc test at Hayfield? So what? The outcomes are still the same. The difference is you better damn well perform at Langley, because there is a huge cohort of kids that are going to take 8-9 AP's. 
No thanks. I want my kid to enjoy school and learn some stuff. 
Keep the peer pressure over there. 
So some schools send 40 kids to UVA and others send 10. So what? Your odds are the same either way, it's just a horrible pressure cooker in some schools, and a lot more reasonable in others. 
[/quote]

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