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[quote=Anonymous]I don't think Presidential Scholars is a very useful stat (too political),   But assuming the accuracy of SAM''s report  (which I do -- I haven't double-checked), it  would confirm what I said.

50 public school kids in the region were Presidential Scholars.  28 private school kids were.

Locally, most smart kids go to public.  50>28.

The only context in which I made a proportionality claim was elite privates vs. elite publics (as a PP noted).  And while I don't know about Presidential Scholars data (too small a sample for this sort of analysis anyway), but when you look at National Merit semi-finalist data, the % at TJ greatly exceeds that of the academically highest-achieving local privates.  Blair is trickier, if I remember correctly -- if you treat the magnet as a school of its own (and I honestly don't know to what extent that's reasonable -- don't know about the program, coursework, etc.), then it's also doing better than the best local privates on that measure (% of the class that earns NMSF status).  In any event, both TJ and Blair obviously do better than any local private on absolute numbers which are more significant in practice (that's what constitutes each smart kid's cohort and shapes course offerings) than percentages.

What SAM has shown is that local privates get more than their fair share of smart kids (assuming random distribution of smart kids across all schools).  Sure -- it's not random distribution.  The children of economically privileged families, for a variety of reasons, are disproportionately likely to perform well on the SATs.  And, presumably, among families that are not economically privileged, the parents of the smartest kids  are probably disproportionately likely to seek out private school options for their kids and the kids in this group who do exceptionally well on standardized tests are the most likely to be offered such options.

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