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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think the Lewis and West Springfield folks need to consider my post from yesterday. Reposting here (it is on page 77).

[color=blue]Here is what I think is going on with Lewis.

The county cannot [b]officially[/b] make Lewis an ESL school (that would be illegal), but through their actions they seem to be pushing it that way.

They slightly shrank the boundaries with this latest map. This could reduce the population further (on track to be around 1450 in a couple of years). Remember, in both 2005 and 2015 the boundaries of Lewis (Lee) were made smaller and the enrollment fell from over 2100 to its current 1539.

At Lewis they stick with a woefully underperforming IB program and have shrunk the language choices to a minimum. They put in a STEM program at Edison next door. All of this allows (and incentivizes) families who live within the Lewis boundaries to pupil place to other schools. These are typically families with more resources that can provide their own transportation and likely get more education support at home.

The end effect is Lewis having more high-needs students and fewer advanced students. This theoretically allows the county to focus on high-needs students while more advanced students transfer to different schools to access more advanced courses. They must think this will make the job for Lewis administrators and teachers easier. The problem is that right now they don’t appear to be getting those high-needs students to perform very well (only so much a school can do without proper influence from the home), and it is doing a disservice to advanced students who have to stay at Lewis (fewer advanced courses, fewer instances of those courses).

If they had addressed this 10-15 years ago they may have been able to avert Lewis from becoming a pariah. At this point Lewis is so far down the high ESL / high poverty line that the thought of moving any students to Lewis is seen as cataclysmic. I think all of this explains why no students are being moved to Lewis.[/color]

This is the only explanation I can think of. Why else would they hold on to IB at that school?[/quote]

Herndon is AP and that school is also a pariah. Do you see anyone on here clamoring to get into Herndon?

It’s not about the program it is about the students. How are people so naive? It is not about the classes it is about the environment. Put IB at Langley and see if there is a mass exodus there.

If they take away IB people of means will simply use a different excuse. You can transfer for other reasons other than IB/AP so people will just use something else.

The only people that are screwed are poor kids who are at or above grade level and take their studies seriously. They are stuck in a bad school because their family can’t transport them to a better school or don’t know any better. 
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