Reply to 2 Banneker students receive Gates scholarship

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Reply to "2 Banneker students receive Gates scholarship - attending Harvard and Brown"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have an important question.  Why don't more white parents send their children to Banneker?  It appears that the District's white parents only see SWW and Wilson as viable high school options for their high performing children.[/quote]

You know the answer to that question PP.  Black and brown children are acceptable in small doses only.  [/quote]

White students at Wilson comprise just 25% of the total student body. I would hardly quantify the remaining 75% "black and brown" students as a small dose. At School Without Walls, white students comprise just 36% of the student body. I'd start looking for other reasons why whites don't attend Banneker.[/quote]

First of all, respect and congratulations to the 2 kids for these great achievements!

I agree with PPs point. Wilson and Walls are majority-minority.

The "why so few whites at Banneker" issue has been debated on many other threads. But it is worth rehashing here. My personal experience (we're white) is that DCPS sends the message that whites are not welcome at Banneker. They don't say it in so many words, but it is there. I asked the Deal principal (Kim) and the guidance counselors "what about Banneker for my kid" and there response was never enthusiastic. And the AA Deal parent I asked (whose child not not apply to Banneker) said [b]"Banneker is for the have-nots" and implied that my kid wouldn't be comfortable there. [/b]So there you have it. If for next year's 8th graders DCPS says loud and clear at high school presentations that all students are encouraged to apply to Banneker, then whites and Asians will also apply.

The bigger question is how DCPS is handling selective schools overall. The undermining of SWW by merging it with Francis-Stevens is unconscionable. We need strong selective schools that produce high achievers like these two, as well as good programs for the middle and bottom of the curve.[/quote]Uh, why don't you go and see for yourself, pp?  This is what drives me crazy about this discussion, people making decisions based on something they heard from some other parent who has never been to Banneker.  When my kid applied to magnet programs, we went to all the open houses we could and I was blown away by how organized the Banneker open house was.  It was on a Saturday and yet the administrators, teachers, and students were all there.  The students took us on tours of the school and they were lovely kids who talked about how hard they had to work.  Our tour guide had left Georgetown Day to attend Banneker.  In contrast, the SWW open house was a disorganized mess that had a few teachers and a few current parents and no current students at all.

Granted, you can't tell everything from a tour of the school so you have to do more than that - but it amazes me the assumptions people have about Banneker when they've never bothered to even cross the threshold of the school building.  Do people have to have their hands held and be begged to even come look at the school?  Seems like it wouldn't take much out of one's weekend to attend a simple open house.

BTW, my white kid was not accepted because when she went into her interview she told the committee that she couldn't handle pressure.  At that point in time, it was not the right place for her. They make the students work hard there and the student tour guides were quite honest about that up front.  Is this something that white middle and upper class families can't handle?[/quote]

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