Reply to Why w school students not preferred in Blair magnet

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Many students from W-schools, my DD included, choose not to apply for or attend the Blair magnet program because the quality of education sucks.

The magnet program is open to anyone at Blair who wants the pretext of a challenge and has been watered down accordingly.

My 2 cents.[/quote]

[u]Sorry you did not take the time to learn more about the program..  Certain magnet electives (which don't start till junior year) are open to on-magnet students if there is space and if the student has met the same pre-rec requirements as the magnet student.  That is very different than opening the classes to anyone at Blair.   I know there are a variety of good programs in MCPS but only Poolesville and Blair offer the high level and variety of offerings in SMAC.[[/u]/quote]
Want to echo the PP's response to the earlier poster whose daughter chose not to apply.  According to the program administrator there are typically a couple of spots available for non-magnet students to enroll in 11th and 12th grade magnet electives as long as they have completed prereqs for these electives so none of the 9th and 10th grade magnet classes have non magnet students and the 11th and 12th grade magnet classes have a handful of non magnet students.
We are zoned for a W school and I took the trouble to find and speak to several W families who had sent kids to Blair for magnet/CAP and many of these families had also sent siblings of these children through their home W school.  The consensus was that the SMAC program was head and shoulders above anything available in a W school ito curriculum and peer group.  The non magnet classes (English, Social Studies, Foreign Language) were comparable.  If your child is enrolled in an honors or AP class English or Social Studies class at Blair it will be exactly like a similar honors or AP class in a W school.  It is a large and diverse school but there are 700 extremely high performing students (400 from magnet, 300 from CAP) and a couple hundred high performing students from the general student population, many of whom come from UMC, highly educated families living in Takoma Park and Four Corners etc.  There are enough high performing students to fill many honors and AP classes in every grade.  The school is very well run and (unlike DCUM) the kids coexist very well.  Lots of different kinds of kids at Blair (hey, isn't that what you want in a public school?!) and there is a sphere for each to shine.  There were two areas where Blair did not compare favorable to the W schools that some of the W families I spoke to mentioned.  The first was foreign language instruction which is not good for some reason.  The second is that many of the W athletic teams do better so if your child is a serious soccer player for example (this is a hypothetical example, I have no idea which athletic teams are good at Blair) they might be better off on a W team.  Not sure about the reason although I do notice that many of the soccer players on our W varsity team have also been on expensive club teams for years.
Based on what I learned and based on my child shadowing at his W school and at Blair's SMAC program, he chose Blair. It was not even close especially after the shadowing - he found the atmosphere at Blair much more intellectually stimulating and more vibrant.  It was a careful decision and he is very happy.  It is a great school, period.[/quote]

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