Reply to Walls vs Private- How Would You Compare

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have a daughter at Walls and wouldn't consider sending her to privates. The bullying is likely worse at the privates and the education is likely similar considering that walls has excellent teachers. Walls (like any DCPS school) also offers the opportunity to register for college classes (for a select few full time and for others on a course by course basis). I have trouble matching our personal experience to all of the walls bashing. On the side of the elite privates i will say that the resources are better and appear to some parents as feeling more like college campuses in terms of resources with multimillion dollar donations. If you are looking for more resources privates will have those. Walls and DCPS cannot match privates in terms of sports either. To us high teacher quality and advanced classes is enough, and we do not like high pressure with sports - even walls is a little higher pressure than we would like. As mentioned with the college classes there are also some advantages that you will not have at privates. For anyone interested in debate the Washington Urban Debate League is only for public school kids and their kids I believe do better than the private school kids.  The peer group is also important. There is no question that the walls kids are top notch academically. In college admissions your child is at a disadvantage at private school because the kids, many of whom are legacies, compete against each other for early decision to elite privates. Walls kids often attend public universities so they can get DC TAG. Walls has many longtime teachers and retaining teachers is one of the most portant roles of a principal.[/quote]

You make some good points.  That said, posters are hardly "Walls bashing" to note that new head is a cipher and that watering down admissions standards at Bowser's behest was a terrible idea. All the Walls kids are hardly top notch academically. Just not the case, not anymore.  I wish things were different.[/quote]

The kids were initially selected based on grades, which studies show are a better predictor of academic success than tests scores. According to my child most of the kids earned straight As or nearly straight As in Middle School. They took the highest achieving kids. The only part that was subjective was the interview, which arguably led to many deserving kids being waitlisted. My experience is that my child has always been number one at school, and now my child needs to provide more effort and is not always number one. It is hard for me to imagine a school providing a more high achieving peer group. Elite privates also have many kids who get in in elementary school, and those kids are not necessarily as high achieving as the ones who enter in high school and went through a rigorous selection process. [b]I'm just not convinced you are getting a higher achieving peer group at an elite private, though the group may be equivalent and the resources certainly greater.[/b]
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I can speak to this:  my kid was near/at the top of the class at Deal (if there is such a thing) ---straight As all 4 years (no A minuses and mostly percentage grades of 98/99).  PARCC scores at 99%. 
Algebra 2 at Deal. 
Is now at an "elite" private (Sidwell/NCS/STA) and is probably at the [b]75% point for the grade,[/b] despite working really hard and doing what I consider "the best of his/her ability.". 
This is no slam on DCPS and I have another 2 kids who have gone through DCPS through 12th, including one at Walls.  But some of the privates really [b]assemble a high performing cohort [/b]of kids.  They have their pick from across the DMV and also routinely counsel-out kids for academic reasons along the way (including a bunch prior to 9th).

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Doesn't Walls also assemble (or at least purport to) a high performing cohort?  Maybe your kid also would have been 75% at Walls (where he would be competing against other 99% middle school kids from (other than Deal) schools in DC, including my kid, who is a 99%er at BASIS)?  [/quote]

My kid (now in Sidwell/NCS/STA) has Basis 9th graders in her 10th grade math class and they struggle---getting Bs and Cs on tests (the kids share grades).  At least one dropped back down a grade in math (back to Algebra 2 for a second go-around).  They Basis acceleration for acceleration's sake (Algebra in 6th) does not work well in the long run for all kids. Some yes!  But their model of accelerating all kids or most does not work once they get to [b]a school that favors depth over speed[/b].  
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What does this mean. It's math, not history. [/quote]

Math concepts can be taught at a very superficial level or at a deep level.  Basic concepts can be applied to more complex problems. 
It's common for high schools to offer 2 or even 3 levels of the same math class:  for example--Algebra 2, Accelerated Algebra 2, Honors Algebra 2.  The same concepts are taught in each class but the speed and depth at which the material is taught is vastly different. 
Honors level classes commonly have exam questions that have never been done before in class or on homework:  the expectation is that students will apply concepts "live" in new and harder ways on the tests vs. just replicating what they have done before on homework or what they were taught 
in lectures. [/quote]

Many students can do a math concept robotically but have no idea what it means and can’t apply it to different iterations.[/quote]

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