Reply to Banneker HS - College and Score Outcomes

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Look up 
DCPS SAT scores. I think on the DCPS site. There's a spreadsheet. You can also find AP scores. Walls is the only school that's just across the board higher. JR is obviously huge and high-variance. [/quote]

Thanks. Found the SAT (https://dcps.dc.gov/publication/dcps-data-set-sat) and AP (https://dcps.dc.gov/publication/ap-score-data-sets) spreadsheets. The averages are indeed as you say. I would have expected Banneker to do better but I take it that there is a very long thread from a few years back on that topic.[/quote]

Why do you think your child will score in line with others? I have a Banneker student who has scored 5 on APs and 1540 on SATs. You’re aware this is a Title 1 school. The kids are all very studious and bright but there are some kids who have tough home lives. If your kid doesn’t have these challenges, s/he will score high. Test score track HHI closely.
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My personable Asian 8th grader who finds 10th grade math/Trigonometry easy at a DC charter, scored 600s on the SAT for admission to a Johns Hopkins CTY STEM camp and has a 3.9 GPA wasn't so much as waitlisted at Banneker.  I'm left with the impression that Banneker doesn't knock itself out on the STEM achievement front.  We're staying at the charter, which the kid isn't wild about, with new appreciation for it.[/quote]

Banneker is a Humanities focused school so no you won't get the STEM feel you want. It's not hard to figure out. I'd look at moving if you feel like your kid needs more of a challenge. TJ would probably be great..Blair also. [/quote]

Do you not understand the residency requirements that apply to public schools across the country or are you trying to make a different point about where you would like people from certain backgrounds to move to? I'm genuinely curious.[/quote]

DP who referenced TJ, Blair and RMIB. No, it has nothing to do with race. Just making a point about how annoying parents are when they declare nothing is possibly good enough for their “advanced” child. Ok friend, try your hand at the VERY selective and demanding public programs just a short move away. Oh, Larlo won’t get into TJ? You don’t say … [/quote]

They didn't get into Banneker. Banneker decided the kid wasn't good enough for them, not the other way around. And it wasn't because they had a long line of more academically-advanced kids trying to get in. [/quote]

+1. What a joke. When a pleasant, diligent 8th grader does HS math two or three years ahead of grade level and destroyed both mandatory sections of the SAT at age 14 but can't even get waitlisted at Banneker, the system is broken. Everybody's sure that not being low SES or AA was irrelevant in the case?  I'm far from convinced.  I note that Banneker's average SAT scores for 17–18-year-olds are still just a little above the national average, in the low 500s.   [/quote]

[b]They don't look at PARCC scores or what math class the kid is taking, much less SAT, and they're explicit about that.[/b] I think that's a huge mistake. But I don't think you need an additional explanation on top of that. It's basically random. [/quote]

What an outrage. Why in the hell can't DC support a single world-class public high school with transparent admissions or an elite school-within-a-school program like other big US cities do here in 2024? High time for DC voters to demand more.

Walls, BASIS, Banneker, J-R, Latin, DCI, none of them are half as good as Boston Latin or Cambridge Rindge and Latin (although Boston and DC are very close in population size).  All of our best public high schools either support middling academics, weak facilities or both. All of them essentially admit by lottery, or by real estate. None of them even aspire to be in the same league as the Blair Montgomery magnets, TJ, or Richard Montgomery or Washington-Liberty IB Diploma, here in the DMV.  High time for DC to up its game. [/quote]

While I agree with much of this, why is it that Walls, for example, gets a rating of 2nd best Metro-area school, after TJ? It's not any of the MoCo schools. BTW I'm a MoCo school product and don't believe I received some kind of superior education to the masses.[/quote]

Walls and Banneker used to have a more rigorous selection processes and have built their reputations on the student bodies they attracted as a result. As other threads attest to, those selection processes have been torn asunder in recent years by doing away with PARCC scores and testing and basing admissions decisions entirely on GPA (despite wide variation within and between DCPS schools in grading standards), subjective letters of recommendation, interviews, and an essay (application for Banneker, in-person for Walls). As a result, selection has become more akin to a lottery, which will inevitably impinge upon the preparedness of the students and the quality of learning at the schools. The proposed funding cuts to DCPS won't help matters either. Which is a long way of saying that while these DC selective schools have good reputations, they are probably heading in the wrong direction.[/quote]

I think you are being dramatic and perhaps resentful. My child, and the others in their cohort who got into Walls and Banneker, are all high-achieving, high GPA's and 4's & 5's on PARCC, and read and math above grade level. Yes, they made it in under the subjective letters of rec, interview, and essay, but those don't negate the objective merits that helped get them in. The bottom line is, there are not enough spots for all the kids who deserve them, as has been said hundreds of time before. So it has to come down to luck at some point. I do believe that the '09-'10 babies were a boom in the city and changed the demographics forever more. Unfortunately it's only going to be harder for the coming cohorts to get into these schools. Hopefully though, the likes of McKinley, DCI, and others will benefit from the onslaught of more high-achieving students and things will start equaling out a bit with more better HS options in DC (plus the intro of MacArthur into the mix). [/quote]

If you define "qualified" as "good grades and testing at grade level", then yes, there are too many qualified kids. But that's not the full range of ways we have of evaluating students no matter how many times someone says it. When a kid who's already testing in the 600s on each section of the SAT can't get into a school where the high school seniors on average are doing less well, it's not because there are too many high-achieving students, it's because the admissions process doesn't look at achievement beyond a certain point. And that bar doesn't even include being at grade level any more. Of course a lot of the kids who get in are still good. But that's a function of the applicant pool, not the admissions process. [/quote]

And this is where it comes down to luck, I’m sorry to say. That sounds like an outlier situation as I’m sure there is not a massive number of middle-schoolers scoring like that on the SAT’s (or even taking the SATs yet?)[/quote]

I'm not even sure how the school would be aware of one's SATs for this to even be a factor. If it was mentioned in interview, it was probably off-putting.[/quote]

It's not a factor. Whether you do advanced coursework is also not a factor. Whether you test at grade level is not a factor. The whole point is that *none of these are factors*, so kids who are too advanced for their EOTP zoned high schools (which in some cases really just means being at grade level) have no way to differentiate themselves in the admissions process for Banneker or Walls. [/quote]

Outside of grades, you have essays, recs, and possibly an interview to do so. [/quote]

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