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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP. My DH does horribly on standardized tests. 900 on the SAT, yet graduated from an excellent private high school with a 3.9 GPA. He was offered a full ride to college based on merit. Majored in chemistry. Graduated at the top of his class and was offered a full ride to med school. The SAT says NOTHING about future college performance or future success.[/quote]

Your DH is an extreme outlier.

FYI[/quote]
The odd teenager is always going to freeze up on standardized tests, even if they could answer most of the questions correctly in a low-pressure setting. Colleges know this, helping explain why the Test Optional movement is steadily gaining ground nationally.

I'm just not buying that the SAT says "nothing" about future college performance, because the test just isn't difficult for a HS student who's well read and did OK in MS or HS algebra and geometry. SATs are pitched at an 8th or 9th grade level for strong students who aren't geniuses or prodigies.

If high SAT scores were out of reach for cohorts of the best-prepped low-SES minority students, there's no way that average scores at the 9 NYC magnet test-in high schools, where at-risk/FARMs students are strongly represented, would be 1200+. What's obviously happening at Banneker, and Eastern, Dunbar, Ballou, Anacostia, is that the the most able low SES students in the system seldom get the essential support/prep they need to score high.

The fact that the depressing status quo works for our politicians, ed leaders, and the bleeding hearts and apologists for DCPS' failings on this thread is shameful.[/quote]

Agree 100% with this.  Top privates and magnet schools have many minority students from poor backgrounds who do exceedingly well on the SAT. Kids are not doing well on the SAT from Banneker because the education is a joke.  The SAT isn't rocket science.  It's basic reading and math at the geometry level or below.  
Sidwell, GDS, STA etc put many poor minority kids (and the rest of the class) through their paces for 4 years and these kids all end up with SATs scores above 1450.  They don't take million dollar review courses.  They learn over time,  n school thanks to a genuinely rigorous curriculum.   Not the DCPS bullsh$%T.  I've had
kids in both environments (DCPS and top DC private) and the education is world's apart. [/quote]

Private schools cherry pick their minorities. Those kids would have had high SAT scores regardless of where they went to school. To me Banneker's scores reflect the student population which is good for DCPS, but technically average. Still we are not comparing to a private school, which would bring up a lot of other issues, but to public schools in DC. In that context, Banneker looks like a pretty good option. As to those who are shocked that someone with an average SAT score could go to medical school, that is completely ridiculous. Maybe that child bloomed in college, or the test scores we're not indicative of his potential. Apparently grades are a much better metric to predict later success.[/quote]

So the private schools pick the poor but smart minorities but DCPS gets the poor but dumb ones?

What are you even saying?[/quote]

The privates choose who goes there. They will take diversity onto account in admissions, but they will take the highest performing child,  so you will have very highly performing minorities along with all the other high performing children. Performance is less the effect of the school itself. I can't comment on teaching at Banneker, but this is what test scores says to me.
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