Reply to Student Stratification at Selective High Schools

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Student Stratification at Selective High Schools"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It just seems like "bring the test back to Walls" is such a doable request that makes a ton of sense, would be easy for them to implement (because they used to) and seems to have near unanimous support here. Can we just push for that? [/quote]

Push away. Beat your head against a wall if you wish. But Bowser won't bring the test back, or an external standardized test score (PARCC, PSAT 8/9) with an application either. The problem is that UMC-fueled political pushback can't amount to much without the demographics to build a critical mass of political support. This says to me that tests in DCPS HS magnet admissions won't be back as long as our current mayor is in office, or during the tenure of a crony who succeeds her either, if that's in the cards. [/quote]

Bringing back the test makes large swaths of kids ineligible for the school. Keeping Walls open to the whole city where most schools aren't preparing kids to do well on any standardized test including math is a better political move than bringing back tests and restricting Walls to a handful of UMC schools. [/quote]

It is a f***g magnet school with selective admissions.[/quote]

UVA is a highly-regarded university with selective admissions; they still turn away high-scoring kids from Fairfax to make room for lower-scoring kids from rural counties, to maintain political support in the Virginia legislature. Same with UMD turning away high-scoring kids from Montgomery County.

Just because a school has selective admissions does not make it exempt from political reality. [/quote]

That's true, but it's also true that DC's harsh political reality is extreme where magnet high school admissions are concerned. There's no bona fide elected school board here, essentially unheard of in this country. And there are few Asian immigrant families in DCPS (around 1% across middle schools, not even 7% at Walls). Asian students comprise more than 70% of Stuyvesant students and roughly 30% at Boston Latin in cities where Asian percentages as a whole are in the low teens (NYC) and high single digits (Boston). Call me names but looks to me that without much stronger Asian immigrant family representation at Walls, a political impossibility, the school can't begin to compete with the best elsewhere, even in this Metro area (TJ).  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics