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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]^Sure, there are kids with GT potential in DCPS and DC Charter, hundreds and possibly thousands of them.  But somewhere between K and 9th grade, the great majority depart to the burbs or privates, including low-SES kids given scholarships.  Those who remain probably aren't in the best situation.  Parents of 4th and 5th graders in one of the half dozen centers for the highly gifted in MoCo can attest to the difference between the curriculum for "advanced learners" in their neighborhood schools and those for truly gifted kids at these centers.

In AZ, apparently, few leave public schools and the BASIS campuses offer better facilities than here.  The DC amenities are so lean that many high-SES parents will surely leave for HS in search of playing fields, media centers, gyms, auditoriums etc. even if the academics look promising.  What we can probably expect on the SAT front is what you see at Wilson, a small number of students, nearly all high-SES, scoring 2000+ while average scores are much lower.  Without selective admissions, as at Bronx Science and TJ, you can't do better than that.  As my grandmother would have put it, you can't put in what God left out...

Although I attended a mediocre HS where average SAT scores hovered close to the national average, I scored 750+ on both sections.  I've loved to read as a  kid, and had some good math teachers.  The test presents no great hurdles for the highly motivated, wherever they study.

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A huge number will never have the means to get to fancy suburban schools or privates, because the families do not have the means for doing so.  Moving is expensive, many of the neighborhoods outside the city with good schools are not cheap.  Even with scholarships, there is typically still a lot of money that families have to come up with, my brother and sister-in-law have kids who got academic scholarships to privates and they still have to come up with a lot of money to make up the difference and fill in the logistical gaps.  For any family that isn't well into six figure incomes, scholarships will still not likely be enough to do it, and even then it may become a question of going into hock to pick up the remainder of the private school cost versus saving for college, or hoping they get a decent scholarship for college as well (and that still requires coming up with a lot of money too).  Have no illusions about it - private school scholarships are not some Magic Hand of God reaching down from the clouds to pluck poor and middle class kids who are gifted out of the ghetto.  [/quote]

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