Reply to How is it possible that Walt Whitman high school has a score of 4 on greatschools.org??

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Reply to "How is it possible that Walt Whitman high school has a score of 4 on greatschools.org??"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't have a dog in this fight (yet), but I think it's safe to say that a majority of kids attending Whitman are not pompous ingrates that are oblivious to reality. Sure there are some, but most are being raised by parents that are somewhat intelligent, who are sitting in high-paying jobs and hold advanced degrees. These parents have instilled in their children a sense of what's right and wrong and pushed critical thinking and rocking the boat over a sheep mentality.  It is much more likely that these kids purposely tanked the test as a protest/statement against this kind of testing that public school kids are so often forced to endure. And even if they tanked it for more selfish reasons -- i.e. they were told it wouldn't effect their college admissions -- unless the school made it clear to them (in real/digestible terms) why doing well on the test was good for their school and community you can't blame them for not wanting to focus their energy on something they saw held no value for them or their future. [/quote]

So when Whitman scores are low, it's political protest, but when other high school scores are low, it's...?[/quote]

The reason this makes potential sense is that there was a precipitous drop in their scores in a one year period.  It is hard to imagine that Whitman's teaching changed dramatically in a year or that the abilities of its students changed so suddenly.  If this had been a slow, steady decline it would be harder to explain away.  But it seems odd to me that Whitman teachers and students would all of a sudden become drastically less able.[/quote]

It seems odd to me that the children of intelligent parents, with high-paying jobs and advanced degrees, who have instilled in their children a sense of what's right and wrong and pushed critical thinking and rocking the boat over a sheep mentality, purposely tanked the test at Whitman, but did not purposely tank the tests at the other high schools where all of those things are true as well (as far as anybody knows). Why no political protest at B-CC, for example? Or Wootton, or Walter Johnson, or Churchill?[/quote]

Not sure, but it is entirely possible a relatively small number of students decided to organize a campaign that was followed by more.  Lots of times high school students will follow what popular kids do.  For whatever reason, maybe the same effort wasn't made at other schools.  Maybe it will happen this year at other schools.

More fundamentally, you asked a reasonable question, but you offered no proposed answer of your own.  Why do you think scores dropped so precipitously in one year?  [/quote]

I have no idea. My kid goes to one of the high schools where, when the students don't do well on the standardized tests, it's obviously because the parents haven't instilled a culture of learning.[/quote]

+1 No one sits around asking why the kids "chose" not to do well at the other schools with lower great schools scores.  Why aren't there threads  discussing why the students at Rockville High School (great schools score, 5) chose to purposefully tank the test and "not be sheep" just like the kids at Whitman?  
[/quote]

Do you really not see the distinction?  Presumably RHS's scores have been relatively consistent.  Maybe 5 one year or 6 another.  People would ask the same type of questions if RHS or any other schools had a sudden drop, say from a 5 or 6 to a 1 or 2.

I freely admit that some people might offer different theories on why the drop occurred and maybe those theories would be fair and fact based, maybe they wouldn't. But I hope people would be asking the questions.

And most people acknowledge that test scores and therefore GS scores are heavily correlated to socioeconomic status, a major weakness in using them to measure school quality.  Therefore, if there had been a change in the average Whitman students background, that would be another potential explanation.  But I don't believe that has been the case.[/quote]

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