Reply to What happened to Whitman's Great Schools Rating?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hi-

Not from the DMV but used to be from Wooton feeder zone a long time ago.

What is the PARCC that you are mentioning?

I'm curious because Great Schools has had bad data for my area for years.

When I first started looking at it, it placed my area in the adjacent school district.  None of my zip code is in that school district even though it's very nearby (a few city blocks away across a big highway).

Then, when it actually placed my address in the correct elementary zone, I felt the ratings of the elementaries across the district did not match the word on the street at all.

Finally, I tried to use it to help my sister pick a town when she moved to my metro. Not very useful at all.  Could have made similar decisions just based on city demographics or state standardized test scores without going to Great Schools.

So...I'm interested to know why this site is more useful for MCPS.

Thoughts?[/quote]

Ratings like GS just measure the SES of a school's boundary. If this is what you want to know just get a heatmap of HHI.  I would argue there's a lot more to this than something that simple, and looking a bit deeper may yield better value, especially for ES and MS.  At the HS level, kids have more choices, so I feel many schools could provide a fine experience.[/quote]

No GS measure student performance and outcomes holistically. You’re confusing causation and correlation. Yes rich kids perform better than poorer kids most of the time but the point many miss is that also allows the schools to focus on performance instead of babysitting. Can poor kids do well or rich kids FU, Of course but where the school gets to devote their resources is the difference which all comes down to the percentages of lost causes. When there are too many lost causes it can become a culture problem for the school which will try to create schools within the school to shelter the kids that care, when they have a hard time filling these they will often take kids from out of area to set better examples or boost test score to salvage a school’s reputation.

Schools like Whitman are so highly regarded because instead of a school within a school it is a school within a mixed system for parents with the means. While many fight for special programs like magnet to get their kids sheltered and enriched, Whitman parents just opt for a place that has almost 100% kids with high expectations as the means to shelter their kids. Can kids blossom in other environments…. Of course. But I would guarantee those parents by and large are continuously monitoring and competing for sheltered enrichment opportunities be it better classes with better peer groups or set aside programs within their environments. Whitman is just that but there isn’t an application other than a large mortgage out of reach for most. [/quote]

This is true. Students at Whitman are getting a better education compared to many other large publics because the teachers can actually focus on the teaching. The students tend to be pretty academically focused. Almost all of their parents are well educated. There's an expectation to do well. Disruptive students are socially scorned. And usually kept separate in SPED from the larger student body that is taking all honors and AP classes.

The downside to Whitman is that it's academically very competitive. The college thing can be very stressful. Colleges only take so many kids from a particular public school. I think Duke has taken 4 kids so far this year. Which, great. But i can guarantee you at least 50 very good students are applying from Whitman, whether early or regular. And it'll be like that for most of the good schools. Whitman has always been known as a pressure cooker. I think there was even a book written about it. The students seem to be very supportive of each other, but they are feeling a lot of pressure - from their parents, socially, from themselves.

But there are worse problems to have. When every class is overwhelmed by disruptive students and the teacher can no longer teach. When administration does nothing to deal with this and teachers check out. Bad parenting. A stressful school environment when you have to keep your head on a swivel walking down the hallway. Violence and fighting. Toxic social media. And a culture of mediocrity, failure, and entitlement. At a certain point, it becomes a losing battle. And post-covid, we're seeing a lot more schools circling the drain.  [/quote]

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