Reply to BASIS DC to open in 2012-2013

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[quote=Anonymous]"You can't shut out other kids you don't want in your tax payer funded school, under some foolish delusion that you earned it because your child is advanced, and somehow, underserved. "

Again, are you against Banneker for this very reason?

Your train of thought is the exact reason DCPS is such a failure of a school system: No one gets theirs until I get mine. Good luck with that. Hasn't worked in the past.

Yes, against Banneker because I'm no longer convinced that it serves the target population, high achievers, well.  I quit interviewing Banneker applicants, after nearly a decade of doing it as an alum volunteer for my Ivy, recently, burned out on the poor prep the school offers in comparison to suburban magnets (particularly TJ in Alexandria).  The school's guidance counselors remain convinced that kids with 600s on SATs and a handful of AP classes/tests under their belts (scoring 2s and 3s in almost every case) are in the running because they came from poor families as much as anything else.  I discovered through hard experience that "open enrollment" kids, poor and middle-class alike, can almost never compete with counterparts in highly selective programs.  The latter group comes up through MS TAG programs, gets 700s, and takes twice around as many AP exams as DCPS kids, scoring 4s and 5s.  As other posts have emphasized, Banneker's average SAT scores are below the national average of around 520.

Why not one or two DC middle schools, and one or two high schools, that can compete with the top suburban and NYC programs?  Not dozens, not most, just one or two?

In my view, the real difference between NYC's magnets and DC's selective admission high schools is not the size of the cities, as was pointed out, but NY's willingness to support a relatively race-blind, if not need-blind, admissions policy.  The student populations of the six or seven famous NYC magnets are all least 59% Asian (US News and World Report lists will confirm) in a city that's around 10% Asian.

As for my own family, my husband and I have chosen DCPS for elementary with a view to Mo. Co for MS and HS.  We're not reformers, we're public school and Ivy League financial aid babies concerned that the deficit of rigorous magnets (Banneker and SWW don't make the grade) shortchanges the brightest and most disciplined poor kids, mainly by driving most middle class parents from public schools after elementary.  These children are growing up much like we did, in New England and New York (where urban magnets are the norm).

No, I certainly don't see the current City Council or mayor pushing the amend DC Law on Charter Schools, or promoting selective admission schools-within-schools in DCPS for that matter.  But I do see tremendous potential in a decade or so.  If you lived in the District in the 90s, as we did, you couldn't possibly have predicted how far the city would come between then and now.

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