Reply to magnet schools for Bethesda kids?

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Reply to "magnet schools for Bethesda kids?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The first part of this post is simply not true, at least not for the Whitman cluster in terms of there being "plenty" of kids attending the magnets.

There are exact numbers in the Choice Study and they are so low for the Whitman cluster that on some charts they don't even list them for privacy reasons.[/quote]
True from the Bethesda area high schools the Whitman cluster sends very few.  On the other hand BCC sends 11 and WJ sends 17 to the two high school magnets.  Westland sends 10 and North Bethesda sends 6 to the middle school magnets.  [/quote]

This was the main point. People like to think the the magnets are heads and shoulders above other scenarios but truth be told the local populations around the W's who are all for the most part highly educated and successful themselves don't even bother pushing for their kids to apply or accept because of their local option. Say what you will but these families know what they are looking at and still very few opt in. It might help the best of the best STEM students but not your average smart kid. I know why local families hold on to the notion that it is a super program but [b]it is more about sheltering strong students from general population kids that could derail their focus. [/b]That isn't as big of a problem at a place like Whitman opposed to say an Einstein.

Before you scoff remember that the school within a school is basically in the magnet's charter and all the metrics are going to be higher simply due to the kids selected. They would be high if they had them watch Disney movies all day.[/quote]

The magnet is about addressing the needs of very high-performing kids, where such needs cannot be met in home schools.

It is not about "sheltering strong students from general population kids," FFS.  [/quote]

Have you always been naive to reality or are you just regurgitating what you hope it's true? Why do you think the programs are put in schools with historically low preforming student bodies and not in locations with higher concentrations of "very high-preforming kids".  Why do you think they have to dedicate local slots for takoma instead of making them compete with everybody else in the same pool? Also the fact that the magnet kids share any classes with the local kids is a fairly recent phenomenon, they used to even have an entirely separate lunch peiord when I went through the program not to mention different school hours and bells for classes. We didn't even walk the halls with the local kids. So just because they have recently tweaked it to look less isolationist, that doesn't change the intent to prop up test numbers in low preforming localities in a way that the student's parents won't object to.[/quote]

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