Reply to s/o - DC privates are not filled with gifted kids

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]3. Since admissions are competitive, [u]the student body [i]should[/i] be more uniformly high-performing, [/u]so that the range between the extremes is smaller.[/quote]

I think this gets at OP's premise, way back when 5 pages ago.

You would think this, but you might be wrong.  At least in the early grades.   I have been truly surprised at the range in *apparent* ability in my child's class.

I am pretty sure -- no, I am certain -- that this gaping difference in abilities is a logical and direct result of the school's intentional pursuit of a diverse student body.  In every sense of that word.  Also, the guaranteed sibling admission policy, barring psychosis or profound mental retardation.[/quote]

This is the OP....you hit the nail on the head![/quote]

A frequent PP chiming in here:  Yes!  The Lower Schools in this town are not selecting on academic ability, all the drama over WPPSI scores on this board notwithstanding.  They are selecting on parental social status, and kids with rich, prominent parents are not necessarily the highest academic performers
I would add strongly:  in our experience, it has nothing to do with diversity. (Some of our school's ahem "diverse" students are also some of its academic stars.)[/quote]

Well, for starters, I don't buy OP's underlying premise: "[i]I've also heard that ERBs in top DC privates in lower grades usually rank the top performers around the 80th percentile which equates to an IQ around 115 to 120 tops.[/i]"

1.  OP's statement that some school admin told her in a dinner party conversation that his school's top students are in the 80th percentile doesn't strike me as a particularly rigorous basis for this thread.

2. When OP somehow translates that dinner party comment into a calculation that the top students have IQs of about "115 to 120 tops," that starts to sound fishy to me. First, how do you make this conversion from ERB to IQ? Is there a conversion table you used?  And second, are you really telling me that the "top performers" at local private schools generally miss the base level for giftedness (130 IQ) by at least 10 points?  That does not strike me as likely.

3. And [i]even if you accept OP's premise as true[/i], I still think the overall range of abilities from the top of the class to the bottom is a lot smaller at a typical DC private school than at a typical public school.  Indeed, if the top performers are really only "80th percentile" students, as OP claims, then that suggests the range to the bottom of the class might even be smaller than what I'd guess.  As a result of the smaller range, the private school teachers should have less trouble offering differentiated instruction tailored to each child.[/quote]

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