Reply to DCPS Policy on Talented & Gifted & Acaemic Magnet Middle School Programs...Questions for You

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Reply to "DCPS Policy on Talented & Gifted & Acaemic Magnet Middle School Programs...Questions for You"

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[quote=Anonymous]No flaming here, please.

We can quibble about what constitutes giftedness in DC children forever and a day without changing the fact that the District's elite magnet high school (hint not Walls or Ellington) boasts mean SAT scores slightly BELOW the national average of around 500 on each of the three sections (the thread on the issue, begun recently, makes fascinating reading on this site).  Compare this outcome to NYC's famous magnet high schools--Hunter, Bronx Tech, Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, Bard Early College etc.--where roughly half the kids hail from low-income families, most graduate from selective MS magnet programs and average SAT scores approach 700 across the board.

When you don't set the bar anywhere in particular, as a general rule, is the motivation to excell in MS going to be as strong as when standards are clear, and high, as in NYC?   I know a 20-something who was so determined to be admitted to Stuyvesant that she repeated the 8th grade in a Brooklyn, moving from a parochial school to a MS TAG program, while taking advantage of a new city-funded program to prep bright low-income minority kids for the SSAT magnet high school entrance exam.  Her extended family, immigrants from Haiti, impressed with her determination, scraped together money for tutoring.  Without a high bar to clear, she, the city and her family surely wouldn't have risen to the occasion.  She graduated from Yale law school and clerks for a Supreme Court justice.

The posts on this thread strongly suggest that the time isn't right for MS magnets.  DC will surely need to wait until Gray is gone, and perhaps 5 or 10 years longer than that, for a critical mass of professionals with children in public and charter elementary schools to feel brave enough, and fed up enough with lackluster MS reform efforts, to effectively advocate for selective MS programs.   In the current political climate, powerful fear of being accused of racism seems to stalk advocates of even the mildest forms MS tracking (e.g. offering algebra to only some of the 8th graders, but none of the 7th graders, at Deal, Hardy, Stuart Hobson etc.).  Full-fledged magnets are starting to seem 15 or 20 years away in a city whose ambitions for its highest achieving low-income children are relatively low.   Save your pennies, parents of especially bright and disciplined future 5th graders, for if you lack lottery luck at Latin etc., as you probably will, you may face stark choices indeed...

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