Anonymous wrote:Anywhere. What you need to understand is that a lot of the work at Banneker is about forming solid study habits. It’s annotating the book, making the notecards, making the study guide, outlining the essay, and turning it in for a grade. For kids who are sufficiently intelligent or talented or who have sufficient background knowledge, those steps might not strictly speaking be necessary to get an A on the high school essay or exam, but because of how grading works at Banneker they are necessary to maintaining As in high school. So in college, when the kid already has the study habits but now has fewer hours of class and more freedom to choose where to allocate their efforts, it’s probably going to feel like less work.

(And fwiw, I also think the intensity of Banneker helps kids learn their own limits. My Banneker kid has friends who have gone Ivy/MIT, and their stats are just as good, but for themselves they said “no, I did small and intense for high school, I am not doing it again for college.”)

This is precisely why Banneker has been so great for my kid.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to HYPS undergrad and law school and met friends at both who went to Banneker. They say Banneker prepared them for college. My undergrad Banneker friends did well enough to go on to top 20 law and MBA programs. Ditto obviously for the ones I met in law school.

Oh and how many was that?

Counting 4 that I’ve actually asked about this.

My oldest went to Banneker and he found college easy for the most part. Once he began his major classes, it became more challenging but he did not struggle. He went to an HBCU.

It's not a bad thing.

My oldest went to a rigorous private and is now at an Ivy and college is much easier than high school. However, this isn't a bad thing. Graduate school and many jobs (investment banking, etc) are dependent on grades. My Ivy kid and friends are all interested in investment banking and they're all trying to get as close to a 4.0 as possible. The NY banks are not hiring 3.5s even if you're from an Ivy because there are finite numbers of jobs and plenty of kids who ARE doing well.
We know many DCPS kids (JR specifically) who struggled their first semester or year of college at top30 schools. It's not great for opportunities after school in this day and age when the job market is shrinking by the week and graduates are applying to grad school and law school in droves.

I was a middle school teacher who recommended a fair amount of students to Banneker. Many said that their first two years of college were much easier than Banneker.

I believe that my own child would have thrived anywhere. But they chose the structure of Banneker over other programs in the city. I think it will serve them well.

Anonymous wrote:Anywhere. What you need to understand is that a lot of the work at Banneker is about forming solid study habits. It’s annotating the book, making the notecards, making the study guide, outlining the essay, and turning it in for a grade. For kids who are sufficiently intelligent or talented or who have sufficient background knowledge, those steps might not strictly speaking be necessary to get an A on the high school essay or exam, but because of how grading works at Banneker they are necessary to maintaining As in high school. So in college, when the kid already has the study habits but now has fewer hours of class and more freedom to choose where to allocate their efforts, it’s probably going to feel like less work.

(And fwiw, I also think the intensity of Banneker helps kids learn their own limits. My Banneker kid has friends who have gone Ivy/MIT, and their stats are just as good, but for themselves they said “no, I did small and intense for high school, I am not doing it again for college.”)

So interesting to hear. No wonder Banneker is so loved by the city -- this method would really set students up to succeed in college and grad school, even if they are coming in without professional parents or that kind of guidance at home. It's an model of how rigor can help you climb the ladder.

I wish DCPS could do that in somehow in middle school, too.

Anonymous wrote:I went to HYPS undergrad and law school and met friends at both who went to Banneker. They say Banneker prepared them for college. My undergrad Banneker friends did well enough to go on to top 20 law and MBA programs. Ditto obviously for the ones I met in law school.

Oh and how many was that?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is often true if your student goes to a truly rigorous high school. That’s WHY you want rigor - sets them up for college success!!

Not really. A lot of high schools don't emphasize study skills to that extent, and a lot of students don't need it. Making notecards for a grade? That would have driven me crazy.

This is exactly why Banneker tends not to be a good fit for kids coming in from a solid education background with good content knowledge and executive functioning skills.

It’s just busywork and unnecessary hours of homework.

I had strong content knowledge and executive functioning skills and went to a public HS 40 years ago where we were taught how to write research papers through this model. Note cards were annoying, but what I understood once I got to college and grad school was that they were about much more than time management and organization—the notecard approach taught me how to identify relevant, citeable pieces of information, tie it to a source, and then physically organize my argument (by moving the cards into piles). It was literally teaching us how to do research and develop a coherent argument. I never used notecards again, but I was absolutely using the same skills. I’m sure I would have figured it out (as my JR alumni kids have in college), but I think it’s great that Banneker employs this approach and would guess that it does result in graduates’ feeling more confident and prepared for the rigors of college research papers, especially in the humanities.

My high school taught like that and I think my freshman (not at Banneker) is missing out by not being taught this way.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is often true if your student goes to a truly rigorous high school. That’s WHY you want rigor - sets them up for college success!!

Not really. A lot of high schools don't emphasize study skills to that extent, and a lot of students don't need it. Making notecards for a grade? That would have driven me crazy.

This is exactly why Banneker tends not to be a good fit for kids coming in from a solid education background with good content knowledge and executive functioning skills.

It’s just busywork and unnecessary hours of homework.

I had strong content knowledge and executive functioning skills and went to a public HS 40 years ago where we were taught how to write research papers through this model. Note cards were annoying, but what I understood once I got to college and grad school was that they were about much more than time management and organization—the notecard approach taught me how to identify relevant, citeable pieces of information, tie it to a source, and then physically organize my argument (by moving the cards into piles). It was literally teaching us how to do research and develop a coherent argument. I never used notecards again, but I was absolutely using the same skills. I’m sure I would have figured it out (as my JR alumni kids have in college), but I think it’s great that Banneker employs this approach and would guess that it does result in graduates’ feeling more confident and prepared for the rigors of college research papers, especially in the humanities.

I went to HYPS undergrad and law school and met friends at both who went to Banneker. They say Banneker prepared them for college. My undergrad Banneker friends did well enough to go on to top 20 law and MBA programs. Ditto obviously for the ones I met in law school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is often true if your student goes to a truly rigorous high school. That’s WHY you want rigor - sets them up for college success!!

Not really. A lot of high schools don't emphasize study skills to that extent, and a lot of students don't need it. Making notecards for a grade? That would have driven me crazy.

This is exactly why Banneker tends not to be a good fit for kids coming in from a solid education background with good content knowledge and executive functioning skills.

It’s just busywork and unnecessary hours of homework.

Anonymous wrote:This is often true if your student goes to a truly rigorous high school. That’s WHY you want rigor - sets them up for college success!!

Not really. A lot of high schools don't emphasize study skills to that extent, and a lot of students don't need it. Making notecards for a grade? That would have driven me crazy.

This is often true if your student goes to a truly rigorous high school. That’s WHY you want rigor - sets them up for college success!!

Anywhere. What you need to understand is that a lot of the work at Banneker is about forming solid study habits. It’s annotating the book, making the notecards, making the study guide, outlining the essay, and turning it in for a grade. For kids who are sufficiently intelligent or talented or who have sufficient background knowledge, those steps might not strictly speaking be necessary to get an A on the high school essay or exam, but because of how grading works at Banneker they are necessary to maintaining As in high school. So in college, when the kid already has the study habits but now has fewer hours of class and more freedom to choose where to allocate their efforts, it’s probably going to feel like less work.

(And fwiw, I also think the intensity of Banneker helps kids learn their own limits. My Banneker kid has friends who have gone Ivy/MIT, and their stats are just as good, but for themselves they said “no, I did small and intense for high school, I am not doing it again for college.”)

I have heard some post-college parents say my student at Banneker (DCPS) studied as hard as/harder at Banneker than they did in college.

Is that true and most importantly to me, what level of college was this?

I think about this because I have a hardworking Banneker student and I don’t want him working twice as hard in college. It’d be too much. So if Ivys or MIT or whatever are super hard I might counsel him against them as a general matter.