Anonymous wrote:You must not have earned an IB Diploma like my spouse and I did, although we grew up in working-class immigrant families. We were first gen college students and are POC. The reality is that the European IBD was never meant for all. Thank goodness or we would never have made it to Ivies. We like the “elitism” of IBD done right for all the students who are cut out for the rigor, particularly low-income URM teens. From where we sit DCI’s IB egalitarianism is well-intentioned BS. Several under-performing public school IBD program in one urban school system is a couple too many. Eastern, Banneker and DCI all run iffy IB programs and seem set on continuing to do so.

+ a million. Could not agree with this more!

Post above for 10:43 not 11:26. The latter gets it.

You must not have earned an IB Diploma like my spouse and I did, although we grew up in working-class immigrant families. We were first gen college students and are POC. The reality is that the European IBD was never meant for all. Thank goodness or we would never have made it to Ivies. We like the “elitism” of IBD done right for all the students who are cut out for the rigor, particularly low-income URM teens. From where we sit DCI’s IB egalitarianism is well-intentioned BS. Several under-performing public school IBD program in one urban school system is a couple too many. Eastern, Banneker and DCI all run iffy IB programs and seem set on continuing to do so.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh come on, you want to move to the burbs. Just remember though, your kid will have to apply and be accepted to the IB program at WL. They, like every other "IB school" only provide the program to a small, select group of high-achieving students. DCI provides it to ALL students.

In fact, the IBD program at Washington-Liberty isn't an application program like those in MoCo, at Richard Montgomery (which admits around 10% of applicants countywide) and Bethesda Chevy Chase.

At Washington-Liberty is that there are just 2 manageable prerequisites for in-boundary 8th graders. The student needs to have taken algebra I by 8th grade and earned at least a B+ in the course. The kid also needs at least a B+ average overall in 8th grade to qualify to take pre-IB courses in 9th grade. That's it, those are the requirements. Two years later, in 10th grade, the student needs to have earned at least a B+ average in pre-IB courses to qualify to take IB Diploma courses in 11th and 12th grade.

We don't like IB for All at DCI. We don't think that students who can't swing a B+ average belong in IB Diploma courses.

Give us a break, DC 8th graders can't even apply to Walls without a GPA higher than 3.8!

Ummmmmm.....that is selectivity in action. WL weeds out those who don't meet its standards for entry to an IB program. If you don't like IB for All and your sole goal is to decide which kids "belong" or not, then you are not a DCI family. You belong elsewhere where segregating kids is acceptable. Buh-bye, elitist troll. Hope your kids turn out differently than you.

DP, but IB is an advanced curriculum with an advanced workload for accelerated learning, like the AP program. It is not designed to be open to all, and is designed at the international level to have standards for entry. IB for all makes as much sense as AP for all. It's just not the way the curriculum is structured and is not possible to implement without serious modifications from the international standards.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh come on, you want to move to the burbs. Just remember though, your kid will have to apply and be accepted to the IB program at WL. They, like every other "IB school" only provide the program to a small, select group of high-achieving students. DCI provides it to ALL students.

In fact, the IBD program at Washington-Liberty isn't an application program like those in MoCo, at Richard Montgomery (which admits around 10% of applicants countywide) and Bethesda Chevy Chase.

At Washington-Liberty is that there are just 2 manageable prerequisites for in-boundary 8th graders. The student needs to have taken algebra I by 8th grade and earned at least a B+ in the course. The kid also needs at least a B+ average overall in 8th grade to qualify to take pre-IB courses in 9th grade. That's it, those are the requirements. Two years later, in 10th grade, the student needs to have earned at least a B+ average in pre-IB courses to qualify to take IB Diploma courses in 11th and 12th grade.

We don't like IB for All at DCI. We don't think that students who can't swing a B+ average belong in IB Diploma courses.

Give us a break, DC 8th graders can't even apply to Walls without a GPA higher than 3.8!

Ummmmmm.....that is selectivity in action. WL weeds out those who don't meet its standards for entry to an IB program. If you don't like IB for All and your sole goal is to decide which kids "belong" or not, then you are not a DCI family. You belong elsewhere where segregating kids is acceptable. Buh-bye, elitist troll. Hope your kids turn out differently than you.

Anonymous wrote:DCI views the “IB for all” as a feature but many view it as a bug. In trying to accommodate all learning levels it’s often the highest levels which are neglected. This is not a problem for many families but it is a problem for families with students capable of very high achievement. I think that’s the crux of the message of this thread.

+100. Exactly, well said. From what we gather, average IB points totals at DCI are in the low 30s, not too hot. In the burbs, they're higher. We want higher.

Anonymous wrote:Oh come on, you want to move to the burbs. Just remember though, your kid will have to apply and be accepted to the IB program at WL. They, like every other "IB school" only provide the program to a small, select group of high-achieving students. DCI provides it to ALL students.

In fact, the IBD program at Washington-Liberty isn't an application program like those in MoCo, at Richard Montgomery (which admits around 10% of applicants countywide) and Bethesda Chevy Chase.

At Washington-Liberty is that there are just 2 manageable prerequisites for in-boundary 8th graders. The student needs to have taken algebra I by 8th grade and earned at least a B+ in the course. The kid also needs at least a B+ average overall in 8th grade to qualify to take pre-IB courses in 9th grade. That's it, those are the requirements. Two years later, in 10th grade, the student needs to have earned at least a B+ average in pre-IB courses to qualify to take IB Diploma courses in 11th and 12th grade.

We don't like IB for All at DCI. We don't think that students who can't swing a B+ average belong in IB Diploma courses.

Give us a break, DC 8th graders can't even apply to Walls without a GPA higher than 3.8!

DCI views the “IB for all” as a feature but many view it as a bug. In trying to accommodate all learning levels it’s often the highest levels which are neglected. This is not a problem for many families but it is a problem for families with students capable of very high achievement. I think that’s the crux of the message of this thread.

Oh come on, you want to move to the burbs. Just remember though, your kid will have to apply and be accepted to the IB program at WL. They, like every other "IB school" only provide the program to a small, select group of high-achieving students. DCI provides it to ALL students.

Mom on the fence again. I got the IB Diploma in the 90s, if I remember correctly, scoring lowest on language and math. I think I scored 3s on SL math and German, enough for a top 10 SLAC at the time. We're white and were first gen college students.

The PP who taught in Fairfax raises thoughtful issues about language instruction in DC public schools, even if nobody else on this thread wants to hear it. We're looking at good colleges abroad for our kids for fi reasons, Canada, Ireland, the UK. This means we do care about IB exam scores and AP scores.

I don't get the feeling that the DCI high school has a culture where the scores matter yet. It's not clear to me what does matter to the leadership and families, other than high GPAs, fun for top students, and that the school improves slowly over time.

We're thinking seriously of moving to Arlington, where I work, for Washington-Liberty's IBD program. The program has been around for more than 30 years. We'd keep our DC house on CH, returning as empty nesters.

Anonymous wrote:If only shutting DCI's critics up would make the program great. We're on the fence about staying for after this year, 8th grade. Really torn. Come on, give it a shot, convince us to stay.

Same, the thing giving me hope is that friends with high schoolers say it's so much better than middle. I hope the new middle school principal is great.

You, Larla poster, come on every single thread, to slam anybody with legit concerns. After 2 years at DCI, we agree with the criticism expressed on this thread. The PP who taught Fairfax got it right. We turned down a BASIS spot (didn't want to waste the kid's language skills). If we could go back, we'd have taken the spot. We head to Alliance Francaise at Dupont on weekends to keep up our kids' French because Stokes and DCI middle school French hasn't been challenging. If that makes us trolls, OK.

Anonymous wrote:New poster.

I don’t know why (1) parents of kids who used to go to DCI but don’t anymore think they’re somehow helping OP by dampening her enthusiasm for the school and (2) why they bother commenting on DCI at all. Why not just move on?

Because they are bitter that a new school did not have tracking from the start to meet Larla’s needs. As if any school whatsoever has tracking to begin with. They are somewhere else and not happy or insecure about their choice so can’t move on and have to comment on every single DCI thread.

What is even more sad are the posters who don’t have kids at the school at all with the same talking points who say the same thing several times on every thread. It’s easy to single out the YY hater with kids who go to MOCO language weekend school. Doesn’t have a life and comes on every single thread trolling.

Seriously. Can we please talk about all the DCI moms who have gotten chlamydia from the super hot janitor?

New poster.

I don’t know why (1) parents of kids who used to go to DCI but don’t anymore think they’re somehow helping OP by dampening her enthusiasm for the school and (2) why they bother commenting on DCI at all. Why not just move on?