Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is in a race to the bottom. No matter what school if it’s admissions process or honors for all. Sad.

Oh, ffs..."honors for all" is three or four classes at Wilson...people continue to make it seem like there are no opportunities for advanced classes. The school has more AP classes than any other in the city.

+1
Wilson parent here- plenty of things at Wilson to complain about...the fact that 9th grade English and Biology (and a couple other classes) are not tracked is not one of them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is in a race to the bottom. No matter what school if it’s admissions process or honors for all. Sad.

Oh, ffs..."honors for all" is three or four classes at Wilson...people continue to make it seem like there are no opportunities for advanced classes. The school has more AP classes than any other in the city.

Anonymous wrote:DCPS is in a race to the bottom. No matter what school if it’s admissions process or honors for all. Sad.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The process is a mess, complete mess, but no point in pretending that affirmative action had nothing to do with it. Bowser says she wants greater Ward 7 and 8 representation at Walls. She’s not willing to invest in more serious prep for bright poor minority kids aiming for Walls. So she’s taken a pathetic shortcut to increasing their numbers. Sorry that your student was passed over. Please sue DCPS for an unaccountable admissions process at Walls.

Both things are true. DCPS/Bowser/Ferebee wanted greater representation from Wards 7 and 8 at Walls, and they incompetently landed on an admissions process (GPA/interview) that does nothing to advance that goal, while sometimes excluding kids who would have been a great fit for Walls and done very well there.

Anonymous wrote:The process is a mess, complete mess, but no point in pretending that affirmative action had nothing to do with it. Bowser says she wants greater Ward 7 and 8 representation at Walls. She’s not willing to invest in more serious prep for bright poor minority kids aiming for Walls. So she’s taken a pathetic shortcut to increasing their numbers. Sorry that your student was passed over. Please sue DCPS for an unaccountable admissions process at Walls.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWW has better academics than Wilson.

SWW also has better college admissions than Wilson per capita (Wilson is four times bigger than SWW).

Everybody knows that, and that’s why send our kids to SWW.

Want proof? Here you go:

USN&W ranks SWW #2 in the DC area, right beyond TJ (which some consider the best high school in the country; TJ has far better college admissions than any other high school in the area, including Top 3 privates).

Wilson ranks #73.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/district-of-columbia/rankings/washington-dc-47900

Truly the dumbest post I've ever seen.

Walls has a self-selected group of kids, combined with a screening from DCPS. Wilson has none of those things and is more reflective of a larger swath of kids in DC. Those rankings are based on academic performance...if you only looked at the academic performance of the subset of Wilson students who looked like Walls kids, I'm guessing their academic achievement would be similar.

It's like if you ranked how good a hospital based on mortality rates...low and behold, the hospitals serving the healthiest populations would rank highest but it would not necessarily reflect the quality of care.

Not PP but this is really the most idiotic response to a post I have seen on DCUM. Are you a Wilson parent?

Previous posters suggested that Wilson and Walls were equally good or Wilson was better, and parents just picked one or the other because of “fit.” In response, PP pointed out that Walls has better academics, better college placement, and a much higher ranking. Your response is that Walls attracts a higher caliber of student. That means you AGREE with PP.

And then you make an analogy to hospitals. Why don’t we run with that analogy. Let’s say you have a terrible disease. Would you choose a hospital with better doctors, better treatment, and a higher ranking than one with worse doctors, worse treatment, and a lower ranking? I suspect that you might pick the first one.

You don't understand the PP's point at all...they were pointing out the idiocy of how USNews determines the rankings...if you look at how they do it (which I just did) they use measures like % of kids who graduate and scores on assessment tests...OF COURSE Walls does better on those because they screen out a bunch of kids based on GPA or their test or whatever they do during the admissions process...but that does not mean it's a better-than-average school (maybe yes, maybe no)...it just serves a smarter-than-average population. Imagine two schools:

School A is a magnet school that screens for "above average" kids and screens out any kid with a learning disability (i.e., all the kids would graduate from almost any high school and would perform better than average on assessment tests).

School B is a general public school that reflects a wide range of kids from all backgrounds, of all abilities, with no screening. It reflects the population as a whole.

Suppose school A's graduation rate is 100% and 90% of kids score above average on some achievement test. Is that surprising? Does it tell you anything about the quality of the school? Not really. We knew those kids were going to graduate and score above average on tests--they were screened before they started at that school and unless the school really messed up, this was going to be the case. Now, suppose school B's graduation rate is 95% and 85% of kids score above average on the test. Wow! That seems pretty great given the high school graduation rate is something like 70 percent and we'd only expect 50% to score above average. The school must be doing something really well. But US News would rank school A higher than school B because there is no adjustment for student population.

And the hospital analogy is a great one--the ranking would only be meaningful if the metrics used to determine the ranking were good. If, as you suggest, a ranking is based on some sort of measures of "good doctors" and "better treatment", than it might be useful. If, on the other hand, they used what the PP suggested--mortality rates--high rankings might not reflect anything other than serving low-risk (i.e., relatively healthy) patients.

So, if the US News ranked high schools based on the "quality of the teachers" or "improvements in student achievement" then the rankings might be meaningful. But they don't. Simply using the levels of things like test scores and graduation rates is meaningless if you don't control for the student population.

Dig a little deeper and think more critically before relying on these rankings...there may be some that are useful, but this one is B.S.

Anonymous wrote:The DCPS leaders responsible for the watered-down, affirmative action based admissions process at Walls can only game the rankings for so long. Weak management of the jewel in the DCPS crown under Ferebee sucks no matter how you slice it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWW has better academics than Wilson.

SWW also has better college admissions than Wilson per capita (Wilson is four times bigger than SWW).

Everybody knows that, and that’s why send our kids to SWW.

Want proof? Here you go:

USN&W ranks SWW #2 in the DC area, right beyond TJ (which some consider the best high school in the country; TJ has far better college admissions than any other high school in the area, including Top 3 privates).

Wilson ranks #73.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/district-of-columbia/rankings/washington-dc-47900

Truly the dumbest post I've ever seen.

Walls has a self-selected group of kids, combined with a screening from DCPS. Wilson has none of those things and is more reflective of a larger swath of kids in DC. Those rankings are based on academic performance...if you only looked at the academic performance of the subset of Wilson students who looked like Walls kids, I'm guessing their academic achievement would be similar.

It's like if you ranked how good a hospital based on mortality rates...low and behold, the hospitals serving the healthiest populations would rank highest but it would not necessarily reflect the quality of care.

Not PP but this is really the most idiotic response to a post I have seen on DCUM. Are you a Wilson parent?

Previous posters suggested that Wilson and Walls were equally good or Wilson was better, and parents just picked one or the other because of “fit.” In response, PP pointed out that Walls has better academics, better college placement, and a much higher ranking. Your response is that Walls attracts a higher caliber of student. That means you AGREE with PP.

And then you make an analogy to hospitals. Why don’t we run with that analogy. Let’s say you have a terrible disease. Would you choose a hospital with better doctors, better treatment, and a higher ranking than one with worse doctors, worse treatment, and a lower ranking? I suspect that you might pick the first one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWW has better academics than Wilson.

SWW also has better college admissions than Wilson per capita (Wilson is four times bigger than SWW).

Everybody knows that, and that’s why send our kids to SWW.

Want proof? Here you go:

USN&W ranks SWW #2 in the DC area, right beyond TJ (which some consider the best high school in the country; TJ has far better college admissions than any other high school in the area, including Top 3 privates).

Wilson ranks #73.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/district-of-columbia/rankings/washington-dc-47900

Again, I have no dog in this fight, but this is proof? Look at how the rankings are calculated...ANY school that screens students (based on a test or GPA) is going to rank very highly because they are going to get higher-than-average kids...the only thing this proves is that USNews is (as always) able to dupe a huge number of people with BS rankings.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SWW has better academics than Wilson.

SWW also has better college admissions than Wilson per capita (Wilson is four times bigger than SWW).

Everybody knows that, and that’s why send our kids to SWW.

Want proof? Here you go:

USN&W ranks SWW #2 in the DC area, right beyond TJ (which some consider the best high school in the country; TJ has far better college admissions than any other high school in the area, including Top 3 privates).

Wilson ranks #73.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/district-of-columbia/rankings/washington-dc-47900

Truly the dumbest post I've ever seen.

Walls has a self-selected group of kids, combined with a screening from DCPS. Wilson has none of those things and is more reflective of a larger swath of kids in DC. Those rankings are based on academic performance...if you only looked at the academic performance of the subset of Wilson students who looked like Walls kids, I'm guessing their academic achievement would be similar.

It's like if you ranked how good a hospital based on mortality rates...low and behold, the hospitals serving the healthiest populations would rank highest but it would not necessarily reflect the quality of care.