Anonymous wrote:And a Brown acceptance! Even more important, 10 MILLION in scholarships!!!

Parent of a DCI Senior here.

For those talking about the Ivies and other “top” schools, out of approximately 90 seniors:

One Brown acceptance
Two Cornell acceptances
Two Yale acceptances
One Vanderbilt acceptance
Many Spelman acceptances
One Howard acceptance
Two Macalester acceptances
One Middlebury acceptance
Carnegie Mellon acceptance
Johns Hopkins
Barnard
McGill
A couple of UVA offers (not sure if accepted)
Georgia Tech
One Durham University in England
One or two Pitt acceptances
George Washington
American
Several HBCUs

Many, many other awesome acceptances and offers and yes, over $10 million in scholarship offers!!

From this class, two left to go to Walls, a couple left because they moved out of state.... most stayed.

We are a WOTP family in the Lafayette, Deal Wilson area who took a chance on a feeder school years ago.

We did this because we wanted Chinese language immersion and more racial and socioeconomic diversity for our children.

Our senior applied to Walls and got in and chose to stay at DCI - we gave her the choice (but luckily it was our choice too).

We have been so grateful over the years to be in such rich and diverse school environments.

A PP said wisely that every school has behavioral issues. I think this is true.

The IB is rigorous and DCI implements it with fidelity. I have observed our DD, her study habits and her grades.

We have been very happy at DCI and think it has done a brilliant job in preparing the first two graduating classes well (2020 and 2021).

Two are going to Yale from DCI.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

+1 Basis also is in trouble constantly for its treatment of students with disabilities.

Fair statement 6 or 8 years ago, not today.

Absolutely true today! 6%? Come on! You’re delusional

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a fair point that Walls, Wilson and Banneker were never struggling AP HS programs. DCI could also have started out strong.

Walls and Banneker are test in schools that self select. BTW the average pass points at DCI in the IB diploma is just as good as Banneker.

You really don’t know the history of Wilson at all. It wasn’t always a higher performing school.

I know the history of Wilson. The school struggled until Dunbar, the jewel in the DCPS crown until the early 1980s, fell on hard times as the city pushed to desegregate neighborhood schools. This led to a big influx of strong black students into Wilson in just a few years.

DCI could easily offer more test-in classes within the school, and stop socially promoting. They're happy to support acceleration in middle school math, and that's about it DCI's "advanced" language classes just aren't very advanced.

BASIS doesn't socially promote, the key to their success.

And yet, Basis college acceptances are not any better than DCI’s

Come on, BASIS' college acceptances are better, particularly for UMC students. BASIS got two into MIT in 2019 and another 2 in 2020. This year, they have on into Harvard, one into Yale.

How many into MIT and Harvard from DCI?

Not sure, maybe none. But one DCI grad is going to Yale this year. Impressive for first year!

But I do agree with the criticisms of the lack of tracking. My kid was reading the same in sixth grade English as he did in fifth grade at his feeder. And he said math was boring.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a fair point that Walls, Wilson and Banneker were never struggling AP HS programs. DCI could also have started out strong.

Walls and Banneker are test in schools that self select. BTW the average pass points at DCI in the IB diploma is just as good as Banneker.

You really don’t know the history of Wilson at all. It wasn’t always a higher performing school.

I know the history of Wilson. The school struggled until Dunbar, the jewel in the DCPS crown until the early 1980s, fell on hard times as the city pushed to desegregate neighborhood schools. This led to a big influx of strong black students into Wilson in just a few years.

DCI could easily offer more test-in classes within the school, and stop socially promoting. They're happy to support acceleration in middle school math, and that's about it DCI's "advanced" language classes just aren't very advanced.

BASIS doesn't socially promote, the key to their success.

Wow did not realize the history of Wilson but makes total
sense because all my black friends graduated from Wilson in the 90’s not sure how they got in because they definitely did not live on that side of town. There was no lottery then. And when Dunbar was segregated way back in the day they graduated top
AA students. This was in the 40’s some attend Ivy League schools. Many AA doctors and lawyers came out
from that school

If anything, DCI wants to track less than what they already do. The math tracking is not something admins really want to continue - they only do so because of families. Tracking goes against their IB for all philosophy and their mission statement.

Anonymous wrote:DCI selects for families that can support language immersion.

Huh? Many of the families coming up through the feeders effectively don't "support language immersion." Plenty of feeder families land in immersion schools to escape bad in-boundary schools, full stop. These families tend to coast on immersion, meaning that the kids speak target languages poorly, even in the upper grades. Hardly a secret.

Anonymous wrote:

+1 Basis also is in trouble constantly for its treatment of students with disabilities.

Fair statement 6 or 8 years ago, not today.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a fair point that Walls, Wilson and Banneker were never struggling AP HS programs. DCI could also have started out strong.

Walls and Banneker are test in schools that self select. BTW the average pass points at DCI in the IB diploma is just as good as Banneker.

You really don’t know the history of Wilson at all. It wasn’t always a higher performing school.

I know the history of Wilson. The school struggled until Dunbar, the jewel in the DCPS crown until the early 1980s, fell on hard times as the city pushed to desegregate neighborhood schools. This led to a big influx of strong black students into Wilson in just a few years.

DCI could easily offer more test-in classes within the school, and stop socially promoting. They're happy to support acceleration in middle school math, and that's about it DCI's "advanced" language classes just aren't very advanced.

BASIS doesn't socially promote, the key to their success.

And yet, Basis college acceptances are not any better than DCI’s

Come on, BASIS' college acceptances are better, particularly for UMC students. BASIS got two into MIT in 2019 and another 2 in 2020. This year, they have on into Harvard, one into Yale.

How many into MIT and Harvard from DCI?

Anonymous wrote:DCI selects for families that can support language immersion.

No they don’t. Families select DCI in the lottery. Some kids come into 9th with no history of foreign language and start it then. It’s not immersion. It’s like starting a foreign language in middle school.

DCI selects for families that can support language immersion.

+1 Basis also is in trouble constantly for its treatment of students with disabilities.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a fair point that Walls, Wilson and Banneker were never struggling AP HS programs. DCI could also have started out strong.

Walls and Banneker are test in schools that self select. BTW the average pass points at DCI in the IB diploma is just as good as Banneker.

You really don’t know the history of Wilson at all. It wasn’t always a higher performing school.

I know the history of Wilson. The school struggled until Dunbar, the jewel in the DCPS crown until the early 1980s, fell on hard times as the city pushed to desegregate neighborhood schools. This led to a big influx of strong black students into Wilson in just a few years.

DCI could easily offer more test-in classes within the school, and stop socially promoting. They're happy to support acceleration in middle school math, and that's about it DCI's "advanced" language classes just aren't very advanced.

BASIS doesn't socially promote, the key to their success.

And yet, Basis college acceptances are not any better than DCI’s

I'm not buying that the political winds are blowing against all tracking outside of math and foreign languages our schools either. It's DCI admins who are against the tracking.

This thread has been jammed with excuses for why DCPC can't be bothered to build a serious IB diploma program at DCI.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Washington Liberty kids have to apply to get into their IB Program. It’s certainly not IB for All like DCI. And certainly the demographics of the IB kids at WL are not close to the same as the DCI kids.

Not really. Any Washington-Liberty student with a B average freshman and sophomore year can pursue IBD junior and senior year. W-L does not offer a test-in IBD program like Richard Montgomery in Rockville and some of the Fairfax IBD programs. The demographics of Washington-Liberty are similar to the demographics in several of the DCI feeders, particularly YY.

Well that is still applying and self selecting kids. No DCI demographics isn’t like WL. Some kids at YY don’t continue to DCI and their demographics get diluted with all the other schools who feed into DCI in addition to taking new kids in 9th.

Come on, the demographics get diluted mainly because DCI refuses to track academically in middle school, other than for math and languages. Arlington offers low-key GT programming in middle school and stronger admins than DCI does, not just more favorable demographics. DCI's system just doesn't support IB Diploma-worthy high school academics for all that many students.

If DCI would only stop tossing YY graduates etc. who work at or above grade level into humanities and science classes with kids who work behind grade level, they'd keep more of the stronger feeder students. Admins don't seem to give a hoot that they lose around half of these kids to programs offering more rigor, and better discipline, BASIS, Latin, privates, the burbs. It's a vicious circle that needs political attention.

And that's exactly the problem - politically, the winds are against any tracking, haven't you noticed?

Somehow the test in schools are managing to still exist, not sure how they defend themselves while tracking goes by the wayside, but I don't see tracking being added, only removed these days (Wilson).

I don't see this.

DCPS finally started publishing guidelines for advanced middle school work/honors classes on its web site in 2019. Some DCPS middle schools, including Jefferson Academy and Brookland, have started grouping kids into "leveled homerooms," enabling those who work above grade level to stay together in academic classes through creative scheduling.

BASIS has been allowed to force kids who can't pass end-of-year comprehensive middle school exams to repeat 6th, 7th or 8th grades for a decade now (a creative twist on academic tracking).

Many DC public middle schools, both charter and DCPS, have introduced math tracking in the last five years or so. Washington Latin didn't formally track for math until SY 2017-18.

Wilson is watering down tracking because its principal of four years runs with a militant anti-segregation agenda and has the political capital get mileage out of it, no other reason.