Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:yes, if it isn't clear enough here - if you have the typical American high test score-based gifted program, you'll have a gifted program that has 99% of its enrollment from 20% of its student body, i.e., it will be white, Asian, and to be politically incorrect, a few token majority-assimilated black and Hispanic kids.

That being obvious, DCPS tries to go about this from a different perspective, making enrichment content available to students who are bad at test taking and possibly just simply poor students. So you won't see the gifted programs you wish for.

WTF is an assimilated black kid?!!

not you, bro

I don't get this response. Is this supposed to be funny? Are you supposed to be "talking black", really I don't get it. What were you going for here?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:yes, if it isn't clear enough here - if you have the typical American high test score-based gifted program, you'll have a gifted program that has 99% of its enrollment from 20% of its student body, i.e., it will be white, Asian, and to be politically incorrect, a few token majority-assimilated black and Hispanic kids.

That being obvious, DCPS tries to go about this from a different perspective, making enrichment content available to students who are bad at test taking and possibly just simply poor students. So you won't see the gifted programs you wish for.

WTF is an assimilated black kid?!!

not you, bro

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to the Census, there are only 24,000 kids aged 10-14 in DC--and that's a major overstatement of how many high schoolers there will be in a few years since families will send kids to private school or move out of the District. Even if they all went to public high school, about half would be in charters. The top 1% of DCPS kids would only be 24 kids per grade, which is not enough to run a very interesting high school--especially since the top couple dozen most gifted kids in DC are not going to be gifted in the same way: some are going to want to do physics research and some are going to write plays and some are going to build computers and some want to learn Hindi and study international relations.

I think the DCPS application high schools plus AP at Wilson and IB at Eastern offer rigorous curricula, though the schools each have aspects that make them not a great fit for certain kids. A motivated student can also use the resources of the universities, agencies, organizations, etc. in the city to do a whole lot more.

Fixing the pipeline seems like a useful step--identifying smart kids at early grades and working with them in ways parents like. And there could be improvements (different ones for each school) at SWW, Banneker, Wilson, Eastern, etc. But building a whole new TJ-like school makes a lot less sense to me than working on McKinley Tech, which has the same aims.

Have you talked to the top IB Diploma candidates at Eastern lately, or their IB Diploma Program Coordinator? Do you know that the "rigorous curricula" you describe led to a first-year IB Diploma pass rate in the mid 20s, versus in the high 30s in the better suburban programs (the IB Diploma Point pass range is 24-45)? This year, half the Diploma candidates couldn't earn the minimum 24 points. Flash forward ten years, and little is likely to have changed at the rate we're going.

You're not fooling me because I've volunteered in Eastern's fraught IB Diploma Program. Nobody else should be fooled either. Not a good fit for certain kids, my foot. Try middle class kids, period.

I said it was a rigorous curriculum. The fact that many kids who attempt it don't get the minimum score to pass just proves that point. If Eastern all of a sudden had 50 kids who scored 4s and 5s on PARCC enter each grade, there would be more kids passing. The problem isn't IB. The problem is that too few kids go into high school with the skills needed to do IB. If you have a kid who has the skills, then IB will be there for them. Now, there may be other problems at Eastern--how is classroom discipline? Are kids who don't want to/can't do IB put into IB classes because the school doesn't want to have a teacher working with only 5 students? Those are issues, but they are solvable--and the solution isn't to remove IB.

OK, fantastic, a rigorous curriculum that should stay. What of it for Cap Hill gentrifiers? What doesn't appear to be solveable is the Ward 6 neighborhood middle school arrangement, with the nine Cap Hill neighborhood elementary schools feeding into several weak middle schools, causing the great majority of well-educated parents to vote with their feet to BASIS, Washington Latin, private and the burbs at 4th grade. Stuart Hobson's in-boundary percentage has dipped for five years running now, with no end in sight.

So when are the kids with the skills to ace IB Diploma examinations coming to Eastern? 30 years hence?

Anything is solvable in the grand scheme of things. Apparently, just not in Ward 6, with no heads rolling politically as a result.

Anonymous wrote:It is frustrating that pull outs in DC seem to focus on kids who are behind rather than those that are ahead.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Won't happen because the racial makeup wouldn't match the city.

But it would match the country. We don't live in Nigeria, despite of what some folks seem to think.

What does the racial makeup of the DC school system have to do with the racial makeup of the country?

Enrollment in DCPS is limited to DC families (OK, maybe a few VA and MD families...)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to the Census, there are only 24,000 kids aged 10-14 in DC--and that's a major overstatement of how many high schoolers there will be in a few years since families will send kids to private school or move out of the District. Even if they all went to public high school, about half would be in charters. The top 1% of DCPS kids would only be 24 kids per grade, which is not enough to run a very interesting high school--especially since the top couple dozen most gifted kids in DC are not going to be gifted in the same way: some are going to want to do physics research and some are going to write plays and some are going to build computers and some want to learn Hindi and study international relations.

I think the DCPS application high schools plus AP at Wilson and IB at Eastern offer rigorous curricula, though the schools each have aspects that make them not a great fit for certain kids. A motivated student can also use the resources of the universities, agencies, organizations, etc. in the city to do a whole lot more.

Fixing the pipeline seems like a useful step--identifying smart kids at early grades and working with them in ways parents like. And there could be improvements (different ones for each school) at SWW, Banneker, Wilson, Eastern, etc. But building a whole new TJ-like school makes a lot less sense to me than working on McKinley Tech, which has the same aims.

Have you talked to the top IB Diploma candidates at Eastern lately, or their IB Diploma Program Coordinator? Do you know that the "rigorous curricula" you describe led to a first-year IB Diploma pass rate in the mid 20s, versus in the high 30s in the better suburban programs (the IB Diploma Point pass range is 24-45)? This year, half the Diploma candidates couldn't earn the minimum 24 points. Flash forward ten years, and little is likely to have changed at the rate we're going.

You're not fooling me because I've volunteered in Eastern's fraught IB Diploma Program. Nobody else should be fooled either. Not a good fit for certain kids, my foot. Try middle class kids, period.

I said it was a rigorous curriculum. The fact that many kids who attempt it don't get the minimum score to pass just proves that point. If Eastern all of a sudden had 50 kids who scored 4s and 5s on PARCC enter each grade, there would be more kids passing. The problem isn't IB. The problem is that too few kids go into high school with the skills needed to do IB. If you have a kid who has the skills, then IB will be there for them. Now, there may be other problems at Eastern--how is classroom discipline? Are kids who don't want to/can't do IB put into IB classes because the school doesn't want to have a teacher working with only 5 students? Those are issues, but they are solvable--and the solution isn't to remove IB.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:yes, if it isn't clear enough here - if you have the typical American high test score-based gifted program, you'll have a gifted program that has 99% of its enrollment from 20% of its student body, i.e., it will be white, Asian, and to be politically incorrect, a few token majority-assimilated black and Hispanic kids.

That being obvious, DCPS tries to go about this from a different perspective, making enrichment content available to students who are bad at test taking and possibly just simply poor students. So you won't see the gifted programs you wish for.

WTF is an assimilated black kid?!!

Anonymous wrote:yes, if it isn't clear enough here - if you have the typical American high test score-based gifted program, you'll have a gifted program that has 99% of its enrollment from 20% of its student body, i.e., it will be white, Asian, and to be politically incorrect, a few token majority-assimilated black and Hispanic kids.

That being obvious, DCPS tries to go about this from a different perspective, making enrichment content available to students who are bad at test taking and possibly just simply poor students. So you won't see the gifted programs you wish for.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to the Census, there are only 24,000 kids aged 10-14 in DC--and that's a major overstatement of how many high schoolers there will be in a few years since families will send kids to private school or move out of the District. Even if they all went to public high school, about half would be in charters. The top 1% of DCPS kids would only be 24 kids per grade, which is not enough to run a very interesting high school--especially since the top couple dozen most gifted kids in DC are not going to be gifted in the same way: some are going to want to do physics research and some are going to write plays and some are going to build computers and some want to learn Hindi and study international relations.

I think the DCPS application high schools plus AP at Wilson and IB at Eastern offer rigorous curricula, though the schools each have aspects that make them not a great fit for certain kids. A motivated student can also use the resources of the universities, agencies, organizations, etc. in the city to do a whole lot more.

Fixing the pipeline seems like a useful step--identifying smart kids at early grades and working with them in ways parents like. And there could be improvements (different ones for each school) at SWW, Banneker, Wilson, Eastern, etc. But building a whole new TJ-like school makes a lot less sense to me than working on McKinley Tech, which has the same aims.

Have you talked to the top IB Diploma candidates at Eastern lately, or their IB Diploma Program Coordinator? Do you know that the "rigorous curricula" you describe led to a first-year IB Diploma pass rate in the mid 20s, versus in the high 30s in the better suburban programs (the IB Diploma Point pass range is 24-45)? This year, half the Diploma candidates couldn't earn the minimum 24 points. Flash forward ten years, and little is likely to have changed at the rate we're going.

You're not fooling me because I've volunteered in Eastern's fraught IB Diploma Program. Nobody else should be fooled either. Not a good fit for certain kids, my foot. Try middle class kids, period.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Won't happen because the racial makeup wouldn't match the city.

But it would match the country. We don't live in Nigeria, despite of what some folks seem to think.