DCUM Forum

Anonymous

10/06/2013 15:36 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Anonymous wrote:If Banneker and SWW are the best in DC, then they should get higher then average test scores, even with poverty. We need a new, harder, magnet school.

Right, and the points made earlier were:

1) Any school that had admission criteria similar to other STEM magnet programs in the region would be overwhelmingly white.
2) The powers that be in DC would not support/allow a magnet school that was overwhelmingly white.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 15:20 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Banneker and SWW are the best in DC, then they should get higher then average test scores, even with poverty. We need a new, harder, magnet school.

Their scores aren't all that good and they don't seem to be placing many grads in the better universities. They don't seem to be all they are cracked up to be. That's why lots of families just skip them and go to charters, privates or move out of DC for high school.

Pp here. That is my exact point.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 15:11 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Anonymous wrote:If Banneker and SWW are the best in DC, then they should get higher then average test scores, even with poverty. We need a new, harder, magnet school.

Their scores aren't all that good and they don't seem to be placing many grads in the better universities. They don't seem to be all they are cracked up to be. That's why lots of families just skip them and go to charters, privates or move out of DC for high school.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 14:51 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First of all, I am the "wife". Why would you assume that a man posted that? Huh? Secondly, I don't practice anymore. I went into investment banking and have been in the corporate world for a while. I enjoy it a lot better. SAT scores and LSAT scores are important because people claim that you can't pass the bar if you don't do well on these tests, which is false.

I have 2 sons. One son is in DCPS in middle school. The other started at Banneker. I LOVED Banneker. I am its biggest fan. However, Banneker is 75% girls. My son wanted to know every one of them so we put him in an all boys school. I hate that. He got a GREAT education at Banneker. I am amazed. Unfortunately, it was too rigorous for him at that time. He was not mature enough to handle it. That was not Banneker's fault. Banneker loses boys every year because of maturity. Yes, they have poor SAT scores, as this forum likes to point out. The one statistic that has been proven over and over again is that SAT scores are tied to income, not intelligence. Read Diane Ravich's new book Reign of Error. She talks about it. The environment at Banneker was great.

Fine, don't let your kid go to Banneker. They don't care. They still produce kids who go to ivy league schools every year and get a ton of scholarship money. That's your loss, not theirs.

Be open to the schools. Your kid will do great wherever they go b/c you are their parent. There are great teachers in every single school in this city. We used to live in a very nice suburb with great schools. I honestly cannot see the difference except that the kids and parents looked different. If that's important to you, then it's important to you. I didn't care about that. I wanted my kids to have a diverse experience.

Of course they go Ivy and get money. All the right boxes are checked.

But I wonder how many actually go each year and more importantly how many graduate. I met friends who got the acceptance and the money due to the boxes, but were totally unprepared academically. At least now the place I went to offers a ninth semester of financial aid thanks to our lobbying. It had never occurred to me that some kids who felt they had to drop out mid semester could not come back.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 14:33 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First of all, I am the "wife". Why would you assume that a man posted that? Huh? Secondly, I don't practice anymore. I went into investment banking and have been in the corporate world for a while. I enjoy it a lot better. SAT scores and LSAT scores are important because people claim that you can't pass the bar if you don't do well on these tests, which is false.

I have 2 sons. One son is in DCPS in middle school. The other started at Banneker. I LOVED Banneker. I am its biggest fan. However, Banneker is 75% girls. My son wanted to know every one of them so we put him in an all boys school. I hate that. He got a GREAT education at Banneker. I am amazed. Unfortunately, it was too rigorous for him at that time. He was not mature enough to handle it. That was not Banneker's fault. Banneker loses boys every year because of maturity. Yes, they have poor SAT scores, as this forum likes to point out. The one statistic that has been proven over and over again is that SAT scores are tied to income, not intelligence. Read Diane Ravich's new book Reign of Error. She talks about it. The environment at Banneker was great.

Fine, don't let your kid go to Banneker. They don't care. They still produce kids who go to ivy league schools every year and get a ton of scholarship money. That's your loss, not theirs.

Be open to the schools. Your kid will do great wherever they go b/c you are their parent. There are great teachers in every single school in this city. We used to live in a very nice suburb with great schools. I honestly cannot see the difference except that the kids and parents looked different. If that's important to you, then it's important to you. I didn't care about that. I wanted my kids to have a diverse experience.

Not really true. SAT scores go up w/ income, but in general higher IQ's lead to higher salaries, and higher IQ parents tend to have higher IQ kids, so you would expect kids of high SES families to do better. Also, if SAT scores were really tied to income, kids of poor white families with incomes <20K wouldn't be getting better SAT scores than kids of AA families earning more than 200K.

That other thread convinced me that most AA kids are just SOL when it comes to the SATs, but not why.

Well, we always said that it was the A students being bossed around by the C students when I practiced law and represented investment banks. We are not going private because we don't have the $$ otherwise my dh would absolutely do it for his kids (he got a free ride to prep school due to low SES and being a minority).

Have to assume from the Banneker story that you are AA, so what "diversity" are you talking, SES? and that education is not all that important to you. I used to fume when I saw the C students from the University of Vermont being paid over 500k plus bonuses, and you are probably like them. Except that the ones at GS tried hard to get their kids into the prep schools they never went to, ditto with the Ivy League. And my Ivy was where I experienced "diversity" and that is my dh's goal for our kids as well. Right now we want them to get an education.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 14:23 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Anonymous wrote:First of all, I am the "wife". Why would you assume that a man posted that? Huh? Secondly, I don't practice anymore. I went into investment banking and have been in the corporate world for a while. I enjoy it a lot better. SAT scores and LSAT scores are important because people claim that you can't pass the bar if you don't do well on these tests, which is false.

I have 2 sons. One son is in DCPS in middle school. The other started at Banneker. I LOVED Banneker. I am its biggest fan. However, Banneker is 75% girls. My son wanted to know every one of them so we put him in an all boys school. I hate that. He got a GREAT education at Banneker. I am amazed. Unfortunately, it was too rigorous for him at that time. He was not mature enough to handle it. That was not Banneker's fault. Banneker loses boys every year because of maturity. Yes, they have poor SAT scores, as this forum likes to point out. The one statistic that has been proven over and over again is that SAT scores are tied to income, not intelligence. Read Diane Ravich's new book Reign of Error. She talks about it. The environment at Banneker was great.

Fine, don't let your kid go to Banneker. They don't care. They still produce kids who go to ivy league schools every year and get a ton of scholarship money. That's your loss, not theirs.

Be open to the schools. Your kid will do great wherever they go b/c you are their parent. There are great teachers in every single school in this city. We used to live in a very nice suburb with great schools. I honestly cannot see the difference except that the kids and parents looked different. If that's important to you, then it's important to you. I didn't care about that. I wanted my kids to have a diverse experience.

Of course they go Ivy and get money. All the right boxes are checked.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 13:53 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

If Banneker and SWW are the best in DC, then they should get higher then average test scores, even with poverty. We need a new, harder, magnet school.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 13:45 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First of all, I am the "wife". Why would you assume that a man posted that? Huh? Secondly, I don't practice anymore. I went into investment banking and have been in the corporate world for a while. I enjoy it a lot better. SAT scores and LSAT scores are important because people claim that you can't pass the bar if you don't do well on these tests, which is false.

I have 2 sons. One son is in DCPS in middle school. The other started at Banneker. I LOVED Banneker. I am its biggest fan. However, Banneker is 75% girls. My son wanted to know every one of them so we put him in an all boys school. I hate that. He got a GREAT education at Banneker. I am amazed. Unfortunately, it was too rigorous for him at that time. He was not mature enough to handle it. That was not Banneker's fault. Banneker loses boys every year because of maturity. Yes, they have poor SAT scores, as this forum likes to point out. The one statistic that has been proven over and over again is that SAT scores are tied to income, not intelligence. Read Diane Ravich's new book Reign of Error. She talks about it. The environment at Banneker was great.

Fine, don't let your kid go to Banneker. They don't care. They still produce kids who go to ivy league schools every year and get a ton of scholarship money. That's your loss, not theirs.

Be open to the schools. Your kid will do great wherever they go b/c you are their parent. There are great teachers in every single school in this city. We used to live in a very nice suburb with great schools. I honestly cannot see the difference except that the kids and parents looked different. If that's important to you, then it's important to you. I didn't care about that. I wanted my kids to have a diverse experience.

Not really true. SAT scores go up w/ income, but in general higher IQ's lead to higher salaries, and higher IQ parents tend to have higher IQ kids, so you would expect kids of high SES families to do better. Also, if SAT scores were really tied to income, kids of poor white families with incomes <20K wouldn't be getting better SAT scores than kids of AA families earning more than 200K.

What about the really poor Asian immigrants who get high SAT scores? Maybe scores are closely correlated with being able to learn and apply testing techniques... Well, maybe that is tied to income then because you need money to purchase those lessons and have the time and leisure to learn them.

There have been quite a few studies that show that prepping helps some, but not that much on average.

A College Board study conducted in the mid 1990s showed that SAT coaching resulted in an average verbal increase of 8 points and an average math score increase of 18 points.

A 2009 study by NACAC, the National Association of College Admission Counseling, showed that SAT prep courses raised critical reading scores by about 10 points and math scores by about 20 points.

And poor Asians as a general rule don't get super high SAT scores on average. Obviously there will be able exceptions.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 13:14 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:First of all, I am the "wife". Why would you assume that a man posted that? Huh? Secondly, I don't practice anymore. I went into investment banking and have been in the corporate world for a while. I enjoy it a lot better. SAT scores and LSAT scores are important because people claim that you can't pass the bar if you don't do well on these tests, which is false.

I have 2 sons. One son is in DCPS in middle school. The other started at Banneker. I LOVED Banneker. I am its biggest fan. However, Banneker is 75% girls. My son wanted to know every one of them so we put him in an all boys school. I hate that. He got a GREAT education at Banneker. I am amazed. Unfortunately, it was too rigorous for him at that time. He was not mature enough to handle it. That was not Banneker's fault. Banneker loses boys every year because of maturity. Yes, they have poor SAT scores, as this forum likes to point out. The one statistic that has been proven over and over again is that SAT scores are tied to income, not intelligence. Read Diane Ravich's new book Reign of Error. She talks about it. The environment at Banneker was great.

Fine, don't let your kid go to Banneker. They don't care. They still produce kids who go to ivy league schools every year and get a ton of scholarship money. That's your loss, not theirs.

Be open to the schools. Your kid will do great wherever they go b/c you are their parent. There are great teachers in every single school in this city. We used to live in a very nice suburb with great schools. I honestly cannot see the difference except that the kids and parents looked different. If that's important to you, then it's important to you. I didn't care about that. I wanted my kids to have a diverse experience.

Not really true. SAT scores go up w/ income, but in general higher IQ's lead to higher salaries, and higher IQ parents tend to have higher IQ kids, so you would expect kids of high SES families to do better. Also, if SAT scores were really tied to income, kids of poor white families with incomes <20K wouldn't be getting better SAT scores than kids of AA families earning more than 200K.

What about the really poor Asian immigrants who get high SAT scores? Maybe scores are closely correlated with being able to learn and apply testing techniques... Well, maybe that is tied to income then because you need money to purchase those lessons and have the time and leisure to learn them.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 12:24 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Ask Kaya if you have questions.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 12:16 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Anonymous wrote:First of all, I am the "wife". Why would you assume that a man posted that? Huh? Secondly, I don't practice anymore. I went into investment banking and have been in the corporate world for a while. I enjoy it a lot better. SAT scores and LSAT scores are important because people claim that you can't pass the bar if you don't do well on these tests, which is false.

I have 2 sons. One son is in DCPS in middle school. The other started at Banneker. I LOVED Banneker. I am its biggest fan. However, Banneker is 75% girls. My son wanted to know every one of them so we put him in an all boys school. I hate that. He got a GREAT education at Banneker. I am amazed. Unfortunately, it was too rigorous for him at that time. He was not mature enough to handle it. That was not Banneker's fault. Banneker loses boys every year because of maturity. Yes, they have poor SAT scores, as this forum likes to point out. The one statistic that has been proven over and over again is that SAT scores are tied to income, not intelligence. Read Diane Ravich's new book Reign of Error. She talks about it. The environment at Banneker was great.

Fine, don't let your kid go to Banneker. They don't care. They still produce kids who go to ivy league schools every year and get a ton of scholarship money. That's your loss, not theirs.

Be open to the schools. Your kid will do great wherever they go b/c you are their parent. There are great teachers in every single school in this city. We used to live in a very nice suburb with great schools. I honestly cannot see the difference except that the kids and parents looked different. If that's important to you, then it's important to you. I didn't care about that. I wanted my kids to have a diverse experience.

Not really true. SAT scores go up w/ income, but in general higher IQ's lead to higher salaries, and higher IQ parents tend to have higher IQ kids, so you would expect kids of high SES families to do better. Also, if SAT scores were really tied to income, kids of poor white families with incomes <20K wouldn't be getting better SAT scores than kids of AA families earning more than 200K.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 12:02 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Is there a college acceptance and matriculation list for Banneker? Will love to see where kids go with all that scholarship money. TIA.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 10:45 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

First of all, I am the "wife". Why would you assume that a man posted that? Huh? Secondly, I don't practice anymore. I went into investment banking and have been in the corporate world for a while. I enjoy it a lot better. SAT scores and LSAT scores are important because people claim that you can't pass the bar if you don't do well on these tests, which is false.

I have 2 sons. One son is in DCPS in middle school. The other started at Banneker. I LOVED Banneker. I am its biggest fan. However, Banneker is 75% girls. My son wanted to know every one of them so we put him in an all boys school. I hate that. He got a GREAT education at Banneker. I am amazed. Unfortunately, it was too rigorous for him at that time. He was not mature enough to handle it. That was not Banneker's fault. Banneker loses boys every year because of maturity. Yes, they have poor SAT scores, as this forum likes to point out. The one statistic that has been proven over and over again is that SAT scores are tied to income, not intelligence. Read Diane Ravich's new book Reign of Error. She talks about it. The environment at Banneker was great.

Fine, don't let your kid go to Banneker. They don't care. They still produce kids who go to ivy league schools every year and get a ton of scholarship money. That's your loss, not theirs.

Be open to the schools. Your kid will do great wherever they go b/c you are their parent. There are great teachers in every single school in this city. We used to live in a very nice suburb with great schools. I honestly cannot see the difference except that the kids and parents looked different. If that's important to you, then it's important to you. I didn't care about that. I wanted my kids to have a diverse experience.

Anonymous

10/06/2013 10:44 Subject: Why doesn't DC have a STEM school like TJ?

Anonymous wrote:

Whatever. My kid is in DCPS. He has every opportunity I had and I was raised in HoCo, MD. Give me a break. I don't really care if folks on this forum only care about SAT scores. The funny thing is that I did terrible on my SATs, aced the bar exam and am now the big boss and make a ton of money. Boy, those SAT scores really put me on a path to poverty.

This is not about SAT scores, it is about college readiness. Clearly you went to law school, somewhere. Without serious intervention I would bet the majority of the kids from our "top" schools will never get there.

Well I guess the real question is are you going to KEEP your kid in DCPS for middle and high school, while making a ton of money? Wilson or BASIS? Again, SWW #266, 50% college readiness, Banneker #466, 47.whatever, Duke Ellington 1772 27%? McKinley fuggedabout it. And Wilson is not even ranked or I did not get that far.

My dh comes from poverty and managed to pull himelf out through hard work despite an early shitty education. No way would he do that to his kids just because he survived. Are you saying you will? Making them work hard is one thing. Putting them at an obvious disadvantage when you have the money to do otherwise is incomprehensible to me.

Hey Big Boss Man, you gonna man up and answer the question? BTW, acing the bar exam is usually irrelevant - associates have already started at Biglaw, and the scores are never posted (at least I never looked at mine, kind of a pass/fail test). Acing the bar exam usually means nada. Failing it ? Whole other story.

Something may smell here, although you never claimed to be a partner, just "the big boss" who makes "a ton of money". Maybe you don't boss around other lawyers. What does your wife think about the idea of keeping your apparently only child in DCPS as opposed to going private or moving to an area in the suburbs zoned for a clearly better MS and HS?

Since you can obviously afford a multitude of options, and must not have become "the big boss" because of stupidity, I would be really genuinely interested in what your plans are for your son after DCPS elementary school who may be the heir apparent to some kind of business I am not understanding.

Do share what the school of hard knocks taught you about how to educate your only son, please. That only law school and "acing the bar exam" count? And that sucking at the SAT's is fine by you for your son not only yourself? Clearly cost is no factor, so please we are all waiting with baited breath to hear what someone who may have come from poverty and has apparently unlimited financial resources has decided about how to educate his only heir. NB Banneker kids apparently cannot do math, and I assume you can - including statistics, probabilities, possibilities, etc., especially where they involve your child.