Anonymous wrote:@Anonymous at 11:09am

I hear you on test prep but I just googled Thomson and it is apparently an IB primary years school. (The only one in DC...?) Can't just be drill/kill all day I imagine?

Yu Ying is primary IB.

Of course, it's obviously higher SES than Thomson...

Read the piece on Harvard in today's Washington Post. It's clear that the system is horribly broken when wealthy kids doing C- work are making As at Harvard.
Actual knowledge and learning isn't the issue, social class is.

Anonymous wrote:It isn't clear to me what they are measuring here. It looks as though they are looking at the results for all students and comparing that to how well a school with a similar percent of at risk students should be expected to do. That isn"t the same as actually looking at the scores for the at risk students, which are available. Some of these schools like Ludlow, Seaton, and Barnard are rapidly gentrifying. The kids from better off families may be scoring well, while the school does little for the at risk kids, and the school would still score well on this metric.

You are right about their analysis - it's not about performance of at-risk students exclusively, but rather about average performance of whole school. But I think the trendline shows that significant presence of at-risk students can have effect on peers too (e.g. a school that is 50% at-risk) especially low-income but non-at risk peers, I'd imagine. I'm extrapolating here. They should have made that clearer.

I looked up the achievements gaps between at-risk and non-at risk on the results.osse.dc.gov website of about 7 or 8 of the schools on their list (all the DCPS schools) and saw very small achievement gaps (anywhere from 5-10 points) whereas in many other schools the achievement gaps between at-risk/non-at risk are gaping (30 points) - e.g. Wilson, Stuart Hobson, Oyster-Adams. The city average proficiency for at-risk students is something like 5-10% proficient and the schools on the authors' list (Seaton, Ludlow, KIPP, Center City etc) have about 30-40% of their at-risk students proficient or more.

Anonymous wrote:Didn't the owner/founder of the site move to VA when his child didn't get into any of the schools they liked via lottery?

Um. So?

It isn't clear to me what they are measuring here. It looks as though they are looking at the results for all students and comparing that to how well a school with a similar percent of at risk students should be expected to do. That isn"t the same as actually looking at the scores for the at risk students, which are available. Some of these schools like Ludlow, Seaton, and Barnard are rapidly gentrifying. The kids from better off families may be scoring well, while the school does little for the at risk kids, and the school would still score well on this metric.

I don't think I seen any hostility and there's little challenging about the article.

amazing how hostile some of you are to having your deeply held notions challenged!

What about the author's of the article? Where's their skin in the game, other than profiting from advertising charter schools?

Anonymous wrote:Didn't the owner/founder of the site move to VA when his child didn't get into any of the schools they liked via lottery?

https://ggwash.org/contributors/alpert says he still lives in dupont. I think he's ib for ross, and he has the money for private school. You may be thinking of the owner of popville, who moved from petworth to wotp when his oldest was quite young. I don't even think they tried the lottery.

Didn't the owner/founder of the site move to VA when his child didn't get into any of the schools they liked via lottery?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's nothing compelling in the article that would lead a typical GGW-reading parent to change their lottery philosophy. The Thomson-IT comparison shows how badly they don't get it, since listing Thomson would be a wasted lottery spot for any OOB parent.

But I'm sure there are people who are IB for Thomson, LT, or any of the other schools in the article who have a decent chance of getting in at PK or are entitled to get in, K and after, who didn't consider their IB because of demographics. It may change their lottery preference if they were unaware of how well these schools were doing.

I take it back, as that is a very good point. Applies to Barnard as well.

True. But for a lot of schools, overperforming their demographics still results in unacceptably low test scores.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's nothing compelling in the article that would lead a typical GGW-reading parent to change their lottery philosophy. The Thomson-IT comparison shows how badly they don't get it, since listing Thomson would be a wasted lottery spot for any OOB parent.

But I'm sure there are people who are IB for Thomson, LT, or any of the other schools in the article who have a decent chance of getting in at PK or are entitled to get in, K and after, who didn't consider their IB because of demographics. It may change their lottery preference if they were unaware of how well these schools were doing.

I take it back, as that is a very good point. Applies to Barnard as well.

Anonymous wrote:There's nothing compelling in the article that would lead a typical GGW-reading parent to change their lottery philosophy. The Thomson-IT comparison shows how badly they don't get it, since listing Thomson would be a wasted lottery spot for any OOB parent.

But I'm sure there are people who are IB for Thomson, LT, or any of the other schools in the article who have a decent chance of getting in at PK or are entitled to get in, K and after, who didn't consider their IB because of demographics. It may change their lottery preference if they were unaware of how well these schools were doing.

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure I agree that Ludlow-Taylor is THAT hard to get into. We started off on the PK4 waitlist as an OOB student at number 23 and were offered a spot within the first weeks. We turned it down as we've decided to stay at our current school. Just thought I'd share....

Well, that means that out of 104 no preference kids om the WL, first they got through 7 sibling enrolled and proximity kids, then they went 16 deep in the WL. So that is less than 20% Not amazing chances.

Anonymous wrote:There's nothing compelling in the article that would lead a typical GGW-reading parent to change their lottery philosophy. The Thomson-IT comparison shows how badly they don't get it, since listing Thomson would be a wasted lottery spot for any OOB parent.

I think it makes Seaton look good, and L-T if you have an older child that can get in. But overall, they just don't get it.