Recognizing it was mainly in jest, 6 years ago, there were just barely enough Asian students of *both* sexes to fill Payton, NS and Young. So, demonstrably false. Also, total enrollment at P+NS+WY this year is slightly higer than total HS enrollment of Asians (obv not counting any id’ing as multi-racial).

“discriminated against subtly by the female majority of teachers”

Big near accusation there. Might play out in writing-heavy classes (and not b/c of perceptible sex-based discrim, rather a “writes like me” thing that affects virtually *everyone* and the greater likelihood that girls “write like” women bc, well, they are), but otherwise is hard to imagine.

This particular lack of diversity seems to be completely unaddressed, and it most certainly comes from the heavy weighting on grades, which I suspect that in 7th grade, boys-will-be-boys and they goof off (or are discriminated against subtly by the female majority of teachers.)

On the basis of … what? … do you believe that other alternatives have not been explored?

Also, I read the report, which has a clear tone of advocacy–a tone which, if one did not agree with the view being advocated, is strong enough to cause a reasonable person to question the analysis.

Agreed on questioning the allocation of $$.

Here’s what I can say for certain – she doesn’t have 3 hours of homework a night, whereas this seems to be the mode every time someone talks about IB. The words “rigor” and “intense” invariably arise in the same conversation when talking about IB.

I can say that she’s taking physics, and although they don’t use a textbook, there is a “recommended” one for supplement, and a little more than halfway through the year, they are covering a topic that roughly a fifth of the way into the text. I don’t know LPHS (not sure IB freshmen take physics.)

Looking at the LPHS website, it looks like in Geometry, Payton might be a little farther along.

While going through the tours, I was in awe of the teachers – they were entirely reminiscent of what you’d find at a top-notch liberal arts college. Which lead me to wonder, how is one accredited to teach IB? As CPS teachers, they’re allowed by contract to become incompetent and apathetic, but I’m not sure they couldn’t be reassigned out of IB…so maybe that’s why they seemed so good.

I’ll give up looking for concretes – because the thing is, how “good” a school and what it accomplishes is very dependent – maybe entirely — on the preparation of the students before they enter the door. It is likely (who knows…LPHS can be extremely secretive, and IB is immune to the tiers and all that) that students going into the top SEHS are better prepared. And this is the only reason they wind up at the top of the charts when things like PSAE scores are tabulated. And it is this kind of statistic that becomes a positive feedback loop: I know lots of kids who were accepted into both IB and SEHS, and given that choice, not a single one opted for IB. And not a single one chose the SEHS over IB because they thought the SEHS was “harder” or “more challenging” – in fact, they (my small sample) thought the SEHS was not only “better”, but easier.

It’s hard to use data – info from LPHS pretty cleverly spanned the last 20 years – and so half of that time was before the SEHS existed – but it was very impressive in terms of Ivy placements, National Merit, etc.

You simplify everything Angie – it all comes down to – what are the scores? Since that is how you look at the world, why not look at the report in both of today’s papers about the success rate of the “turnaround” schools. You may find that your precious scores will show you that they perform no better, and are actually outperformed by neighboring CPS schools. Learn about how once placed in this “watched” status the schools are starved of funds or community input, and then given to AUSL with large amounts of our tax dollars to “turn them around” – yet the results aren’t there.

Read more about it, and let’s talk then.

Mom2 – my last post here – going back to obsessing on the SE letters – which is my real reasong for visiting this whole blog to begin with!

And as a taxpayer – I am concerned about the amount of tax dollars that would go to “turning them around” when other options – that may very well have better outcomes – haven’t been explored and may still exist.

Apologies to mom2 for getting off topic on this thread again!