If, and this is a big if, this was the issue,it is not unique to Sidwell. Again in my experience, my school was fine with club athletics if it did not interfere with activities at the school, which was to be given priority. So traveling for varsity soccer had all sorts of accommodations. Travel for club soccer? The student needs to figure it out. This policy was a surprise to nobody when I was in HS, and I imagine, if this was the case at Sidwell, it was not a secret. And if this was the case, I can bet that Dayo was not the first student in the history of the school that was part of a travel team.
I keep going back to: if sheâs not at that level, then sheâs not at that level. If the Math III class is already full with people who are better qualified, which student do you bounce out to make room for her? Private schools have budgetary constraints and pedagogical approaches, so they just donât stick in an extra chair into the classroom or offer up an additional section. They need to schedule according to what will make the most sense for all 500 HS students, not just Dayo. In the immortal words of Mich Jagger and Keith Richards, âYou canât always get what you want.â
Iâm impressed with how knowledgeable and thoughtful many of you are, but is this debate really going to lead anywhere? The case was never going to be heard by the Supreme Court, who takes on maybe 1% of those cases petitioned for review. Whether or not the young woman was wronged, and whether or not any wrongdoing was racially motivated, will never be proven in court, as meaningful evidence clearly does not exist. The plaintiff should move on with her life, and maybe we should as well.
The issue discussed in the recent posts relates to the Math II grading and who continues on the advanced math track from Math II â Math III. I donât think competitiveness for Ivy-type admissions should be a notable factor in who continues on the advanced math track. If you choose math track advancement based on who is most competitive for Ivy admissions, then you might choose a URM who is a potentially recruitable athlete (like Dayo) over more academically qualified math students, without hooks.
Itâs one thing, if there was lack of space in the class and they did not have enough room for everyone who took Math II to continue to Math III, but the lawsuits docs do not suggest this. At the HS I attended, this certainly wasnât the case. Instead the advanced math track class size became smaller, with each subsequent course in the series, making space limitations relevant for early classes, but not later ones. It sounds like Sidwell has rules in place that address who should have the option of continuing on the advanced track, and those rules should be followed, which include objective grading standards. However, Dayoâs grade for math II was disputed, and there is not enough information to know whether the grade was justified, which makes it a matter of speculation.
Regarding generalities about who should be allowed to continue on the advanced math track, I favor having some objective metrics combined with a subject teacher recommendation, which it sounds like is similar to the Sidwell system. It shouldnât be just up to a single teacher, nor should it be entirely based on who meets a grade/score cutoff. I also donât think a B- threshold is unreasonably low to continue on the track, regardless of competitiveness for Ivy admissions. Iâd expect a history of higher math grades to be required to start on the advanced track, but the weaker thresholds to continue on the track.
I canât speak for Sidwellâs Upper School, but when my nephew was advanced in math Sidwellâs Lower School basically told his Mom, take what we offer or look somewhere else - everyone is above average here. Meanwhile my kid in public school did math with kids two grades advanced. When my kid did CTY in the summer (and loved it), the Sidwell party line was not to do academic stuff in the summer. I get where they were coming from, seeing how that arms race plays out in other communities, but I think there can be a sort of âwe know best attitudeâ at private schools that you really canât fight.
Missing school for a club track team. Ludicrous. So letâs assume one was above average in robotics, you should miss algebra class at my toney prep school to work on the new robot or compete in some non school sanctioned competition? Nah.
She wasnât a high end d1 material athletically. But itâs my guess they knew the power of the athletic preference overshadowed her academic prowess.
It was not even an Ivy strategy that didnât pan out for them initially.
It was a hpysm or bust strategy.
This is a weird family imho. Move on and be happy.
âFor so many people here to continue to speculate and conclude so many things from what the parents âsayâ is troubling.â
What do you mean, most posters on this thread are siding with the school, not the parents. There are are a couple of posters that are not automatically siding with the school. Most posters though are saying if the school says 2+2 is 5, well then 2+2 is 5, regardless of what other mathematicians say. If Sidwell physics teachers says energy and mass are not related, well theyâre not related, regardless of what that Einstein says. I donât want to leave non-stem out, if Sidwell says that Alcott and Joyce are overrated, well theyâre overrated.
Re #385: I would be happy to see the over-the-top EC race for the Ivies stop, so that the students can be in their high school classes all the time when they are not sick. That is not happening, even out where I liveâI remarked earlier about debate team missing every Friday for a semester, but did not throw in a mention of the fourth-grader being recruited for a travel track team.
I am not actually unhappy about this. I just maintain a skeptical attitude as to what happened with regard to the student. A lot of posters seem to be operating under the impression that the statements in the court documents are false. I donât take it for granted that they are true, but neither am I at all convinced that nothing happened. I donât like to see anyone shut out of an advanced class in the circumstances alleged in the suit, where there is room, when the student wants to take it. The student stopped track after one year at Penn, perhaps when engineering became too time-consuming to pursue along with track. Maybe that would have happened earlier with Math III. No way to know.
Students get âshut outâ of advanced classes all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes itâs a scheduling conflict, sometimes it is due to class size limits, sometimes the classes they would like to have are not offered. And definitely, students who are trying to juggle school with outside activities or commitments end up getting âshut outâ of classes. And sometimes it can be due to seemingly arbitrary school policies.
And for a lot of students its a matter of student and school resources. If a public school doesnât offer AP Calc, a student from a low-income family is (almost) by definition âshut out.â - though a highly motivated student with internet access might choose to take advantage of the wealth of free offerings. (Khan Academy, MIT Courseworks, Coursera, etc.)
But for students whose parents have financial resources and a willingness to invest in their education, there are other options. There are all sorts of online programs, community college & university extension courses in higher math available. And there are all sorts of students on CC who have taken that route when they werenât happy with the math track that they found themselves on in high school.
Many here ere are resisting taking any position, not just picking a side for the sake of picking one.
We donât know the facts here. Itâs not about hypotheticals, maybe this, probably that, because we think so, we heard about something similar somewhere.
It seems to me that the majority of the posters are highly critical of the parents for filing the lawsuit, and the majority of the posters believe that Sidwell Friends acted correctly. Some have used the term PITA for the parents. I donât see that as resisting taking any position. Actually, it seems that hardly anyone who is commenting on the thread is resisting taking any position.
Quantum mechanically, the world is governed by probabilities. I estimate probabilities a lot based on experiences, both my own and experiences I have read about. I have applied probability estimation here. Of course, everyone is free to disagree with my estimations (not that I have noticed anyone holding back from that).
There was an interesting quotation from Don Marquis in a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, published today, defining an optimist as âa man who has never had much experience.â I think practically all of the postersâmyself includedâare taking the optimistic view of the family or the school (the majority favoring the latter).
Itâs probably a wonderful school. I admire the Quaker belief in the inner light, and many Quaker traditions. I would find it very hard to run a school where probably all of the parents anticipate that their children will get into an Ivy League college, while in reality maybe 15-20% of the students will do so. For that matter, if we lived in Washington, D.C., Sidwell Friends might well have been my top choice for my daughter, and it is entirely possible that the school would not have admitted her! I donât bear them any grudge at that level of hypotheticals.
Like what @momofsenior1 said in post # 361, our sâsâ private HS decided whether or not a student could register for an AP class or not, based on past performance and courses taken/taking. They claimed it was because of limited space, but many of us suspected they wanted to maximize the # of students who would likely get a 4 or a 5 on the AP exam, and they could put this in their school profile.
In our local HS, if a student petitioned to get into an AP class that they werenât recommended for, they had to commit to staying n the AP class 9dnot dropping back down) even if it was challenging.
Our private hs was a little looser. But the responsibility for getting grades was on the kids. Aim higher and get a B? Maybe itâs better to stay at-level, if thatâs where your record shows you fit (calculus is no easy class.) Thatâs not gaming it, but being realistic about learning. Not just what might impress a college.
I donât care whoâs on what side. Bottom line: this isnât about projections. Not some vent about all the issues weâve ever experienced or know someone who did or heard something, somewhere. We have one-sided info and can apply some critical thinking.
I donât think lawsuits are about probabilities. Iâve served on juries and it was clearly spelled out that what we supposed might have happened didnât matter. Only what the plaintiff/prosecution could prove did. In this case it doesnât appear that the plaintiffs were able to prove their case.
In my opinion, itâs just as bad to insinuate a school official gave their notice the year this young woman left Sidwell because of possible wrongdoing by the school as it is to say unproven things about the girlâs family. I donât think misgrading is a smoking gun since apparently an entire class didnât get their lowest grade dropped. Teachers make honest mistakes. And shredding old exams and gradebooks a year after the students graduate doesnât seem unusual to me either.
I donât see any evidence of racism or a coordinated conspiracy to retaliate against this young woman because of her parents. Thatâs not to say it didnât happen, just that the evidence doesnât support it.
Of course lawsuits are not about probabilities. If a suit is heard, a lot of facts may emerge, but most likely not everything. When a decision is made to hear a case, that decision is based on probabilities. Decisions to issue warrants are based on âprobable cause.â I base my opinions on situations on probabilities as I assess them, keeping in mind that the result is not settled truth. I see nothing wrong with that.
I am not insinuating that there was actual wrongdoing by the headmaster. If the headmaster did say that the teachers wanted the family âgone, gone, gone,â that may have been the absolute truth. If so, it would be impolitic to say it, but not wrongdoing, in my view. If the headmaster did not say it, then his comments were not even impolitic. I doubt that there are any outside witnesses or recordings to the conversation. I think the headmaster may well have left just due to being tired of dealing with the issues that are inevitably going to arise, when various parentsâ expectations cannot all be met.
As mentioned earlier, I do not see any evidence of racism at Sidwell Friends. In fact, I would be shocked if there were racism among any of the teachers and administrators there. What I think is most probable (sorry to those who donât like to deal in probabilities) is that the Math II teacher felt that student was prioritizing the travel team above math. In the same situation, I would have thought that myself. It is not stretching credulity too far to suggest that the teacher may have been displeased by the studentâs apparent priorities.
With regard to shredding the old exams, I had the impression that happened at the end of the year the student took the class, and hence two years before she graduated. If it happened a year after she graduated, the issue was already part of an ongoing lawsuit, and that would make it questionable, in my opinion. But I believe that the shredding was practically immediate. There is a small likelihood that nothing was shredded. I estimate the probability of that as below 10%. If the exams had not been shredded, they could have been produced for the family.
âThose things that are part of the record do show an accomplished young person but do not seem to point to the best of the best who would be a likely for the top schools in the country. That she was able to graduate from Penn just shows me that so many more âaverage excellentâ students, if given the chance would also excel at top schools. It does not indicate to me that she was wronged or a victim, it indicates to me that she was lucky and leveraged her superior SF education to reach her goals.â
I contend that many would argue that this very outcome, this very path - from Sidwell Friends to Penn - that seems the more natural landing for a student lifelong educated within the halls and walls of the SF community. Admission to Penn (and other schools of its ilk) is what many who place their children there probably believe they are laying the groundwork for.
As such, absolutely no graduate of SF admitted to the environs of Penn+, would ever consider themselves âluckyâ. No. Each of those graduates would tell you they earned it.
@QuantMech â the shredding seems to have taken place a year later. It was the sophomore Math II teacher, and she testified that it was her practice " to keep her grade books for one year after the school year ends, and then destroy them". The mediation that resulted in the agreement to review the math grades took place in July after the completion of junior year. The Math II grade (C/C+) was not changed after review.
Itâs pretty obvious that the familyâs primary goal was to get the grades revised prior to submission to colleges in senior year â they wanted the colleges to have a transcript with all Aâs rather than the Câs in Math II and A- in Calculus. The calculus grade was revised upward to an A.
I do think its quite possible that the C in Math II was a factor that hurt the plaintiff when she was applying to colleges as a senior. From the assertions of the plaintiff, they seem to think that her inability to take Calc BC in high school was a huge factor. Iâm wondering if perhaps during the gap year the student took an advanced calc course and was able to document completion of a BC level course? (No evidence one way or another â but we also donât know what âunconditionalâ acceptance meant.)
The point Iâve been making is that there has already been a determination by the court. The plaintiff failed to sustain their burden of proof of anything nefarious with the grading. Maybe their ability to do so was hampered by the teacherâs routine destruction of old records â but itâs not a matter of probabilities at this point, itâs a matter of lack of proof in a case that was decided 2 years ago (July 2017).
So itâs not about being pro-Sidwell or pro-Dayo in my view â itâs a matter of accepting a decision thatâs already been made and moving on. The part that I see as missing is that the student could have made up the perceived math deficiency in other ways â we do get kids and parents posting about these sorts of problems on CC, and Iâve never seen anyone advise âsue the school.â More commonly students opt to take online courses or self-study for the BC exam.
The student graduated from Sidwell in 2014, and the lawsuit was filed in December of 2015 (after the plaintiff had already completed her gap year and matriculated at Penn)
@privatebanker: âMissing school for a club track team. Ludicrous. So letâs assume one was above average in robotics, you should miss algebra class at my toney prep school to work on the new robot or compete in some non school sanctioned competition? Nahâ.
Those kids bring home statues, ribbons, medals and trophies. Those kids bring with them positive press about the school.
It happens.
Heck, those kids come from families whose travel schedules interfere with the kid sitting in the seat absolutely everytime school is in session.The parents expect to work with the schools to cover lost time for these circumstances as much as for national or international club travel and competition.
What Iâm hearing is that Dayoâs parents felt the rigid rules for accommodation you posit should be in place, across the board and all the time (they are not), were felt to be affinity-bent.