Well, if the child is male, Bard is a lot better bet! Their numbers are very heavily female, so boys get a bit of a tip.</p>
<p>I’m on Staten Island and we have zoned programs, but there are so few schools in the borough that there are elite programs in every zoned school. Which sounds great on paper, but people are tripping over themselves to get into programs in schools which have less of “that element.” So we have schools which operate at 200% of capacity or more and schools in the same general area which operate at less than 65% of capacity.</p>
<p>The system defintely no longer runs like the process you spoke about as evidenced by the fact that you have a lot of kids that get shut out of the first round and then have to go on to the supplemental round. There are students that are shut out of the supplemental round and are not assigned a school and then they have to go to the office of enrollment on the first day of school to be assigned a school. They will be given a disposition letter placed at a school that has not met register. On the student side there is really no choice. If the school is a screened program or limited screened, the school can choose not to accept the student and the family has to go back to the enrollment center.</p>
<p>We just got finished ranking on SEMS (Student Enrollment Mangement System) last week. When we rank we rank 5 times the number of slots we have. If we have 100 seats, we rank 500 kids. Beleive me not every kid who ranks your school number 1/2 gets admitted. There are different factors in the selection process that drive how Principals/GCs rank students (like colleges filling classes based on their institutional mission).</p>
<p>Like Zoosermom stated, if we need more boys to gender balance, then boys will get the tip. If you need to add to your ICT population, ESL then they will be your priority when ranking students. </p>
<p>If you have a student that ranks highly with grades, reading math scores and has bad attendance/lateness that will raise a flag and that kid may not be as highly ranked as a student whose scores/grades may be slightly lower but comes to school on time each day (we can’t help you if you are not in the building).</p>
<p>When I rank kids, I pull disclipinary records from ATS. If a student has had a suspension or infraction that comes up in ATS especially in 7th/8th grade it raises a red flag (the best predictor of future behavior is relative past behavior).</p>
<p>We do reach out to middle school counselors and middle school counselors do reach out to us regarding students.</p>
<p>So, sybbie, when you rank kids, do you rank from 1 to 500, or are you marking, say 100 kids as a 1, 100 as 2, etc? I read an article written by someone at NYCischool who said they rank it by the latter method, which brings in an element of randomness. The first way is much more personalized.</p>
<p>Interesting about the counselors. The kids from middle schools where the counselors are on the ball will have a big edge.</p>
<p>It’s also interesting about attendance. I have friends who laugh that part off (ha ha, my kid was late 20 times, etc) but still expect their kids with good grades and scores to get in where they want. I know it puts up a big red flag, but how often does it mean they are really out of the game?</p>
<p>Oh and here’s another question. Sorry if I am barraging you sybbie, and maybe you can’t answer it, but how much does the quality of the student’s middle school affect the high school admission? And, I’m sure this I different for different high schools, but it just seems that some middle schools are feeders for some selective high schools. For example, it seems like tons of kids from the good Park Slope middle schools get in to Beacon, and no one from my kid’s good private school ever seems to, with one exception.</p>
<p>No, we are advised by the director of enrollment not to rank students this way. When the algorithm is run, you will most likely not get any of the students that you ranked this way.</p>
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<p>We don’t rank those kids, so they do not get a seat in our school.</p>
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<p>Attendance is big. Remember you get budgeted slated on the number of students that you have. Your budget is finalized based on the number of students on your register on October 31 of the school year. No school wants to deal with a student that is an attendance problem, especially when it concerns students under 17. If they are chronically absent late, you willmost likely have ACS involeved. If a student is 17.5 years old and is chronically absent, you will do a planning interview and the student will eventually be given a code 39 (dropout) discharge, which is a negative discharge against the school. If students are late for first period, they are missing classes and the risk of actually not being successful in that class increases. Schools are evaluated on credit accumulation as well as regents test scores. </p>
<p>Students who are consistently late/absent will not do well on either the regents or on accumulating credits. The chancellors regs state that as part of the promotion requirements, that students should have 90% attendance. With approxmately 29 days in a marking period, any student who is absent more that 3 days in a marking period, 9 days a term or 18 days a year does not make the 90%. </p>
<p>Also keep in mind that at the middle school level, most students go to the zoned school close to their homes. If you cannot make it on time the school that is in walking distance from your house, you are going to be an attendance problem in the making. Also keep in mind that as mandated reporters, students with attendance problems are reported to ACS for educational neglect.
So even among smart kids, with the limited resources available, it is not worth it to a school to take a student who is a chronic attendance or disciplinary problem. Again, at the end of the day a school would rather take a 2/3 that comes to school every day on time and they can work with through tutoring/enrichment than to take a 3/4 with horrible attendance/lateness. Schoolwide we meet once a month to discuss attendance (AP’s, Principals, GC’s, Parent Coordinator, Attendance Coordinator and Attendance teacher) to come up with interventions fro students who have attendance problems. This can range from encouraging them to attend a transfer/alternative high school/GED, take the hit, do a planning interview and negatively discharge a student, or if the child is a 9th grader meet with the parents with the goal of having the student apply to another school for 10th grade throught the SEMS process.</p>
<p>With the exception of specialized high school exams, audition, portfolios, etc that are used for admissions criteria, your child’s high school admission lives and dies by the 7th grade reading, math and classroom scores. High schools like going with a known product when it comes to selecting kids from middle school. Case in point, the park slope middle school kids that get accepted to Beacon. Beacon knows what kind of kids they are getting in terms of testing and grades. There is probably a relationship established between principals/ GC’s/ AP’s. High schools hold counselor breakfast, tours and open houses, specifically for middle school counselors in hopes of buidling feeders because schools are responsible for building their base. if you know that you are going to get good students who will pass regents, accumulate credits and graduate with the cohort, you keep picking from that middle school.</p>
<p>Thanks! It’s kind of sad, regarding middle school feeder schools. High stat kids from bad middle schools have the decked stacked against them in so many ways. Everything works out fine for families like mine whose kids are in known middle schools. So much for a meritocracy.</p>
<p>And the kids with the attendance and disciplinary problems end up at the lowest common denominator schools, and then those schools get Fs on their report cards, and then the DOE blames the teachers, and tries to shut those schools down . . But if the school got dedicated kids in the first place they wouldn’t look so bad. It’s a terrible system, except for the priviledged ones. Again, For those who wonder: this is why we pay $ to send our kids to private.</p>
<p>Something happened this week in my son’s middle school that surprised me. There is an audition only music program at one of the high schools. Its director and two other teachers came to the middle school (the auditions were a month ago) for the sole purpose of listening to the kids who are zoned for their school (and therefore didn’t need to audition). They told everyone straight out that they are going to select the kids from the audition pool based only on what spots they have to fill in after the zoned kids are accounted for and that they weren’t interested in the best overall musicians, just in the ones they can only get into the school by offering one of those coveted seats. Which makes things even tougher for some of the families we knew. Their kids are excellent musicians but play common instruments, so they may get locked out of that program because they aren’t what that music program needs. I wasn’t aware that this even happened.</p>
<p>This is the reason that MS GC’s have to get out there and network so that they can put their kids/schools on someone’s radar.</p>
<p>I think that schools that have it the worse are Ed-OP schools. Ed-opt schools are supposed designed to attract a wide range of academic performers. Students applying to an Educational Option program are categorized into one of three groups based upon the results of their 7th grade standardized reading test score: </p>
<p>•Top 16%- High
•Middle 68%- Middle
•Bottom 16%- Low</p>
<p>However, often this is not the case. While the half the students are chosen by the school administration from the applicant pool, the other half are selected randomly. It is these schools that end up with the discipline problems, attendance issues and low performing students who are placed thre to fill the register. However, from an evaluation standpont, they are held at the same standards for graduation/credit accumulation as a screened program.</p>
<p>We live in Brooklyn. Early on with our older D we opted for a small private in Southern part of Brooklyn. The tuition is nowhere near the leves discussed in this thread, and I personally couldn’t be happier with our choice. No headache dealing with city schools, small class size, excellent education and discipline. D stayed in this school through 8 grade. She did get into Mark Twain (without tutoring or even studying for a test), but we decided to keep her where she was. Then she got into Stuyvesant - again, no tutors, just a study group at her school. Now my younger D is in the 2 grade in the same private, and loves it. There is NO WAY I’ll exchange this school for ANY public one around.</p>
<p>There is a payout - they make kids to study A LOT. Lots of homework, including weekends, holidays and breaks, and parents are expected to monitor it. You simply cannot come to school without homework being done and checked. But it’s a small price to pay for knowledge and piece of mind IMHO.</p>
What did you decide about that? Send or not? My D (back in the dark ages) got into Stuyvesant and refused to attend and it seems that it’s a less popular choice for some families than one might expect. Although still wildly popular!</p>
<p>“I dont think a workable model has been developed in urban areas that can work for all.”</p>
<p>I agree with you. Putting family preferences to the side for a moment, it’s a calamity for poor folks in the city when the upper-middle-class families all leave. Compare New York to Detroit in terms of public services. One necessity for keeping the UMC families in town is building elite, selective public schools with academics comparable to the suburbs. That’s the choice Chicago made, and it is working here as it has in NYC. When I was in high school, we had one selective high school that regularly got kids into the Ivy League; now we have five (plus 15 more schools with application-only IB programs). It’s one of many reasons we haven’t become a “doughnut” with an abandoned city center like other cities that were once our peers (e.g., St. Louis).</p>
<p>The down side is that the ordinary public schools suffer because they lose their best and brightest working-class and poor kids to the selective schools/programs. On balance, I think we’re doing the right thing, because the whole city goes down the tubes when your tax base collapses, and takes the regular public schools with it. But this is a real, significant downside that we need to work to fix.</p>
<p>She went. She really liked it when we visited. I don’t know whether it was a right choice. She is doing fine, the GPA is 92-94, but the workload and stress level is enormous. D says it’s love/hate relationship. I am not sure I will be sending my little one there.</p>
<p>D’s other option was Midwood HS - not bad, but nowhere near the Stuy, or it was our district HS (New Utrecht) - this one was no contender.</p>
<p>If our private opens the HS, I would seriously consider it for my younger D.</p>
<p>My D decided against Stuyvesant for social reasons. Between the commute and the fact that she didn’t know anyone going there, she was concerned about making friends.</p>
<p>My D did not have a problem with either commute or not knowing anyone - I think about 5 kids from her class of 26 got accepted, plus a few more that used to go with her in the elementary school but left for middle school. Besides, she is very sociable and makes friends quite easily.</p>
<p>But I repeat - Stuy is not for everyone. There are a lot of very gifted kids in there, and if your child is a competitive type, but not a genius with photographic memory (my D case), it is hard and stressful to keep up.</p>
<p>I can’t complain about the level of education. And my D guidance counselor was simply great.</p>
<p>The question remains - would I personally pay $40K for elementary school? I would if I could do it without seriously damaging my family budget (not my case, unfortunately). Otherwise - no. I would find other options (including relocation from Manhattan).</p>