<p>I’m wondering if you have a list of student accomplishments for the students in the school district in your part of the world. I have links here for three school district brag sheets </p>
<p>for districts near where I grew up. All three of these school districts lie within a United States congressional district that has, I think, the highest percentage of college-educated adults in the entire United States (which probably means it is the largest area in the whole world with a comparable percentage of college-degree-holding people). </p>
<p>How do the student achievement facts related here look to you? What do you think of the list of colleges admitting graduates of the middle-listed district? Note that in any of these school districts, but especially in the first-listed two, there are plenty of parents who could afford to pay full freight to send their children to any college into which the children could gain admission. This is an area, in general, of high family income. </p>
<p>By my state’s law, I could enroll my children in any of these school districts (because our state has open enrollment). I happen to have close relatives who attend schools in one of the listed districts, and know lots of young people from all of them through various community activities. Thus far we are staying the course of pursuing homeschooling for more challenging academics and better balanced socialization for our children, despite the reputed favorable school environment locally.</p>
<p>I attend Robbinsdale Cooper High School and our district has an annual report that I have been able to find but not one with as much bragging as minnetonka’s (although their principal was our head principal until last year). </p>
<p>Most schools will have some sort of school information sheet that they send to schools along with the transcript. It will include things like % college bound and information on scores. </p>
<p>As to 'tonka’s list of schools…it’s a pretty good list. I must say that Cooper probobly has a more prestigious list becasue of its excellent IB program (and the states only approved MYP program although they havnt graduated yet), but it also has more non-college bound and a ton of people heading off to mankato state. </p>
<p>I would also say that if minnetonka’s IB program is anything like coopers, it would be preferrable to homeschooling for academics and socialization. The big schools are finally starting to take more notice of IB as a program rather than as a bunch of tests that are kind of like AP tests. Homeschooled kids can take AP tests, but they cannot get the effect of such an internationalized, enveloping program. Please note that I can’t speek for the minnetonka program directly, only that IB itself is pretty cool and the principal is a good guy.</p>
<p>Thanks for mentioning a school district with which I am very familiar. My goddaughter and her brothers go to schools in that district, and I have other connections to Robbinsdale district. </p>
<p>Are you referring to the Robbinsdale district annual report </p>
<p>which I just found by landing on the district Web site? </p>
<p>I guess I would say that Robbinsdale’s brag sheet looks more impressive than Minnetonka’s mostly because Robbinsdale is a lower socioeconomic status district, and long has been, than Minnetonka. But anyone living in suburban Minneapolis is wealthy by world standards, and the Robbinsdale IB statistics would need a lot more detail to convince me. What languages are the IB students studying these days? How is the math taught in the IB program? Is anyone Ivy-bound from this year’s early round of admissions from Robbinsdale district?</p>
<p>Your query brought a smile to my face. Not only does our district not have a brag sheet but it does not disclose the number of NMSF (I know the numbers only because I attended the ceremony honoring the students and their families–nothing was mentioned in the school’s daily newsletter, website, principal’s newsletter, etc…). Last year and the year before, the school decided to publish a list of colleges where students had been accepted, but no numbers were attached.</p>
<p>There’s an interesting brag sheet posted on a thread in the “College Admissions” forum showing all acceptances in a wealthy California district:</p>
<p>As a parent of a Sophomore, I really haven’t focused on this yet, but I’m curious and will eventually ask the Guidance Office. The school definitely has a “profile”, but it’s more for state DOE purposes rather than as a “brag sheet” – I’d like to see exactly what accompanies a transcript when it goes out the door. At my S school, I’m afraid it’s not much more than a transcript and maybe the official (and pretty unhelpful) state profile. The HS has a 955 SAT average and only sends about 40% on to 4-yr colleges, so that might explain it.</p>
<p>Marite wrote: “Your query brought a smile to my face. Not only does our district not have a brag sheet but it does not disclose the number of NMSF (I know the numbers only because I attended the ceremony honoring the students and their families–nothing was mentioned in the school’s daily newsletter, website, principal’s newsletter, etc…).”</p>
<p>I have to smile at your smile, Marite, for not only does our school district not have a brag sheet or disclose the number of NMSF, it does not honor or recognize them in any way! My S was the first NMSF in his school’s (relatively short) history and nobody outside of his counselor and the principal knows or cares. (And we just learned there won’t be any from this year’s junior class either). There are probably one or two others at the other bigger high schools in the district, but one would never know. It’s fine with me, because S does not like much attention, but it is interesting how student accomplishments get played out regionally across the U.S.</p>
<p>Bragging about NMSF totals reminds me that such things often reflect more upon factors exogenous to the schools rather than the value-added by the school per se. </p>
<p>One especially noteworthy example–my own high school was happy to celebrate its record crop of 4 NMSF (in a graduating class of 400), when 2 of those students were actually senior year transfers. So they were enrolled in the school at the time of the NMSF announcement, but they’d actually never darkened the doorways of this particular school district until long AFTER they took the NMSQT in the schools they had previously attended in another state. Of course, the article and press release celebrating them didn’t mention that no credit could actually be ascribed to the school for their accomplishment (and did not give any credit to the 2 students’ previous schools.)</p>
<p>Another case in point: affluent suburban school districts like to brag about the number of their NMSFs, but I’ve met a number of those NMSFs who’ve told me they are very bored and unchallenged in their schools, and they don’t give much credit to the schools for their accomplishments. They ascribe their accomplishments to outside reading, informal mentoring by parents, summer programs, special weekend programs, etc.</p>
<p>The only IB district in our area is a troubled inner-city public school that doesn’t have a huge number of NMSF’s (compared to the affluent suburban schools) BUT from what I have learned of the IB program (from students, parents, and teachers there), I believe that the value-added of the educational program of this troubled inner-city school is HUGE compared to the affluent suburban public schools.</p>
<p>We live in a suburban public school district which had the option to allow interested students to attend the IB program in the nearby inner-city school, but unfortunately, our public school district rejected that option (apparently fearing that they’d lose some of their strongest students to the program.) That’s too bad–it was an option I would have like to explore for our children if our district had been willing to make it available to us.</p>
<p>(Of course, we could have moved to the city and been entitled to have the option of enrolling our children in that IB program, but there was no way to be sure that they would actually find it enough to their liking if they tried it, so it wasn’t worth the huge cost and disruption of moving just to test the waters there.)</p>
<p>To answer your questions about cooper’s IB program: IB languages are Spanish (spanish immersion program), French, and a few people doing German. I’m not sure how to explain how math is taught, I know that Cooper has always had Math Methods and Math Studes and only this year (for juniors) added Math HL. AP calculus at cooper runs parallel to math methods for most of the year. Methods is a 2 year course (first year runs parallel to precalc), Studies is traditionally a 1 year course, and HL is an extensive 2 year program. As to Ivy bound, I think there is one girl headed for Harvard but other than that I can honestly say that out of this years class, not many actually wan’t to attend Ivy’s (actually not too many early applicants at all this year). 2 years ago I wanted columbia until I got my heart set on Uchicago (Accepted EA)…2 girls got EA at Georgetown (one for SFS). One kid got deffered from MIT but he isnt exactly their type…other than that I think that the rest of the class is all RD. The only exception is the people looking to major in music–Robbinsdale’s arts program breeds some very strong musicians who all do IB but end up in prestigious conservatories rather than acedemic schools–they are still waiting for audition time. </p>
<p>I actually got a copy of the school profile sent with college apps today (for my own interests). I don’t have it with me but one side was dedicated to explaining everything from GPA calculations to acronyms on the transcript and the otherone had similar info to the district profile. The only statistict that I distinctly remember is that only 35% of the graduating class is headed for a 4year school (although the IB class happens to be 100% unless something major happens).</p>