Montgomery Blair Magnet

Hunt
Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:06:14 +0000

Just by the sound of it, these magnets sound like they are pushing kids to a near breaking point. At the end are the kids really smarter, more knowledgeable than their elite peers from elsewhere?

For the first sentence, this wasn’t really our experience, with our kids or with their friends. There was a lot of work, though, especially at specific crunch times. As for the second sentence, I don’t think IB made them smarter, but I do think the preparation for college was better than the typical high school experience here. It wasn’t so much better that I think somebody who goes to one of the non-magnet high schools doesn’t get good prep, but the magnets do provide something that the other high schools don’t. (This is, I guess, another version of the debate over whether its worthwhile to go to a highly selective college–for some kids, it is.)