Buck Turgidson said:
cecil77 said:
We're talking about ceremonies and rankings.
Deem the academies as a separate school. They have their own ranking and their own ceremony.
Then there is one kid from among a group of the district's best students who is valedictorian for the academy, and another far less qualified valedictorian of Hightower High School, while 40+ other, more qualified kids at the academy get screwed.
Also, while most of the kids at the academy are more deserving of auto admission to the flagships, they'd instead bump the top kids from Hightower ahead of them. There's no good solution when you use class ranking. Schools ought to admit based upon SAT/ACT score, course rigor and GPA. Class ranking for the purposes of auto-admissions is a bad idea.
Nah...Id rather go class ranking. The top kids at any school (even if the schools is full of Blacks and Mexicans) deserve a shot at admission to Big State University. This also goes for rural white kids at a school out in the sticks.
The top students at Hightower, Marshall and Willowridge all deserve admission to taxpayer funded schools.
Private schools are better equipped to just use things like the SAT/ACT which typically breaks down along socio-economic lines.
I knew plenty of lazy rich kids who never put any effort into school and easily scored 1200-1300 on their SAT's. This was mainly the result of being blessed with parents and family members that were already educated.
Some of these people did great after school......some of these people turned into the biggest F-Ups imaginable once they started messing with drugs and alcohol.
Why aren't major college football teams filled with kids from Highland Park, Southlake Carroll and Westlake? These schools have been kicking ass in football for decades.
The reason why is that many college coaches feel that they could take a "less qualified" player and if they gave him all the advantages that an affluent high school gave its student athletes they could get the same or superior output from that player.
College admissions isn't that different. Colleges want to admit the best students from all demographic levels.....including the lower class.