Is DCI a good school?

[Anonymous]

Everyone for some form of IB exam, not necessarily Diploma exams. Many DCI students take no Diploma exams. They take the career exams.

[Anonymous]

from 2018-2022

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone who has had teaching experience at DCI, I would like to share my perspective on the school. DCI is a school that appears to place more emphasis on marketing themselves than on ensuring effective school governance. While I was working there I noticed that the school has a high teacher turnover rate. I cannot recommend this school to parents.

When did you teach there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Back to OP's question. In a nutshell, DC is a pretty good school, better in the HS than MS. It's just not a great school.

But if you're looking for serious STEM challenge, a strong music, sports or performing arts program, or great humanities rigor, I'd look elsewhere. I'd even move.

This. If you live outside of the JR boundary in DC, it is one of the best choices. That does not mean it is a great school or equal to JR or suburban options. If you want to stay in the city and don't get into Latin/Basis, value immersion, or otherwise prefer DCI, then it's the best option available. With all of these options, whether it's good, great, or insufficient for your particular child is a personal decision.

There are families at our Chinese heritage school in MoCo on weekends who switched from DCI to Robert Frost MS in Potomac for partial Mandarin immersion after 6th or 7th grades. I'm told that they've found around twice the rigor in MoCo, along with great instrumental music instruction (daily as a band or orchestra class at school), sports, arts etc. In MoCo, the kids need summer immersion experiences to keep up in two-way immersion classes (enrolling many native speakers). The two public schools are just 14 miles apart. No DC UMC family is trapped at DCI. As pointed out above, personal choice and preference are what's at issue here.

[Anonymous]

Double the rigor sounds about right.

[Anonymous]

Here's an analogy to help illustrate my point: DCI can be compared to a building that suffers from persistent foundational issues, resorting to applying a band-aid solution each day. And their approach towards their staff appears transactional and lacks sincerity, resulting in low teacher morale within the organization. Hopefully the newly appointed ED will be able to bring about positive changes and improvements.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone who has had teaching experience at DCI, I would like to share my perspective on the school. DCI is a school that appears to place more emphasis on marketing themselves than on ensuring effective school governance. While I was working there I noticed that the school has a high teacher turnover rate. I cannot recommend this school to parents.

What are some other problems you found at DCI?

[Anonymous]

No.

[Anonymous]

The people that think it’s good are the same people that are happy with the academics at DCB and Stokes. Take that for what you will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's an analogy to help illustrate my point: DCI can be compared to a building that suffers from persistent foundational issues, resorting to applying a band-aid solution each day. And their approach towards their staff appears transactional and lacks sincerity, resulting in low teacher morale within the organization. Hopefully the newly appointed ED will be able to bring about positive changes and improvements.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As someone who has had teaching experience at DCI, I would like to share my perspective on the school. DCI is a school that appears to place more emphasis on marketing themselves than on ensuring effective school governance. While I was working there I noticed that the school has a high teacher turnover rate. I cannot recommend this school to parents.

What are some other problems you found at DCI?

The real problem is that DCI doesn't have the dough to become a first-rate school, like all DC charters. Their facilities are unusually good in the charter sector, better than the original Latin's. But, like other charters, they can't pay their teachers well enough to maintain a stable, high-caliber teaching force, can't afford to subsidize summer immersion study like MoCo, can't afford to field very serious sports teams or a good band or orchestra, and the list goes on. They also can't establish lotteries for natives speakers due to the DC LEA arrangement. Hence, nothing about the school is exceptional relative to public alternatives in this Metro area.

[Anonymous]

True, DC charters still don’t get anywhere near DCPS per capital outlays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Different person posting. Apparently, untrue that RM takes 1-2% for IB, or that their annual average points total is in the low 30s like at DCI. I have a sister who's sent two of her kids to RM IBD - one's a graduating senior, the other graduated a couple years ago.

IB Geneva doesn't make admissions info or average IB points totals public, but she says more like 10% of applicants are admitted and average IB points totals hover around 36-37 points, with more than a dozen students scoring 40+ annually. I'm told that my older nephew scored 41 on IBD. He attends an Ivy.

Nope. RM IB average in 2021 was only 34 even with taking 1% of kids. It’s right on their data sheet.
Yes it’s 125 kids in pool 8000. Their IB score for 2022 was lower I hear.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCI's leadership is content with the status quo and their college counselors don't seem to be IBD experts.

Some of the umc families hire the help they need to ensure rigor and bilingualism.

It's frustrating when good teachers leave, sometimes during the school year. We miss the great 7th grade English teacher for our younger kid, who ran off in March.

The issue of staff retention is the biggest indicator of the overall issues at DCI that so many people tend to gloss over. And no, this is not just like every other school now post-COVID because this problem existed at DCI before the pandemic.

Leadership has always said that exposure to IB curriculum is the goal, not actual IB diplomas. I’m also not sure if this ended up being the case or not, but they at one point said they wouldn’t pay for IB exams for students - is this the case right now? If so, that can really skew the numbers since the exams are very expensive.

As a former employee you are entitled to your opinion of the school based on your limited personal experience and perspective, but you obviously are not familiar with the actual data (check PCSB and OSSE report cards) because DCI staff retention rates are better than most. And DCI does pay for IB exams for all, and encourage everyone to take them, That has always been the case so far.

Do you really think you’re the only former employee? All you have to do is check out the vacancy list and you can figure out there’s a ridiculous amount of teachers leaving. Are you claiming staff retention wasn’t an issue at DCI before the pandemic?

P.S. I don’t have “limited” experience. But you can keep trying to claim that there isn’t a staff shortage issue at DCI if it makes you feel better.

[Anonymous]

Any alert DCI parent of more than 1-2 years knows that high teacher turnover is a real issue. Somebody will surely jump in to unhelpfully point out that teacher turnover at DCI isn't as high at many other DC public schools. That won't change the fact that the teacher churn at DCI is a real drag, the worst part about the program. Admins love to claim that the issue is being addressed. It isn't. We're planning to tough DCI out for one more year, before leaving for high school. We feel we can do better for our STEM-oriented children than a school where they aren't pushed academically outside of language classes. We're hoping for Walls or Banneker. We might even consider McArthur if their launch year goes OK.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone for some form of IB exam, not necessarily Diploma exams. Many DCI students take no Diploma exams. They take the career exams.

The CP kids mostly take IB diploma classes, so they take the same exams for thos clases as the DP kids. They take a few classes specific to CP (and don't take TOK for example). But everyone therefore is encouraged to take the exams and the school pays for everyone. Unfortunately, some kids don't think the exams are important, since they are given at end of senior year after some kids are already in college and they don't see a benefit. Kind of like AP classes versus exams.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DCI's leadership is content with the status quo and their college counselors don't seem to be IBD experts.

Some of the umc families hire the help they need to ensure rigor and bilingualism.

It's frustrating when good teachers leave, sometimes during the school year. We miss the great 7th grade English teacher for our younger kid, who ran off in March.

The issue of staff retention is the biggest indicator of the overall issues at DCI that so many people tend to gloss over. And no, this is not just like every other school now post-COVID because this problem existed at DCI before the pandemic.

Leadership has always said that exposure to IB curriculum is the goal, not actual IB diplomas. I’m also not sure if this ended up being the case or not, but they at one point said they wouldn’t pay for IB exams for students - is this the case right now? If so, that can really skew the numbers since the exams are very expensive.

You don’t even want to know how much money we wasted last year on IB exams that students simply skipped. Exposure is great but we’re teaching calculus to kids who don’t understand slope and expecting 5000 word essays from kids who don’t know which form of “to” is appropriate.

[Anonymous]

Exactly. IBD sounds great on paper but doesn't work well when most kids lack basic prep.