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Beauvoir Head has resigned with over a year's advance notice
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Anonymous
70-80% of Beauvoir's classes go on to NCS/STA. The first choice success reflects the championing Beauvoir does for each of its students who do better than other schools at moving on to Sidwell, GDS, Potomac if they don't go onto NCS/STA. The bottom 10% tends to be kids with learning disorders or behavioral issues. |
Anonymous
The new head of Beauvoir seems awesome and I wish her better success with outplacement than last year. No child from last year’s class attended GDS or Potomac. Or Maret. Students from last year’s class attended 12 different schools (not counting the Cathedral schools.) The full list is posted up thread and the somewhat underwhelming results speak for themselves. Let’s hope for a better year this year. |
Anonymous
Nice try. Several students were accepted at GDS and chose not to attend. Few DC families consider Potomac a desirable school. Maret had a couple of admits that attended other schools. It’s not particularly desired by Beauvoir families. |
Anonymous
No need to litigate. The matriculation results speak for themself. |
Anonymous
| Not a fan of the current out placement person but adore the new head and Beauvoir. Luckily Beauvoir kids are strong candidates notwithstanding a mediocre outplacement coordinator. |
Anonymous
Yes, indeed. It’s asinine to imply that admissions results need to be improved because Beauvoir families chose not to attend three particular schools. Most Beauvoir families wouldn’t even consider Potomac or Maret. |
Anonymous
Did your DC not get accepted to NCS or STA? What is mediocre outplacement? |
Anonymous
Why not? |
Anonymous
You are leaving out the fact that several 2nd graders left early last year to attend Maret. Admission results are uneven and parents know it. You learn very quickly that even to get into STA/NCS an insane amount of tutoring and prep goes on outside of the school to get DCs ready for the testing. The beauvoir curriculum doesn’t match up with NCS/STA so parents supplement a lot. |
Anonymous
Untrue. They’re many Beauvoir families who are fleeing and not getting into their top choice. Board members have pulled their kids. We’ve seen several Beauvoir PreK and K families at open houses. The new HOS may be great, but current parents and others know the truth. It will take time for the new HOS to leave her mark. Don’t believe the lies about the school being stable. Beauvoir and the Cathedral schools are in damage control mode. They already lost one HOS at NCS and have various legal issues (both private and public-search DC Superior Court). Why would a school sue a parent?!? God forbid the current HOS departs. That’d be three Heads in the last three years. As we saw with the thread about St Albans, the Cathedral Schools PR will shut down a popular DCUM thread quickly if it tells the truth about what’s going on. There are many concerned parents paying $35k to educate their 4-9 year old. Many are exploring all options because the preparation for Grade 4 is not strong. Kids leave without a strong math foundation. Ask around, you’ll learn that many parents tutor their DS or DD so that they can leave to a decent school. Do not apply if you are not willing to supplement and tutor. That’s the only way to ensure your child ends up with a great education. Unfortunately, the outplacement results are due to tutoring and not the learning that happens in school. Look beyond the awesome playground and ask the tough questions. Hopefully, they will tell the truth. In honor of MLK - Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Martin Luther King, Jr. |
Anonymous
Your facts are incorrect. Last year outplacement was amazing. 30 to 35 of the 45 kids in the current STA and NCS fourth grades came from Beauvoir. That’s pretty amazing. Most people that go to Beauvoir want to go to the cathedral schools as their first choice. Most kids do get their first choice and last year was And example of that. It sounds like someone on here has an axe to grind with Beauvoir and they should just let it go and move on. |
Anonymous
Actually, nothing against Beauvoir. Just tired of the complaints from my friends who have children at the school. |
Anonymous
Potomac and Maret are 2nd tier schools. Potomac is in Virginia and is convenient only to families living within a certain radius. Otherwise, your kids get bussed or you have a longer commute. Not worth it. Maret is a tiny school that is great or terrible depending on the students in any given class. Kid go to the SLACs rather than HSLACs. Someone’s child did badly on the testing. The testing is an IQ test, not a test of achievement, so tutoring and prep wouldn’t help. You’re grasping at straws. Beauvoir protects kids from drill and kill. The curriculum does match up to NCS/STA, but the issue is radically different approaches to learning. The transition from Grade 3 to 4 is tough at any school, but the Beauvoir kids transition from a relaxed, more progressive and kid-focused environment to a rigorous, traditional approach (drills, lectures, rote memorization). It’s a harsh change. I still prefer the Beauvoir approach to early childhood. What a lot of parents don’t get is that early stressful academics makes kids more anxious and negative about learning. I’ve been at Beauvoir for almost 10 years. In the past, parents sending their kids to Beauvoir knew and wanted this approach. They chose Beauvoir because it protects childhood. In old DCUM posts, you’ll see people mocking Beauvoir parents for calling it a magical place. It is a magical place. It’s curriculum set up by people who specialize, repeat specialize, in early childhood. These days I see more parents bent on sending their kids to Harvard, ruthlessly focused on getting their kids to the next step. Now I encounter anxious parents who send their kids to Kumon and Mathnasium because they want the kind of drilling approach Beauvoir doesn’t do. They really should have chosen a different school if that was what they wanted. Beauvoir has been sending kids to NCS/STA for decades. They all do fine, but yes there is a period of transition. FWIW, my 3rd and last kid graduates this June. We have never supplemented or used tutors. Oldest kid went to STA, middle to Sidwell (girl who didn’t like NCS), and youngest boy just was accepted to STA in December. Oldest boy did find STA a bit of a shock at first, but that lasted all of a month. Girl’s transition to Sidwell was seamless. |
Anonymous
| You lost me already with your first sentence. A credible and secure parent would not start off by denigrating other schools. If this is the kind of education that Beauvoir/Cathedral schools offer, no wonder the schools have law suits coming out of their yazoo. No thank you! |
Anonymous
So many lies. No, Beauvoir families are not “fleeing.” There were families on both sides of the conflict created by the previous HOS that left. One of the families that left for Maret was close to the former HOS and didn’t like the way she was treated. A few other families left because they disliked her. One family transferred at second grade because there was an opening at a highly competitive school that an older sibling was already attending. Some board members were angry because their children or children close to them did not get into STA. A group of boys on their admissions visit at STA started a spitting war and were rude when asked to stop. The insinuation about legal issues is ridiculous. Every private school has cases against parents for.... drumroll... NONPAYMENT. The change of HOSes across the Close is generational. Paula Carreiro retired after 21 years as Beauvoir’s head. Kathleen O’Neill Jamieson has been HOS at NCS for 16 years and is of retirement age. Vance Wilson retired after 19 years as HOS at STA. These three were/are strong leaders. The last HOS at Beauvoir was, in one word, divisive. Her tenure coincided with one of the weakest board chairs in Beauvoir history. There was a lot of turbulence for a couple of years, but Beauvoir the institution is stronger than one individual. The school has recovered its balance. The new HOS is incredible. 2016-2017 was a bad year for outplacement due to the outplacement counselor being hired without respect for skills and qualifications needed for the job. The STA spitting war happened that year. Poor woman was completely out of her depth which to her credit she recognized. She returned to teaching. There are anxious, competitive families that compulsively supplement. Is it necessary for your child to do well and go on to NCS/STA? No. Most of the school doesn’t supplement academically; only about a quarter do. Anxiety was stoked by the atypical 2016-2017 year. The families who didn’t get into their first choice schools complained loudly about their kids not being prepared. Some families refused to listen to the outplacement director when she told them their child needed to consider options other than NCS/STA. They blamed the school when they didn’t get in. The counselor lacked the assertiveness to push back on parents who thought being at Beauvoir had bought them entry to NCS/STA. Beauvoir does well by its children, but no school can make a child of average intelligence gifted or control an entitled child’s behavior while being evaluated for admission. The 2017-2018 placement was back to Beauvoir’s historical norms. Ironic that you’d quote MLK in a post full of hate and lies. “No, violence is not the way. Hate is not the way. Bitterness is not the way. We must stand up with love in our hearts, with a lack of bitterness and yet a determination to protest courageously for justice and freedom in this land.” |