If quality of education is your only priority, are there any reasons to live in DC...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone making the argument that DC schools are more diverse than many of the local suburbs is wrong:
https://k12.niche.com/rankings/public-school-districts/most-diverse/m/washington-dc-metro-area/

Anyone making the argument that DC schools are equivalent to their grade-level counterparts, I'm interested in your data. Here's a small selection of mine that says you're wrong:
https://k12.niche.com/t/washington-dc-district-of-columbia-dc/ (click nearby towns and look at the profiles of local districts)
http://schoolgrades.org/ (Punch in your DC address and look at schools within a 10-mile radius. Note all the green that appears west of the District. Scroll down to see a relative ranking of schools. All the schools receiving honors are outside of the District. By the way, this methodology gives weight for FARMS kids.).

There may be many reasons to live in the city over the 'burbs, but quality of education ain't one of them. If you're happy at your in-bounds JKLM, super magnet, or high performing charter - that's great. For what it's worth, I teach in a DC public school and I very much want to see it be successful. However, even leaving aside middle and high school (which is a big thing to leave aside), the honest answer to OP's question is "no."

As noted in one of the other 8 threads on basically the same topic, the top 5 DC elementaries for PARCC scores would all be among the top 10 MD ES schools if they were on the other side of Western Ave, which seems like the closest thing we have to objective evidence as to how they compare to the MoCo schools.