Any thoughts on Wayside ES?

[Anonymous]

Hi everyone--
We are trying to decide between private and going to Wayside next year for K. Has anyone had any experiences good or bad with Wayside?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

We were not there for K so I cannot speak to that but it is an excellent school with a great staff, administration and parent community. People are either hot or cold on the principal but she has been able to get lots of resources for the school from MCPS and did some sort of special project for a few months in the executive office of MCPS (or whatever it is called) so she knows a lot of people in administration. There is a lot of attention to "data" and test scores and kids are grouped fairly early so there is a lot of differentiated learning which is good if your kids are gifted or have some difficulty with the material. We've been very happy there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were not there for K so I cannot speak to that but it is an excellent school with a great staff, administration and parent community. People are either hot or cold on the principal but she has been able to get lots of resources for the school from MCPS and did some sort of special project for a few months in the executive office of MCPS (or whatever it is called) so she knows a lot of people in administration. There is a lot of attention to "data" and test scores and kids are grouped fairly early so there is a lot of differentiated learning which is good if your kids are gifted or have some difficulty with the material. We've been very happy there.

PP could you talk more about how Wayside groups kids in the early grades? We live nearby but attend a different elementary school, and it has been my great frustration that our school groups by ability level in math, but not in language arts. The classes in language arts are all heterogeneous, and in my experience taught to the lowest ability in the room. While they do have guided reading groups within the class, our experience has been that the lower level guided groups are met with daily and the highest level group meets with the teacher once a week if they are lucky. They sometimes go two weeks without meeting at all. Although I've brought this up with the school many times, they contend that it is "Montgomery County Policy" to not group kids by ability level for Language Arts, but to maintain heterogeneous classrooms.

[Anonymous]

I've heard great things about the school. I've also heard that it's quite diverse, so minority families feel welcome.