Good elementary schools

[Anonymous]

They are all good and bad. The teacher/staff your child gets is the most important thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like most of the talk is about HS. What are some good ES in the county? Why?

Most parents are pretty happy with their kids' elementary school. There are some differences from school to school, and of course even more differences depending on which particular teacher or classmates a child has in a given year. But if I were looking for an elementary school, to start out with I would look at the schools with smaller class sizes and some extra staff positions, which MCPS has called Focus schools. These schools have medium-level FARMS rates, so they are less impacted by poverty than the Title I schools, which receive additional federal funding.

There are 33 Focus schools, but 15 of them are in currently overcrowded buildings, which I would avoid if I could, because even if the class sizes are smaller, if the building can't accommodate everyone in the cafeteria, in the hallways, in the parking lot, etc., it becomes a pain to deal with for 6+ years. So, the 18 Focus schools with room to grow are:

Cannon Road
Drew
East Silver Spring
Flower Hill
Forest Knolls
Fox Chapel
Glen Haven
Glenallan
Goshen
Great Seneca Creek
Maryvale
McAuliffe
Montgomery Knolls/Pine Crest (paired schools K-2/3-5)
Sequoyah
Stedwick
Takoma Park (paired with Piney Branch, which is slightly overcrowded)
Waters Landing

I see this differently, we chose to avoid focus and title 1 schools. Life is better when everyone is well fed and secure. Exceptions abound but in general you get what you pay for

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel like most of the talk is about HS. What are some good ES in the county? Why?

Most parents are pretty happy with their kids' elementary school. There are some differences from school to school, and of course even more differences depending on which particular teacher or classmates a child has in a given year. But if I were looking for an elementary school, to start out with I would look at the schools with smaller class sizes and some extra staff positions, which MCPS has called Focus schools. These schools have medium-level FARMS rates, so they are less impacted by poverty than the Title I schools, which receive additional federal funding.

There are 33 Focus schools, but 15 of them are in currently overcrowded buildings, which I would avoid if I could, because even if the class sizes are smaller, if the building can't accommodate everyone in the cafeteria, in the hallways, in the parking lot, etc., it becomes a pain to deal with for 6+ years. So, the 18 Focus schools with room to grow are:

Cannon Road
Drew
East Silver Spring
Flower Hill
Forest Knolls
Fox Chapel
Glen Haven
Glenallan
Goshen
Great Seneca Creek
Maryvale
McAuliffe
Montgomery Knolls/Pine Crest (paired schools K-2/3-5)
Sequoyah
Stedwick
Takoma Park (paired with Piney Branch, which is slightly overcrowded)
Waters Landing

I see this differently, we chose to avoid focus and title 1 schools. Life is better when everyone is well fed and secure. Exceptions abound but in general you get what you pay for

I understand that perspective but we really appreciated having only 17 students in our children's primary classrooms. As others have mentioned, much of it comes down to the staff and culture of a school. Both of which can be hard to tell from most sites.

[Anonymous]

When you all say smaller class sizes at the focus schools, how big are they? Compared to how big at Title I? And how big at the others?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When you all say smaller class sizes at the focus schools, how big are they? Compared to how big at Title I? And how big at the others?

You can look up each school's average class size on the at a glance reports, here:

https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/glance/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you all say smaller class sizes at the focus schools, how big are they? Compared to how big at Title I? And how big at the others?

You can look up each school's average class size on the at a glance reports, here:

https://ww2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/glance/

That can shift significantly from one year to the next.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When you all say smaller class sizes at the focus schools, how big are they? Compared to how big at Title I? And how big at the others?

I work at a focus elementary school. Our class sizes in K-2 vary from 15 - 17 students in each class. When I taught at a non-focus school, my kindergarten class had 25 students in it. There's a big difference between 17 and 25 when it comes to five year olds.