LOL. And we've met obnoxious parents who announce years in advance that their kids will only attend either TJ or a private. So you get a mix with a lot of privates - some snotty, helicopter parents and obvious social climbers; some parents just trying to offload their parenting to private-school administrators; and some who've genuinely concluded a private school would best meet their kid's needs. |
Woodson is nowhere near as good as Langley.
Students that attend Langley because they can’t get into Potomac or Sidwell. |
Or because their parents believe in public education. But for academics, you might find better a parent community at McLean. Or you might not. |
Nope. |
There you are! I was wondering how long it would take for the insecure McLean booster to show up. |
Thank you for confirming you are the latter |
+1 The OP didn’t even mention McLean. |
+1 We've moved in and out of the DMV area and have had experience with both public and private schools. I would never characterize private schools as having a superior parent community. Different perhaps, but not superior, and the good public schools have many parent and community events. As for character development, public schools as well as private schools teach kindness and resilience. I would argue that public school kids are generally a more diverse bunch and that kids can also learn by not being spoonfed everything the way they are in public school. YMMV. |
Pretty sure FCPS offers Dual-Enrollment, FWIW |
I'm not sure which public school you've been in, but aren't all the elementaries (and maybe middle/highs) doing positivity project? Our elem level kids get mountains of character development, both in those lessons and constantly being reinforced by the teachers (I volunteer in the classrooms and see it all the time!) |
Each year more and more bullies and ADHD kids leave our public school for the privates. |
I teach in a very expensive private school. I would not allow my own children to attend because of the entitled, arrogant, obnoxious student body. I don't think the parents are "better" either. Many of them are certainly oblivious to the fact that their children have ADHD or autism or some other disability and don't or won't get help for their kids. And our teachers are decent, but they seriously cannot control a classroom. I cannot tell you the number of classes that are wild. We have many fewer resources than public schools. But every school, public or private is different. You do you. |
If I were lucky enough to be zoned for Langley or Woodson, there's no way I'd pay for private. |
Teachers are paid less at private - you can figure out where the better teaching is…. |
My late father was the original researcher- compiled statistics, visited neighborhoods and parishes and surveyed colleagues (active duty military) and relatives to determine where exactly he should buy to put his DC in the best school district circa 1975. He even did his own study on FCPS v. Catholic schools.
He always said that he quickly determined that the FCPS of this era was far superior to any Catholic education, so that was an easy first choice and so he proudly decided to move to a modest house in a great FCPS HS pyramid. All said, DH and I wanted same for our DC: enrolled oldest circa 2005 in FCPS. We fairly quickly became disillusioned and contend 2 decades later that we really should have sent DC to private for the now obvious, clear advantages. So, if I had to do it all over, I’d send DC to private schools from pre-k-12. Private schools (generalizing here but very familiar with the local ones we all talk about here on dcum) have now surpassed FCPS in every academic standard. FCPS seems one experiment after another and is increasingly losing academic rigor to disciplinary and administrative issues. |