Hardy/Deal vs Arlington middle schools
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Anonymous
Go to the Fairfax school forum or ask friends of friends who send their kids to those schools. My impression is those schools are better resourced than any DCPS school. |
Anonymous
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OP here. I was worried these would be the answers. We want to stay in DC but I'm not sure we can justify it knowing that for a similar housing price we could get Arlington schools. I'm interested in comparing the regular schools since we know our kids could go there, and may not get into specialty schools.
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Anonymous
| We have experience with a DCPS MS (6th and 7th grade for eldest) and Thomas Jefferson MS in Arlington (8th grade for eldest, 6th-8th for youngest). Eldest now at Washington-Liberty in 9th grade). Arlington has been much better, mainly because the county offers "intensified" (honors) classes across the board in 7th and 8th grades, for social studies, science, English and math. Any student can enroll in the honors classes, but teachers won't water down the curriculum for stragglers. The facility was also a lot better than the DC MS, with a great auditorium, a nice gym and big music rooms, a greenhouse, big playing fields and tennis courts. The nicest looking MS in Arlington is the heavily UMC Dorothy Hamm, but Jefferson was fine for us. I liked how all the kids have to take a language per IB curriculum in MS. There's seriously accelerated math in Arlington for students who can handle it, Algebra II and Geometry in 8th grade. There's also a decent music program, band and string orchestra daily in every Arlington MS and the chance to compete to get into county and district (with Fairfax) bands. Sports are good also, a dozen team sports offered. Any Arlington MS that feeds into Yorktown or W-L should work for you if you're prepared to move. |
Anonymous
| OP, another plus of Arlington is that all the neighborhood middle schools are about the same size, 900-1100 students. There's no overcrowding or desperation to flee a bad MS for a better one. |
Anonymous
The better neighborhood schools in Arlington are better than the very best neighborhood schools in DC from top to bottom. High school, middle and elementary. There’s zero question about it. But you don’t need the very best schools for most kids. A good school is good enough. I wouldn’t move to Arlington just for the schools if you’re in a good DC district, your kids are doing well, and everything else about your existence favors DC. |
Anonymous
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Parent of two DCPS graduates, both went to Hardy and then graduated from Wilson/Jackson Reed. It is hard to make a direct comparison between the middle schools, but I can tell you that measuring the ultimate outcome - college acceptance and readiness - the DCPS kids were very much on par with their peers from Arlington and Montgomery County.
If anything, I think the DCPS kids were more college ready and independent than the Arlington/MoCo kids. |
Anonymous
This is just not true. But keep telling yourself that. |
Anonymous
I know it is a cope for Arlington and MoCo parents to deny this, but based on peers from sports, camps, and other activities, your basic middle-class DCPS kids will equal or outperform their nearby peers from Arlington/MoCo public schools. |
Anonymous
It’s not a “cope.” It’s a reality. I’m a product of “Arlington/MoCo public schools” myself—from pre-K through high school—but now live in DC with kids in DCPS. My oldest is a high school freshman. My kids are doing fine and I’m sure they’ll end up fine, but navigating the DC public school system to make sure that has happened and will continue to happen is exhausting. What you also don’t appear to understand because you haven’t experienced it personally is that the “peer” group and “cohorts” of which you speak are much smaller in DC than what’s in the suburban schools. I don’t regret my decision to live in the city and educate my kids in the public schools here, but I’m not going to lie to myself and say that generally speaking the schools are just as good as the ones I attended. I’m a realist. |
Anonymous
Are they? I have siblings in Arlington whose teen do all sorts of things in their public schools that don't seem to be options in the best of DCPS or DCPCS. They have easy access to a much wider range of AP classes, and IB Diploma classes at Washington-Liberty. I've seen the list of current DCI IBD classes along with the Washington-Liberty list. The latter is at least twice as long as the DCI list. I'm assuming that the lists for Banneker and Eastern can't compete with DCI's. In Arlington, if your MS offers IB so does your HS, unlike Deal (IB curriculum) and J-R (no IBD, makes no sense). One nephew, at Yorktown, is training as an EMT at the Arlington HS Career Center nearby for free, as a step toward applying to college pre-Med programs. A niece is training to be a vet tech through the same career center in their giant animal lab (with a couple hundred animals). My younger nieces and nephews take school band or string orchestra as a daily class in their middle schools with the chance to complete to play in country and division (with Fairfax) competitive ensembles for free. They also take honors classes in all core subjects as mentioned above. Yet the DCPS kids come out ahead? |
Anonymous
| Whatever you do, avoid Kenmore and Gunston. |
Anonymous
| I am not sure where you live in DC and where you can afford in Arlington, but honestly we found our quality of life overall improved when we moved to Arlington. We are in Lyon Park and it is more walkable than the neighborhoods where we could afford a house in DC. We can walk to lots of coffee shops, bakeries, stores and restaurants. Also we can easily get to a good Target and Home Depot. Our kids walk to Ballston to go to the movies or hang out in the food hall. We end up going to the Timber pizza there so we don't even miss the Timber in Petworth. |
Anonymous
Just to clarify, this (IB in MS>IB in HS) is only the case for a small group of kids in the district - those who are zoned Jefferson Middle School (only IB middle school) and then W-L HS (only IB HS). Unless it's changed recently, that's really just kids zoned to Long Branch ES. The rest of the Jefferson Middle School zone goes to Wakefield. You can apply to transfer to IB at W-L but it's not the default. And, if you applied to transfer to Jefferson for IBMYP, you still have to apply again to transfer to W-L if it's not your zoned school. Also, IB transfers to W-L are locked in to doing the IB program while those zoned to W-L can pick and choose between IB and AP classes. My kids did Long Branch/Jefferson/W-L (did the AP/IB mix). Overall, have been happy with the resources and opportunities in Arlington. |
Anonymous
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Arlington parent with ex in DC, meaning we have access to both systems for our teens.
This is still the case for Jefferson MS zoning. But we know families zoned for W-L who went to Wakefield for at least one teen by choice. We also know Yorktown families who go to W-L for IBD. The main reason we switched from DCPS to APS for MS was because of the honors MS classes in APS. If Deal and Hardy tracked for MS science, social studies and English with above-grade level offerings, we'd have stuck wtih DCPS. |
Anonymous
Having a big menu of APs to choose from doesn't make you come out smarter. You can only fit so many in a schedule. It's like going to a restaurant with a 6 page menu. It's likely you'd come out just as well-fed if the menu were 2 pages. People overestimate the value of a zillion APs. |