Subjective capsule reviews of MD private elementary schools
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Anonymous
NP here - parents may not "know education" per se but I think they do know their own children. I think for the majority of children, they can thrive in a variety of educational environments - but for some kids, the educational environment can make a big difference. Granted, there are probably plenty of parents out there that erroneously believe their kid is "the one that is different"; that just makes it harder for the families that have a valid case. For the families I know that have a child where educational environment makes a big difference, it is not the parent being hyper sensitive - it is also the school and teachers giving them feedback, usually from early ages to help the family guide the child to the best match for success. Schools and classrooms can vary quite a bit on dimensions that don't make a difference to most families, but do make a difference to others. |
Anonymous
| A few senior executives where I work have had kids graduate from Barnesville and they've all been happy with the school/ exmissions. We've only experienced the summer camp which we have had a mixed result with. Our older one was sort of bullied at the camp one year but was adored by the teachers. The programs themselves have varied in quality/ organization. The staff though has always been very friendly and flexible. The problem I think Barnesville has is that it is very expensive relative to its nearest competitors (Seneca ,Butler,MON). I know two families midlevel career people who have left for financial reasons. If the school was 8k per year rather than approx 20k, we would have considered. |
Anonymous
| I thought that the problem the Barnesville School is that it's a long way from where most people in the county live, and almost everybody in the immediate area sends their children to public school. No? Where do people who send their children to the Barnesville School live? |
Anonymous
It pulls from Germantown and Gaithersburg. Germantown gas very mixed quality public schools, and if it were incorporated, I believe it would be the second or third largest city in Maryland. MANY people live upcounty. Barnesville is too expensive, for me at least, to consider. My kids go to one of the cheaper schools listed. Been very happy. |
Anonymous
OP here, wasn't sure if this was directed at me. Two issues for us; one is our child's challenges on the social front, the other being our school district. We're just on the bad side of a line dividing a pretty-good public school district from a not-so-good one. We actually had the public school system on our list of schools to consider if we got desperate, but fortunately (from our perspective) it didn't come to that. Reports are that our local public school system is gradually improving, but that's relative to where it was; it's still some distance from the quality of public school systems just south of us. |
Anonymous
OP here again. Yes, if I were listing summary upsides and downsides for each school, the big downside for us re Barnesville was distance. It's actually why we didn't include it on our first round of visits the previous year (which resulted in our not finding a match among the other schools). Having said that, in terms of driving time Barnesville is no further for us than Norwood or St. Andrews lower school in the other direction. And it's a lower-stress drive, so ultimately this ceased to be a big issue for us. There are other schools on this list that would have been more convenient location-wise (Christ Episcopal, Charles E. Smith, e.g.), but ultimately we went with the closest match for our educational priorities, and are glad we did. |
Anonymous
OP here again. As earlier mentioned, we attended Seneca for a while, and had a very bad experience. Just last night we happened to run through some old e-mails with Seneca and reminding ourselves of just how saddening it was. I don't have experience (not even a visit) with the other two schools you mention. We were fortunate in being able to look both at the down-county schools and the ones north of us. We hadn't originally intended to go up in that direction, it just worked out that way. For most of our search we assumed we'd be down-county. If events had worked out slightly differently we might have wound up at SAES or Norwood, but our choice of Barnesville was the best fit for our particular situation. Again this set of reviews is not intended to sell everyone on our choice but to provide capsule reviews of 14 schools. We did a lot of visits these last two years and we picked up a ton of information. In 2012 we did one round of visits that didn't ultimately wind up in our applying, and then in 2013 we did another. Along the way we got quite the crash course in all the MoCo private elementary schools. |
Anonymous
OP here. I agree with the respondent above. There are two important sides to the coin here; what the educators have to offer, and the child to whom it is being offered. Professional educators have the most information about the first, and parents about the second. Every child is different. For one child, McLean might be a fine choice and Norwood a problematic one. For another child the reverse might be true. There is no objective best/worst school -- it's an interaction between the child's needs/learning processes, and what the school offers. In our case we have learned a lot about how our child learns, and the circumstances that enable her to thrive vs becoming frustrated. That experience has been borne of years of experience with schooling, extracurricular classes, social skills teaching sessions, testing, home instruction, and much else. We have learned to be wary of any teacher/institution who approaches things from the perspective of, "This is what we do because it works best for everyone." In our case that often wasn't true. Fortunately we adapted, and found settings that worked, and now we have a high academic achiever in our household. Again, I would reiterate that the title of this thread is "Subjective capsule reviews," and that the first post took pains to point out that the reviews referred to the specific match between child and school. If someone objects that some schools that were less attractive to us are objectively "better schools," then they are missing the point of the thread as well as the larger point that what's "best" is a function of several variables, including the child being placed as well as many others ranging from location to price. As the original post noted, Charles E. Smith might be a perfectly fine school, but the percentage of the day spent on Judaic studies made it a suboptimal choice for us. That's not a criticism of Charles E. Smith or of Judaic studies. In our particular case, we had a strong academic performer needing a socially nurturing environment, so Barnesville rose to the top of our list, and St. Andrews was right behind it. Other parents' priorities may differ. Contrary experiences with the 14 schools reviewed are more than welcome. |
Anonymous
OP here. The timing reflects the fact that for the first time in three years, we as parents are more relaxed during this admission season because for once we aren't struggling to find a new school. Each of the last two years we went through an extensive search process and found it very stressful. Finally we are not going through that, and this was posted in the hope that it might be helpful to other parents going through a similar process. It contains information we wish we had had earlier in our own process. This was posted over New Year's because we finally had a holiday break and an opportunity to post it, and because it's been on our minds because we remember what it was like to go through all this. The hope is that someone will find it useful. |
Anonymous
| This thread is posted on Barnesville's facebook page. A little odd. |
Anonymous
I agree. This poster has been all over these forums posting about Barnesville. She claims she is just a happy parent but now the blog is on the Barnesville website. More than a coincidence. |
Anonymous
It's more than a coincidence that the person in charge of the Barnesville School Facebook page reads the private school forum on DCUM? |
Anonymous
What other private school has posted a thread from this website on their Facebook page? |
Anonymous
I don't have any idea! Do you? Do you regularly monitor the Facebook pages of all of the various private schools in the area? |
Anonymous
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OP here. For what it's worth, I was unaware that a facebook page had linked to this thread, but I'm not in the least concerned that they did. I'm flattered that they apparently thought the post reflected well on the school.
I will say I'm a little amused that some see conspiracy in the fact that a favorable review by a parent is pointed to by the school it praises. But this post wasn't aimed at the cynical passerby; it was aimed at other parents in the same situation we were in the last two years, and it contains information on several schools, not just the one we chose. |