OP said they have no religious preference, but where open to a religious school. Plenty of folks named Catholic schools. Why not name a Jewish school? And what does Texas have to do with anything? |
| I'd aim for one school that has 5th grade and HS. St. Andrew's Episcopal, Bullis, Sandy Spring are your co-ed options and best bets to find late openings. |
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[Post New]07/31/2018 22:19 Subject: Best private schools in Montgomery county [Up]
Anonymous
OP, do you realize that MoCo has excellent public schools? You might consider them. |
Why the heck would you suggest MCPS given all the curriculum problems? |
| II would look at Holton (girls, 3-12th) Landon (boys, 3-12th), Norwood (K-8th), Georgetown Prep (boys, 9-12th), Stone Ridge (girls, PK-12th). |
| Also, depending on where you are in MoCo, you may want to consider some of the privates in NWDC. There are lots of NWDC private school kids who live in MoCo. |
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Brookewood in Kensington is all girls 1-12. They would have or make a spot for your DD. Catholic but there are non-Catholic and non-Chritisian girls there. Racially diverse as well. More Latinas and AAs than Asian, but certainly not overwhelmingly white.
Brother school is Avalon in Gaithersburg. Similar “personality”. The kids are outside a lot in all kinds of weather, which my child loved. Her science class was often held in the woods and stream. Families ranged from big traditional Catholic ones with a SAHM to several single moms who WOH. Headmaster was political conservative, but there were liberal voices on faculty. Very generous with FA and they ended up giving us uniforms. |
Some of us think that even with those problems, the kids receive one of the best public educations in the country. 2.0 doesn’t control everything. It’s on its way out. And our system continues to be highly ranked nationally and send kids to top colleges. |
I’d guess that person is very religious. That’s the only reason I can see for dismissing the top private school in the state (and I think ranked number 62 in the country) which also happens to be in OP’s preferred county. Go figure. |
First of all, we don’t know what will replace curriculum 2.0, so I really don’t know why you seem to feel so comfortable with the trajectory of curriculum in MCPS. Second of all, the replacement process is going to take a couple of years, so if a kid isn’t in a pilot school for the new curriculum, that kid could have 2.0 until the 2021 school year, so 3 more years. That’s not insignificant. For OP’s kids that means much of MS for the younger one. Lastly, OP asked about private school, so I don’t know why you’d suggest something totally different. |
I wasn’t the poster who suggested MCPS, but I don’t think it’s a bad suggestion. I have families in Texas. They would never think about public school on their own because the schools in their area are so bad. But MCPS is actually more rigorous than the private their kids attend. We’ve done a mix of private and MCPS over the past 20 years with one adult kid successfully launched, another in law school, and one winning national awards in science. |
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OP here. I truly appreciate all the responses, thanks a lot to you all. Will call around today. We picked MoCO because both of us will work in ROckville/bethesda area. In Dallas, we had pretty diverse community, that created a kind of richness in our kid's perspective of world, so i'd pick some thing that has diverse population. If we had a choice,we'd never move from our area, but........
thanks again. |
If you can't find two spots, think about where you will buy/rent your house so that at least you have a good public school option. If you are looking for high achieving schools, you probably want to look for houses in the Whitman/Churchill/Walter Johnson school districts. You can always apply for next year. Also, think about commute time. If they end up at two schools, you really want to be able to manage the commute. The traffic here is much worse than you are used to. |
Being from Texas, I can tell you that this area and its choices of public and private schools are so very, very different from what you would have experienced in Dallas area. The magnets in the public schools are comparable to the best magnets in the Dallas area. The non-magnets on the west side (the 'W's)are generally comparable to Highland Park area, and the schools "East of the Pike" are generally the quality of the middle class/UMC in Dallas area. There is no UIL in Maryland. There really is no comparison to Landon/Georgetown Prep/Holton etc. in Dallas, but those are $40K a year (I think the Dallas families that afford this type of tuition may just send their children to boarding school). Prep is a Jesuit school and offers a rigorous (boys-only) education. Holton-Arms and Landon are brother/sister schools that also offer outstanding rigorous educations. Georgetown Day may offer the kind of diversity and worldview you are looking for. Green Acres is a more experiential (crunchy) school. St. Andrews and Gonzaga both offer rigorous Catholic school educations. Sidwell (the private school of choice for many a president's child) is, as you would imagine, top-notch. |
W schools will not give you diversity. Consider the RM cluster. |