Why stay in DC when none (yes, including upper NW schools) seem to compare to Arlington?????????????

[Anonymous]

You're right, I did base my premise on the ability to move, but, IIRC, none of the responding parents said their reason for not going to a better district was the inability to move. Among the reasons were that they liked their neighborhood, they didn't want an hour commute (in all fairness, my friends' commute downtown increased by only 15mins - from 20 mins to 35), they were hoping to get in lotteries, or just didn't like the idea of living in the 'burbs. I know this is going to sound judgmental, but those don't seem like legitimate reasons to put a child in a bad school. I can understand, though, if they can't afford to move but didn't want to admit it to the OP, so they came up with other reasons. To be honest, I never considered Arlington schools until I looked at the test scores, a direct result of this thread. While Shepard is a solid school, I'd think that most parents would prefer a school that scores in the 90's vs the 60's. I agree with a pp who said that some parents have different priorities. They and their children have to live with their choices; I don't. So, to each his own.

Do you direct your judgment at follow suburbanites who live in PG county? How about Alexandria? How about South Arlington? Do people who live in all those places have "legitimate reasons to put a child in a bad school?" Or is this just a DC thing?

I can afford to move, but I like the charter we're in for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it's as good or better than many of the suburban schools we'd move to. And it may be at some point that we'll move because of schools - middle school is a likely time. But to assume that anyone who lives in the city is in a bad school is pretty silly, don't you think?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:21:32 Since you like test scores so much, I would place a bet any day on a DCPS/Charter school kid from a HHI/highly educated family over a kid from Arlington with the same demographic background. As a PP said, talk to me about how the two systems compare when you have an actual head to head comparison.

Nobody on DCUM would send their kid to a "bad" school including those of us who live in the District. Contrary to your belief, you can get your kid into a good school in DC but you have to be persistant and patient because DC's schools are in the midst of a renaissance. The current system is not for the faint-hearted but the options are getting better every year.

If you are going to send your kid to a publicly funded school in DC you have to put some work into the process. You can look at test scores and make a determination about a school based on that factor alone, but that's a lazy way to assess shools, particularly in DC.

Our neighborhood school's test scores were abysmal, however when I went to the school to visit, the facility was beautiful, the kids were sweet, the atmosphere was great and the teachers seemed very good. The school had many ESL students and the test scores reflected the difficulty of getting those children up the learning curve. It was not a "bad" school. As a matter of fact, the parents there were happy and very proud of their school.

Be careful not to judge because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'd bet that there is a Virginia parent at GDS that thinks people who send their kids to Arlington county schools are abusive .

Ultimately, through research and relentlessness, I was able to secure a spot at a school that turned out to be a better fit. However, my kids would have been fine at our neighborhood school. There was no boogey man there.

Many of us District parents have done a lot of research on DC schools and have dug beneath the numbers. I made an educated and informed decision when I placed my children in their current public charter. It is obvious that you believe Arlington schools are better. That's fine. Please move there if you haven't already. You will be much happier. In the meantime, stop trying to push the idea that no DC school compares to the schools in Arlington.

I push no such thing. I am not the OP. I am a random poster pointing out what seemed like a salient point to me:

Someone upthread said that the advantage of DCPS over Arlington is that children have choices in form of charters and OOB. It seemed appropriate to me to point out that a) lottery-based options are not real options since they are a dice roll, and b) they cannot be legitimately called an advantage over Arlington because ACPS, too, has many lottery-based options. What objection can there be to these fact-based statements? I am not trashing DCPS wholesale, nor praising Arlington above others. I am pointing out what I see as a flaw in some poster's argument.

[Anonymous]

Someone upthread said that the advantage of DCPS over Arlington is that children have choices in form of charters and OOB. It seemed appropriate to me to point out that a) lottery-based options are not real options since they are a dice roll, and b) they cannot be legitimately called an advantage over Arlington because ACPS, too, has many lottery-based options. What objection can there be to these fact-based statements? I am not trashing DCPS wholesale, nor praising Arlington above others. I am pointing out what I see as a flaw in some poster's argument.

I don't get this at all - your position is that since there is no guarantee that a student will get ionto a charter, it's not really an option? You require a guarantee of where your child will spends 14 years in school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Someone upthread said that the advantage of DCPS over Arlington is that children have choices in form of charters and OOB. It seemed appropriate to me to point out that a) lottery-based options are not real options since they are a dice roll, and b) they cannot be legitimately called an advantage over Arlington because ACPS, too, has many lottery-based options. What objection can there be to these fact-based statements? I am not trashing DCPS wholesale, nor praising Arlington above others. I am pointing out what I see as a flaw in some poster's argument.

I don't get this at all - your position is that since there is no guarantee that a student will get onto a charter, it's not really an option? You require a guarantee of where your child will spends 14 years in school?

My position is that an option that depends on an element of luck must be a) recognized as such and not sold as a regularly available option, and ) not held as an advantage over a neighboring jurisdiction that employs an identical, lottery-based network of educational options in addition to IB schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Someone upthread said that the advantage of DCPS over Arlington is that children have choices in form of charters and OOB. It seemed appropriate to me to point out that a) lottery-based options are not real options since they are a dice roll, and b) they cannot be legitimately called an advantage over Arlington because ACPS, too, has many lottery-based options. What objection can there be to these fact-based statements? I am not trashing DCPS wholesale, nor praising Arlington above others. I am pointing out what I see as a flaw in some poster's argument.

I don't get this at all - your position is that since there is no guarantee that a student will get onto a charter, it's not really an option? You require a guarantee of where your child will spends 14 years in school?

My position is that an option that depends on an element of luck must be a) recognized as such and not sold as a regularly available option, and ) not held as an advantage over a neighboring jurisdiction that employs an identical, lottery-based network of educational options in addition to IB schools.

Sweetheart, "luck" plays a roll in every aspect of one's life. Just because I put my kid in an Arlington county school doesn't mean they will be "lucky" enough to get a great teacher, or that they will be "lucky" and the neighborhood school will turn out to be a great fit for my child. I've read some of the Virginia threads. It's not all peaches and roses over their either. Our job as parents is to find the best school option for our child, whether it's through the lottery, the neighborhood school, or by going private (if that's something you can afford to do).

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you can get into a good school in DC if you're patient and persistent and perhaps willing to wait into October for a spot. There are some folk that don't have the stomach for this. I did and that's why all of my kids are at the same sought after school. I did my research and I was relentless. So it's not all luck. And even if it were all luck, you still have great schools and great options in DC that negate the OPs assertion that no school in DC is comparable to any school in Arlington.

Oh, and by the way, I did both a google search and a great schools search for public charter schools in Arlington, Virginia. No results. So name one.

If you're not trashing DC schools and praising Arlington schools above all others, then what is your point?

[Anonymous]

I am not willing to gamble my child's life with a lottery for charter schools. How many of you won the mega millions.

[Anonymous]

Part of the education VA kids are getting is that women are 2nd class citizens who can't be trusted to make their own health decisions.

We'll stay in NW DC rather than be under the rule of governor tranvaginal and his merry band of misogynists, thanks. I'll take a little corruption in the leadership over that, any day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not willing to gamble my child's life with a lottery for charter schools. How many of you won the mega millions.

If you lose the lotteries then move to Arlington. If you win you get great public prechool on up. If you work hard and don't narrow your options you will get in somewhere good. Most DCUM DCPS and charter parents have our kids at great schools, love where we live, pay way less for our mortgage than folks in Arlington, and never look at the VA school threads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Someone upthread said that the advantage of DCPS over Arlington is that children have choices in form of charters and OOB. It seemed appropriate to me to point out that a) lottery-based options are not real options since they are a dice roll, and b) they cannot be legitimately called an advantage over Arlington because ACPS, too, has many lottery-based options. What objection can there be to these fact-based statements? I am not trashing DCPS wholesale, nor praising Arlington above others. I am pointing out what I see as a flaw in some poster's argument.

I don't get this at all - your position is that since there is no guarantee that a student will get onto a charter, it's not really an option? You require a guarantee of where your child will spends 14 years in school?

My position is that an option that depends on an element of luck must be a) recognized as such and not sold as a regularly available option, and ) not held as an advantage over a neighboring jurisdiction that employs an identical, lottery-based network of educational options in addition to IB schools.

Sweetheart, "luck" plays a roll in every aspect of one's life. Just because I put my kid in an Arlington county school doesn't mean they will be "lucky" enough to get a great teacher, or that they will be "lucky" and the neighborhood school will turn out to be a great fit for my child. I've read some of the Virginia threads. It's not all peaches and roses over their either. Our job as parents is to find the best school option for our child, whether it's through the lottery, the neighborhood school, or by going private (if that's something you can afford to do).

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you can get into a good school in DC if you're patient and persistent and perhaps willing to wait into October for a spot. There are some folk that don't have the stomach for this. I did and that's why all of my kids are at the same sought after school. I did my research and I was relentless. So it's not all luck. And even if it were all luck, you still have great schools and great options in DC that negate the OPs assertion that no school in DC is comparable to any school in Arlington.

Oh, and by the way, I did both a google search and a great schools search for public charter schools in Arlington, Virginia. No results. So name one.

If you're not trashing DC schools and praising Arlington schools above all others, then what is your point?

You are like that woman in Kreutzer's Sonata who was responding to the argument she thought her friend was making, not the one he was actually making.

I will restate my point, without sarcasm or emotion because I don't think they help.

School option that requires luck, persistence and patience, and may not work out after all that < School option that can be exercised at will.

Lottery = Lottery.

Arlington lottery-based schools: Arlington Traditional, Claremont and Key (Spanish immersion), Drew Model (Montessori), Campbell (expeditionary). They don't need to be called charters, do they?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You're right, I did base my premise on the ability to move, but, IIRC, none of the responding parents said their reason for not going to a better district was the inability to move. Among the reasons were that they liked their neighborhood, they didn't want an hour commute (in all fairness, my friends' commute downtown increased by only 15mins - from 20 mins to 35), they were hoping to get in lotteries, or just didn't like the idea of living in the 'burbs. I know this is going to sound judgmental, but those don't seem like legitimate reasons to put a child in a bad school. I can understand, though, if they can't afford to move but didn't want to admit it to the OP, so they came up with other reasons. To be honest, I never considered Arlington schools until I looked at the test scores, a direct result of this thread. While Shepard is a solid school, I'd think that most parents would prefer a school that scores in the 90's vs the 60's. I agree with a pp who said that some parents have different priorities. They and their children have to live with their choices; I don't. So, to each his own.

Do you direct your judgment at follow suburbanites who live in PG county? How about Alexandria? How about South Arlington? Do people who live in all those places have "legitimate reasons to put a child in a bad school?" Or is this just a DC thing?

I can afford to move, but I like the charter we're in for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it's as good or better than many of the suburban schools we'd move to. And it may be at some point that we'll move because of schools - middle school is a likely time. But to assume that anyone who lives in the city is in a bad school is pretty silly, don't you think?

If your child didn't get a spot in the charter and you had to enroll in your IB school, what would have done?

I don't think you've read anything I've posted before and you're taking my response to one person's comments out of context. I live in DC. It's in my previous post if you care to read it.

[Anonymous]

13:40 I get that you think Arlington schools are better and good schools in DC are all luck of the draw. I and several others don't agree. Do you have another point to make?

[Anonymous]

School option that requires luck, persistence and patience, and may not work out after all that < School option that can be exercised at will.

Lottery = Lottery.

I think you meant Lottery = Luck, which certainly is true.

In any event, while your point makes some sense, it's pretty theoretical. If you get into a charter, or are IB at a good school, or get lucky in the OOB lottery, then it really doesn't matter, does it? And if you don't, and can move - well, then you do. If you don't, and can't move, it sucks, but not really relevant to this discussion.

If you're trying to make the point that it's better to have good IB options and also choices for specialty probrams than not good IB options and have to rely on specialty programs to rescue you - no shit - not exactly a revelation. And I suppose if you need to have everything planned out - the security of knowinf that you're happy with your local schools through high school before your kid starts preschool, than I suppose you'd move to Arlington, MoCo or somewhere else before preschool. But I'm not like that. So I guess my response to your point is - so what?

[Anonymous]

I don't think any of you ladies understood my point. You are doing the Kreutzer thing again.

I never made a judgment on the quality of DC schools vs. Arlington, MoCo or anywhere else. That market is well-explored by now. Here, again, is the argument I was making:

Someone upthread said the advantage of DCPS over Arlington is the presence of school options. And I say, this is wrong. ACPS has plenty of lottery-based options. So it is incorrect to claim that DC has that advantage (over Arlington). Do any of you disagree?

My second point is that education options that depend on luck of the draw are not as attractive as options available to all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK, OP, you've convinced me. There are some parents in DC who would rather stay in the city and enroll their kids in inferior schools, roll the dice with lotteries, or take a chance on a new charter, rather than move.

Who determines what inferior is?

The great part about public education in DC is that we have so many options now, no matter where you live in the city. And we have public options for language immersion schools, expiditionary schools, montessori schools and traditional schools. You may have to enter a lottery, and it may be frustrating, but you have options. In the suburbs if the neighborhood school isn't a good fit for your child your only other option is private (and we have that option too in DC).

Here is the post I was refuting.

[Anonymous]

The quote thing ran away - above is the remark that I thought was wrong.