Is Brent the best school in Capitol hill?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

PP here Sorry, but I'm calling BS and chalking this to pervasive Brent boosterism. The Hill estate market is very healthy right now, inentory shortages are pervasive, and days on market are short. . . but that's as much of a red herring as Brent's real estate market reflecting its value as a school. Given the fact that Brent families are peeling off around 4th grade just like other Hill ES options reinforces the underlying MS concern.

signed Hill/DCPS parent who CAN afford Brent's district but wouldleave DC outright if driven primarily by public school performance metrics.

I'm a Brent parent and i agree with you in part. the boosterism is annoying, unseemly and wrong-- how do you really know the other Hill schools are so much worse than Brent?

But I have a rising 4th grader and he will stay thorugh 4th and so will many of his cohorts (or so the parents tell me!!-- hmmmm . . . ). BASIS and Latin pulled off a lot of Brent rising 5th graders this year, but next year (for better and worse) it will likely be far more difficult for rising 5th graders to get into those charters, so there may be more staying put at Brent.

Anyway, whether or not kids will pull out of Brent after 4th, Brent kids will get 7 years of decent elementary school if they start in preK 3. Not bad!

But whether those 7 years are spent at Brent or at, say, Maury, is unlikely to make a signficant difference in the overall scheme of your kid's life.

YMMV

Don't see the boosterism as much as factual statements some would rather not hear. There's more money in the Brent District than the others on the Hill, and money buys facilities and program offerings. But it also buys snobbery, helicopter parents and mean-spirited competition for kids - we're going to see more of the negatives you find at WOTP elementary schools at Brent soon enough.

Parents peel off for Latin and Basis from Watkins, too, and will surely be doing so from Maury in a couple of years. SH appeals to few, Eliot-Hine to fewer. And there will be more charters before long, probably DC International School at Walter Reed in 2013-2014, or maybe 2014-2015, for starters. I won't be surprised if Basis opens a second branch eventually. Everybody muddles through for MS somewhere. Parents who plan ahead can circumvent the feeder problem (although they certainly shouldn't have to).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't see the boosterism as much as factual statements some would rather not hear. There's more money in the Brent District than the others on the Hill, and money buys facilities and program offerings. But it also buys snobbery, helicopter parents and mean-spirited competition for kids - we're going to see more of the negatives you find at WOTP elementary schools at Brent soon enough.

Parents peel off for Latin and Basis from Watkins, too, and will surely be doing so from Maury in a couple of years. SH appeals to few, Eliot-Hine to fewer. And there will be more charters before long, probably DC International School at Walter Reed in 2013-2014, or maybe 2014-2015, for starters. I won't be surprised if Basis opens a second branch eventually. Everybody muddles through for MS somewhere. Parents who plan ahead can circumvent the feeder problem (although they certainly shouldn't have to).

Someone ought to check the ROI, because Brent's results look a lot like those of other Hill ES. Higher SES also traslates to ease of affording CDS or parochials, not that those communities aren't served by other families spread across the Hill which is generally skewing higher SES. That also overlooks the Stanton Park neighbohood, which hardly suffers for lack of high SES families, but they get LT for ES.

And honestly, for Hill house shoppers the prospect of Brent vs. other neighborhood options is not much of factor (at least according to my friend and agent on the Hill who knows). Most people move up before they know if or what they'd want from a school for their hypothetical or very young kids. ES isn't the concern (EC wasn't even a concern for my family as we went private). I agree that there's a Brent contingent who really wishes their kids attended JKLMM. And from my experience I haven't seen too many WoTP helicopter parents -- their kids usually look bored while mommy or daddy is locked into their device or the parents aren't around because they 'dump and run' for kids' events or farm it out to the nanny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

PP here Sorry, but I'm calling BS and chalking this to pervasive Brent boosterism. The Hill estate market is very healthy right now, inentory shortages are pervasive, and days on market are short. . . but that's as much of a red herring as Brent's real estate market reflecting its value as a school. Given the fact that Brent families are peeling off around 4th grade just like other Hill ES options reinforces the underlying MS concern.

signed Hill/DCPS parent who CAN afford Brent's district but wouldleave DC outright if driven primarily by public school performance metrics.

I'm a Brent parent and i agree with you in part. the boosterism is annoying, unseemly and wrong-- how do you really know the other Hill schools are so much worse than Brent?

But I have a rising 4th grader and he will stay thorugh 4th and so will many of his cohorts (or so the parents tell me!!-- hmmmm . . . ). BASIS and Latin pulled off a lot of Brent rising 5th graders this year, but next year (for better and worse) it will likely be far more difficult for rising 5th graders to get into those charters, so there may be more staying put at Brent.

Anyway, whether or not kids will pull out of Brent after 4th, Brent kids will get 7 years of decent elementary school if they start in preK 3. Not bad!

But whether those 7 years are spent at Brent or at, say, Maury, is unlikely to make a signficant difference in the overall scheme of your kid's life.

YMMV

I suspect the Basis will evolve into a 'go to' option for many Hill families, and it's a very rigorouis curriculum and that will prevent it from becoming just another acceptable PCS option. It's not going to serve the merely "proficient" -- it's going to serve advanced students. The charters are continually pushing to fill gaps where DCPS is not meeting expectations. Basis, Latin, or some other PCS (existing or new) will fill this gap. It's a shame, because if you pooled Brent, Maury, Watkins, Tyler SI, Logan Montessori, SWS families, you could make a pretty fantastic MS feeder rather than having SH serve a relatively small number of Hill families, many OOB families, and a pipeline to privates, charters, and suburban MS schools. I'm still looking for a single Hill familiy excited about the prospects for Eliot Hine -- I have yet to meet that family, although I hear some exist, almost like an urban myth.

I agree that Brent is a good ES option and I know families who've been happy there to date (skewing younger, but still). I could see my kid thriving there, much as I see my kid thriving elsewhere. I wouldn't play boosterism for my own kid's Hill ES even though I'm happy with it and think it's an excellent program - parents look for different things in schools. The boosters may find this hard to believe, but I personally know families who've declined offers for Brent.

Brent Parent -- I hated that some parents from the old guard Cluster were always shouting about how great the CLuster was and tha all Hill parents should send their kids there. I have seen some Brent parents start to act the same way. Hate it too. Which is why threads like this make me crazy. There is no best. There are different schools with different strenghts. Better question, why do you like Brent. I like tha that it is small. I like the huge parent involvement to get things started. I like that there has been a huge greening push making our school yard and playground really nice. I like that our teachers are all good now. When we first started there were some that I would have fought to get fired because they couldn't even speak English well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Brent Parent -- I hated that some parents from the old guard Cluster were always shouting about how great the CLuster was and tha all Hill parents should send their kids there. I have seen some Brent parents start to act the same way. Hate it too. Which is why threads like this make me crazy. There is no best. There are different schools with different strenghts. Better question, why do you like Brent. I like tha that it is small. I like the huge parent involvement to get things started. I like that there has been a huge greening push making our school yard and playground really nice. I like that our teachers are all good now. When we first started there were some that I would have fought to get fired because they couldn't even speak English well.

PP - Hill ES parent here. Couldn't agree more. I don't even plug my kid's school because it's irrelevant. Families should find the school that best suits their children's educational needs. That's done by visiting the schools and talking with current teachers, parents and administrators, and doing some research (not anonymously through an online forum). The best fit is not always the one that tops some kind of paper ranking. Is the OP picking a school based on socially acceptable status lines or for something best suited to their kids' needs? If it was the former, I'd stay firmly put in private school, as I frequently get asked by friends and acuaintenances concerning DCPS -- "are the schools ok?" You need to trust your instincts instead of worrying about what other people think about your decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP here Sorry, but I'm calling BS and chalking this to pervasive Brent boosterism. The Hill estate market is very healthy right now, inentory shortages are pervasive, and days on market are short. . . but that's as much of a red herring as Brent's real estate market reflecting its value as a school. Given the fact that Brent families are peeling off around 4th grade just like other Hill ES options reinforces the underlying MS concern.

signed Hill/DCPS parent who CAN afford Brent's district but wouldleave DC outright if driven primarily by public school performance metrics.

I like it when HS calls BS on the ES. Hey HS, where's your DC going to MS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I don't even plug my kid's school because it's irrelevant. Families should find the school that best suits their children's educational needs. .

The best DC school to fit your kid's educational needs, if you're not raising a special needs kid, can be found easily enough. It's Sidwell, Maret or one of the other NW privates, certainly not a public school, or even CHDS or St. Peter.

If you're talking about social "needs," where your kid rubs shoulders with many others whose parents can't afford $30,000 per child annually, and avoids a long commute to NW, public school on the Hill.

We all make do at DCPS and charter schools; we're hardly talking about high-powered and well-endowed independents and suburban schools. I know one Brent family that hit the road for an all-gifted MoCo school serving 4th and 5th graders. What would I give for a program like that around here?

Can't help but agree with posters who expect Brent to pull ahead of the other Hill elementary schools on most fronts because of the money and momentum in that corner of SE. I've seen LT District families buy in SE for that reason - their IB option seems to be going nowhere and they can no longer plan to lottery into Peabody/Watkins or nearby charters catering to high-SES families.

True that future parents don't always plan ahead to ensure that a good IB option is waiting for them, but some read the writing on the wall a few years in. As has been pointed out, the middle-class cohort on the Hill is spread much too thin at the elementary schools and S-H.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: I don't even plug my kid's school because it's irrelevant. Families should find the school that best suits their children's educational needs. .

The best DC school to fit your kid's educational needs, if you're not raising a special needs kid, can be found easily enough. It's Sidwell, Maret or one of the other NW privates, certainly not a public school, or even CHDS or St. Peter.

If you're talking about social "needs," where your kid rubs shoulders with many others whose parents can't afford $30,000 per child annually, and avoids a long commute to NW, public school on the Hill.

PP here -- Good point, and I agree. I think the "social" needs are intrinsically tied to education when discussing schools. I'm using education in the broadest sense (ie school experience)