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Will Whittle be around next year?
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Anonymous
Isn’t Chris Whittle from Tennessee? Look at the last school mentioned in this posting, about the Global School… |
Anonymous
Of course if you were fleeing a dangerous, underserved neighborhood and your previous house was collapsing, you should be forgiven for incomplete due diligence. |
Anonymous
| There are people who are early adopters and start before the rest of us. There are grifters and con artists who are very compelling in the stories they tell. I have heard people, who I knew to be dishonest tell me things I knew to be a lie and still wondered, could this be true they were so good at spinning their tales. I don’t know CW or this school, but feel for the teachers and families who are in the situation they are in. |
Anonymous
There are also scenarios where are you pay for a home inspection, but the inspector lies and scams you. Plenty of con artists go after more vulnerable people that are easier to fool, that doesn’t mean the scammer schooling be blamed and held accountable. |
Anonymous
The school opened in a new facility with (by all accounts) excellent faculty. The school achieved accreditation and IB certification. It’s easy to look back today and say parents should have known but that’s not the reality. |
Anonymous
There were established alternatives with track records going back decades. It was always a gamble sending a kid there (assuming they could have gotten into a better school). |
Anonymous
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There were established alternatives with track records going back decades. It was always a gamble sending a kid there (assuming they could have gotten into a better school). That's a big assumption. As is the capacity to pay (which is something that I assume wouldn't cross your mind). |
Anonymous
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Given that Chris was able to use all his wiles and charms to get investors to put up (according to him) almost a billion dollars to fund his scam, dupe the landlord into taking out a several hundred million dollar loan to renovate a building in DC for said scam, and convince established and well respected educators and administrators to leave strong institutions to join him in his latest (and hopefully last) scheme - I'd say that the initial group of parents had little chance of seeing through all the shiny distractions Whittle put forth prior to the opening in DC.
Anyone that stayed for the third year, however, needs to ask themselves some really hard questions. Not trying to be heartless or mean but the writing had been plainly on the wall for a while and the departure of the founding educational team should really have been the last canary in the coal mine / last straw / pick your metaphor... |
Anonymous
There were established alternatives with track records going back decades. It was always a gamble sending a kid there (assuming they could have gotten into a better school). That's a big assumption. As is the capacity to pay (which is something that I assume wouldn't cross your mind). Whittle is among the most expensive schools in the DMV (more so now that parents have to pay teachers directly on top of tuition) |
Anonymous
Not sure what this has to do with a private school, but there is just as much graft and poor performance in the public school sector as well, at least in DC. now, back to our regularly scheduled train wreck. |
Anonymous
I agree with this. Our family was in the HS application process for the admission for the first year Whittle opened. Another family encouraged us to take a look. All my interactions with them didn't pass the smell test. It was very heavy marketing and idea and I just wasn't convinced it would play out in practice. Not necessarily that it was a financial disaster, but I wasn't willing to have my child be part of a start up for their HS experience. Then, I discovered the previous failures and it just solidified what I already felt. This was all before admissions decisions were completed that year. |
Anonymous
Very limited high performing options for kids that wanted to learn/continue learning Mandarin in Middle School. As much as the world has changed in the last 20 years you would think there would be more alternatives. But here's some for example, if you have more please share. Bullis farm from the city very expensive. Sidwell one in a million very expensive. DCI which is rated 6/10 on Greater Schools. Many complaints that I've heard from parents I trust to make informed schooling decisions. Pallotti is far from the city and doesn't begin until HS. Whittle promised a lot and offered merit scholarship. If parents were seeking small school traditional education there were many other viable schools. But for the niche group mentioned above that wanted Mandarin as a key learning component there weren't many options. Of course some will say just send your child to a traditional school and have them study Mandarin on the weekends, blah blah blah etc... Sending your child to Whittle was a risk, like a start up company. Its all sunken cost now, lesson learned. |
Anonymous
If Googling that inspectors name returned a laundry list of past scams, well, I’d say you didn’t do your due diligence as a consumer. |
Anonymous
Low socioeconomic public schools y’all would thumb your nose at receive IB certification all the time. It’s about as hard as getting a store-issued credit card. Again, a few minutes of cursory research instead of grabbing for the shiny new thing would’ve helped a lot of folks. I wonder how many Whittle parents are also driving Teslas with panel gaps that would hold a team of paper and/or are cryptocurrency enthusiasts. I’m seeing a Venn Diagram that doesn’t overlap much. |