Norwood vs Washington Episcopal

[Anonymous]

Can anyone compare these two schools? Are the students at either school overly competitive? What about the staff?

[Anonymous]

Norwood is competitive, but does not emphasize competition among peers. (You sort of compete with yourself) With that said, parents there are fairly competitive--and urge their children to be. For example, many many parents hire expensive tutors for every subject area, not because a child is failing, but to ensure that he/she is at the top of her/his class. Norwood offers a rich academic, arts, and community service program that is beyond impressive. What worried me is that roughly 90% of the families lived in Potomac and the high end areas of Bethesda. There is virtually no economic diversity, so that did not work well for us.

Don't know much about Washington Episcopal, other than it is an actual Episcopal school. Norwood has Episcopal roots, has a morning chapel, but is not Episcopal.

[Anonymous]

OP: Thanks a lot. I get the impression from your reply that if a family does not want to be competitive with other kids and just educate their child, it is o.k. by the school???

[Anonymous]

I'm a current Norwood parent and couldn't be happier with the school. I don't know Washington Episcopal very well so can't really help with a comparison there but I can talk about Norwood. We love it! It strikes a great balance between being very nurturing and also being academically rigorous and challenging. I've found very little pressure on the kids to compete with other children. Rather kids are encouraged to meet high but individually appropriate expectations for them. The faculty are truly second to none and the curriculum is broad and deep, with great focus on the arts as well as on math and science. The school is genuinely committed to helping raise kind and socially responsible kids so there's a huge commitment to values (like kindness, collaboration, respect) and to community service. We're now starting to look at high schools so my perspective is probably a bit different from yours. I think we're in really good shape in that regard (I hope!). Norwood has an amazing high school placement record. If we were to do it all over, we'd pick Norwood again (even though we started there with a significantly longer commute than we now have). I'd encourage you to take a close look. If you want to talk more, let me know. I'm not sure if you can put your email address in a post, but if you'd like to try that I'd be happy to respond to you directly.

[Anonymous]

we are very seriously looking at Norwood at this point. it is our top choice. and we can see it has a good after norwood placement. my question is how are the students doing in their new high school compared to other students? thank you very much.

[Anonymous]

Norwood's transition to high school is supposed to be great. We're not quite there yet but I've talked a ton to parents who say there children are extremely well-prepared for high school. I think tNorwoodl does a really good job in the middle school of gradually transitioning the kids to greater and greater responsibility and self-advocacy. This at least is our experience and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the scuttlebut will prove correct once we take the next step.