Seaton or Lee Montessori (Brookland) PK3

[Anonymous]

The season scores took a major dip this year

[Anonymous]

I have two kids at Lee (5th grade and 3rd grade) and while we have generally been happy with the school there are definitely some good teachers, and some not at all good teachers. I suspect this is the case at any school but our experience has been determined by the teacher and so that makes it difficult to advise anyone about which school to choose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The season scores took a major dip this year

Real talk about Seaton -- It used to be a complete gem and had two exceptionally good principals in a row who created a culture that differentiated well, utilized pull-outs, pushed for excellence all around, and I would have recommended it wholeheartedly to anyone. There has been a real change under the new principal and there are a lot of tensions (between teachers and the principal, and parents and the principal), and the academics are slipping. Some of the teachers and students are occasionally able to be exceptional, but the overall culture shifted away from that. You can see it in the scores this year.

This also coincides with the gentrification of the school in an unlikely way; 8 years ago there were maybe 20 gentrifier (read: families with parents who supplement like crazy) families and also it was an amazing school. now there are 100 gentrifier families and its a worse school. community cannot overcome academics.

It remains to be seen what will happen -- will the principal get better? will the teachers tensions resolve? will the sheer force of gentrifier families make it fine? It's a bit unknown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:very helpful! thanks for sharing the experience. why is that though?( underscored line) DCPS better regulated？

Anonymous wrote:We had this same decision, but it was 8 years ago for my child who is now entering middle school. The reason I am responding is because I feel strongly that we should have stayed with Seaton. We were in at Seaton and left for Lee. Well, we transferred out of Lee after 1 year of pre-k. My child was doing the same things everyday because he preferred it and he was not self-directed enough to choose the difficult things. Now, I wasn’t expecting a lot of academics in PK3, but I don’t think he learned a thing. Fast forward and now he is above grade level heading into advanced classes in middle school. I would recommend DCPS over a charter school any day.

Not OP. IMO it’s less about regulation — DC has one of the most tightly regulated charter sectors in the country — and more about standardization. (Which are two different things.) DCPS has standardized — in a good way — many aspects of curriculum, instruction, expectations for teachers etc. E.g. many DCPS schools now do a better job teaching reading than charters because DCPS (by and large) adopted a science of reading-aligned approach early on. DCPS is a big district with the advantages and disadvantages that brings. They can make a central decision and require things of all campuses, which on the one hand can be good. On the other parents and teachers can end up banging their heads against the wall when encountering inflexible bureaucratic rules. But I agree with OP: on average and at this point in time post-pandemic in DC, DCPS > charter — but that doesn’t mean ALL DCPS > ALL charters. I haven’t looked at the data but my guess would be DCPS has a bell curve that skews toward the middle — more consistently fine-to-good. And charter sector bell curve has “fat tails” — some really high performers and a lot of egregious low performers (that the PCSB will probably shut down soon, after their “pandemic pause” on closures due to 2 years of no test score data).

Just one person’s view