Top private (Sidwell, GDS) versus top public (JKLM) for early years: what are the differences?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just curious, is there more than one EOTP charter-attending parent posting, or is it the same poster who is very prolific. All the posts seem to share a common writing style.

I'm one. The heading for homeschool is another, and it has sounded to me like there is a third![/quote ]

It is kind of funny that we (at least us two) sound a lot alike. But maybe that is because we are thinking along the same lines - just both desperately wanting to create space and time for our kids to have the freedom to learn what they want and what interests them, and not only read English books that are assigned for class.

I would consider that an absolute tragedy for my kids, since I spent so much time reading books from all over in MS and HS that were not assigned, were just in my house. And it seems hard even in a non pressure cooker school for kids sometimes to find the time to do that.

We are not 10 private activities a week parents, and I loved exploring the library I was provided with at home and then going to Palisades to check out the rest of a series I was interested in, and I never felt like I didn't have time to do this even in 7th and 8th grade.

Does anyone else just think that the amount of homework assigned starting in MS is just plain too much no matter where you are? I know we could talk about different levels of intensity, perfectionism and and how that plays in, but honestly I do not remember having this much homework until 9th grade and our kids are starting it in 5th.

Do private schools avoid this?

Why do schools feel compelled to do this?

I feel like it is crushing my children sometimes, especially the youngest ones where you can either go sledding or do your homework. We usually find a way to do both, but having a ten year old know on Friday afternoon that they have x y and z hanging over their heads that they have to do by Monday, is just not what I remember from 5th grade AT ALL........ and it feels really wrong....

[Anonymous]

Does anyone think that the "at risk" set asides, if implemented the way they are written, will make them flee public for private? We are almost done with ES, and going to a charter, but honestly when I think of Mann or Key and how they would deal with a truly troubled student without seriously disrupting the education of the other kids I cringe....

We had two teachers in every class, partially very useful to pull out disruptive students - and these were IB disruptive students. I do worry that the WOTP schools, who will not gain any traction to get wrap around services for these kids, may seriously change in ways I would not like because they are simply not equipped to help kids who come from unstable situations like foster care or being homeless, who presumable have been shuffled from school to school and had their education suffer as a result.

I am not sure anyone really thought carefully about how this would work for the "at risk" students either in WOTP elementary schools. Kids who are in foster care or whose families qualify for TANF/SNAP. How will they get to school? How will they feel once they are there, especially if they are profoundly academically behind and in with a bunch of white affluent kids for the first time in their lives????

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Public pluses and downsides: Jklm filled with bright motivated kids and parents; whatever is lacking is not having PE everyday is trust me made up after school, tons of sports and enrichment opportunities on campus. These kids get plenty of exercise. Testing doesn't become a downside until third grade and it does impact the curriculum for about two months a year, but class sizes are totally manageable (we have twenty) and love being part of a neighborhood school and teachers are super responsive in fact I'd say more so because you see them every day at drop off and pick up as opposed to being in a car pool line. My teachers have always been super responsive.

Private downsides and pluses: more art is great, no testing provides more freedom in older grades, prettier facilities sometimes. And ... Smaller classes can be a plus or a minus. I can see it going either way. Sometimes privates are too small to find your tribe. Middle school is where there is a big divide that begins to take place. If money is any issue, apply in middle.

2 months a year? Can that be right?

No, not in my kids' experience.

[Anonymous]

Do private schools avoid this?

Why do schools feel compelled to do this?

I feel like it is crushing my children sometimes, especially the youngest ones where you can either go sledding or do your homework. We usually find a way to do both, but having a ten year old know on Friday afternoon that they have x y and z hanging over their heads that they have to do by Monday, is just not what I remember from 5th grade AT ALL........ and it feels really wrong....

PP, you sound like a seriously thoughtful and cool parent, a person I bet I'd like IRL. For that reason, I'm going to try not to sound like a total dick here.

What you just said in your longer post, and especially the part I've pulled out above^^^, is one of the top 2* reasons we chose an independent school for our kid. It is not easy, and we are making serious financial sacrifices to do it.

Our kid is in 5th grade now, and he never, ever has homework over a weekend. He didn't have homework at all really until 4th, and even then it was one reinforcing math worksheet 3 days a week. (well, and "read for 20 minutes at least.") As a parent, I choose to believe the considerable research that concludes that homework at the elementary school level adds little to nothing to critical thinking ability and knowledge retention. The case in middle school is somewhat more compelling, but not to warrant a crushing homework load.

So we are attempting to buy our way out of what I believe, after thoughtful consideration, is a bullshit model of testing, curriculum = testing, and homework for homework's sake. ** the other of the top two reasons we save less for retirement than we could in order to pay tuition is the rich curriculum that is not the same as it is at our IB school, Murch.

[Anonymous]

What is missing from the Murch curriculum?

Who is going to pay for your retirement?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is missing from the Murch curriculum?

Who is going to pay for your retirement?

there are 15 pages so far about what might be missing from the Murch curriculum, when comparing head to head with certain independent schools in NWDC and lower Moco. Depending on one's perspective, of course. Many posters in those 15 pages of comments would disagree with me.

My retirement is being funded but not at the pace it once was. Perhaps I will have to work later in life than some other people do. Maybe I won't be able to afford a condo in Newport Beach and international travel in retirement.

[Anonymous]

Hey PPs - heading to home school here - let's start our own charter where kids play outside half the day and don't get any home work! I vote for a location EOTP...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hey PPs - heading to home school here - let's start our own charter where kids play outside half the day and don't get any home work! I vote for a location EOTP...

Do it!!! I think a lot of people would love the idea.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was not thinking in "test scores' when I was asking for the potential differences in academic excellence. I was referring to knowledge, to learning, to cultural foundation. I was not saying academic excellence = happiness. I was saying your values are great, but I might have other ones, or slightly different ones, or.... Just let me judge "all by myself' (as my DC says) Don't patronize me. It is just a question that it is relevant for me when we talk about a school. Is it the only thing? Of course not! But please, if you know the answer just let me know. Thanks!

Sorry -- the relationship between posts 21:55 and 21:58 was unclear. So if you don't mean scores and if you don't think previous discussions about differences in curriculum and pedagogy don't address the issue of academic excellence, then what kind of information are you looking for? What would count as a satisfying answer to your question?

Did private / public set a better foundation for sustainable -subsequent- learning? Did your DC love math when he/she was a 2nd grader? Did your DC read above grade, or at par in public / private? Did she / he developed, or further developed, a compelling enthusiasm for reading? Was she/he conscious about other cultures? Did he/she developed a passion for art, or music or butterflies (i.e. from beautiful colors to metamorphosis)? Did the school, in partnership with your family of course, help her/him to develop a deep love for learning, for getting to know, for exploring? Did he/she enjoyed learning? Did the school enhance / further developed his/her natural intellectual curiosity? Was she/he able to communicate -even briefly/modestly- in another language? Were you impressed about her/his knowledge in art, music, history..-you name it?
Thanks!

We think that Horace Mann is absolutely fantastic for the "early years," and it is and always will be a small school - the principal knows all of the students and most of the parents at least by sight. We put our last child in preK (with the others we had waited until K), and it was fantastic.

They do a great job of getting the kids acclimated to a "big school" but they have sort of separate playgrounds for the older and younger kids. The music program is wonderful, and the 1st and 2nd graders have a musical together, while the 3rd - 5th have a different one that the little kids attend. Each year there are two notebusters sessions as extra curriculars which involve Mann, Janney, and I don't know who else that are also great musicals - performed at Wilson, and all three of our kids have done them.

One of the teachers this year is offering a creative writing program after school that is fantastic. She is a graduate of Horace Mann, and when my first child came she was doing ELL and had a program called "culture club" where each week kids shared their culture - it is an extremely international community, and that is all the diversity we thought we needed and could handle at the time. In retrospect, we probably should have tried for Yu Ying just for the sake of immersion, but at the time there were still serious questions about their academic quality when our kids were starting out. Our kids loved school during the early years, art is another strong point, as is science - they have a separate science program. There is also a garden that they tend to.

The early years are heavily play based, and IMO real homework does not start until 3rd grade - before that they only have reading logs. In 3rd they start with real tests, real grades, each week alternating vocabulary and spelling, and each week they have to log on to the scholastic site and write a "current events" report. So maybe this provides some concrete answers to your original questions. We have never thought that our kids lacked for anything, and basically with the exception of a shiny new building, it might as well have been private school as far as we were concerned, and we know a lot of parents who went from our preschool to Beauvoir and it did not sound like there were any significant differences. They have held our hand when we needed it, and are always very grateful for parent volunteers in any capacity - whether it is being a room parent or just going on the annual field trip to the pumpkin patch. And there are a lot of active involved parents. I don't know whether you can be a room parent in private school, but it basically means that you can be a somewhat constant presence in your child's classroom, which is useful if your child is having a hard time one year for some reason.

They have a project over the summers called a "noticing book" with very helpful suggestions as to what to put in it, and in the back you are supposed to keep a list of the books you have read. We really value these now - because it basically recaps the summer in all its glory. The younger ones had mostly pictures with captions and artwork, and as they get older they write entries and stories and all sorts of things under the sun. The only problem for our kids was that school was just too easy. We have solved that by sending them to Basis, and the two that are there are doing extremely well. There is a lead teacher and an assistant in each class, the classes are fairly small, and they do break up into groups for reading etc. They also allowed our math kids to get on to the math team a year earlier, and all of our specific requests about having teachers and keeping kids together have been honored although we have not made many. They like to give families the same teacher for all the kids, which is kind of cool because you already have a rapport with the teacher and the kids can reassure each other........... The teachers are for the most part fantastic.

Everyone says that all our kids come in well prepared and bla bla bla, but I do really think the school adds value, and allows the kids to ease into homework in a nice transition. I do wish they would start some things like emphasizing spelling in 2nd grade, but you cannot have everything you want. Now we have a shiny new building, but people had been going to the old Horace Mann where the paint was peeling for years. You really cannot judge a book by its cover. And the aftercare program has also been very good. For family reasons, we had to put our two younger kids in after care which included the preKer and sometimes the days lasted til 6pm for both of them, and they also have great trips during spring and Christmas breaks. So even though we are not really using the after care per se (now we use the before care so that my husband can get the kids to Basis on time), our younger one still looks forward to the trips on no school days so we have a drop in afternoon so that the kid qualifies. Also, the special ed coordinator there is very good and they are fairly good about spotting developmental issues and learning differences, and they do not begrudge testing the kids at their own expense. Really really have liked Horace Mann, as have all of our kids. Last year our second grader was clocked at reading at a 5th grade level. Most of the kids there are fairly advanced, and I think the test scores probably reflect that. But we also like the fact that they do not do a lot of test prep - just sort of a "go team" attitude during the DC CAS. Last year they had Tshirts that said something like Rock the DC CAS, and reminders about making sure our kids got enough sleep etc, but they definitely are not teaching to any test

Our only problem was that kids start leaving for private schools in 4th (our son lost his two best buds to STA), but then we leave after 4th so undoubtedly we are also part of the problem....

Thanks PP for taking the time and doing the effort to write this post. Really helpful. Thanks for sharing your experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I was not thinking in "test scores' when I was asking for the potential differences in academic excellence. I was referring to knowledge, to learning, to cultural foundation. I was not saying academic excellence = happiness. I was saying your values are great, but I might have other ones, or slightly different ones, or.... Just let me judge "all by myself' (as my DC says) Don't patronize me. It is just a question that it is relevant for me when we talk about a school. Is it the only thing? Of course not! But please, if you know the answer just let me know. Thanks!

Sorry -- the relationship between posts 21:55 and 21:58 was unclear. So if you don't mean scores and if you don't think previous discussions about differences in curriculum and pedagogy don't address the issue of academic excellence, then what kind of information are you looking for? What would count as a satisfying answer to your question?

Did private / public set a better foundation for sustainable -subsequent- learning? Did your DC love math when he/she was a 2nd grader? Did your DC read above grade, or at par in public / private? Did she / he developed, or further developed, a compelling enthusiasm for reading? Was she/he conscious about other cultures? Did he/she developed a passion for art, or music or butterflies (i.e. from beautiful colors to metamorphosis)? Did the school, in partnership with your family of course, help her/him to develop a deep love for learning, for getting to know, for exploring? Did he/she enjoyed learning? Did the school enhance / further developed his/her natural intellectual curiosity? Was she/he able to communicate -even briefly/modestly- in another language? Were you impressed about her/his knowledge in art, music, history..-you name it?
Thanks!

Ah, well, I suspect that people aren't going there for two reasons. First, you're asking people to brag about their kids which risks outing them (and is likely to lead to a certain amount of abuse of the precious snowflake variety). Secondly, for any individual kid, it's hard to say what's attributable to the school vs what would have happened anyway. And it's inherently a YMMV situation -- the fact that one poster's kid emerges with a love of math doesn't increase the odds your kid will.

At this point, enough people have pointed out enough perceived differences that the obvious take away is that if you value what the private school partisans appreciate about their schools (rather than see those things as expensive frills), look at the school closely with those aspects in mind, compare your public option, and think about your own child's personality and interests. Most schools -- on their walls and, to some extent, their websites -- display or describe what students are doing. This was one of my favorite aspects of school visits. And you can talk with actual kids who attend the different schools you're looking at (friends, neighbors, at post-admission open houses). Before I made a decision, I had seen (without having to make a specific request and without doing anything unusual (just taking the tour, showing up for the interview, going to the informational sessions) 3rd graders doing a science experiment, lots of artwork, how well 5th graders could write in a foreign language, a sort of Williamsburgy history project that involved researching and then personifying an historical figure. I also noticed which schools seemed to display all or most of the kids' work vs. a select few. Told me not only about ethos but about the range of responses a particular assignment elicited. You can see a lot by looking!

Hi PP. I don't understand the first part of your post, to be honest (I don't say that badly, I just don't understand the bragging part and the outing thing) Anyhow, regarding the second part: I have visited 4 public schools (Mann, Key, Janney and Oyster), 4 charters (Yu Ying, Two Rivers, Creative Minds and Mundo Verde), and 3 privates (GDS, Sidwell and WIS). I spoke with the teachers, with some students, looked to their art projects, science projects, math projects.... I have analyzed their DC CAS scorings (for those schools which have them), their Great Schools ratings, the parents comments, their websites, their curriculums,... I know which schools have Blue Ribbon awards, how many do they have, when they were awarded. I know their testing trends, which school is a solid bet, which school has recently risen... I spoke with some friends who are education specialists, with friends who have children in private, in public. I agree with you, visits are crucial, seeing is key. That said, I just wanted more perspectives, more experiences, amplifying the "sample". I know I cannot assume attribution /causality from these posts. Of course. But so far, I got to know many enriching experiences and info from many nice families that have been struggling like us with such important decision: what is best for our child.
So to everyone who has shared their perspectives and experiences: thanks!

[Anonymous]

It seems like if it would be hard to do private school because of money then I would definitely do private. My son went from 1-5 at Janney and now he's in 8th grade at Deal middle school and has a great time socially and academically. He will be going to SJC scholars program for HS and it has all worked out. I would go in public school until high school if I were you! Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Out of curiosity, why did the charters all drop off your list?

[Anonymous]

Because you can't count on charters...

[Anonymous]

In terms of admissions? Or in some other sense? If admissions, you can't count on GDS or Sidwell or JKLM OOB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In terms of admissions? Or in some other sense? If admissions, you can't count on GDS or Sidwell or JKLM OOB.

I though OP had been accepted at one or more of the privates, and was trying to determine whether to send her child. Her alternative was to move inbounds to one of the M schools. But maybe I got it wrong.