DC or MD for middle school (Alice Deal x Westland)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks everyone for your replies and insights! To the person who mentioned much worse issues at Westland, could you pls elaborate on what kind of issues?

The bullying at Westland is much worse than Deal.

This is what I have heard as well. Friends with kids at both schools. Suburban schools tend to be far worse social environments. Academic’s aren’t much better.

So You have no experience at any of these schools.

np: With a small number of exceptions, no one is in a position to make a direct comparison. At least PP was comparing the schools from an equal distance, rather than knowing directly about one but zero about the other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:my older one just graduated from Deal and honestly, it felt like a hot mess too much of the time - for us, teacher related. one 7th grade teacher disappeared for 3 months (which Deal did not communicate it to us) and kid had a substitute teacher who only handed out worksheets for the 3 months. another 7th grade teacher was super checked out, didn't actually grade homework so gave my kid a D on an interim report card (because of ungraded but completed assignments) while simultaneously stating in the same report card "Pleasure to have in class". my repeated attempts to contact this teacher to meet to discuss my kid's non graded assignments and associated D grade went unanswered and i had to get the Asst. Principal involved. said teacher then quit with 6 weeks left of school. my kid's 8th grade math teacher was escorted out of the building/suspended/likely fired this past Spring for handing out a wordsearch with words like "raped", "unclothed", "peed", and "Swastika".

not sure if Westland has these kinds of issues...but Deal sure did. i'm so glad to be done there and no, my younger one is not and will not be attending Deal.

To be fair, I think his bungling of the administration of a PARCC test was just as likely (if not more likely) a reason that he was fired. DCPS does not mess around when it comes to PARCC and he cost several students at least 30 minutes of testing time. The crossword showed extraordinarily horrible judgment, but I don’t think it was malicious. He probably never looked at the words before handing it out. I didn’t like that the school never communicated with parents that he was gone and that a sub would take over. However, the sub was delightful and was deemed an upgrade in our house.

For the more general question, we had a totally fine experience at Deal. I think you’ll find that it’s variable, family to family and student to student. I’d live where you want to live and assume your kid will probably be fine in either place.

yep, Deal is large enough that one's experience can be highly variable kid-by-kid.
We have 3 kids. One had great teachers for 3 years. One had a really rough experience: 6th grade ELA teacher quit in September and wasn't replaced until January (subs and no instruction in the intervening 4 months). 7th grade was better. 8th grade ELA teacher probably called out 75% of the time and 8th grade science teacher was MIA for a good month. When a teacher is missing, the kids don't generally get instruction--it's not like they just bring in a sub and keep going.

I get that it's very much luck of the draw when you're running a school of this size and hiring this large of a staff. Some teachers will be fantastic, some will be horrible and most will be perfectly fine. I think my only real gripe with Deal is that the school never seems to communicate with parents when a teacher quits or goes out on leave. Parents only find out if their kid tends to be a talker. My kids never shared much in middle school so I would find out 6 weeks later that there had been no ELA teacher for weeks on end.