APS (Jamestown/ATS) to Private?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please tell me about the “sense of community” you are referring to at private.

I am the one who believes writing is better at private.

I firmly believe you are losing out on community when you move. Read the private school dcum. I have kids in APS and Big 3. There is no substitute for a neighborhood school, and particularly one like Jamestown. Your kid will know their neighborhood; the neighborhood will know your kid. You will know the families. Your kid will go to school with little Jimmy and then show up on his soccer team on Saturday. You will stand on the sidelines with the parents and it will turn out they live behind you. You will have a drink together and turns out everyone went to Georgetown and you knew little Jimmy’s dads sister. Little Jimmys moms neighbor has a child in the next grade and you all get together and you know everything about the next grades teachers. Little Jimmy can run over to his new friends house at the drop of a hat. The kids can have some freedom without structured play dates with weird mom interactions. Everyone loves the school and community.

Private school is really, really different. People live far apart. You aren’t standing together on the sidelines as frequently. It’s a lot harder to get little Jimmy together with little Johnny. You see people in carpool which just isn’t the same as walking with parents to/from school while the kids play.

I just think you need to be realistic. Yes, you are right about writing but really wrong about community.

+1 if you want community, APS is the way to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Went from Jamestown/Williamsburg to a Big 3 private for high school. Wasn't behind at all - in fact, was probably ahead in math and Spanish.

How much writing did your child actually do in APS? This is where my sense is that APS falls behind Big3. I mean, I believe that APS teachers are on par with the best private school teachers around here; the compensation makes it so. But APS teacher still have bigger classes and, particularly in MS, exponentially greater # of students. So, if a teacher in APS assigns a five page paper in MS, they will have (best case scenario) five pagers per 20 students per five periods equals 1,000 pages to review. They cannot possibly give real editing feedback or teach children the iterative process of writing/editing/revising. A private school teacher has the luxury of maybe 1/3 (or much less) number of pages. They can give detailed feedback. Not all do of course. Many are terrible. And you could win the lottery of teachers in APS so there is no right answer. On the other hand, you are giving up a ton in my view when you pull for private and almost always it’s the wrong call and based more on parents neediness than child’s actual development.

For our average student, they had zero assigned novels in middle school, just excerpts handed out or “pick your own reading — hello graphic novels”. We switched to private in 7th, and we have about 4 assigned novels with reports due end of each quarter

Definitely not the experience my DD had. She had assigned novels and reports due. She went to Swanson.

What grade? We didn’t have any at Hamm for 6th.

You could move to Williamsburg...

[Anonymous]

Have you considered the IB program at Washington Liberty, OP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks, everyone! OP here and your replies are definitely helpful.

My reasons for considering private have very little to do with college matriculation. I’m motivated and impressed more by the smaller class sizes and sense of community that many of the local privates offer. Most importantly, like many of you have stated, the private schools seems to place much more emphasis on writing, spelling, and grammar.

I work in consulting and am in my 40’s, and am increasingly frustrated by how poor the writing is amongst the 20-something’s. This just seems to get worse year after year with each recruiting class. There are a few exceptions and stand outs with stellar communication ability - and time and again I always come to find out they all went to private school.

Gen Z writing ability rant aside, I just hope I’m in a financial spot (fingers crossed) to make this happen after 5th grade.

A big thing to consider is that your kid will be entering years after the lifer kids who started in PreK at the school. It may be hard to break into friend groups. Smaller classes aren't always a good thing when it comes to making friends. In our case, there was a kingpin boy who told the other boys what teams to follow, games to play, music to like, and so on. In a bigger school system, kids have a greater chance to find their tribe, whether that's band, science fair, debate or sports. They can also ignore the queen bees and kingpins, whose influence is diluted by numbers.

If you want to focus on writing and grammar, encourage your kid to study history and foreign languages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you considered the IB program at Washington Liberty, OP?

The IB English classes at WL are incredibly challenging and I have zero doubt my DD is prepared for college. You can take those classes even if you are not full IB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my kid’s very best friend went to a Big 3 after another North Arlington elementary school and Williamsburg. They met up again at UVA and rekindled the friendship that they still have to this day. The parents assume the switch would get the kid into an Ivy. It didn’t. Ironically, it very well may have had the kid stayed at Yorktown, where they likely would have been a superstar.

Oh well, it’s not my money.

You have told this story before on DCUM. And I’ve taken the time to explain to you that your analysis is wrong. And yet you keep posting it.

Compare please the acceptance
data from the last five years at YHS and W&L (available from Arlington magazine) with posted acceptance data from Big3, using USNWR Top College (as an arbitrary ranking). Giving EVERY benefit of the doubt to APS, eg, the kid who got into Yale wasn’t also the one who got into Georgetown, Big3 do significantly better by a very wide margin. And the idea that Big3 are filled with legacy/athlete and APS is not is a complete fallacy; there are just as many in my view.

The idea that the kid would’ve been a superstar at YHS is nonsense. There are way bright kids at YHS. And my review is that private school helps you—not hurts you in the very top admissions game. (See private schools representation at the top colleges). Of course, if you are sending your kid to private for this (perhaps) advantage, you are a moron on a number of levels.

All I can say is you don’t know the kid. Definitely would have been a superstar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of my kid’s very best friend went to a Big 3 after another North Arlington elementary school and Williamsburg. They met up again at UVA and rekindled the friendship that they still have to this day. The parents assume the switch would get the kid into an Ivy. It didn’t. Ironically, it very well may have had the kid stayed at Yorktown, where they likely would have been a superstar.

Oh well, it’s not my money.

You have told this story before on DCUM. And I’ve taken the time to explain to you that your analysis is wrong. And yet you keep posting it.

Compare please the acceptance
data from the last five years at YHS and W&L (available from Arlington magazine) with posted acceptance data from Big3, using USNWR Top College (as an arbitrary ranking). Giving EVERY benefit of the doubt to APS, eg, the kid who got into Yale wasn’t also the one who got into Georgetown, Big3 do significantly better by a very wide margin. And the idea that Big3 are filled with legacy/athlete and APS is not is a complete fallacy; there are just as many in my view.

The idea that the kid would’ve been a superstar at YHS is nonsense. There are way bright kids at YHS. And my review is that private school helps you—not hurts you in the very top admissions game. (See private schools representation at the top colleges). Of course, if you are sending your kid to private for this (perhaps) advantage, you are a moron on a number of levels.

All I can say is you don’t know the kid. Definitely would have been a superstar.

You know you are belittling all the YHS kids when you say this right? I’m sure whatever class your daughter was in already had kids going to Yale and Brown and Duke. So I just don’t buy it.

Plus, even if she got “stuck” at UVA, she can at least write—a skill I see entirely lacking from the graduates of APS. So, perhaps the money was misused by her family, but I don’t think your analysis is at all correct and want to disabuse other parents from your anectdotal nonsense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Regarding sense of community, our kids went to a DC private from Arlington. Most of the kids lived in DC/MD and their parents regarded crossing the Potomac as entering the deep south. They complained they didn't know their way around. There's more of a sense of community in neighborhood elementary schools.

LOL, this is totally true. In one class at our kid's DC private, for some reason "venison" came up and the teacher asked if anyone had ever eaten it. Several kids pointed at our child and said "Larla probably has, she's from Virginia."

Re: the reading and writing instruction in APS, our kid did have some teachers who were gems and did a good job of teaching. I have another kid who went to Yorktown, and, no, the level of HS English instruction is not the same as that at a DC Big 3 school, where the English teachers have PhDs and teach like college professors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Went from Jamestown/Williamsburg to a Big 3 private for high school. Wasn't behind at all - in fact, was probably ahead in math and Spanish.

How much writing did your child actually do in APS? This is where my sense is that APS falls behind Big3. I mean, I believe that APS teachers are on par with the best private school teachers around here; the compensation makes it so. But APS teacher still have bigger classes and, particularly in MS, exponentially greater # of students. So, if a teacher in APS assigns a five page paper in MS, they will have (best case scenario) five pagers per 20 students per five periods equals 1,000 pages to review. They cannot possibly give real editing feedback or teach children the iterative process of writing/editing/revising. A private school teacher has the luxury of maybe 1/3 (or much less) number of pages. They can give detailed feedback. Not all do of course. Many are terrible. And you could win the lottery of teachers in APS so there is no right answer. On the other hand, you are giving up a ton in my view when you pull for private and almost always it’s the wrong call and based more on parents neediness than child’s actual development.

For our average student, they had zero assigned novels in middle school, just excerpts handed out or “pick your own reading — hello graphic novels”. We switched to private in 7th, and we have about 4 assigned novels with reports due end of each quarter

Definitely not the experience my DD had. She had assigned novels and reports due. She went to Swanson.

What grade? We didn’t have any at Hamm for 6th.

My kid had an assigned book or two in 6th at Hamm. They didn’t do a “book report” but has writing assignments related to it. No books during the poetry unit obviously.

Older kid definitely read novels and had related writing assignments at DHMS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding sense of community, our kids went to a DC private from Arlington. Most of the kids lived in DC/MD and their parents regarded crossing the Potomac as entering the deep south. They complained they didn't know their way around. There's more of a sense of community in neighborhood elementary schools.

LOL, this is totally true. In one class at our kid's DC private, for some reason "venison" came up and the teacher asked if anyone had ever eaten it. Several kids pointed at our child and said "Larla probably has, she's from Virginia."

Re: the reading and writing instruction in APS, our kid did have some teachers who were gems and did a good job of teaching. I have another kid who went to Yorktown, and, no, the level of HS English instruction is not the same as that at a DC Big 3 school, where the English teachers have PhDs and teach like college professors.

LOL. VA did elect Youngkin so they aren’t wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding sense of community, our kids went to a DC private from Arlington. Most of the kids lived in DC/MD and their parents regarded crossing the Potomac as entering the deep south. They complained they didn't know their way around. There's more of a sense of community in neighborhood elementary schools.

LOL, this is totally true. In one class at our kid's DC private, for some reason "venison" came up and the teacher asked if anyone had ever eaten it. Several kids pointed at our child and said "Larla probably has, she's from Virginia."

Re: the reading and writing instruction in APS, our kid did have some teachers who were gems and did a good job of teaching. I have another kid who went to Yorktown, and, no, the level of HS English instruction is not the same as that at a DC Big 3 school, where the English teachers have PhDs and teach like college professors.

LOL. VA did elect Youngkin so they aren’t wrong.

There are many issues with Youngkin but his appointment of Lisa Coons as superintendent was an excellent choice. She is highly respected nationwide by both sides of the aisle.

[Anonymous]

Did someone really suggest that APS families have the same number of hooks as top DC privates?

We aren’t talking about a simple legacy/athlete situation. More like children of top political appointees and those with relatives with buildings named after them. Kids going to top universities from DC privates have major hooks, unlike those seen at APS.

That being said, it sounds like OP has his/her head on straight and isn’t focused on college acceptances. The lack of strong writing curriculum in APS is a legitimate concern.