Which bethesda elementary schools have the best teachers, principal, and resources?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bethesda Elementary is often criticized for being crowded (and it is despite changes over the years) but the principal is dedicated and hard working. She fights for resources for the school from MCPS. Because the school has a focus on special needs, I think all students benefit from diversity in abilities in the student population. Because of the high amount of construction in Bethesda, there’s a variety of housing and family incomes. I’ve had 14 years at the school as a parent with multiple children and have only had one teacher who was very unprepared for the classroom (and that teacher has left). I am regularly impressed with the teaching staff.

+ 1. Great principal and mostly great teachers. The overcrowding is no joke though. 44 kids in my kid’s 5th grade math class. The teacher is a marvel and can handle it and my kid adores math so she’s fine, but others may not be.

I have heard good things about Westbrook and somerset in the same cluster. And Bradley Hills and Burning Tree further out.

Compacted math? Guessing the other classes are smaller.

The reward you get for being placed into compacted math is being crowded into a classroom like a sardine? My kid's ES class has 27 kids and already there's no room to move. I hope math is in the BES gymnasium, if they're squeezing 44 kids into a classroom.

They make it work and the kids truly don’t seem to mind. The teacher is a marvel. But obviously not ideal.

That is an outlier but even their home rooms have 27 plus kids. The county tried rezoning a few years ago to try to fix it - half our neighborhood now goes to Somerset and the rest to Bethesda - but it didn’t take. We are happy there because of the caliber of teachers and the principal, who truly makes the most of what she’s got. But I do sometimes wonder if a place like Burning Tree where my friend says they top out at 20 kids per class might be better.

I don’t think I’d move into the BE cluster for the school. If I wanted to live in the area for other reasons (which we do - walkable, metro etc) then the school need not be an impediment. But if I could live anywhere in the area without regard to the particular reasons that brought us to our neighborhood, I’d pick a neighborhood zoned to a less crowded school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:there isn't anything magical about Bethesda. What is different is the kids in Bethesda come from wealthier families than where I assume you are.

What didn't you like about the kindergarten teachers? All the schools follow the same curricula.

This simply isn't true. The faculty in Bethesda a lot better than in many other locations. A lot.

For example, I attended a Rosemary Hills Elementary School English as a Section Language parent meeting in August/September 2024, and a non-English parent through an interpreter asked the coordinator when can he get an update on how his child's English is doing considering that this will be their second year in the school and they are now in 1st grade. The coordinator told him that results are given to them in May and they inform the parents in June. Put differently, the coordinator told him to wait 2 years total.
Out of curiosity I asked a teacher the same question here in Bethesda (without giving any background of my experience at Rosemary), and her response was to wait 2 months after school starts so that the kiddo can learn some kids' names, throw a party for the kids from his class and then see how he interacts verbally with them, and this'll show the parent how their kiddo is doing with their English. Sure, but response were true, but one is simply at a different caliber of thinking.

I've also interacted with teachers from different schools in MCPS and the caliber of the teachers and principals is astounding. Astounding.

More often than not, this is not quite as black and white as you are making it seem. Bethesda teachers have all the parent support, resources, enrichments, and outside academic support that money can buy. That makes it more fun to teach in, means you can work outside the box in different ways, and means that your focus on struggling students is focused on just a few kids in a class. It also means that you can be mediocre in your instructional practices, and your students will still score high on tests. In schools with more complex demographics, the teachers that stay for years and years (which happens often) are amazing teachers- arguably the best. They have to spread themselves more thinly, and work/plan harder to help students make gains, and the gains aren't always as bright and shiny as in Bethesda. But their dedication and instructional practices are unmatched. I've taught in both, and there are pros and cons in both types, but it's not as simple as Bethesda= Good, Gaithersburg = Bad

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:there isn't anything magical about Bethesda. What is different is the kids in Bethesda come from wealthier families than where I assume you are.

What didn't you like about the kindergarten teachers? All the schools follow the same curricula.

This simply isn't true. The faculty in Bethesda a lot better than in many other locations. A lot.

For example, I attended a Rosemary Hills Elementary School English as a Section Language parent meeting in August/September 2024, and a non-English parent through an interpreter asked the coordinator when can he get an update on how his child's English is doing considering that this will be their second year in the school and they are now in 1st grade. The coordinator told him that results are given to them in May and they inform the parents in June. Put differently, the coordinator told him to wait 2 years total.
Out of curiosity I asked a teacher the same question here in Bethesda (without giving any background of my experience at Rosemary), and her response was to wait 2 months after school starts so that the kiddo can learn some kids' names, throw a party for the kids from his class and then see how he interacts verbally with them, and this'll show the parent how their kiddo is doing with their English. Sure, but response were true, but one is simply at a different caliber of thinking.

I've also interacted with teachers from different schools in MCPS and the caliber of the teachers and principals is astounding. Astounding.

How is that a higher quality response from BES? The teacher offered no objective performance information from
their side and just told the parent to hold a party for a bunch of kids and see for themselves how they were doing. That is a rotten response, particularly if the parents themselves are not English speakers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bethesda Elementary is often criticized for being crowded (and it is despite changes over the years) but the principal is dedicated and hard working. She fights for resources for the school from MCPS. Because the school has a focus on special needs, I think all students benefit from diversity in abilities in the student population. Because of the high amount of construction in Bethesda, there’s a variety of housing and family incomes. I’ve had 14 years at the school as a parent with multiple children and have only had one teacher who was very unprepared for the classroom (and that teacher has left). I am regularly impressed with the teaching staff.

+ 1. Great principal and mostly great teachers. The overcrowding is no joke though. 44 kids in my kid’s 5th grade math class. The teacher is a marvel and can handle it and my kid adores math so she’s fine, but others may not be.

I have heard good things about Westbrook and somerset in the same cluster. And Bradley Hills and Burning Tree further out.

Compacted math? Guessing the other classes are smaller.

The reward you get for being placed into compacted math is being crowded into a classroom like a sardine? My kid's ES class has 27 kids and already there's no room to move. I hope math is in the BES gymnasium, if they're squeezing 44 kids into a classroom.

If you're in other parts of the county, your reward might be to get compacted math on a computer, because there's not enough kids to hire a teacher.

[Anonymous]

My kid is at Oakland Terrace ES in Silver Spring in kindergarten and it has been fantastic. Amazing, amazing teachers and an all-school immersion program to boot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is at Oakland Terrace ES in Silver Spring in kindergarten and it has been fantastic. Amazing, amazing teachers and an all-school immersion program to boot.

Adding that we got reading test scores a couple of times this year, once in the fall and once in the winter. There might be another round of scores coming soon.

[Anonymous]

Medical Center ES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wood Acres, Bradley Hills, Bannockburn, Carderock

+ 1 Love Bradley Hills