oyster/stoddert/murch/mann??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We live in the city (currently in Eaton, but we've decided against sending our daughter there next Sept).

Our lease is up in 2 months, so we need to choose a school/neighborhood pretty soon. I've lived in DC for 10 years, but I'm having a hard time making this decision!

Should we do Oyster? Concerns - the new Adams middle school? We're unsure of how the merge is going.

Stoddert? Test scores aren't as good as we thought and we're also concerned about the new rec center and construction. but we like the community

Murch? I don't like that area of Connecticut, but have heard good things about the school

Mann? The "best" school in DC, but Gtown crime has been pretty bad and rent is expensive (we can't buy)

What are your thoughts? thanks!

Can you elaborate on why you're not sending your child to Eaton? There are a number of frequent posts on the DCUM threads which speak highly of it.

Mann is supposed to be an excellent school and has several large apartment buildings in it's district -- on Cathedral, near NM Ave., on Mass near the circle at Nebraska where AU is, and some townhouses off NM Ave.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Mann is supposed to be an excellent school and has several large apartment buildings in it's district -- on Cathedral, near NM Ave., on Mass near the circle at Nebraska where AU is, and some townhouses off NM Ave.

Check carefully. I believe the Mass. Ave apartments are in the Stoddert district, but the Cathedral/New mexico apartments/ths are in Mann.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in the city (currently in Eaton, but we've decided against sending our daughter there next Sept).

Our lease is up in 2 months, so we need to choose a school/neighborhood pretty soon. I've lived in DC for 10 years, but I'm having a hard time making this decision!

Should we do Oyster? Concerns - the new Adams middle school? We're unsure of how the merge is going.

Stoddert? Test scores aren't as good as we thought and we're also concerned about the new rec center and construction. but we like the community

Murch? I don't like that area of Connecticut, but have heard good things about the school

Mann? The "best" school in DC, but Gtown crime has been pretty bad and rent is expensive (we can't buy)

What are your thoughts? thanks!

Can you elaborate on why you're not sending your child to Eaton? There are a number of frequent posts on the DCUM threads which speak highly of it.

Mann is supposed to be an excellent school and has several large apartment buildings in it's district -- on Cathedral, near NM Ave., on Mass near the circle at Nebraska where AU is, and some townhouses off NM Ave.

You MUST check the boundary list, then reconfirm with the school. Most of the apartments on Mass are in the Stoddert district. A number of families have believed that living there would put them in Mann, but have ended up in Stoddert.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in the city (currently in Eaton, but we've decided against sending our daughter there next Sept).

Our lease is up in 2 months, so we need to choose a school/neighborhood pretty soon. I've lived in DC for 10 years, but I'm having a hard time making this decision!

Should we do Oyster? Concerns - the new Adams middle school? We're unsure of how the merge is going.

Stoddert? Test scores aren't as good as we thought and we're also concerned about the new rec center and construction. but we like the community

Murch? I don't like that area of Connecticut, but have heard good things about the school

Mann? The "best" school in DC, but Gtown crime has been pretty bad and rent is expensive (we can't buy)

What are your thoughts? thanks!

Can you elaborate on why you're not sending your child to Eaton? There are a number of frequent posts on the DCUM threads which speak highly of it.

Mann is supposed to be an excellent school and has several large apartment buildings in it's district -- on Cathedral, near NM Ave., on Mass near the circle at Nebraska where AU is, and some townhouses off NM Ave.

You MUST check the boundary list, then reconfirm with the school. Most of the apartments on Mass are in the Stoddert district. A number of families have believed that living there would put them in Mann, but have ended up in Stoddert.

When I last checked the boundaries ( admittedly, couple of years ago), the apartments on Mass near the circle were in district for Mann. The apartments on Mass closer to Wisconsin Avenue were in district for Stoddert. The same problem is true if you are on Cathedral -- closer to NM Ave. and you are in Mann but closer to Wisconsin Avenue and you are in Stoddert.

In both cases, the "dividing" line seems to follow along a little lick of Glover Archibold Park that extends northward.

Do look carefully at the boundary and make calls to the schools individually to confirm. When I called the schools, they had specific lists of street names and house numbers that qualified to be in their district.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've used a horribly simplistic formula to try to tease out how well various schools educate children from "advantaged" backgrounds (i.e., stable marriage, enough income that money's not a constant stressor, college-educated-plus mom, etc.). Generally, but not always, it involves using scores from the "white" demographic. Again, it's horribly simplistic -- I think it's useful to see where there might be significant gaps, but even I think it's utterly useless for making fine distictions between schools. That said, here are the "total" scores it spits out for the 2006-08 period for the schools that have been mentioned in this chain:

Lafayette -- 625
Mann -- 619
Key -- 611
Murch -- 600
Oyster -- 586
Eaton -- 578
Hyde -- 532
Stoddert -- 446

Anyone have any idea why Stoddert scores lower than other NW schools? Is the Glover Park demographic different? the school?

This social statistician doesn't know where these data come from. But, I'll trust the OP, and offer that the rank order varies directly as a function of income and inversely as a proportion of white students who are not English mother tongue. eg Large numbers of Stoddert students are children of embassy workers and non-native graduate students. So, high education backgrounds, but higher incidence of errors in testing due to recent ESL. No lack of support for education and schooling, though. (They'll leave the native lawyer couple's kids at other schools proud they have lacross to excel at.) Top flight school-based community with participatory democratic values too.