Please convince me: DCPS over MoCo for smart kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it an exaggeration to call downtown Silver Spring vile?

Depends on how you feel about plastic grass serving as a huge communal lawn, I guess. And a huge concrete bus yard anchoring downtown.

Some images:
http://home.comcast.net/~phyilla1/myphotos/abovetransitcenter.jpg
http://www.craphound.com/images/jul4silverspring.jpg
http://www.towercompanies.com/images/prop_LWP_theBlairs.jpg

YMMV, of course, but, depending on your urban aesthetic, this area could certainly be considered vile.

Yeah.

The plastic grass is gone now. It was only supposed to be temporary from the start and now the area is under construction. But lots of people mourn the plastic grass -- every weekend you'd see tons of families with toddlers, teenagers with soccer balls, and others hanging out on the grass. Something you don't see on the DC mall so much, where it's mostly tourists.

Sure, you can pick the worst pics and post them here. I could do that for DC, too. But there are plenty of nice places in SS that aren't shown here.

Ditto. I could dig up pics of kids playing in the fountain in the summer while their parents shop at the farmers market (and yes, I wish there was less of the outdoor mall/chain aesthetic, but it's still a pleasant, urban place).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I've heard very positive things about SWOW as well. From what I understand about Wilson, if you have a top student they are basically in a "school within a school." And, all things being equal in terms of grades and test scores, a student from Wilson will get selected for a top-tier college over the student from MoCo.

I've gotten that impression as well. Apparently for the top tier universities "diversity" means nationalities and life-experience and many background factors, and whether the prospects are applying from Montclair, NJ, Manhasset, NY, or MoCo, MD - there are only so many upper-middle class suburban kids they want to find room for.

[Anonymous]

OK, so go to Bethesda instead. If what you want is an urban vibe that's velly, velly upper class.

[Anonymous]

If you want "very, VERY upper class" forget Rockthesda and move to Georgetown or McLean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OK, so go to Bethesda instead. If what you want is an urban vibe that's velly, velly upper class.

Did you mean "veddy veddy"?

[Anonymous]

I've heard both.

[Anonymous]

warning to OP and others, tortured synthesis attempt ahead:

But, if you have a bright child in DCPS, he/she will be left twisting in the wind until high school, and by then they may very well have lost their spark or found it's not cool to be smart.

Apparently for the top tier universities "diversity" means nationalities and life-experience and many background factors, and whether the prospects are applying from Montclair, NJ, Manhasset, NY, or MoCo, MD - there are only so many upper-middle class suburban kids they want to find room for.

These two sentiments, melded together, explain very well our family's decision to send DCs to a nice warm-yet-rigorous private school for elementary, instead of our local Ward 3 public school. Then, our plan is to have them attend Wilson or Walls or Banneker whatever high school emerges as the best school/fit at the time. Middle school is as-yet undetermined.

This is admittedly both a caring and a cynical approach (see Manhasset comment, which ITA with). also, Bloomfield Hills, Brookline, Evanston, Wayzata ...Bryn Mawr ...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
For me, my main concern is that my child is challenged for most of his day in each grade to learn things he doesn't already know. That simply never happened for us in DCPS. Not even close.

At the high school level, the difference between MCPS and DCPS may level out in the sense that both systems have international bacc. and AP programs at some schools (which are generally thought to be more rigorous than the regular curriculum). But, if you have a bright child in DCPS, he/she will be left twisting in the wind until high school, and by then they may very well have lost their spark or found it's not cool to be smart.

OP here. This is my concern exactly. My DC is under-challenged in school, and I can see the negative effects of that spilling over into the rest of her life already. We can't afford private school, even for a few years. I really want to live in DC proper and send my kids to DCPS, but I'm still not convinced that's the best thing for them, given that they are academically talented. I'm begging to be convinced to move to DC and put my kids in DCPS, but the pro-DCPS parents seem a little ambivalent. My kids aren't geniuses, but they are smart, and I do think I owe them an education that challenges them. I'm not convinced (yet!) that I will be able to offer that to them in DCPS, at least in elementary school -- will that really matter?

[Anonymous]

Why is it so important to you to live in DC proper? What specifically are you looking for? What DC neighborhoods would you be looking in?

[Anonymous]

OK, I see you are not "suburban types," but what do you mean by that?

[Anonymous]

We live in the suburbs now, and while our neighborhood is pleasant, -- trees, nice old houses, big yards -- there's an overall blandness, a smug UMC complacency that we find enervating. The environment is very static, compared with that of the city, which is always evolving. We like the energy of the city that gets diluted in the suburbs. You have to rub shoulders with people in a city (even if you don't make eye contact), whereas in the suburbs people often hide out in their houses and in their cars.

We expect to look in NW because we're told those are the safest neighborhoods with the best schools. I've heard certain areas of NW look suburban, but as I have not seen them myself, I don't know. I suspect there is a difference, as pointed out by a PP re: FH. And we like pre-war architecture, so that factors in a little, since much of MoCo is postwar. We're coming to house shop in a few weeks, so we're trying to gather information now to narrow down our search.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
For me, my main concern is that my child is challenged for most of his day in each grade to learn things he doesn't already know. That simply never happened for us in DCPS. Not even close.

At the high school level, the difference between MCPS and DCPS may level out in the sense that both systems have international bacc. and AP programs at some schools (which are generally thought to be more rigorous than the regular curriculum). But, if you have a bright child in DCPS, he/she will be left twisting in the wind until high school, and by then they may very well have lost their spark or found it's not cool to be smart.

OP here. This is my concern exactly. My DC is under-challenged in school, and I can see the negative effects of that spilling over into the rest of her life already. We can't afford private school, even for a few years. I really want to live in DC proper and send my kids to DCPS, but I'm still not convinced that's the best thing for them, given that they are academically talented. I'm begging to be convinced to move to DC and put my kids in DCPS, but the pro-DCPS parents seem a little ambivalent. My kids aren't geniuses, but they are smart, and I do think I owe them an education that challenges them. I'm not convinced (yet!) that I will be able to offer that to them in DCPS, at least in elementary school -- will that really matter?

OP -- former DCPS mom here (I posted earlier). I think your kids would be okay in the right DCPS school but I don't think you will be. I'm glad my kid was in DCPS for as long as she was and I wish she could have stayed longer. But I'm much more confident she will be a success because of her family background and support and that these are the key things in determining a child's future. You're worrying about (and trying to control) every little detail of your kids' education for the next decade (which too many people on these boards do -- people, you're planning college for pre-schoolers!). For your own sanity, you should move to the suburbs. Your kids will be able to cope with school better if you're not wringing your hands over them all the time.

DCPS has worked just fine for a bunch of us but I don't think it's for you. And as other pps have noted, there's lots of hip places in the suburbs around here. Move there!

[Anonymous]

I honestly don't know if you will find what you're looking for west of the park, at least outside Georgetown/Glover Park. We have lived in AU Park (near FH) and now live in Cleveland Park, and I wouldn't say either one has a lot of urban energy. Both are very walkable neighborhoods, but they are essentially residential, and neither one has a ton of foot traffic. We can walk to Connecticut and Wisconsin, but in both cases you're really talking about a fairly short strip of shops and restaurants. FH has more commercial activity but a lot of it is chains and on the Chevy Chase side, high-end retail. It's not really city living. I think you could get just as much urbanness by looking in Bethesda, e.g., the neighborhood east of Wisconsin from Bradley beyond East-West Highway.

Don't get me wrong--I love Cleveland Park! I just wouldn't say NWDC = urban; outside DC = surburban.

[Anonymous]

@ 17:23 above:

Thank you for pulling together that synthesis and sharing your P.O.V. I don't think it sounds cynical at all, more like far-sighted, "an eye for the long road."

Where I grew up it wasn't uncommon to go to parochial school or private day school up through 8th grade. After that the local high schools made more sense because the sheer numbers of students allowed for course offerings and opportunities which weren't available at a smaller school. But, our parents still liked the more controlled environment of private schools when we were young. I'm looking for that balance here as well.

Middle school is the real question to me, too. I've heard that in some districts middle school is where the kids get lost. I don't know if that's because teachers with a real passion for teaching tend to strongly prefer either elementary or high school and so it's the less dedicated who get stuck in the middle schools, or maybe it's the nature of children going through adolescence that makes their intellectual passions wane as other ones bloom. Either way, I wish I heard more about local middle schools. I think I'm drifting too far O.T., I might have to start a new thread...

[Anonymous]

OP: I am a DC resident who lives in the Lafayette elementary school district, and I send my kids to private school. I had a big second-guessing of myself about this until I started e-mailing with the principal of Lafayette and learned that there was no gifted program in DCPS.

That, to me, was a deal breaker. I grew up in a very highly regarded school district outside of another large metro area. I struggled early on in elementary school with boredom, etc. Nobody knew what to do with me until they finally gave me an IQ test in second grade, and even then, it just stopped them from deciding I was a discipline problem rather than just bored. The schools didn't start a gifted program until I was in Fifth Grade (ok, so yes, I'm really, really old, but that's another issue). Middle School was fine academically; just the usual social angst. High School was a whole different issue, despite being in the gifted program. By that point, I felt in some ways it was too late; the damage from all those years of being unchallenged was too great. I did go on to top college, grad school, etc., but it was not a particularly great experience.

I don't want that for my kids. I want a school with a great gifted program that can challenge my kids in appropriate ways from day 1. The only reason we are not in MoCo now is because at the time we looked to move, it was the top of the real estate bubble. So we stayed in the city and went to private instead.

This may not be a perspective that is useful to you or that you want to hear, but I feel a lot of empathy for your high-testing elementary school kid, so I thought I would share my thought process with you.