BASIS and Stuart Hobson options for MS

[Anonymous]

Any recent feedback on Stuart Hobson?

[Anonymous]

We're at SH for 6th and it's quite OK. Math and ELA, the only academically tracked classes, are good. The fine arts instruction is seriously good, as are the facilities. Discipline isn't great, but it isn't bad - certainly not a dangerous setting for my 12 year old. If the school weren't a 2-minute walk from our house, we wouldn't bother. But it is, she's happy enough there, and we squeeze in 90 minutes of tutoring after school several days a week without the commute to wherever. Working for us but we may not stay to 8th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We're at SH for 6th and it's quite OK. Math and ELA, the only academically tracked classes, are good. The fine arts instruction is seriously good, as are the facilities. Discipline isn't great, but it isn't bad - certainly not a dangerous setting for my 12 year old. If the school weren't a 2-minute walk from our house, we wouldn't bother. But it is, she's happy enough there, and we squeeze in 90 minutes of tutoring after school several days a week without the commute to wherever. Working for us but we may not stay to 8th grade.

If math and ELA are good, why 180-270 minutes of tutoring per week? What subjects?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're at SH for 6th and it's quite OK. Math and ELA, the only academically tracked classes, are good. The fine arts instruction is seriously good, as are the facilities. Discipline isn't great, but it isn't bad - certainly not a dangerous setting for my 12 year old. If the school weren't a 2-minute walk from our house, we wouldn't bother. But it is, she's happy enough there, and we squeeze in 90 minutes of tutoring after school several days a week without the commute to wherever. Working for us but we may not stay to 8th grade.

If math and ELA are good, why 180-270 minutes of tutoring per week? What subjects?

Wow, 90 minutes several days a week is a lot of tutoring. That tells me the rigor is very lacking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're at SH for 6th and it's quite OK. Math and ELA, the only academically tracked classes, are good. The fine arts instruction is seriously good, as are the facilities. Discipline isn't great, but it isn't bad - certainly not a dangerous setting for my 12 year old. If the school weren't a 2-minute walk from our house, we wouldn't bother. But it is, she's happy enough there, and we squeeze in 90 minutes of tutoring after school several days a week without the commute to wherever. Working for us but we may not stay to 8th grade.

If math and ELA are good, why 180-270 minutes of tutoring per week? What subjects?

Science, social studies w/writing emphasis, foreign language not taught at SH.

We're shooting for Walls or a private offering fi aid for 8th grade+ for a STEM oriented student and don't want to mess around. Some of the tutoring is merely in in the form of 1-2 hour/week classes via Out School on-line, very good.

We got a spot at BASIS but didn't like the cookie cutter curriculum, long school day, heavy emphasis on testing, bad building etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're at SH for 6th and it's quite OK. Math and ELA, the only academically tracked classes, are good. The fine arts instruction is seriously good, as are the facilities. Discipline isn't great, but it isn't bad - certainly not a dangerous setting for my 12 year old. If the school weren't a 2-minute walk from our house, we wouldn't bother. But it is, she's happy enough there, and we squeeze in 90 minutes of tutoring after school several days a week without the commute to wherever. Working for us but we may not stay to 8th grade.

If math and ELA are good, why 180-270 minutes of tutoring per week? What subjects?

Wow, 90 minutes several days a week is a lot of tutoring. That tells me the rigor is very lacking.

Come, maybe what tutoring tells you is that a family is both aiming high and catering to their student's academic quirky interests. We have friends in MoCo magnets who pay for tutoring for straight A students.

Something is severely lacking everywhere you look in the DC public MS realm....

At BASIS, it's fresh air and enough exercise, joy and respect for the individual.

At Deal, it's a student body that hasn't fit in the building for a decade now - seen their trailer village?

At Washington Latin, it's achievement standards - social promotion rules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We're at SH for 6th and it's quite OK. Math and ELA, the only academically tracked classes, are good. The fine arts instruction is seriously good, as are the facilities. Discipline isn't great, but it isn't bad - certainly not a dangerous setting for my 12 year old. If the school weren't a 2-minute walk from our house, we wouldn't bother. But it is, she's happy enough there, and we squeeze in 90 minutes of tutoring after school several days a week without the commute to wherever. Working for us but we may not stay to 8th grade.

If math and ELA are good, why 180-270 minutes of tutoring per week? What subjects?

Wow, 90 minutes several days a week is a lot of tutoring. That tells me the rigor is very lacking.

Come, maybe what tutoring tells you is that a family is both aiming high and catering to their student's academic quirky interests. We have friends in MoCo magnets who pay for tutoring for straight A students.

Something is severely lacking everywhere you look in the DC public MS realm....

At BASIS, it's fresh air and enough exercise, joy and respect for the individual.

At Deal, it's a student body that hasn't fit in the building for a decade now - seen their trailer village?

At Washington Latin, it's achievement standards - social promotion rules.

Your MoCo magnet friends are the exception, not the norm. Most don’t pay for tutoring.

[Anonymous]

Those us who post here are almost all "the exception" in DC public schools, not the norm. The norm is low SES and minority.

I once worked in a MoCo magnet HS, where I was surprised by how many of my students families paid for extra help, from SAT prep, to high-powered STEM tutoring to help them ace BC Cal and advanced physics, to college counseling.

[Anonymous]

My sibling lives in MoCo and one her children attends a middle school magnet. She reports that parents who can afford to generally supplement in a great variety of ways, not so much by hiring tutors, but by paying for enrichment and test prep. Apparently, it's common for MoCo kids in middle school magnets to be extensively prepped for high school magnet entrance tests by private services like "Dr. Li's." Attending a MoCo middle school magnet doesn't guarantee admission to a high school magnet.

What else can we do here in DC but hire tutors/supplement if we don't want to move and don't like BASIS and/or Washington Latin, and don't get a spot at either, or at any other acceptable public middle school? We're in the 200s on the BASIS 5th grade WL. I doubt we'll get in.

Stuart Hobson will surely see an uptick in UMC IB enrollment in the coming years, as more in-boundary families strike out in the charter lotteries. Who knows how great an uptick.

[Anonymous]

For years, almost all the high SES white SH families have been Watkins families committed to keeping their children in the Capitol Cluster system from Peabody through Watkins to SH.

That's slowly changing as the BASIS wait list lengthens and more in-boundary Hobson families can't start their 5th graders there!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My sibling lives in MoCo and one her children attends a middle school magnet. She reports that parents who can afford to generally supplement in a great variety of ways, not so much by hiring tutors, but by paying for enrichment and test prep. Apparently, it's common for MoCo kids in middle school magnets to be extensively prepped for high school magnet entrance tests by private services like "Dr. Li's." Attending a MoCo middle school magnet doesn't guarantee admission to a high school magnet.

What else can we do here in DC but hire tutors/supplement if we don't want to move and don't like BASIS and/or Washington Latin, and don't get a spot at either, or at any other acceptable public middle school? We're in the 200s on the BASIS 5th grade WL. I doubt we'll get in.

Stuart Hobson will surely see an uptick in UMC IB enrollment in the coming years, as more in-boundary families strike out in the charter lotteries. Who knows how great an uptick.

I went to a MoCo-like magnet 25 years ago and most of us had tutors even then.