Barnesville?

[Anonymous]

Anyone have information on this school?

I'm most interested in:

1) academics (of course)
2) extracurricular activities
3) ethnic diversity? Its website doesn't mention this at all, and all the kids in the pics look white. My child is white, too, but I really feel more comfortable with a more diverse group of kids.

[Anonymous]

I have never heard of this school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have never heard of this school.

Thanks for sharing!

[Anonymous]

The head, John Huber, was posting on DCUM for a while. Haven't seen a post from him lately, although I could have missed it...

[Anonymous]

It is very 'white' because, well, it's in Barnesville. Academics are okay, as it's the only private school 'up there'. Had friends there who left because the teachers were not great in the lower grades.

[Anonymous]

I looked at it 2 years ago and decided it wasn't for us. I have a neighbor & several friends who have sent/are currently sending their kids there and love it, so it depends on each family and what you are looking for in a school. Answering your specific three questions, I wasn't impressed with their K curriculum (the grade my child would have been entering), I'm not familiar with their extracurricular activities, I saw no diversity, something that was very important to us as we are a mixed-race family.

[Anonymous]

OP here, thanks for the feedback.

Could any of you elaborate on the academics? I'm just starting my search for a school and don't know much about curriculums in general. For example, what makes the curriculum at a school like Sidwell Friends better (assuming it is) than the one at Barnesville? My child would be entering kindergarten as well, so any insight on the lower grades would be much appreciated.

[jhuber]

Anonymous wrote:The head, John Huber, was posting on DCUM for a while. Haven't seen a post from him lately, although I could have missed it...

Well, since I've been called out...

Good afternoon all! You're correct, I've been fairly quiet on this board for these last few months despite my desire to post replies more frequently. Chalk it up to the business of the school year. Right now I'm resting my eyes from reading report cards, so the excuse for a temporary break is appreciated!

I've been intentionally silent to this question for a few reasons. First, my original (and continued) intent in joining DCUM was to bring one head's perspective to educational issues that are raised on this board - and there are many substantive ones. Economic concerns, affordability, teacher quality, classroom size, substance vs. prestige - these are meaty issues that independent school leaders are all facing. Also, the collective feedback to my own questions has been an appreciated. Given all this, it was not my desire to utilize this board for admissions or marketing purposes, thus in my original post I left my school unnamed. Though I must admit to cringing when I read that the 2nd poster has "never heard of this school"!

Secondly, I believe parents come to this board for the "inside scoop" - a parent's perspective, not the official points brought out by a school's administration. I think discriminating parents considering independent schools want to know on many different levels that a school is "walking the walk", and DCUM fills that role in a technological age.

All this being said, original poster, I'd be happy to answer your questions about academics / diversity / extracurricular activities, either off-line from this board (by call / email / in-person) or on this board if you wish.

Take care,
John

[Anonymous]

OP here again. Thanks for responding, Mr. Huber. I'll e-mail you directly.

But in general, I'm searching for a private school that doesn't merely "teach to the exam" -- which to me is a very unfortunate byproduct of NCLB. I want a school that is creative and challenging, but not brutally competitive. And finally, a school where people/families are diverse -- in regard to both income and ethnicity -- but in general value education and character development for their kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here, thanks for the feedback.

Could any of you elaborate on the academics? I'm just starting my search for a school and don't know much about curriculums in general. For example, what makes the curriculum at a school like Sidwell Friends better (assuming it is) than the one at Barnesville? My child would be entering kindergarten as well, so any insight on the lower grades would be much appreciated.

I'm interested in hearing the answer to this question as well.

How do people compare curriculum's across schools? What makes one better? What should parents look for?

[Anonymous]

bump. Still trying to get more information on the school, especially about its curriculum.

[Anonymous]

I don't know anything about Barnesville (or Sidwell for that matter), never been to either place, but my kids attend an independent school in Montgomery County and I am a non-educator who's interested in curriculum.

Barnesville has a good website that has the objectives and the books listed for each grade. So kindergarten is here:

http://www.barnesvilleschool.org/home/content.asp?id=71&zZsec=academics&mid=71&mSec=academics

You can tell more about books if you look at first (except for some reason that link at Barnesville is broken) and second grade than Kindergarten, where usually the kids don't have textbooks just yet. In second grade, Barnesville apparently uses the Houghton Mifflin reading program, the D'Neallian handwriting program, Everyday Math, and various social studies and science materials. They also study Spanish, Art, PE, Music and Library.

So then if you went to the Sidwell website, you would see that they also have a set of objectives but they don't really disclose what books they use. They study language arts, math, social studies, science, music, PE, library and technology. They apparently don't study any language.

http://www.sidwell.edu/lower_school/academics.asp

If you were really into it, you could then compare the objectives across whatever schools you're interested in for a couple of grades and see whether what they're expecting for outcomes is the same or different. I would pick a fairly low grade since that's what you're interested in in the short term, and then a relatively high grade (say five or six years out, or the last grade in the school) to see the cumulative effect. So if one school has a 5th grade objective of writing a 10 page research paper and another school doesn't have that objective until 6th or 7th or whatever, this gives you some expectation about how far the school is taking the kids. The public schools post their curriculum objectives too, so you can compare there as well.

There are also schools of thought about various programs, Everyday Math being the obvious one from what's above, and you might want to do some reading about the programs and decide if you're comfortable from a philosophical standpoint.

There's also no substitute for going to visit the schools and talking to the teachers and administrators. There's an atmosphere about schools that take their curriculum out of a box and teach it over and over again every year, and another atmosphere in schools that empower teachers to research, reevaluate and improve the curriculum based on the results.

[Anonymous]

thanks for the thoughtful response.

[Anonymous]

Post from 15:34. Thanks for the great information. This process can be overwhelming and a systematic approach would surely help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know anything about Barnesville (or Sidwell for that matter), never been to either place, but my kids attend an independent school in Montgomery County and I am a non-educator who's interested in curriculum.

Barnesville has a good website that has the objectives and the books listed for each grade. So kindergarten is here:

http://www.barnesvilleschool.org/home/content.asp?id=71&zZsec=academics&mid=71&mSec=academics

You can tell more about books if you look at first (except for some reason that link at Barnesville is broken) and second grade than Kindergarten, where usually the kids don't have textbooks just yet. In second grade, Barnesville apparently uses the Houghton Mifflin reading program, the D'Neallian handwriting program, Everyday Math, and various social studies and science materials. They also study Spanish, Art, PE, Music and Library.

So then if you went to the Sidwell website, you would see that they also have a set of objectives but they don't really disclose what books they use. They study language arts, math, social studies, science, music, PE, library and technology. They apparently don't study any language.

http://www.sidwell.edu/lower_school/academics.asp

If you were really into it, you could then compare the objectives across whatever schools you're interested in for a couple of grades and see whether what they're expecting for outcomes is the same or different. I would pick a fairly low grade since that's what you're interested in in the short term, and then a relatively high grade (say five or six years out, or the last grade in the school) to see the cumulative effect. So if one school has a 5th grade objective of writing a 10 page research paper and another school doesn't have that objective until 6th or 7th or whatever, this gives you some expectation about how far the school is taking the kids. The public schools post their curriculum objectives too, so you can compare there as well.

There are also schools of thought about various programs, Everyday Math being the obvious one from what's above, and you might want to do some reading about the programs and decide if you're comfortable from a philosophical standpoint.

There's also no substitute for going to visit the schools and talking to the teachers and administrators. There's an atmosphere about schools that take their curriculum out of a box and teach it over and over again every year, and another atmosphere in schools that empower teachers to research, reevaluate and improve the curriculum based on the results.

I appreciate the care and thoughtfulness of this response. We have made significant efforts these past few years to share more about our curriculum to current and prospective parents via our website. It can devilishly difficult to compare curricula school-to-school, but we'd rather err on the side of providing more information rather than less. Our annual curriculum review committee (made up of teachers, administrators and parents) is charged with doing exactly what prospective parents are trying to do - make reasoned comparisons.

PS I believe the broken link is now working, thanks for the nudge!