Please convince me: DCPS over MoCo for smart kids

[Anonymous]

19:34: OP here. I had a similar experience in elementary school, only my school had NO gifted program. In high school I was the only one in a class of 800+ students who took any AP exams -- I had to sit in a little room all by myself. In first grade I was sent to the principal's office for reading ahead while the other kids were reading out loud. I remember the feeling of excruciating boredom as I tried in vain to keep my eyes on the words the other kids were reading out loud, and invariably losing my place as my eyes sped ahead. I'm no genius, but much of school for me was torture because I was forced to "stay with the group" instead of going at my own speed, and I don't want my kids to endure that.

[Anonymous]

Oh, and I went to a top college as well, grad school too. But I felt all those years of doing my homework on the bus (or in class) were wasted. Those are years you can never make up. Plus college at first was miserable because I had no idea how to study. I don't want my kids to endure that either.

[Anonymous]

Okay, you need to get over your issue of wanting to live in DC. It's not all that. It sounds like MoCo is best for your kids. I know several people who dreaded moving out of the District and the fact of the matter is they are living a much more urban lifestyle in Bethesda.

[Anonymous]

A series of disjointed reactions.

Smart kids don't need gifted programs to be challenged. The parenting challenge here is to help your kids learn to challenge themselves. It's a gift that keeps on giving, so it's really worth the effort. Abstractly, it's a matter of getting them to think of learning as more of a web than a line -- there's not a clearly marked path and the question is how fast you can traverse it; there are a million roads not taken and if you're quick, you get to decide which other ones to explore while you're waiting to rendezvous with the rest of your party. Nothing wrong with going way beyond what's expected or required of you. Why let someone else set the standards for you when you'd set them higher?

School isn't the only place where kids can/will be challenged. And if you want DC to have more rigorous assignments and/or an equally talented cohort and don't find these things in school, then look at programs like CTY (Center for Talented Youth) which is run out of Johns Hopkins. It offers both summer courses and school-year online courses. Wide range of fun topics. In the summer courses, lots of the instructors are Hopkins grad students.

Re urban living. I'm the FH poster and live on the DC side. AU Park, maybe 1/2 a mile away, is a much more suburban set-up. A large part of what makes FH urban to me is that I can (and do) live here without a car. I've got great access to public transit. I'm a few short blocks from both a Metrorail station and a number of bus lines that take me to G'town and other places not on the Metro. I can walk to three different commercial areas, but that's not what makes it city-living. It's the fact that public transit gives me easy access to lots of places within the city and puts me (and my DC) in constant contact with a wide variety of city dwellers.

I think people who drive more tend to experience upper NW as a burb. I feel stranded/exiled in AU Park or eastern Chevy Chase or Palisades without a car. But if I lived there and had a car, I know that I'd head to Montgomery County (where parking is easier) for lots of things I now do in DC (e.g. movies, shopping, eating out. libraries, etc.) In which case my neighborhood would, for all practical purposes, become more narrowly defined and function more like a bedroom community than a gateway to the city.

I say all of this because I sincerely doubt you can find what you want in a burb -- even a comparatively "urban" inner-ring suburb. I know I couldn't. When DC politics gets me down, I look around at all of the obvious alternatives. None appeals.

Good luck -- you'll find a way. It's fun raising an urban kid. And lots of smart people with smart kids make it through DCPS. Actually, where DCPS is concerned, I think that the real damage happens to average kids whose parents don't have the resources (educational, intellectual, temporal) to supplement and/or fight for a better education when the schools let their kids down.

PS I went to elementary school in small working class town in Ohio where there were no gifted programs. I wasn't miserable; I became resourceful. I've also taught plenty of MoCo honors graduates (the ones with A- averages -- not the valedictorians) at the college level and was unimpressed by the education they'd received.

Come visit -- schools and neighborhoods -- and see what feels right. I don't think there's one obvious right answer here; it's a matter of finding a comfortable balance.

[Anonymous]

Wise words, pp.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

This was a problem for us, too. We resolved it by doggedly insisting on buying a place in Kalorama Triangle, a few-block historic district that's part of Adams Morgan. It's much more urban than west of the park neighborhoods, but in-boundary for Oyster, a Ward 3 school about 15 mins. walk away. I didn't have the stomach for the out-of-boundary/ charter application dance, but if you do, OP, many other neighborhoods would be good options for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I've also taught plenty of MoCo honors graduates (the ones with A- averages -- not the valedictorians) at the college level and was unimpressed by the education they'd received.

Could you explain why you were unimpressed by the education the A- MoCo students received? Or were you unimpressed with the students themselves? What education did impress you? How were the MoCo valedictorians different?

Thanks for your thoughtful post. Just when I thought I'd made up my mind, it gave me much to ponder.

[Anonymous]

21:00--Are you SH? I'm not a stalker--honest! But I'm struck by the length and quality of your posts and others I see on local liservs.

[Anonymous]

Actually, never mind; I take it back. I'm not sure I would want to be identified even by initials only, so please ignore the previous post. Carry on.

[Anonymous]

I also agree that there are many smart children in DCPS. My own kids are young (oldest is kindegarten in a charter), but I have a network of friends/neighbors with older children in both DCPS schools and charters. These kids are happy and well adjusted. They also have highly educated parents who use DC as a labratory for learning.
I fit the profile of many previous posters that went to a school that was very average. Mine was a k-12th school in a small, rural town. I also developed very extensive outside interests since school didn't challenge me--languages, voracious reading, business ideas, etc. Personally, I expect my children to be safe at school, to be happy, and to be learning. But my real goal for them is that they discover something they love--art, music, geography etc. that they can pursue outside of school and I am so happy to live in DC because it offers so many opportunities for kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Could you explain why you were unimpressed by the education the A- MoCo students received? Or were you unimpressed with the students themselves? What education did impress you? How were the MoCo valedictorians different?

First, a couple of caveats: This was over 10 years ago (and pre-NCLB, interestingly enough) and I don't know what the valedictorians were like (they went to different schools or departments than the one I taught in), but still I'm talking about successful/high-performing MoCo grads.

What struck me was that while they seemed fine on the "garbage in -- garbage out model" (e.g. remembered facts reasonably accurately) and while most could write reasonably fluently, they seemed to have very underdeveloped analytical skills. And that showed up in both their reading and their writing. The writing read like an op-ed. Had a clear thesis, stated an opinion (these are good things), but couldn't back it up with logic or evidence (beyond anecdote). It might sound good, but nothing added up, no underlying structure, etc. And they seemed shocked to be told this. Not surprisingly, these were also kids that, when they read, remembered much of what the book told them, but didn't seem to know how to think through a text -- where are the holes, why does the author set up the argument this way, why (not just how) does this author disagree with the last one we read, if this analysis is true, then what follows, etc.

It wasn't that such kids weren't teachable on these axes -- I taught 'em. What disconcerted me was that they didn't seem to have any clue what they were missing. That's why, when we faced school decisions, I didn't think public schools in MoCo were the silver bullet. Even then, MoCo seemed to be a district where the desire to maximize scores on standardized tests oriented pedagogy. Not what I was looking for.

That said, our alternatives were different from yours. We stayed in DC, managed to buy a house at the bottom of the market, and sent our kid to private school But I think that if I were faced with the choice you are making, I wouldn't automatically assume my kid would be better off in MoCo schools. Maybe this is a perverse POV, but if both DCPS and MoCo share an orientation toward education that I find problematic, I think I'd rather have my kid experience that orientation as dysfunctional rather than hegemonic. In either system, I anticipate that I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving my kid's education to her school, so I'd be actively engaged in advocacy of various sorts as well as providing her with alternative approaches, experiences, objectives.

Now that's a really labor-intensive approach and I will certainly acknowledge that getting your kid a good education through DCPS will require lots of engagement on your part. There's no "coasting" option here, whereas I think there probably is in MoCo, especially if your kid is bright. Hey, the kids I taught didn't learn stuff in high school that I thought they should have learned in high school, but they had a good enough high school education to get into good college, and they learned that same stuff there. No lasting damage. But they didn't have (nor was I likely to have inculcated) the kind of intellectual character (or motivations) that I wanted my daughter to have.

These are really personal decisions/priorities -- I don't think that there's one right answer. And, of course, there's the question of how much time/energy you have on your hands and what you want to spend it doing. If spending a lot of time working on educational issues strikes you as an interesting and important challenge, that's one thing. If it'll just function as a continual source of anxiety and stress, that's another.

I don't know whether I wrote this earlier (I certainly thought it!), but from what I've seen, DCPS, for the parents who are serious about education and who keep their kids in the whole way through, strikes me as a "that which does not destroy me makes me stronger" proposition. I've seen folks become engaged in their communities and with their kids in ways I find thoroughly admirable. In other words, with DCPS the potential up-side looks vastly more interesting to me, but it's hard-fought. By contrast, with MoCo, the worst case scenario just isn't that scary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A series of disjointed reactions.

Smart kids don't need gifted programs to be challenged. The parenting challenge here is to help your kids learn to challenge themselves. It's a gift that keeps on giving, so it's really worth the effort. Abstractly, it's a matter of getting them to think of learning as more of a web than a line -- there's not a clearly marked path and the question is how fast you can traverse it; there are a million roads not taken and if you're quick, you get to decide which other ones to explore while you're waiting to rendezvous with the rest of your party. Nothing wrong with going way beyond what's expected or required of you. Why let someone else set the standards for you when you'd set them higher?

School isn't the only place where kids can/will be challenged. And if you want DC to have more rigorous assignments and/or an equally talented cohort and don't find these things in school, then look at programs like CTY (Center for Talented Youth) which is run out of Johns Hopkins. It offers both summer courses and school-year online courses. Wide range of fun topics. In the summer courses, lots of the instructors are Hopkins grad students.

Re urban living. I'm the FH poster and live on the DC side. AU Park, maybe 1/2 a mile away, is a much more suburban set-up. A large part of what makes FH urban to me is that I can (and do) live here without a car. I've got great access to public transit. I'm a few short blocks from both a Metrorail station and a number of bus lines that take me to G'town and other places not on the Metro. I can walk to three different commercial areas, but that's not what makes it city-living. It's the fact that public transit gives me easy access to lots of places within the city and puts me (and my DC) in constant contact with a wide variety of city dwellers.

I think people who drive more tend to experience upper NW as a burb. I feel stranded/exiled in AU Park or eastern Chevy Chase or Palisades without a car. But if I lived there and had a car, I know that I'd head to Montgomery County (where parking is easier) for lots of things I now do in DC (e.g. movies, shopping, eating out. libraries, etc.) In which case my neighborhood would, for all practical purposes, become more narrowly defined and function more like a bedroom community than a gateway to the city.

I say all of this because I sincerely doubt you can find what you want in a burb -- even a comparatively "urban" inner-ring suburb. I know I couldn't. When DC politics gets me down, I look around at all of the obvious alternatives. None appeals.

Good luck -- you'll find a way. It's fun raising an urban kid. And lots of smart people with smart kids make it through DCPS. Actually, where DCPS is concerned, I think that the real damage happens to average kids whose parents don't have the resources (educational, intellectual, temporal) to supplement and/or fight for a better education when the schools let their kids down.

PS I went to elementary school in small working class town in Ohio where there were no gifted programs. I wasn't miserable; I became resourceful. I've also taught plenty of MoCo honors graduates (the ones with A- averages -- not the valedictorians) at the college level and was unimpressed by the education they'd received.

Come visit -- schools and neighborhoods -- and see what feels right. I don't think there's one obvious right answer here; it's a matter of finding a comfortable balance.

I think this is a very interesting post, but I am confused because you seem to say that what's essential for an "urban" experience is the ability to rely on transit, but then you say you can't find that in inner-ring suburbs.

We live in East Bethesda, and hardly use the car at all. We don't need it for commuting, movies, library, restaurants, parks, shopping (unless it's more than a couple bags)... I think you could find the same thing in SS (with more economic diversity).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hey, the kids I taught didn't learn stuff in high school that I thought they should have learned in high school, but they had a good enough high school education to get into good college, and they learned that same stuff there. No lasting damage. But they didn't have (nor was I likely to have inculcated) the kind of intellectual character (or motivations) that I wanted my daughter to have.

I think you, like many academics, are setting the bar too high (not too high for your daughter, but too high for any school system). I taught at Harvard while in graduate school, and most of the students I saw were not all that curious. Smart, yes, but not driven to question and learn. Bottom line, I would not write off MoCo because it turns out only a small minority of students who are truly intellectually engaged.

[Anonymous]

10:10 -- you should write that up as an op-ed for the Post.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you, like many academics, are setting the bar too high (not too high for your daughter, but too high for any school system). I taught at Harvard while in graduate school, and most of the students I saw were not all that curious. Smart, yes, but not driven to question and learn. Bottom line, I would not write off MoCo because it turns out only a small minority of students who are truly intellectually engaged.

I agree that I set the bar too high (or, perhaps, in the wrong place) for any school system, which is why my kid ended up in a private school (whose approach to education is very similar to my own and where my DC is thriving). I do think that what I'm looking for is rare -- in part because not many people care about it. I also know that it's what makes my life rich (and what drives me to/keeps me in cities).

But I also think that, if you are in a situation where there isn't institutional support for this project (i.e. you don't have access to a simpatico public school), then, as a parent, you'd have a higher chance of success producing it in a context where the alternative you reject (teach to the test, differentiate based on speed/accuracy rather than breadth/depth of knowledge, get it right/make no mistakes and you're done) clearly isn't working rather than one where everybody around you seems happy with the results. That's the logic behind what may have been my too cryptic statement about favoring the dysfunctional (DCPS) over the hegemonic (MoCo).

And, again, I'm not suggesting anyone should write MoCo off -- just presenting another way to think through this decision.