Subjective capsule reviews of MD private elementary schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: In particular, she denigrated Maddux, a school that has had considerable growth and popularity for families with kids with social and learning issue, The founder, Andrea Mullins, has grown the school from a preschool and pre k class to one that now goes through 2nd grade, all in 9 years. They receive far more applications then they have space available every year.

For what it's worth, there are a number of factors independent of Maddux's quality that contribute to the excess of demand for their services over supply. Among them:

1) Maddux remains quite small.
2) There are a lot of bright kids out there with both strong academic potential and social thinking challenges.
3) Maddux's niche is somewhat unique among MD area schools -- whereas McLean (which is much bigger) focuses more on learning differences, Maddux focuses more on social thinking.
4) A number of parents of kids with social thinking challenges are very eager to avoid placing the special ed label on their child.

This last factor is significant. Most schools that offer help on the social cognition side are considered special ed schools, whereas Maddux is not. Unfortunately there is prejudice out there, even among educators and education consultants, against kids who have gone through a special education school.

This probably gets into areas that warrant cross-posting on the special needs board, but we know of two families with girls who looked into Maddux a couple of years ago. One was accepted there and one was not, but both families concluded that KTS would be able to offer more of what they were looking for than Maddux could provide. Both girls were very bright and capable not only of excelling at Maddux but in mainstream schools, which both are doing now; it wasn't a matter of either being too challenged for one rather than the other. The trade-off between Maddux and KTS is to a significant extent a trade-off of KTS being able to offer more extensive services whereas Maddux avoids the special ed tag.

Because many parents are so eager to avoid the special ed label, there is always a surplus of parents interested in Maddux. Were it not for that distinction, many parents would probably select other schools that offer more comprehensive doses of similar services. Maddux likes to position itself as serving a less challenged population than, say, KTS, but that's not necessarily true as there are plenty of counter-examples. But that positioning is very powerful in attracting parents to give Maddux a closer look than they might an equally good set of services from a school with the special ed label. That in turn creates an excess of demand over supply, which in turn enables Maddux to retain something of an air of exclusivity about it.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your honest perspective.

[Anonymous]

what is KTS??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:what is KTS??

Katherine Thomas School

[Anonymous]

Maddux was not impressive. If they cant organize a tour how can they organize my kid!

[Anonymous]

I'm surprised by the praise for St. Andrews. I found them to be very disorganized and one person would indicate there weren't going to be any open spots for K while another would claim they were adding a whole class.