In which NW DC neighborhoods do most (75%+) of ES-aged kids attend their in-bound public ES?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of us don't make much distinction between charter and public schools. They're all just schools.

Well, it does change the vibe of the neighborhood when lots of neighbors go to school together -- the kids can walk to each others houses for playdates, etc.

The kids in our area all go to different schools. No one cares. They all play together.

This. Big mistake if you prioritize poor neighborhood schools over better schools. You will realize this sooner than later in upper elementary and upper. Kids don’t choose friends based on where they live. It’s not an issue when they can also take metro and get around by themselves. My DS started going on metro by himself to school in 6th.

No one is doing that. Most of the schools on the list the PP posted above with very high IB participation rates are the best schools in the city (Janney, Mann, etc).

The DCPS schools that are not that great don't have very high IB participation, so kids don't get that "walk to and from school with friends and go freely from house to house" thing.

Some circling logic here--the only reason these schools are "great" is they have a self-selected cohort of students from very well-off families that can pay to segregate themselves in specific neighborhoods to take advantage of geographic boundary preferences. Theses school would not be "great" for long if they didn't offer an in-boundary preference.

Not really. One of the biggest determinants of how well kids do is what the kids around them are doing. If they're in a class full of children working hard, they will likely work hard too. If they're in a class full of children who aren't working hard, they probably won't either. Peer pressure is powerful thing among children, and that can be bad and it can be good.

How is that different. If it is the cohort of kids and the resulting peer pressure that makes them perform better, then the school is not actually "great"-- teacher quality and curricula don't factor in much. The neighborhood is "great" not the school.

This seems very pedantic. I don't really care how much of it is due to the teacher and the school, and how much of it is due to the quality/character of the students. That seems completely unknowable. I do know there are schools in this city where behavioral issues are nonexistent, and the kids want to learn, and that seems like a far better learning environment than most of the schools here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of us don't make much distinction between charter and public schools. They're all just schools.

Well, it does change the vibe of the neighborhood when lots of neighbors go to school together -- the kids can walk to each others houses for playdates, etc.

The kids in our area all go to different schools. No one cares. They all play together.

This. Big mistake if you prioritize poor neighborhood schools over better schools. You will realize this sooner than later in upper elementary and upper. Kids don’t choose friends based on where they live. It’s not an issue when they can also take metro and get around by themselves. My DS started going on metro by himself to school in 6th.

No one is doing that. Most of the schools on the list the PP posted above with very high IB participation rates are the best schools in the city (Janney, Mann, etc).

The DCPS schools that are not that great don't have very high IB participation, so kids don't get that "walk to and from school with friends and go freely from house to house" thing.

Some circling logic here--the only reason these schools are "great" is they have a self-selected cohort of students from very well-off families that can pay to segregate themselves in specific neighborhoods to take advantage of geographic boundary preferences. Theses school would not be "great" for long if they didn't offer an in-boundary preference.

Not really. One of the biggest determinants of how well kids do is what the kids around them are doing. If they're in a class full of children working hard, they will likely work hard too. If they're in a class full of children who aren't working hard, they probably won't either. Peer pressure is powerful thing among children, and that can be bad and it can be good.

How is that different. If it is the cohort of kids and the resulting peer pressure that makes them perform better, then the school is not actually "great"-- teacher quality and curricula don't factor in much. The neighborhood is "great" not the school.

This seems very pedantic. I don't really care how much of it is due to the teacher and the school, and how much of it is due to the quality/character of the students. That seems completely unknowable. I do know there are schools in this city where behavioral issues are nonexistent, and the kids want to learn, and that seems like a far better learning environment than most of the schools here.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of us don't make much distinction between charter and public schools. They're all just schools.

Well, it does change the vibe of the neighborhood when lots of neighbors go to school together -- the kids can walk to each others houses for playdates, etc.

The kids in our area all go to different schools. No one cares. They all play together.

This. Big mistake if you prioritize poor neighborhood schools over better schools. You will realize this sooner than later in upper elementary and upper. Kids don’t choose friends based on where they live. It’s not an issue when they can also take metro and get around by themselves. My DS started going on metro by himself to school in 6th.

No one is doing that. Most of the schools on the list the PP posted above with very high IB participation rates are the best schools in the city (Janney, Mann, etc).

The DCPS schools that are not that great don't have very high IB participation, so kids don't get that "walk to and from school with friends and go freely from house to house" thing.

Some circling logic here--the only reason these schools are "great" is they have a self-selected cohort of students from very well-off families that can pay to segregate themselves in specific neighborhoods to take advantage of geographic boundary preferences. Theses school would not be "great" for long if they didn't offer an in-boundary preference.

Not really. One of the biggest determinants of how well kids do is what the kids around them are doing. If they're in a class full of children working hard, they will likely work hard too. If they're in a class full of children who aren't working hard, they probably won't either. Peer pressure is powerful thing among children, and that can be bad and it can be good.

How is that different. If it is the cohort of kids and the resulting peer pressure that makes them perform better, then the school is not actually "great"-- teacher quality and curricula don't factor in much. The neighborhood is "great" not the school.

This seems very pedantic. I don't really care how much of it is due to the teacher and the school, and how much of it is due to the quality/character of the students. That seems completely unknowable. I do know there are schools in this city where behavioral issues are nonexistent, and the kids want to learn, and that seems like a far better learning environment than most of the schools here.

Agree.

Because the schools have so many kids coming in with a lot of family support or whatever, they are able to push the entire class harder. These schools offer more depth and challenge as a result, and then the kids become even stronger students.

So they aren't leaning on demographics. The teaching is actually different as a result of demographics.

[Anonymous]

We are in-bound for Murch and there are 7 families on our street who have elementary aged kids - 5 families go to private, 2 go to Murch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We are in-bound for Murch and there are 7 families on our street who have elementary aged kids - 5 families go to private, 2 go to Murch.

We are IB for Murch, off Reno Rd. There are six households with elementary aged kids and five send their kids to Murch.

Private, non-parochial school is honestly too expensive K-12 for even most UMC households these days, and spots are much harder to secure. Even 2-lawyer families don't honestly have $150k/yr after taxes to spend on their 3 kids at Maret for 13 years. In the absence of wealthy boomer grandparents paying the tab, the default is DCPS.

That's a huge change on my same block from the aughts, when the HHI :: tuition ratio was more favorable. Back then, almost nobody on our street used Murch or Deal though they were considered among the best DCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are in-bound for Murch and there are 7 families on our street who have elementary aged kids - 5 families go to private, 2 go to Murch.

We are IB for Murch, off Reno Rd. There are six households with elementary aged kids and five send their kids to Murch.

Private, non-parochial school is honestly too expensive K-12 for even most UMC households these days, and spots are much harder to secure. Even 2-lawyer families don't honestly have $150k/yr after taxes to spend on their 3 kids at Maret for 13 years. In the absence of wealthy boomer grandparents paying the tab, the default is DCPS.

That's a huge change on my same block from the aughts, when the HHI :: tuition ratio was more favorable. Back then, almost nobody on our street used Murch or Deal though they were considered among the best DCPS.

+100

The math starts to look a little different around high school, but for the earlier grades, the return on investment for tuition over public school is not significant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We are in-bound for Murch and there are 7 families on our street who have elementary aged kids - 5 families go to private, 2 go to Murch.

We are IB for Murch, off Reno Rd. There are six households with elementary aged kids and five send their kids to Murch.

Private, non-parochial school is honestly too expensive K-12 for even most UMC households these days, and spots are much harder to secure. Even 2-lawyer families don't honestly have $150k/yr after taxes to spend on their 3 kids at Maret for 13 years. In the absence of wealthy boomer grandparents paying the tab, the default is DCPS.

That's a huge change on my same block from the aughts, when the HHI :: tuition ratio was more favorable. Back then, almost nobody on our street used Murch or Deal though they were considered among the best DCPS.

+100

The math starts to look a little different around high school, but for the earlier grades, the return on investment for tuition over public school is not significant.

Church Guy OP here. We know some people who have 3 elementary school kids at Beauvoir/Maret/Lowell and honestly that’s a terrible financial decision just given oppo costs. I haven’t mathed it out but I think it would have to be less than 25% of income to be anything but a bad investment decision ($150k or so a year in VTI or something gives you A LOT in 19 years- in fact it’s still a pretty rough decision at 30k a year).

As others have said, I understand the inflation of private prices is pretty recent. But man, I dunno.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, bad financial decision. It’s a bad investment decision just in terms of RAR no matter what but I can understand why people do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gotta love Upper Caucasia. You folks are really something else.

Your desperate, unclever attempt to make “Upper Caucasia” a thing is something else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gotta love Upper Caucasia. You folks are really something else.

Your desperate, unclever attempt to make “Upper Caucasia” a thing is something else.

People have been using that term for at least 10 years. It's been a thing for awhile now.

[Anonymous]

Why do so many people want to lottery into schools in upper NW rather than use their IB schools EOTP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do so many people want to lottery into schools in upper NW rather than use their IB schools EOTP?

To get Deal/J-R or Hardy/McArthur feeder rights.

[Anonymous]

Why not go to their IB schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of us don't make much distinction between charter and public schools. They're all just schools.

I live in the H Street area where there are many people who think this but don't realize their neighbors don't agree.

The degree to which people agree with this depends on (1) where they wound up in the lottery, especially in ECE when a lot of those early family bonds are formed, (2) how strong or weak their IB is, (3) how easily their kid makes friends which can depend on their kid's personality, athletic ability and other factors, and (4) the resources the family has for forging bonds with other families, which might include room to host other kids frequently, money to enroll their kid in activities where they make friends, or time to invest in making these bonds.

I have neighbors who think like you and are like "it's all good, the kids all play together!" regarding the mix of DCPS and charter families in the neighborhood. I also know families who feel that so many neighbors choosing charters or choosing to go OOB for school majorly detracts from their kids' social experience, especially in elementary grades.

I am in the middle. We have a poor IB school and had a bad experience there for ECE with my oldest, but then got into a great DCPS OOB for both kids when older was in 1st and youngest was in PK3 (one of the inherent advantages in the lottery of having multiple kids close in age). We've been really happy with our school community since then and are lucky that the DCPS we wound up at is walking distance so we get all the advantages of a great IB without having to be able to afford to live IB for it. But I also recall how lonely those first three years were with our oldest, how frustrating it was to listen to neighbors say stuff like "oh it's all good" when they'd talk about their great experience with a school they lotteried into elsewhere while privately we were struggling with our IB and desperately lotterying every year for a better situation but getting locked out.

Also, we are now years on from any of this (oldest is in MS at this point), and I will also say that as kids get older, they do NOT play with neighbor kids who go to other schools, unless they become friends through an activity. And kids cut down on activities as they get older to, it's not like with the little kids where everyone is doing soccer and ballet and the same nearby summer camps, etc. We have families who live within a block or two of us, with same age kids, and our kids never play together, even though back when they were much younger, we did regular playdates and playground meetups and our kids went to each other's birthday parties and all of it. Because they don't know each other at anymore, they have their own friends through school and activities, and their standards for what a "friend" is is much higher. Again, because we got lucky relatively early on with the lottery, this has worked out fine for my kids who have plenty of nearby friends through school. But for a family who gets stuck at their IB through 2nd or 3rd? It's brutal and there is resentment and I don't really blame them because that easily could have been us if we hadn't gotten lottery spots at a nearby school when we did.

I’m the OP of this thread, and I want to thank you, PP, for this nuanced response that reflects the underpinnings of my question and is clearly backed by relevant lived experience. Thanks for making the time to respond — seriously.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of us don't make much distinction between charter and public schools. They're all just schools.

Well, it does change the vibe of the neighborhood when lots of neighbors go to school together -- the kids can walk to each others houses for playdates, etc.

The kids in our area all go to different schools. No one cares. They all play together.

This. Big mistake if you prioritize poor neighborhood schools over better schools. You will realize this sooner than later in upper elementary and upper. Kids don’t choose friends based on where they live. It’s not an issue when they can also take metro and get around by themselves. My DS started going on metro by himself to school in 6th.

No one is doing that. Most of the schools on the list the PP posted above with very high IB participation rates are the best schools in the city (Janney, Mann, etc).

The DCPS schools that are not that great don't have very high IB participation, so kids don't get that "walk to and from school with friends and go freely from house to house" thing.

Some circling logic here--the only reason these schools are "great" is they have a self-selected cohort of students from very well-off families that can pay to segregate themselves in specific neighborhoods to take advantage of geographic boundary preferences. Theses school would not be "great" for long if they didn't offer an in-boundary preference.

Not really. One of the biggest determinants of how well kids do is what the kids around them are doing. If they're in a class full of children working hard, they will likely work hard too. If they're in a class full of children who aren't working hard, they probably won't either. Peer pressure is powerful thing among children, and that can be bad and it can be good.

How is that different. If it is the cohort of kids and the resulting peer pressure that makes them perform better, then the school is not actually "great"-- teacher quality and curricula don't factor in much. The neighborhood is "great" not the school.

+1
Just look at the test scores for kids who are lower income at some of these schools. The scores are pretty bad considering the resources the school has to put into a relatively low percent of disadvantaged kids.