DP. Why is a tutor telling a parent negative stuff about other students he/she tutors? Sounds super unprofessional. |
I have a sub-3% interest rate on a 3 bedroom rowhouse (that I rent out to cover the mortgage and a little extra). I've done the math 20 different times, and I can't afford to buy in Ward 3, even a small 2 bedroom condo. Rents on apartments up there are also high. The math just doesn't math. Believe me, I'd love to live in a neighborhood with a great elementary school where my kid can walk and there are tons of kids. So would a lot of other people, which is in part why prices are so high. Instead, I'm hoping to get one of these jobs back in DC so I can stop being a landlord and be only 3 hours from my parents instead of 9. I know schools are a thorny, complex problem in DC and I'm trying to make a best of the cards I've been dealt. |
Move to the suburbs, where middle schoolers don't act like middle schoolers. |
| It is fine OP. People do not read the part where you say you already own a home. Rank the Hill area elementary schools with some attention to proximity to your house and save most of the middle (or high) school research for off this board in real life next year. |
| Also think about researching neighborhood activities depending on your 4th graders interests. Good way to meet people outside of a single elementary school bubble. |
Tutors can tell what the school is assigning because they usually help the kids with schoolwork. Let's focus on the deficiencies with the schools, not the students. |
I'm skeptical of the story altogether. It doesn't make sense for a tutor to be telling a random parent about other kids. And I would seriously question the professional judgement of any tutor who thought that was appropriate to do. Happy to discuss actual evidence of S-H's deficiencies. This isn't it. |
I’m the PP. I didn’t say the tutor told me anything. I’m posting about generalizations that a tutor posted about his experiences working with kids from many middle schools EOTP and his recommendations. It was objective and helpful. |
It's interesting, I read the same posts and I thought they were extremely unprofessional and didn't actually realize the skew in who hires him. The vast majority of normal families are not hiring a tutor for enrichment. BASIS is much more likely to attract the kind of family hiring a tutor for enrichment than basically any other middle school. On top of that, BASIS is harder than most other middle schools workload wise, so the average kid he sees struggling with BASIS is likely to be a better student than the average kid he sees struggling with another middle school. But SH, at least, has pretty good supports for differentiation especially via extracurriculars (seriously, between drama and an instrumental group and debate and History Day, + tracked math, my kid has what is essentially a challenging curriculum that she also loves... and then also the rest of school); but SH parents aren't hiring a tutor to achieve extracurricular excellence. The tutor who posted was completely unable to acknowledge this difference in his populations and essentially said parents are failing their kids if they aren't hiring tutors for enrichment. I frankly think that's insane and very obviously self-promoting, stopped taking him seriously after that and assume that we would probably have different views on what makes a good school. YMMV. FWIW I have nothing at all against BASIS which seems like a great school for some kids and would probably be even better in a system that permitted some screening. One of my kids has it as a top choice. |
Thanks. I feel pretty good about most Hill elementary schools and even Thomson. Middle school less so, but is what it is. We'll make it work. |
Why are you making BS stuff up? The tutor never said anything about enrichment and never said anything about Basis period. Also we are talking academics and not EC. EC can’t compensate for the lack of academic challenge or rigor.. BTW other schools also have all the EC you listed above. Big deal. Lastly SH math is just on grade level and nothing special. The other level is remedial. They don’t even have a geometry class. |
You apparently haven’t read all of the tutors threads, because he absolutely did respond to the criticism that he only seems struggling students by saying good parents hire tutors for enrichment. Which is BS, but whatever. He also talked about Basis at length. Also, it is now apparently you allegedly dispassionate observer merely quoting a different person have an axe to grind with SH. Let me guess, you’re the earlier Basis parent. |
I bumped the report card thread with the receipts. Just in case you were mistaken instead of lying about what the tutor said. |