Did anyone find primary day too "academic" or structured?
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Anonymous
Primary Day 25,000 Bethesda Country Day 11,500 Harbor School 14,500 Geneva Day 14,769 |
Anonymous
| Silver Spring Day School 9500 |
Anonymous
Harbor's first and second grade are over $22,000. $14,500 gets no more than a /2 day of preschool in the 3s! And the other schools quoted are also an apples to oranges comparison. Geneva and Bethesda Country Day are preschools with an add on K. |
Anonymous
PP here. 1/2 day of preschool. Sorry for typo. |
Anonymous
Some wonderful teachers and families, but under the former head, there was definitely an “in group” of faculty, staff and parents. Don’t know about now, but from this thread it doesn’t sound as though much has changed. Too political and too much mean girl behavior- at the expense of focusing on curriculum and best interests of the children. Very sad, but never was highly regarded academically. A feeder to Holton and Landon. Weak Board. |
Anonymous
| We’ve been there for 5 years and I don’t know what PP is talking about. Our kids loved it and did great. |
Anonymous
| I have no idea who some of these posters are or where they get their information. The school is very nurturing and very play based while still being academic. My son LOVED full day school in pre-K because he thought he was playing all day, all while learning 3 languages, STEM, Art, Music, Math, Phonovisual, etc. There were at least 3 kids in one of the Pre-K classes that could read fluently. Students go on to top schools after they graduate - Sidwell, Georgetown Day, Holton, Landon, Woods Academy, etc. It is highly regarded academically in part because kids come out as such good readers. Last year, 7 kids out of an incoming third grade class of 12-15 at Sidwell came from Primary Day. What other school can claim that statistic? The teachers and the HOS are wonderful! I couldn't pick a better place for my kid. |
Anonymous
In the world of the Big Three or Five, PDS is considered second or third tier, as evidenced by it’s relative absence on this forum. Cute little place, with rather mundane academics. No one breaking down doors to figure out how to get in. PDS claim to fame is proximity to Holton and Landon. That’s all. |
Anonymous
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We loved PDS but with 3 kids cycling though private school and needed to hopefully get placed at the same K-12 we went straight to a K-12. So far so good.
Secondly, the location may not be so feasible for NW DC people who work downtown or can't have a nanny go north for the drop off or pickup and then back down south. It actually makes a more community feel at PDS since is is a lot of MoCo families, but has an increasing amount of NW DC and int'l families as well. We were very impressed with the curriculum and advanced academics, just wish it was longer than PK-grade 2! |
Anonymous
What impressed you about the academics? Do other schools use Phono Visual to teach reading? |
Anonymous
advanced academics? Teaching phonovisual to pre- k is not advanced. It’s a one size fits all school and not all kids are ready for phonovisual at age 4. That’s not advanced. That’s just pushing kids. |
Anonymous
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It’s the only school that kids learn 3 languages at the same time- Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese. It has an interesting diversity of students because of this and attracts a number of international families.
It’s strengths come from being a school that focuses exclusively on the early years. It’s a small community with 100 families. Many of the parents in my kids class also went to school there. They all say the same thing - it created a love of learning and it was very important for them to send their kid there. Just one example of the excellent foundation for learning that the school provides - The Class of 2008 (now graduating from high school) just came back to a recent school assembly at PDS to announce where they were going to college. There was at least one kid going to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, and Penn along with many other selective colleges. It says a lot about the impression that PDS made on these kids lives that more than 25 kids from the Class of 2008 were willing to come back for the assembly. |
Anonymous
| We are friends with a family that had one kid at PDS and one at Sidwell. The older kid only went to Sidwell. The second kid went to PDS before also going to Sidwell. They were shocked by how much more the kid at PDS learned in the early grades compared to the sibling at Sidwell for the early years. He really thrived and the parents were thrilled with the schools curriculum. The PDS sibling was a much more advanced reader. |
Anonymous
That has more to do with PDS going from PK-2 (i.e., you have to apply again elsewhere within 4 years) than anything about the school's educational merits. For parents looking to send their kids to a (P)K-8 or (P)K-12, PDS would be a non-starter. It's a great school if you're okay with the limited number of years. We were, and are quite pleased. |
Anonymous
Exactly! Very much a function of PDS having only 100 families at one time vs. a PK-12 grade school which could have well over 1000 families at a time (and therefore more alumni). With higher grade levels, there is also a large number of kids from public schools and other private schools (K-6, K-8) that will be looking and interested in talking about a school that goes to 12th grade. The so called "absence on the forum" has nothing to do with quality. PDS attracts a smaller subsets of families that are interested in a private school focused on the early years and located in the suburbs. There are a lot of families interested in the school but that don't want to have to go through the application process again after 2nd grade. There are families that prefer that model because it gives them the chance to reevaluate their child's strengths and interest and pick a private school that best aligns with the kids needs (same sex, co-ed, sports focus, art / music focus, smaller school, bigger school, etc.) It is hard to know what your 4 year old will be like when they are 8-9 years old. |