If quality of education is your only priority, are there any reasons to live in DC...
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Anonymous
| Good luck with the charter lottery |
Anonymous
It's ridiculous the amount hasn't increased. My neighbor sent her son to college in CA for almost the in-state rate using DC TAG -- 15 year ago! The 10K hardly puts a dent in out of state tuition now. |
Anonymous
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The National Merit Scholar comparison is a perfect example of using flawed data to draw conclusions about DC schools and DC public education. National Merit scholars are allocated based on state population. Each state has a cut-off. In recent years, DC's cutoff has been HIGHER than that of either VA or MD, and presumably there are a lot of DC residents in elite private schools who further "suck up" the District's small allocation of NM scholars. So it's likely much, much harder for a kid from a DC public school to achieve National Merit Semifinalist status.
DC's cut-off is the highest in the nation, for anyone keeping track. http://www.compassprep.com/national-merit-semifinalist-cutoffs/ |
Anonymous
I'm sure Latin, DCI, and Basis are great, but you have to win an increasingly difficult lottery to get in. |
Anonymous
+1. But keep in mind DCI is only finishing its second year. Has promise but not yet proven, and an unknown entity for college placements etc. Last year's PARCC scores were pretty low compared to the others, but will be worth watching over time. Latin is most established and by all measures strong. For college placements Basis DC can rely on its network's strong reputation. Both have test scores. |
Anonymous
To be fair to DC, state colleges have been pumping up their out-of-state tuition enormously in the past 10 years. 10 years ago California probably charged much less. |
Anonymous
shouldn't the 10K be at least 15K now, just taking basic inflation into account? |
Anonymous
You would think. But it was a tough enough battle getting it reauthorized and funded at all. No one in Congress is getting any thanks or credits for helping out people who dont' live in their states or districts. An increase isn't likely. Please get involved. https://www.facebook.com/groups/893343827363937/ |
Anonymous
| Our MoCo poster is renting in DC this week, I see. |
Anonymous
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I think people are right that there is a good, quality education to be had in DC - either through charters or some mix of DCPS and charters. The thing I think people are glossing over is that obtaining that good, quality education from ES through HS is largely driven by luck. Unless you live in IB for Deal/Wilson and are happy with those options, you are at the mercy of the lottery and/or application HS.
So if it's important to you as part of their education that your child have consistency in terms of the cohort that they move through ES, MS and HS, then DC is not the place for you. If it's important to you that there be vertical alignment between ES, MS and HS (i.e., music program, language, math pathways, etc), then DC is not the place for you. |
Anonymous
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I choose to live in DC because I define "education" to be both what you receive in school as well as what you receive outside of school. Both DH and I work in downtown DC, so having a short commute means we can spend more time with the kids doing something other than sitting in a car commuting. If we both worked in the burbs, then we would move there.
The quality of the NW elementary schools and Deal are terrific now, and Wilson will be the same in a few years, because the parents at these schools are super-engaged. |
Anonymous
No, those schools will be terrific because the parents are high-SES. Their kids will do well in those schools, and they would do well in private or the suburban publics as well. The measure of a school system should be how they do with kids who weren't born on 2nd or 3rd base. |
Anonymous
I agree with you, to a point. It's a huge showing of privilege to say "my high SES kid will do fine anywhere because he is high SES!" I don't think that is necessarily true. I have a friend whose kids graduated from Wilson and he said, quote, "they were terribly prepared for college." They got into good colleges, true, but they apparently just were not on par with the other kids in terms of writing & research skills. High SES kids do well enough wherever they go not because the school magically becomes good for them, but because they carry their privilege with them. Ultimately it seems like people don't want to accept or see that when you share public resources with poor people, those resources sometimes reflect the systemic disadvantages of poor people. It's not true that they magically become great due to the presence of high SES people. I see this as a gentrification revealing the fault lines -- when you gentrify you're in "their" system, not yours, sometimes. And then when people talk about the "super engaged parents" who are going to change everything, they're really talking about creating a parallel (ie segregated) system for themselves, which takes a while. I'd like to see actual integration in DC, which would not rest on the assumption that "super engaged parents" are going to fix everything by creating a parallel system. |
Anonymous
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Excellent Post
And guess what the charter system is.... trying to create that parallel system Capitol Hill is trying to do the same thing and they can't even get middle school right yet |
Anonymous
No, not really if you look at the entire sector, not one or two unicorns that don't reflect the city's economic and racial background. Charters have more poor and high needs kids, and they are doing slightly better (based on PMF scores) than DCPS. |