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Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)
Thoughts for Kensington Parkkwood Elementary School?
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Anonymous
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We are thinking about moving to Bethesda. We saw a house and liked it and learned from the realtor that the school has an arts enrichment program but I do not much information about Kensington Parkwood Elementarty other than the test scores.I would love to learn more. Could you share your thoughts please?
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Anonymous
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We love Kensington Parkwood. It is an arts integration school (one of three in Montgomery County), which means that they incorporate the arts and music into other subjects. We love that the whole school is infused with the arts, a fact that gives the school community a really nice identity and focus. Also, as a part of it, professional musicians and artists come in to work with students on special projects and also to teach teachers how to incorporate the arts into the regular curriculum. In addition, students in 1st through 5th grades currently have Italian as one of their specials, a fun way to introduce the kids to a foreign language. We have been very happy with the school leadership and with the teachers our child has had.
The school community is very active--just yesterday there was a school art show as well as a holiday bazaar put on by the PTA. There are a ton of annual events (science fair, international night, bingo night, etc.) that get very big turnouts. We are also extremely happy with the rest of our neighbors, who are very friendly. As you can guess, we'd highly recommend our neighborhood to other families. |
Anonymous
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Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts! I am very excited! I checked online to see how the program works. I really want to learn more about this.
Is it common to meet with the principal and ask for a tour or would that be weird? How does the kids benefit from the program? I hear about academic excellence in Montgomery public schools in general. How does an art integrated school like Kensington Parkwood handle tests, scores, rankings compared to other schools in the area? I found a couple of links regarding Arts integrated schools in Montgomery County about Potomac and Drew ES. http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/potomaces/artsintegration.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051301902.html http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/drewes/arts_integrated_model_school.htm Thanks alot! |
Anonymous
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When we were house hunting, we called to ask about a school tour at KP and had no problem scheduling one. When I arrived, the principal showed me around and answered my questions, but I may just have been lucky about timing. I've heard more recently that some people may have had a harder time getting a tour scheduled--not sure if it was the time of year or what. In any case, I think it's well worth asking both about a tour and about briefly meeting the principal and see what they say.
I know that it's hard to measure the impact of the arts integration on something like test scores. Certainly, the school ranks high overall in terms of testing. I initially used the rating system on greatschools.net (which they base on test scores) as a way to see how schools compared--they give KP a 9 out of 10, which is very strong. (Some scores for the nearest schools: Bradley Hills ES 10, Wyngate ES 10, Viers Mill ES 10, North Chevy Chase ES 9, Luxmanor ES 9, Garrett Park ES 8, Ashburton ES 8, Oakland Terrace ES 7, Bethesda ES 7.) Obviously, the MoCo schools website has much more detailed information about testing. Personally, I wanted a school with high scores but that was not overly concerned with teaching to the test. With the arts integration program, it seems that the teachers have more leeway to have creative approaches without having to justify them solely based on test scores. In our experience (two years so far), the academic program is very strong and they follow the rigorous Montgomery County curriculum, but the arts integration ensures that they are considering aspects of the children other than just test scores.
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Anonymous
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I am also looking into Kensington Parkwood which seems to have a great school and an interesting arts integration program, and I hear that Kensington has some nice neighborhoods. One concern I have is that we'd be moving from Silver Spring which seems much more diverse than Kensington. Is this true? How diverse are KP and the neighborhoods that feed into it?
Thanks for your feedback. |
Anonymous
we considered buying in the KP neighborhood. We looked at the test scores broken out by ethnicity, and noticed no results for our ethnicity. That means therecwere NO children of our ethnicity in grades 3,4 or 5. We did not buy in that neighborhood. |
Anonymous
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Here are the demographic stats for KPES from the Montgomery County page:
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schoolodex/schooloverview.aspx?s=02783 African-American: 5.2% American Indian: .5% Asian: 5.1% Hispanic: 7.0% White: 82.1% |
Anonymous
There are 554 students in the school. So for a k-5 school, that means that on average, there is one African American and one Hispanic kid per GRADE. |
Anonymous
| sorry, I meant to say one African American and one Asian kid per grade. |
Anonymous
| Wow, I did not realize that KP was so non-diversified. I think that this must have changed in the past few years - KP used to be relatively diverse when we lived in a townhouse zoned to KP. Now we are zoned to Garrett Park (in a house that is basically across the zoning divide between KP and Garrett Park). GP is 51% White, with 21% hispanic, and the rest Asian and African American. That's quite a big difference from KP. Garrett Park is still in WJ cluster, with Tilden being its middle school. |
Anonymous
Those stats were 2008-2009. Here are the ones from 2006-2007: African-American: 7.8% American Indian: .2% Asian: 6.4% Hispanic: 9.3% White: 76.3% The stats raise questions for me about what individual neighborhoods and communities can do to maintain and increase diversity. Any ideas? |
Anonymous
| I think there has been a boundary change at KP to exclude some rental homes previously within the boundary. Not certain. |
Anonymous
| I think there has to have been because these numbers are quite different from what I remember in 2004-2005. |
Anonymous
| Wow-it sounds like one of the least diverse neighborhoods in the area, though further north towards Rockville may be similar. |
Anonymous
| A number of Bethesda and Chevy Chase elementary schools are over 75% white--with two Bethesda schools at 84.2% white (not sure if they're the highest or not). |