Anonymous wrote:
Hold on - there are no textbooks in APS??? My DS is starting K and we are keeping him at current preschool for the K year because of small class and were then planning to move to an APS ES school. I'm going to date myself here, but kids don't have workbooks like "Wordly Wise," etc or books for social studies reading or math problems? What do they have? I have a PhD in the humanities and my main way of learning was reading independently - hate group work etc. Is that all there is in APS? Tell me more!
My impression as a parent is there isn't much of a curriculum in APS elementary. It's what caused so much chaos in distance learning last spring. There are standards of learning but each teacher is expected to reinvent the wheel and develop their own ways to meet the standards. It seems so exhausting for teachers and so wasteful of their time.
THIS. ~(Parent with child who completed K and 1st at an APS Immersion school before moving out of state to an open public school last year)
Figuring out what your child is learning is extremely difficult in APS. You have to piece it together from worksheets unless your teacher is a great communicator (by email or blog). Getting a teacher's attention is tough when they have 55 students (Immersion students have 2 teachers half-day daily/hence each teacher has double the students over-all). I constantly told myself "At least they're learning Spanish," because I could not figure out that they were actively doing spelling/phonics in English or learning any social studies to speak of. Science and math seemed to be decent despite no textbooks. There's an obsession with "reading by the end of K" but no clear method to get there. It seems every teacher has to do their own thing.
At our new out of state public, 2nd grader does "Singapore Math" in a book, and has more clear curriculum "units," than APS, particularly in Social Studies where they follow a curriculum similar to what I remember growing up (Learn about your community, local government and then go bigger.) To be fair we still don't have any other textbooks at the new school either, but class sizes are smaller and teaching seems to be more on par with a private. (To make a direct comparison, APS is supposedly the #1 public in VA, and our new public is #4 in a different state, but much smaller in size, which helps the students get much more attention). Our child's class at the new public has 18 students. My child was identified as needing an IEP for speech/language this year (I'm certain this would have been missed during a remote year of learning at an Immersion school- so grateful it was caught now).
I do miss the Spanish Immersion a lot, but literally nothing else. Since APS offers both AP and IB in high school, I'm guessing their high school education level is comparable with any very good high schools, but I was not impressed with their elementary education, and middle school is always tough, let alone in an over-crowded school. APS's focus on "woke" political culture above all else was also grating, especially so during a pandemic.
I get the sense from reading these boards that Fairfax has pretty much the same issues as APS, but that's just my speculation. I know ACPS is a mess for various reasons and from friends' experiences. If we had to stay in Northern Virginia we would have switched to a Lutheran or Catholic school for the education/size/values.
My advice to anyone in Northern Virginia would be "don't pay North Arlington house prices for APS." Move to Alexandria or Falls Church if you're still trying to stay close to DC (because home prices MAY be slightly less insane) and go private. Or be prepared to supplement heavily at home.
According to whom? APS is not the #1 school district in VA, or even the #1 district in NoVa. Sounds like someone didn't do their homework.
PP: According to this as of 2021 it's #2 in VA:
https://www.niche.com/k12/d/arlington-public-schools-va/ Maybe it was 2020 where I saw it was #1? The point it is considered to be a very good school district in the state-or so I thought. But like the other poster below, based on my own experience, I'm wondering how this high ranking is possible given the number of issues, but most significantly, over-crowding at almost every single school which impacts the over-all quality of education.
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