Did the community where you grew up have the programs you want for your DC
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Anonymous
| Just curious. On this forum there appears to be a strong push for DCPS to have schools that are IB, language immersion, STEM, TAG, Reggio, Montessori, etc. Parents, where are you from, and did your school district have any of the programs you want DCPS to offer more of? |
Anonymous
Nope. It did have a stellar cross-country ski program, even at the elementary level. |
Anonymous
| Nope, just a traditional education. I value language immersion because it's almost a necessity nowadays. |
Anonymous
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I graduated from high school 30 years ago - so what my elementary did and didn't offer seems irrelevant.
Where I grew up (suburban St. Louis) Montessori was only a private school option. We did have a test in gifted programs. In addition, students who excelled in math (again test in) could spend half a day at a local private university starting in 6th grade. |
Anonymous
| Graduated from RMIB in 1990. So yes. Great program. The alternative was Blair. I didn't go to TPMS or the program didn't exist yet. Lots of differentiation in the classroom and acceleration at the time. My elem. school was across the street from the Jr High. I remember a bunch of us would walk across the street for math in 6th. Yes, MCPS elem were K-6 at on time. |
Anonymous
| Yes. Test-in college prep public. You went back to your neighborhood school or private/parochial if you couldn't keep up. 100% college acceptance rate. APs, music/orchestra, art, drama, varsity sports, newspaper, yearbook. Nothing like it around DC. |
Anonymous
| No, it was a poor rural community with basically nothing. But it did have Latin in high school, which was awesome. I wish more DCPS had that. |
Anonymous
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No. There were two elementary schools, one middle and one high school. A few kids went to private or parochial schools, but mostly I graduated with many of the kids I started kindergarten with and even some who were in my daycare or nursery school.
Small town CT, consistently ranked among the best school systems in the state. I don't care about the Montessori, Reggio, immersion, whatever. I'm sending my kids to our neighborhood school. I want a strong, well-rounded curriculum with strong, enthusiastic teachers. |
Anonymous
| My school was bilingual program where you could take a third language at middle school. So yes, it did. This was in the 80s. Also, a strong arts focus. |
Anonymous
| Yes, I was at an experimental school for gifted children that had a STEM focus. It was awesome. There were also magnet immersion schools in the area. |
jaybird
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| I went to Murch in the 80s. We went to school, played on the blacktop after school, and then walked home. That was it. |
Anonymous
| The only choice in my hometown was Catholic school or public. |
Anonymous
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no. neighborhood school or private catholic school if your parents didn't want you to go to school with black kids (this was the deep south). Both options were second rate. Had bad teachers and OK teachers. High school AP English was pretty good (we wrote A LOT. no one took the ap test though). I was bullied like crazy. Didn't learn much, but I was smart and read a lot outside of school. Went on to the big state second-tier college that was basically open admissions as long as you had a 2.0 in college prep corursework (so you had to take algebra 11 in high school). From there I went on to decent grad school programs and, eventually, a tentured professorship in DC
Definitly NOT what I want for my kids. And definitly not something I think is possible for them. There is just more competition now - they can't meander through crap schools and land whereever they want like I did. Even before I had kids (like my twenties) I knew I wanted a progressive education for them (unschooling or Montessori was the only ones I knew of at the time) that didn't involve workheets and memorization. I will say I grew up grades k-4 in a little college town in the midwest and the neighborhood school was just amazing (we would call it project based learning now). Perhaps that foundation carried me through the crap schools that followed? |
Anonymous
| I went to the Alexander School (private elementary school in Montgomery County) in the 80s. It was awesome. We had Spanish, French, music, drama, nature hikes, etc. There were also 10 kids in each class which was nice. |
Anonymous
| I am from a midsize city in NC (125k at that time 20 when I graduated 20 years ago). My high school was out in a small town at the edge of county line. We had honors, regular and basic level for all english and math. Languages offered included spanish, french, german, italian and latin (two year requirement). What would hav been the equivalent of AP was offered off site at a consolidated location for kids coming from multiple locations. HS had about 1200 students. Starting in 3rd grade I was i in the test in gifted program, then switched to honors level classes in middle school. So DC is a real underperformer as far as I can tell. |