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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I know several families who attend ESS and they are all really lovely with great kids. My kid attended TPES/PBES, but now they are all together at TPMS and even though the two schools get discussed as very different schools, really, it seems pretty even. I would be happy with the pyramid. [/quote]

I've had kids at both ESS and TPES/PBES and they are genuinely pretty similar in every respect other than size, and kids enter TPMS equally prepared.

For me, the benefit of ESS over a lot of other schools in MCPS is the small size of the school overall. Fewer than 500 kids across six grades, so once you count siblings, probably fewer than 250 families total. That's actually a managable number for administration, specialists, and teachers to get to know. In that way it feels more like the ES that I grew up in, where it was reasonable for the principal to know your name, and know which kids were your siblings, etc.

It has also been a pilot for some cool initiatives, maybe also because of the size. They got the NSF science curriculum early, and were a pilot for the Enriched Literacy Curriculum.

The diversity is a plus - the biggest demographic group at the school is East African immigrants, and my white kids learned a lot about the culture of the Horn of Africa. They also learned not to confuse Ethiopians with Eritreans, and that not everyone speaks Amharic.

The biggest downside of the school is also related to the size. MCPS has a model for gifted programming where kids are sent to a "magnet" for 4th and 5th. So, out of a grade level of maybe 75 kids, somewhere between five and seven of the strongest test takers are pulled out of the school between third and fourth. Not only does that impact test scores (since GS looks at test scores from 3rd - 5th) but it also impacts the social dynamics, until the groups kind of recalibrate in 4th.

In general, it's a good school with happy families and I'm sure others on the thread will also be happy to answer questions. [/quote]

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