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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Honest question: what's the point of "checking out schools" at EdFest? Does it give you a straight data-driven perspective on success, lottery stats, and so on that you can't get anywhere else? no, all those reports are available online. (Great, so they might give you a list of school clubs and course offerings or whatever. You can get that online too.)

ok, so does it give you a sense of it's like to physically attend the school, what the vibe is, what the surrounding neighborhood is like, how the commute would feel? no, for that you'd have to make an individual visit to the actual campus.

so does it give you a real-world, unvarnished take on the lived experience of students and parents? no, for that you'd need...someone, anyone who isn't drawing a paycheck from the school or sitting at a booth sponsored by the school.

I made plans to attend this one or two years, didn't go - and realized I now can't see the point. Can someone explain it to me? [/quote]

I'm the OP of this thread. So for us, I used the data-driven, online research to narrow us down to 16 schools. That was based on commute,  test scores, and a few other things (like we knew we didn't want immersion). Going to 16 school open houses would be a LOT - not really tenable in a few months. So we needed to make another round of cuts before we could start open houses.

Through our research, we had a bunch of schools that we were excited about, and bunch that just kinda "made the cut" - test scores were good enough, commute was good enough, but nothing that really excited us about the school. But we know, like you allude to, that there are lots of other factors that go into a school, (vibes, principal quality, etc) and it's very possible there was a "diamond in the rough" in there that we just didn't know about. So we kinda had two lists - for about half the schools, we were very likely to go to an open house, but it was worth visiting their Ed Fest table as a double check. Then for the other half, we really needed a hook or something to impress us, or we probably won't bother. Call it "probably" and "probably nots."

I think asking good questions is key. The ones I got the most out of were "What is special or different about your school?" and "Talk to me about differentiation in the upper grades."

Several of the schools on our "probably nots" list gave us pretty standard, cookie cutter answers to our questions. They couldn't really identify anything special about their school. Discussions about differentiation were mostly about bringing up kids who were behind. Staff were pleasant and nice, but not energetic or enthusiastic. Either the principal wasn't there (bad sign at a middle of the road school, IMHO) or gave the party line. After 10 minutes at a booth at EdFest, combined with the research we already have, we're comfortably crossing them off the list.

However, there were three of those "probably nots" that REALLY wowed us. Center City Brightwood had a great principal who talked a lot about how they work to develop community and make sure that all students are connected to staff members. They also have this brand new maker space (shared among all the Center City schools) that has things like a recording studio, a pottery studio with a kiln, etc, and they'll take turns going and spending the day there to do hands on learning. Combine that with the test scores compared to demographics (strong, which we already knew from our research) and they are definitely worth an open house. We had a similarly great conversation with EL Haynes. I got to spend a lot of time with their upper grades ELA teacher and she had SUCH good and interesting information when it came to differentiation. She really got into specifics on how she can support both the kids who are behind and the kids who are ahead of grade level and how she approaches this. I also found out they are using the same ELA curriculum that a few DCPS schools (Ross included) got a special waiver to use (because the DCPS ELA curriculum is pretty week). I also got to talk to an upper grades parent who was super happy with their experience at EL Haynes. And John Lewis was another - long conversation with the principal about how she brings fun and enthusiasm to the school and you could just FEEL her energy. They'll get a tour too. A good principal can change the whole tenor of a school.

There were also a couple of deal breakers with our "probably" schools, including an upcoming modernization/swing space that we just don't want to deal with. So a couple of those got crossed off.

Also - you're right that you're not getting the unvarnished truth. But it's actually not that hard to spot someone who's giving you bulls*t and someone whose telling you (the shiny version of) the truth. You set your skepticism meter to "high" and you can still learn stuff.

And so, 16 became 9, saving us 7 open houses. I do think where it's most useful is those "on the bubble" schools. We probably could have just skipped the ones at the top of our list and gone straight to an open house. [/quote]

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