Reply to Elementary School hopping and How much Choice is too much?

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Reply to "Elementary School hopping and How much Choice is too much?"

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[quote=Anonymous]It seems to me what the JKLM vs. Lower NW and several other threads have in common is that some people object to 'school hopping', where parents 'trade-up' from year to year as they lottery into a better school or get into K in their own decent in-boundary DCPS.

I think limited school hopping is fine, especially when it can be justified as a better match or more suitable school for the student, but a lot of this churn is simply because parents are fickle and somehow believe the grass is greener.  They somehow believe that by changing schools they're adding value to their child's education when in fact they're just slowing them down.  And the people who are trading up every year are real disruptors.

From my experience, our DC's PK classes have seen 5 or 6 of the 15 leave every year to be replaced by new students. By the time we got to 1st we had only 4 kids left (out of 24) from the original group, and skills-wise all 4 are near the top of the class.  With 80% of the school year done, the newcomers were still catching up and the classroom has had to deal with several disruptive students who didn't go through formal PK (instead coming from some of DC's daycare factories - which also get DCPS monies).  We got through that and the classrooms operate great now. Later grades saw some turnover, but things look more solid now. Hopefully the churn is done.

So my unsolicited advice is this: If you're sure the school you'd like to switch to is better for your kid, then GO, but if you have doubts, stay where you are. The grass is rarely greener, and you might be surprised by how things work out.[/quote]

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