Reply to Is it worth it to move from NW DC to Montgomery County for Public Schools

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Reply to "Is it worth it to move from NW DC to Montgomery County for Public Schools - for 5 year old?"

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[quote=Anonymous]We did exactly this.  I think the key things to consider are why and when.  IMO, if you have a kid at Eaton who doesn't need anything special in terms of education, then staying at Eaton might be fine.  On the other hand, if you have a kid who needs either accelerated learning opportunities or special education, then I would not stay in any DCPS school.

Both our children have unique educational needs.  There is really nothing in the DCPS system that can compare with the accelerated learning opportunities MCPS provides through the Highly Gifted Centers, the middle school magnets like Eastern and Takoma, and the HS magnet programs like Blair Math/Science and RM IB.  These programs are by application only and have a low admit rate.  So, it's not really worth moving for them unless your child is so advanced that you are fairly sure they would be accepted.  (We had a second grader reading at a MS level, so we knew there was nothing at Eaton and that acceptance to a magnet was highly likely.)

Also, special education in MCPS is better than DCPS.  I'm not saying it's great; we still had to spend a lot of time and money to get appropriate services, but it is unlikely that our DC would have gotten anything useful at all in DCPS.  For this child, we knew early on (like by age 4) that there was likely going to be a learning disability.

In terms of "when," I would say moving by K or 2nd would be the best depending on need.  If you think admittance to an HGC is likely, I would recommend switching in 2nd or 3rd to have time to get adjusted and to be in the MCPS system to be eligible to apply in the 3rd grade year.

For special education needs, these typically emerge in K or sometimes as late as 3rd when academic demands increase.  IME, I think it was a really good thing that our DC was already in MCPS by 1st grade.  3rd grade is late to begin trying to address a learning disability.

I should say that I had hoped to stay at Eaton when we began.  I love the neighborhood.  I love the families at the school.  But, the education offered just didn't work for us.  I was always sad about leaving because it struck me as a place that could have been a much better school, but because of obstruction by families, teachers and administrators, was just content with being OK.  I hope that is changed, but even if it has, I doubt that DCPS has changed enough overall to offer the kind of systemic interventions to meet the needs of the kinds of learners I have described above. [/quote]

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