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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The same question was asked on the PG school forums, I am copying and pasting my replies from there -http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/552016.page

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I don't live in PG county but a similar area in VA and I will answer the original question you posed.

Elementary schools that are rated low on Great Schools are not going to be great. BTDT.

What you think you do and do not want right now will change dramatically once your child is in school and is being effected by their environment both academically and socially.

Low rated schools are focused on academics but they are focused on getting the lowest performing kids up to average. This is where they have to put the bulk of their resources.

Behavior problems are very real and impact the classroom and learning.

I learned the hard way that parental involvement meant us as parents do quite a bit of extra work at home to either keep my child interested in school or to fill in the gaps of what they did not have time to teach. Lots of school events and an active PTA do not make up for the academic environment. They are nice to haves and it makes you as a parent feel good but they have minimal impact on the classroom experience.

if you are going to need aftercare, make sure to drop by randomly at a couple different times and check it out.

The same kids who have behavior issues during the day in the classroom are the same kids with behavior issues in aftercare. Add to that aftercare is not staffed usually be teachers and the ratio is high - 20 kids or more (depends on the regs in your area) to 1 adult.

Even if you have afterschool clubs/classes run by vendors, it's not much better. In fact, my kid was in those as well at her school and they were mostly a disaster because the adults running them just didn't have the skills needed to deal with kids with difficult behavior issues, the kids themselves were wore out with focusing on school so had little left to pay attention during the class, and the ratios were also high. 
[/quote]

PP, what did you end up doing? Did you move, or switch to private? How was the transition (academically and socially)?

Thanks for your response![/quote]

Switched to private, the transition was bumpy the first year but things smoothed out the next year and we will stick with private.[/quote]

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