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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thank you for the thoughtful responses. I do not at this moment have a favorite, but one thing that I liked about GDS is the small class size and teacher ratio. Doesn’t that mean more individual attention? Sidwell has up to 20 kids in a class in elementary with one teacher (this was said twice during admissions process). I don’t know how many kids are in the GDS classrooms, but the website says the teacher student ratio is 6:1. 
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Did something change? When my child was in lower school at Sidwell, there were 2 teachers per class. [/quote]

Yes. It has changed. It might revert after covid, but it's been like this for awhile[/quote]

22 kids in a class is the same as public school. One of the reasons we want to make the switch (and I'd wager a lot of parents want to) is so DC has a smaller class size with more teacher engagement. 22 kids, really??[/quote]

Again…yes, really. [/quote]

The way the schedules work, and the kids are split up, there are almost never 22 kids in a classroom with a single teacher.

In the lower school, there are two teachers in every room.
In the middle school, they split up, so half the room goes to language, art or science, while the other half does english or history or math, and then they all flip.
In the upper school, the classes are all small either labs, or discussion for the humanities.[/quote]

This is at GDS or Sidwell?[/quote]

Must be Sidwell. [/quote]
That’s not how Sidwell MS works. Ask me how I know. [/quote]

It isn’t GDS either for MS or IS or whatever you want to call it and the LS classes at GdS have 15-16 students per 1 teacher only.  [/quote]

So GDS caps at 16?[/quote]

16:1 now instead of 20-22:2 full time, experienced teachers for Pk-2 for sure. I think things get to bigger class sizes per single teacher after 2nd grade.?.

Sometimes an aide, sometimes not. Sometimes a specialist works with a small group, sometimes not. Certainly not daily. 
I no longer know if they split the class half science / half music and then flip. I think the whole 16-22 kids go.

Every single grade year the class size and the grade size gets slightly larger. And in a couple years it can also get larger if the community terms allow for final expansion numbers.

I’d email them and get the data for each grade and each subject. If you’re scared to then wait until you’re admitted. Then it will matter. As it should. [/quote]

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