Reply to Public/Charter School Lottery Experience

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You have until the end of March.

Diverse and also high-performing is hard to find in DC.  I would suggest you plan on paying for private preschool, and do some hard thinking about whether you care more about diversity, [b]or about the academic performance of kids who will likely alll have graduated from the school before your child starts Kindergarten.[/b][/quote]

[b]This poster makes it sound as if the current test scores of the school are basically irrelevant. [/b]This is only the case if you assume that the school is rapidly gentrifying and that the kids currently in PK will actually stay beyond that and raise test scores, which is probably not true for most schools.

Here is the reality of the lottery: it takes and increasing amount of very good luck to get into one of the popular charter schools, and it is impossible to get into any of the popular DCPS schools if you are out of boundary. For PK though, you are likely going to be fine at your neighborhood school or any number of less popular charters. BTDT. DCPS and DCPCS do PK well across the board. So do put some "safeties" on your list if you don't want to pay for private. For the higher grades, you may have higher expectations with regard to academics and peer group, and you may very well have to move or go private. Good luck.[/quote]

I posted at 12:16. I actually don't think that the current test scores of the school are relevant to where OP sends her child for PK3. I sent my child to PK3 at our neighborhood school that had terrible test scores. She had a great ECE experience with a lot of support and enrichment. She is currently entering 3rd grade, when testing starts, and the test scores of the school have gone up significantly since we started - the school certainly doesn't have the best test scores in the city, but they're much better than they used to be. I'm confident that she is receiving a good education at her school, which she loves, despite the reality that many of her peers are struggling. Her teachers have always been able to provide support and challenge work for her when she is ready for it.

A lot can change in 5 years, and [b]testing data is not a good gauge of the experiences of children in non-testing grades.[/b][/quote]

PP you are responding to and I certainly agree with that, which is why I said OP will be fine at pretty much any school for PK. I just took issue with the insinuation that current test scores are irrelevant for assessing whether the school will likely be a good long-term option. It's great that you feel that your school has improved a lot in five years, but five years is not going to make a fundamental difference for most schools, because schools tend to evolve slowly. So what I'm saying is that OP doesn't need to worry about test scores for PK, but she should have backup plans for the long run if the school in its current state doesn't seem to meet her expectations and she doesn't get very lucky in the lottery.[/quote]

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