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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hi all, we're moving to DC and will have a child start 1st grade (and a second soon eligible for PK) next Fall.  One challenge of a coast=to-coast move has been trying to assess the quality of a DC school beyond the ratings and statistics. Those metrics tell one side of the story but don't give us an idea of trends at the school or parent engagement, school leadership, etc. For instance, Bancroft in Mt. Pleasant has about 50% competency scores and is given the same Great Schools rating of 10 as Janney, which has almost 90% student competency on state tests. Bancroft is racially and economically very different than Janney (in a good way, in our opinion). And then there are a bunch of schools in between. How do we find other resources and info. about various public schools. Neighborhoods in DC we're open to moving to are Petworth, Shepherd Park, Takoma, Brookland and, if we can afford it, the northwest neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park where all the highly rated schools are (Lafayette, Murch, Janney, etc.) Just reaching out here to see if there's a different approach you can recommend or other resources that are available that could help us. Reading some of the prior posts and threads here has been helpful. Thanks so much![/quote]
The data that would be most telling is some metric of staying enrolled at the school.  For families that had options, did they stay or not.

We were enrolled at a Charter that had staff preference for enrollment.   I watched and questioned what the children of teachers were doing. Were the teachers playing the lottery?   Moving?  Enrolling their children to begin with?    Everyone needs to decide for themselves what works - I looked at this as an indicator.

There was data published 1 year for where children moved for schools / where students commuted.   It was interesting but I only saw it once - probably 5 years ago.[/quote]

Yes. I am sure Covid has wrought havoc with this metric like all the others, but it's a good one to check.

OP, I try to assess schools relative to their demographics.  Low test scores without a lot of at-risk kids or kids with special needs means I want to dig deeper and ask why.[/quote]

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