Reply to Waitlisted for K at Two Rivers 4th -- Q for current families and waitlist gurus

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Reply to "Waitlisted for K at Two Rivers 4th -- Q for current families and waitlist gurus"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Run as fast as you can from Two Rivers. Like a PP said, they did a piss poor job of reopening last year, but their poor COVID response just exposed the cracks that were already there. This year they added extra classrooms in each grade to allow for strict adherence to social distancing (desks are taped off and kids are not allowed to go near each other). While smaller classrooms sound like a positive change, they hired with people who are not certified to teach to fill those lead teaching spots (had only been teachers’ aids before.) While DCPS second graders are learning multiplication, 2nd graders at TR are still doing basic addition and subtraction. The school will only get worse as more unhappy families and qualified teachers leave. We are at a DCPS school now and the difference is night and day. [/quote]

I can say with absolute certainty that almost everything in this post is patently false. Like to a laughable degree. [/quote]

Patently false? Not in our experience. To the OP--I think an offer at the end of the summer could benefit you, as the PARCC scores will be out by that point and TR4 could lose its Tier 1 status (and TRY could even slip from a 2, which isn't out of the realm of possibility). While these scores don't tell the entire picture, of course, it will shed light on the whether the academic rigor of the school has slipped.

I think you are probably fine in PK-1 grade at TR4--I just wouldn't assume that it will suit your child's needs for the long haul. We're grateful and relieved to be leaving before MS. Granted, it's probably natural to outgrow a school and environment; what you prioritize in early elementary just doesn't seem that imperative as the kids get older. Specifically, the focus on community and social/emotional growth seems to be at the expense of core and rigorous academics. That resonated more in PK, K, 1, but now that my child is nearing middle school...it seems cliched and tired. In addition, based on what I'm hearing from my child, discipline and bullying seem to be a big problem that the teachers/staff are struggling to control. And much has been written about the poor COVID response, all of which I agree with...so yeah, I'd think hard about L-T unless you are only going to be at TR for a few years. 
 [/quote]

[b]I really wish people could take the emotion out of their responses. This feels so very personal when it ought not be.[/b] The absurdity of TRY going to Tier 2 is just dumb. Especially for anyone that understands the Tier system is as much about growth as actual scores, so the fact that TRY moved to Tier 2 makes it MORE likely, not less, to return to Tier 1 based on improved growth. It is also silly to point to PARCC scores as a measure of anything when the 4th graders this year will never have taken PARCC because of COVID so the scores are going to be terrible across the board in DC.

What bothers me about PP's post is that if you remove the anger and emotion from the first part I think there's a lot of merit on some of the observations in the 2nd paragraph. I agree completely that the school's focus on "social and emotional learning" is badly misapplied in upper ES. I agree that there are behavioral and classroom management issues that the school seems unwilling or unable to solve for and that the upper ES teachers seem just overmatched by the 4th and 5th graders. I agree that core academics and rigor appear to have no central place at TR. They do seem to teach to the low end of the mean and leave higher performing kids out in the cold to their own devices (literally - they punt them to computers for IXL or other programs and never bother to check if the learning sticks). TR was an amazing place to be for lower ES and did not excel in upper ES.

I'd note also that based on conversations with parents at other schools the issues in upper ES (classroom management, academic rigor, differentiation) are very much the same. But I don't know because none of my kids ever attended other schools.   [/quote]

NP. So let's level set, this is an anonymous forum. Of course emotion will infuse nearly every post. And why not get emotional about your child(ren)'s education? What is more personal?
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