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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We’ve only been at the school 1 year so some will say give it time, but overall we had a good experience with the school and community this year, and I consider myself a fairly involved parent. Don’t get me wrong I’ve had a few issues with the school but nothing super alarming. I disagree with the comments about curriculum- before we enrolled I spoke with families from other schools including Sidwell, and they said the strong top-down curriculum was actually one of the advantages of BVR over Sidwell. Unfortunately there is uneven teacher quality at every school- that’s just part of private school in a high COL city where good teachers are in short demand. But BVR’s top-down curriculum ensures all the classes are more or less getting the same instruction. 
My main gripe with the community is actually that I find them under-engaged with the school and their kid. We’re not super rich and I felt like I didn’t fit in with the superstar career execs busy with their high-powered DC social lives and nannies round the clock doing pickups and play dates. But I found them nice enough and relatively inclusive even though I definitely don’t fit in. I wouldn’t plan on making friends there as I have at other schools. I have a feeling as we get older we are going to have to deal with entitled kids in our peer group, but that’s a hazard of private school in NW DC (and maybe some publics as well).
I found the admin staff including HOS to be wonderfully engaging and responsive. They know your child by name and were very responsive on the occasion I raised an issue. I thought there was a nice balance of community and parent events as well. [/quote]

What do you mean by top down curriculum? Can you please explain [/quote]
Meaning the class curriculum is set school-wide per grade to meet overall objectives, not by the individual teachers. It seems like the individual teachers have very little control over what they’re doing in the class. All four classes use the same materials, more or less do the same activities each week, progress at the same rate. Whereas when I was comparing to Sidwell, it seemed like at Sidwell there was a more open curriculum and the individual teachers had more control over what activities and pace the kids were learning at. At first I thought giving that teacher more flexibility would be better, but Sidwell parents told me it could also be problematic if you had a weaker teacher. Also I spoke with several Beauvoir teachers who told me they genuinely like the curriculum. I don’t know who actually builds the curriculum and how that process works, but they do seem to dedicate a lot of resources to professional development.

I will add BVR also has a ton of additional resource teachers, so if an individual student is not keeping up with the pace of the overall class, that child is typically given individual support so the whole class can keep moving. [/quote]

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