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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Is Lake Wobegon on the Janney grounds?[/quote]

This definitely made me smile, although the OP will have no idea what we're talking about with all of these inside jokes.

OP, here's a serious answer for you:

Fairfax County, VA has a superb school system with lots of G&T programs in its schools at all grade levels, really good, rigorous, well-funded ones. Some of the best in the nation. And one of its magnet HSs is #4 in the entire country among public schools. Fairfax is a bit of a commute into DC proper, but depends where exactly.

Montgomery County, MD, and Arlington County, VA, also have excellent academics. For G&T the rank is probably Fairfax first, maybe followed by MoCo then Arlington, but of course a lot of parents would dispute that ranking. Prince George's county is more mixed - it's better toward the western part (where it borders MoCo). Alexandria Co is also more mixed.

What is not in dispute is that the DC school system is one of the worst in the nation, or the absolute worst, depending on the measures. Lots of people love the urban lifestyle and don't want to leave DC and so people work very hard to find the best thing for their kids. For example charters.

But charters are pure lottery in DC, no matter the focus. They can say they are a G&T charter or a special needs charter or whatever but the fact is they can't do any entrance exams or anything. They just get randomly assigned. And you have about a 1%-5% chance of getting into the most popular ones.

Then there are some good public elementary schools, mostly west of Rock Creek Park. People refer to them on this forum by an acronym "JKLM" etc (Janney, Key, Lafayette, Mann... there are a few others). But they don't have true G&T programs (granted they have some smart kids and involved parents), and anyway you only have 1 year of ES left and the best MS (Deal) and HS (Wilson) in the city are up and coming but still not as strong compared with say Fairfax.

Basically, if you are serious about G&T for your kid, move to Fairfax and deal with the commute. If you stay in DC, be realistic about your very limited options. Especially at grade 4, the rubber really hits the road in DC with MS and HS.

Not trying to insult parents who choose to stay in the District here - we're among them - just trying to give the honest goods to the OP.

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