Reply to Is HB Woodlawn right for my son?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]The kids that do best there in terms of grades, AP scores, and elite college admissions are those that go from ATS directly to HB[/b]. Seems counterintuitive, but thats just my experience. Mine went to the neighborhood elem. and really floundered for a bit until he got to 9th grade and became more self-disciplined.

What people never talk about is how low performing/disruptive students are "mentored" into going to their home schools.[/quote]

I call horseshit on this.

Again, if you win ATS in ES, you should be ineligible to even apply for HBW. These are not people who are committed to an educational philosophy. These are people who are either chasing something these perceive to be a hot commodity or are fleeing their neighborhood school. Neither belongs at HBW. But more to the point, it's a fundamental question of fairness -- you should only be allowed to win one lottery.[/quote]

I'm not sure why there is always such a firestorm about ATS kids going on to HB.  It's not inconsistent for a child to be well suited to ATS at age 5 - or age 3 or 4 when you apply to the VPI lottery or the K lottery - and to later be well suited to HB at age 11.  Perhaps you can tell what kind of middle/high school student your 5 year old child will be, but I can't.  Some kids do well with a little bit of extra structure or discipline in the early elementary years, and the personal responsibility and discipline that ATS encourages might allow those students to thrive in a more permissive environment at HB in middle and high school.  Moreover, it seems to me that ATS isn't all that different from other Arlington elementary schools.  It's educational philosophy isn't really all that distinct.  HB, on the other hand, does seem to offer a quite different middle and high school experience as compared with the neighborhood middle and high schools.  I don't have any kids at HB, so I might be mistaken about that, of course.  (I do have kids at ATS.)

As for the "one lottery win per student" rule, the School Board could do this, but it has not.  The Board seems to want to preserve ATS and HB as truly County wide options for all.  That doesn't strike me as particularly unfair.  Why deprive a child who attends ATS, Montessori, Immersion, or Expeditionary Learning schools of the opportunity to try for HB - with the same odds as everyone else in their home school zone - if that is the best fit for middle and high school?  If there are a disproportionate number of ATS kids at HB (or kids from the other elementary choice schools) it's probably because a disproportionately large number enter the lottery.  When you have already opted out of the neighborhood schools once (the reason doesn't matter), you are more likely to do so again.

Good luck with your decision, OP.  I don't have any first hand experience with HB, but the kids I know who go there really love it.

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