Reply to Top private (Sidwell, GDS) versus top public (JKLM) for early years: what are the differences?

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Reply to "Top private (Sidwell, GDS) versus top public (JKLM) for early years: what are the differences? "

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was not thinking in "test scores' when I was asking for the potential differences in academic excellence. I was referring to knowledge, to learning, to cultural foundation. I was not saying academic excellence = happiness. I was saying your values are great, but I might have other ones, or slightly different ones, or.... Just let me judge "all by myself' (as my DC says) Don't patronize me. It is just a question that it is relevant for me when we talk about a school. Is it the only thing? Of course not! But please, if you know the answer just let me know. Thanks![/quote]

Sorry -- the relationship between posts 21:55 and 21:58 was unclear.  So if you don't mean scores and if you don't think previous discussions about differences in curriculum and pedagogy don't address the issue of academic excellence, then what kind of information are you looking for?  What would count as a satisfying answer to your question?[/quote]

Did private / public set a better foundation for sustainable -subsequent- learning? Did your DC love math when he/she was a 2nd grader? Did your DC read above grade, or at par in public / private? Did she / he developed, or further developed, a compelling enthusiasm for reading? Was she/he conscious about other cultures? Did he/she developed a passion for art, or music or butterflies (i.e. from beautiful colors to metamorphosis)? Did the school, in partnership with your family of course, help her/him to develop a deep love for learning, for getting to know, for exploring? Did he/she enjoyed learning? Did the school enhance / further developed his/her natural intellectual curiosity? Was she/he able to communicate -even briefly/modestly- in another language? Were you impressed about her/his knowledge in art, music, history..-you name it?
Thanks![/quote]

We think that Horace Mann is absolutely fantastic for the "early years," and it is and always will be a small school - the principal knows all of the students and most of the parents at least by sight.  We put our last child in preK (with the others we had waited until K), and it was fantastic.

They do a great job of getting the kids acclimated to a "big school" but they have sort of separate playgrounds for the older and younger kids.  The music program is wonderful, and the 1st and 2nd graders have a musical together, while the 3rd - 5th have a different one that the little kids attend.  Each year there are two notebusters sessions as extra curriculars which involve Mann, Janney, and I don't know who else that are also great musicals - performed at Wilson, and all three of our kids have done them.

One of the teachers this year is offering a creative writing program after school that is fantastic.  She is a graduate of Horace Mann, and when my first child came she was doing ELL and had a program called "culture club" where each week kids shared their culture - it is an extremely international community, and that is all the diversity we thought we needed and could handle at the time.  In retrospect, we probably should have tried for Yu Ying just for the sake of immersion, but at the time there were still serious questions about their academic quality when our kids were starting out.  Our kids loved school during the early years, art is another strong point, as is science - they have a separate science program.  There is also a garden that they tend to.

The early years are heavily play based, and IMO real homework does not start until 3rd grade - before that they only have reading logs.  In 3rd they start with real tests, real grades, each week alternating vocabulary and spelling, and each week they have to log on to the scholastic site and write a "current events" report.  So maybe this provides some concrete answers to your original questions.  We have never thought that our kids lacked for anything, and basically with the exception of a shiny new building, it might as well have been private school as far as we were concerned, and we know a lot of parents who went from our preschool to Beauvoir and it did not sound like there were any significant differences.  They have held our hand when we needed it, and are always very grateful for parent volunteers in any capacity - whether it is being a room parent or just going on the annual field trip to the pumpkin patch.  And there are a lot of active involved parents. I don't know whether you can be a room parent in private school, but it basically means that you can be a somewhat constant presence in your child's classroom, which is useful if your child is having a hard time one year for some reason.

They have a project over the summers called a "noticing book" with very helpful suggestions as to what to put in it, and in the back you are supposed to keep a  list of the books you have read.  We really value these now - because it basically recaps the summer in all its glory. The younger ones had mostly pictures with captions and  artwork, and as they get older they write entries and stories and all sorts of things under the sun.  The only problem for our kids was that school was just too easy.  We have solved that by sending them to Basis, and the two that are there are doing extremely well.  There is a lead teacher and an assistant in each class, the classes are fairly small, and they do break up into groups for reading etc.  They also allowed our math kids to get on to the math team a year earlier, and all of our specific requests about having teachers and keeping kids together have been honored although we have not made many.  They like to give families the same teacher for all the kids, which is kind of cool because you already have a rapport with the teacher and the kids can reassure each other...........  The teachers are for the most part fantastic.

Everyone says that all our kids come in well prepared and bla bla bla, but I do really think the school adds value, and allows the kids to ease into homework in a nice transition.  I do wish they would start some things like emphasizing spelling in 2nd grade, but you cannot have everything you want.   Now we have a shiny new building, but people had been going to the old Horace Mann where the paint was peeling for years.  You really cannot judge a book by its cover.  And the aftercare program has also been very good.  For family reasons, we had to put our two younger kids in after care which included the preKer and sometimes the days lasted til 6pm for both of them, and they also have great trips during spring and Christmas breaks.  So even though we are not really using the after care per se (now we use the before care so that my husband can get the kids to Basis on time), our younger one still looks forward to the trips on no school days so we have a drop in afternoon so that the kid qualifies.  Also, the special ed coordinator there is very good and they are fairly good about spotting developmental issues and learning differences, and they do not begrudge testing the kids at their own expense.  Really really have liked Horace Mann, as have all of our kids.  Last year our second grader was clocked at reading at a 5th grade level.  Most of the kids there are fairly advanced, and I think the test scores probably reflect that.  But we also like the fact that they do not do a lot of test prep - just sort of a "go team" attitude during the DC CAS.  Last year they had Tshirts that said something like Rock the DC CAS, and reminders about making sure our kids got enough sleep etc, but they definitely are not teaching to any test

Our only problem was that kids start leaving for private schools in 4th (our son lost his two best buds to STA), but then we leave after 4th so undoubtedly we are also part of the problem....[/quote]

Thanks PP for taking the time and doing the effort to write this post. Really helpful. Thanks for sharing your experience.[/quote]

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