Reply to Do parents choose Latin/BASIS over Deal/J-R?

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Reply to "Do parents choose Latin/BASIS over Deal/J-R?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yes, but the fact remains that these aren't great options as compared to the best options in the near burbs, not even close.

Our family keeps in close touch with friends who moved from Cap Hill to MoCo, Arlington and Fairfax for schools. We also visit their kids' schools now and again for sporting events, competitions, high school musicals and the like.

It's clear to me that none of our public high school options in the District--BASIS, Latin, DCI, Walls, J-R--can touch these suburban programs on any level. Top suburban schools might as well be on a different planet.  If you never tour suburban schools and aren't familiar with their offerings, this fact may be lost on you. I'm particularly jealous of honors middle school classes across the board in Arlington and Fairfax.

I've been shown printouts from suburban high schools listing more than 100 serious sounding electives any student can take. None of you ask yourselves how BASIS, Latin, DCI, J-R and Walls compare because....moving to the burbs for high school is a fate worse than death or what?[/quote]

Whoever wrote this knows nothing about J-R.[/quote]

I don’t doubt some suburban schools have more electives…but that’s a small consideration in selecting a high school.

For kids taking rigorous, 10+ AP schedules plus PE, art and music requirements…there aren’t many slots left for electives.  There are really no slots if you are in a JR academy like engineering as you are essentially taking those classes as electives.

[/quote]
This post makes no sense. The suburbs seldom have art or music requirements in HS, and not much in the way of PE/Health either. No student needs to take 10 AP classes anywhere, no matter how ambitious they may be on the college admissions front. In the burbs, students can often meet PE requirements on-line or over summers. The burbs don't just offer dozens of serious electives, but feeder middle schools with strong academics/honors classes, better trained teachers overall, more STEM classes, more and languages (e.g. HS Russian, Korean, Japanese, Hebrew, Portuguese, Hindi etc). They also offer high-performing IB Diploma programs that don't operate as IB for all like at DCI. The burbs offer far richer opportunities for a kid to shine in running with their interests, without parents have to pay out of pocket.

We didn't make it through Deal. The teaching was far too uneven, most classes weren't hard enough, and the building was much too chaotic. We got into BASIS and, on close inspection, weren't impressed.  If you don't want to move to the burbs, fine, but you're not going to convince me that public schools are....better here.  [/quote]

Wow, it’s amazing that your kid managed to start at Deal and transfer to BASIS, considering how BASIS never admits anyone after 5th grade, and Deal doesn’t start until 6th. [/quote]

That's not what PP claimed. They must have lotteried into BASIS from the Deal district for 5th grade but didn't take the spot. Same for us, we considered BASIS because our eldest was bored in a Deal feeder, but the building was just too awful. We're at a parochial school for middle school, a stretch for us financially, hoping for Walls. [/quote]

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