Reply to MoCo vs Nova?

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "MoCo vs Nova?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]

OP - If your children are middle school or older, then you need to also be considering the aspect that Virginia has a much wider range of strong state universities across all disciplines for high school graduates to consider with in-state tuition.  This can be an important factor if graduate or professional school is likely in the picture, and you would like to help them avoid horrendous graduate school debt.   We have daughters in both NOVA and MOCO and one issue is that there seems to not only be a "dumbing down" of the high school curriculum by having "everybody" in the same class with supposed differentiation of work to some degree.  But at least in the magnets in middle school in MOCO, one can retake a test for a higher grade even if it is a low A, which is crazy.   In Arlington Public Schools, there seems to be little or no acknowledgement of the efforts of the outstanding ES students when they do perform exceedingly well.  I do hear very good things about high school in MOCO that your child with a learning disability or mild Autism social skills deficits can still find their "own tribe."  From general experience, besides looking at grade inflation or deflation, it is important to learn about the activities that interest your child as an individual and to see how these might be met in school activities and sports OR in community activities outside of school.  So that if one does find school hard academically and or socially, you have had other options for one to develop interests and friendships as through a strong church youth program, a community rec. sports program, a community program such as Scouting, theater group etc.  Also, in middle school starting an activity that would carry over into high school can help one have at least a circle of general friends with the same interest such as being a member of band, orchestra, choir, a sports team (management possibly) or a service group.  If the MS or HS student can feel good about himself/herself in some framework, there is a very good chance the school piece will fall into place over time.    Make sure if your child needs supportive services that you do not let them just be dropped going up to middle school as it is an entirely different game moving among classes and learning to handle different schedule of classes with independent and group work.  And middle school is not too late to request identification for a 504 or IEP because again what one was able to hold together in elementary school with some challenges may not be true in the new environment.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics