Reply to ATS

Forum Index » VA Public Schools other than FCPS

Reply to "ATS"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How does ATS compare to Sidwell/GDS/Beauvoir/Potomac/Maret?

You’re kidding yourselves if you think you’ve got some special school. So it’s better than all of the S Arlington elementaries… So what?[/quote]

I have looked at all of those and I am paying very close attention to education, although I am not Asian.

[b]For lower Elementary I would rather have ATS over any of those[/b].

For MS and HS, my answer would be different. Then, I would prefer the academics at StA/NCS, Sidwell, GDS, or Potomac. [/quote]

Why? Larger class sizes and mediocre curriculum?d.[/quote]

Most of the privates you mentioned do have smaller class sizes and more attention, but they also (as of now - 2024) have lower quality lower elementary curricula.

For example, most (possibly all) of those privates are still teaching reading using whole language/balanced literacy, teaching 3-cueing, and using Lucy Calkins and/or Fountas & Pinnell.  That approach is a very widely discredited educational fad, but the privates are clinging to it.  Please go read the “Sold a Story” podcast about why this is seriously suboptimal.  APS used to do the same thing, in all fairness, but threat of a lawsuit from the NAACP (recently) caused APS to shift to a “Science of Reading” curriculum.  In APS, unlike say FCPS or ACPS or LCPS, this has been integrated with the Core Knowledge curriculum (which is very different from and unrelated to the “Common Core” watered down curriculum silliness), so kids reading has been integrated with other important early learning.

On the math front, the privates like to talk about how they are using so-called “Singapore Math”, but I used to live in Singapore and what the privates actually use (“Math in Focus” et alia) is very far from being Singapore math.  In fairness, those curricula often are marketed/sold to schools as being Singapore math, but that is just good marketing and salesmanship by the publishers.  I think the privates mentioned do a much better job than ATS/APS in MS and US, much more rigor in private, but for lower elementary the APS curriculum of ATS is more effective.  Separately, most (not all) of the top math students in any public or private HS have had at least some outside supplementing.  This might be tutoring at home from a parent at NIH or NIST, supplements at a math center, 1:1 tutoring afterschool, or whatnot.  So by HS it is very difficult, well nigh impossible, to tease out why a particular student is good in math — or which school really has better math instruction — or which uses better curriculum materials.   Some of those privates use a “flipped classroom” approach, modeled on PEA’s Harkness, and that approach often works well for a top math student but much less well for other math students (and not all are top math students at any school).

The compelling reason to pick a private for lower elementary - for many people, not all -  turns out to be admissions lotteries. All of the good privates - and also ATS - have many more applicants than spaces.  For an unhooked applicant (e.g. no sibling preference), getting in to any of these is like a lottery.  The difference is that if attending a private K-12, one is not required to do another lottery until college.  By contrast, ATS is only elementary, and afterwards one either has to attend an APS public MS/HS or apply to private (which is much more competitive admissions lottery then than it was applying at K).  [/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