Reply to DC School Lottery 25/26 & Best Schools in DC

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]With the lottery now open, I just wanted to see where some people are considering placing their children for the 25/26 school year. Anyone have any insight on Apple Tree: Waterfront, Lee Montessori, Global Citizens, Creative Minds, Maury, and Inspired Teaching?[/quote]

Have you looked into Stokes East End?  [/quote]

Yes, I’ve looked into it, but I didn’t like that their test scores are lower than the Brookland Campus. [/quote]

You seem very focused on test scores. I could go through the various reasons they're important and unimportant, but... you're not going to be happy at VN long term. VN's test scores are bad. They're bad overall and they're bad for demographics. They're bad for achievement and they're bad for growth. Check out the recent DC Report Card for Van Ness: https://schoolreportcard.dc.gov/lea/1/school/331/report. Van Ness is in the bottom 1/3rd of schools in the city.

Now, Van Ness' ECE scores are fine. You'll have a totally fine experience there for ECE. Some people might be fine with VN throughout ES. I don't think you will be if you're looking up test scores and willing to commute halfway across the city for better ones.[/quote]

NP. I disagree with this if you are comparing a school like Stoke EE with Van Ness. Their test scores are lower for different reasons. Stokes has a much lower at risk population (11% to Van Ness 46%) which raises questions about why Stokes EE isn't doing better with fewer students at risk. Stokes is also an immersion charter, that comes with benefits and challenges, OP should be aware of them. Stokes EE math scores are concerning to me and I question whether some of that is due to the focus on language immersion becomes some (not all) immersion programs can giver short shrift to core academics due to the structure of immersion programming.

Stokes EE has also had teacher turnover issues in recent years. Not just year to year -- they have had a serious issue with teachers leaving midyear. This has several causes, including lower pay, the need to find teachers with language skills so hiring from a smaller pool, and possibly issues with administration. Van Ness has a more consistent teaching staff, which is true of many DCPS schools because their staff belong to the teachers union which guarantees extremely competitive pay and good benefits, so teachers do tend to stay put.

Will also note that DCPS's ECE program tends to have more highly educated teachers because the vast majority have masters degrees in ECE. This is not true at Stokes, though their ECE teachers have dual language ability. So there is a trade off. But you should at least know what it is going in.

Finally, Van Ness is a short walk through a nice neighborhood for OP. Stokes EE is a car commute across the river -- not insanely far away but not close either.

There still could be reasons to preference Stokes EE over Van Ness -- a strong preference for dual language, access to DCI for MS and HS (if it holds up), desiring a smaller school, etc. But it's also perfectly reasonable to be okay with lower test scores at a nearby neighborhood school with a fantastic ECE program and dedicated longterm staff over a charter with some staffing issues, a dual immersion model you might not be totally bought into, and a commute that is likely 2-4x as long.

The TLDR here is that I look more critically at the test scores of a charter I have to commute a long distance to and that has a unique curriculum than I do the test scores of my IB DCPS, especially if that charter has a low at risk percentage. Those test scores are telling me something different than the test scores at my IB.[/quote]

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