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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I was looking forward to our neighborhood school so our kids could have a group of friends to run around with. My spouse was more keen on private. Then I started hearing stories from parents of kids a year or two ahead of us. Regimented butts in seats, learning to count with an iPad app, teachers spending the majority of their time with the ESL population, minimal outdoor time. [/quote]

My kids are in public for elementary and our plan is to switch to private for middle onward. (That was also the max we could afford.) Kids have had a great experience socially, and I also love the community, but I think that's also a byproduct of our school being on the smaller end for DCPS. There's only 2-3 classes per grade, most friends are walking distance, it's great. But we also know families at much bigger schools who don't have that experience at all.

Our ES (and maybe DCPS generally) does a good job with the fundamentals. The current math and reading curriculum have really clicked for my kids. That said, just the daily classroom experience, especially in the upper grades, is ... not good. My kids have had some wonderful, driven teachers, but they have big classes and enormous pressure to close achievement gaps. So kids who are doing decent-to-great tend to get left to their own devices. My oldest spends a lot of time on the chromebook doing educational apps that are basically video games. The class has read one book, doesn't have science, doesn't have foreign language, etc. We're at a SEM school, and the kids love that program, but it's one teacher trying to serve the entire school. [/quote]

We’re in Arlington so it’s an APS school. About 1/3 of the elementary class population is learning English as a second language and it sounds like that’s where most of the teacher’s time is going (which, frankly, is understandable).

Our big hope is that private will preserve our kids’ curiosity, love of school and joy of learning for longer. The nuts and bolts of what they’re studying when is less important to us than that. [/quote]

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