Reply to Moving to DC for 4th Grade

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm interviewing for two jobs in DC, located in Dupont Circle and Navy Yard, after living elsewhere for 8 years. My DC will be in 4th grade next year, and while getting either job is not assured, I want to be thinking ahead with the lottery coming up. I own a house on the eastern edge of Kingman Park, zoned for Miner. And I'm a single parent, so there's no one else to help get DC to and from school each day.

I know DCPS does not offer gifted programming, which DC currently receives, so I'm looking for input on schools to consider that there is a realistic shot of getting a lottery seat with at least some academic peers. I'm not interested in Montessori or immersion. I know Brent is in a swing space that isn't ideal from the Hill, and that they also lose a ton of kids at the upper grades. Maury is basically impossible to get into in any grade. Two Rivers fell off a cliff in the years I've been gone. Are there other schools I should be considering beyond the list below, with an eye towards reducing commute yet still having a sizable enough cohort of high achieving kids?

Ludlow-Taylor
Payne
John Francis (less than ideal if I get the Navy Yard job, but really convenient for Dupont)
Watkins
JO Wilson
Chisholm
Thomson (also less than ideal for a Navy Yard job, okay for Dupont)

The only charter that seemed to fit my criteria was Friendship Chamberlain. The other higher achieving charters are mostly language immersion and/or an inconvenient commute. Am I missing any?

And before anyone asks, no, moving to another part of the Hill, let alone Ward 3, isn't really an option. I'm loathe to give up the sub-3% interest rate, and while I would make a decent amount of money selling, it's not enough to offset how much prices have gone up and the much higher interest rates.[/quote]

The lack of gifted programming does kind of stink. Do whatever works for 4th and then try for Latin or BASIS or DCI.

Our path was solved by going to BASIS (which has flaws, but at least they are challenged and learn a lot and have lots of gifted peers) and doing CTY in the summers (also popular with BASIS students).

[/quote]

Basis isn’t great but better than other offerings. Take a look at some high school threads to see why. [/quote]

BASIS seems to only work for a very specific kind of kid. The school has a huge amount of turnover among students, and goes very deep into its waitlist. Latin is basically the opposite. They take very few kids and almost no one turns then down or leaves. [/quote]

Because of lack of rigor and social promotion.[/quote]

It's been wild to see just how rigorous BASIS is. Like 99th percentile aptitude students who would easily by straight A students at a DCPS school getting Fs on tests. It's a GAUNTLET and it's not for everyone. (Though my kid loves it!)[/quote]

This is why people hate the BASIS boosters on here. Because you can't just say "BASIS has been great for my kid -- they've really responded well to the test-focused approach and high intensity. But kids learn different ways and maybe other kids do better with Latin's more holistic approach, or the IB programming." Instead Latin is described as lacking rigor and engaging in social promotion (totally unfounded accusations, by the way) and anyone who doesn't enjoy BASIS's approach simply can't handle it, likely because they aren't smart and hard working enough.

The lack of nuance and insistence on putting down other schools ([b]or even just kids or families who want something other than the BASIS approach[/b]) is exhausting. It's not just that you bring BASIS up incessantly, it's that you bring it up and then insist on "winning" an argument.

It is not a good advertisement for the school, and it's especially not a good advertisement for you, as a person. BASIS actually sounds like it could be a good fit for my kid, but I find this attitude so off-putting that I sometimes wonder if it would be a good fit for our family, because I do not want to be around people like this for the next 7 years.[/quote]

I'm not sure who you are responding to. But it's hard to imagine anyone getting to having middle school aged children and still being judgemental about schools. We chose BASIS but have very good friends at all kinds of other schools (Latin, DCI, Francis, Oyster adams, SH, Deal, privates, ITS). I can't imagine judging each other -- we are all doing the best we can. In my real world, there is zero judgement and lots of friendship. And living in DC for years means making friends in lots of circumstances.

DCUM is different, of course.[/quote]

+1 
To each their own - and it sounds like the original poster has left the chat anyway, so we are just bickering among ourselves. Believe it or not, it is possible to believe the choices you made were perfect/right for your kid/family, while at the same time there are other families happy with choices that are different than yours. If it makes people feel better to make assumptions about schools like Stuart Hobson or Eliot Hine that is fine, but for every anecdote of "I know this family who left the school for xyz reason", I could respond with dozens of anecdotes of kids who have left many of the 'sought after' schools for what felt like good reasons to their family.
And no, we don't homeschool our kids to supplement. They go to school, do the work in class, do the homework, and when we are at home as a family, they read books and magazines, experience different places/museums/talk about what's going on in the world. I don't consider that homeschooling, just parenting?[/quote]

It is really relative but maybe you dint have a high performing kid who needs to be challenged.  Or maybe you are OK with your child not learning to their full potential.  What objective data do you have that you don’t need to supplement?  Have you looked at what kids are learning at other schools?

I will tell you that you have to supplement to make up for the deficits at SH.  I say this coming from a tutori that helps kids at all the schools we talk about here EOTP.  The kids at SH are lacking lots of content knowledge compared to other kids.[/quote]

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