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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our experience with SSAS mirrors many others. There are some real positives—especially in the LS, where a few genuinely dedicated teachers took a meaningful interest in our child. But beyond individual classrooms, the culture is the problem. Bullying exists, but the deeper issue is the absence of any culture that supports or encourages academic excellence. There is simply no expectation of rigor, and intellectual curiosity is not just undervalued but sometimes openly mocked.  (If you ask around to enough parents, these stories can get quite deflating.) In other words, the environment feels very academically lazy -- and I hate to say it, but that is reinforced by large chunks of the parent community (many of them "proud alums!") who seem to be totally ok with that.

This may sound harsh, but once we looked beyond SSAS, we were struck by how immensely different the academic standards and cultures were at the top schools in the DMV versus what SSSAS offers. Once we understood that, we left—and have been far happier (and our kid has been far more academically engaged) ever since.
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100% this. It’s the absence of a culture that values intellectual curiosity, and even a mocking of those who ask genuine, thoughtful questions rather than simply memorize and regurgitate what they are told. I can’t tell you how often teachers at the MS (according to my daughter and her friends) say “for our purposes…” and then oversimplify a topic rather than engaging the kids’ curiosity. Or they say, “you won’t need to know that for the test so don’t worry about it.” The takeaway is that you only learn for a test. Learning beyond what’s needed for a test is seen as foolish, or even annoying. And this is the attitude from teachers.

I did not see this attitude at the lower school, so it’s a real shock how different it is in the MS (it’s probably worse in 7th and 8th than in 6th, as the emphasis on tests increases the shutting down of curiosity and discussion). When kids struggle with the culture, it’s simply dismissed as “middle school is hard.” But this isn’t about classic middle school issues; it’s about the teachers and the admin not having the same values as those in the lower school.

I know several kids leave after MS and I’ve heard several have recently even left mid year (!!). When I heard complaints from other parents previously I always dismissed them and I wish I’d taken what I was being told more seriously. We are leaving after 8th, but I wish we’d left sooner.  [/quote]

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