Reply to South Arlington elementary school boundary adjustments 2019

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]NP here who lives in one of the SFH neighborhoods zoned for Barcroft (but has a child at a choice school).  Does it still seem likely that the Barcroft year-round calendar will be changed in the near future?  I know that some of my neighbors with kids at Barcroft (yes, some neighbors do send their kids to Barcroft) more or less assumed that the year-round calendar would be abandoned soon. They got the sense that the new principal was not fully committed to the modified calendar.  But it was a while ago that I had those conversations, and I haven't heard much about the calendar - one way or the other - since then.  Is doing away with the modified calendar still on the table?

For what it's worth, I like the calendar.  It's much more like the school calendar I grew up with (in Europe) than the traditional American school calendar is.  I think it's a superior calendar (and would be even better if adopted across the board in APS). When DC was nearing kindergarten and we were considering schools, I viewed the Barcroft calendar as a plus for that school.  But it wasn't a big enough draw to make up for the fact that our choice options were higher performing schools.

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This. I also like the sound of the calendar. It's a lot more like the private school I went to, that followed a particular schooling style - can't remember the name. We had shorter summers, but longer fall and spring breaks. We had seminars, much like the intercessions. For me, it's the test scores - a school like this should be doing great, but the test scores give me pause. I think the high level of English learners is part of it, though when you look at their scores, I think they are doing a good job getting caught up, but it seems like the rest of the students suffer.[/quote]

There's no tracking. The most able students are running on 3 cylinders instead of being challenged every day.[/quote]

My experience, in a title 1 school with many ESL students, is that my child actually gets more support.  There are nearly always extra adults in the class room and the class works in small groups.  Sometimes break-outs are done among an entire grade, sometimes just in the classroom.  My child  interacts with numerous staff throughout the day in addition to her teacher and reports a lot of one-on-one attention.  They also have a "young scholars" program for enrichment that starts pretty  young.   This is lower elementary.   Both of her classes so far have had only 19 or 20 kids.  She is definitely challenged and learning.  To me a supportive environment is one of the most important keys to academic success.

This is true across APS, no tracking. I don't know what happens in the classroom at Barcroft, but at other schools they are finding ways to keep the "quicker" students interested without tracking them. If that isn't happening at Barcroft, and I am not saying that it isn't (I only have outdated information about the school at this point), they need to tap into schools with similar demographics that are getting better results and figure out how/why. [/quote][/quote]

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