Reply to Positive Momentum in Alexandria?

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[quote=Anonymous]We were at Burgundy, but not for long.  Academically it was not at all strong.  We know ex-Burgundy parents whose children did well at Burgundy, but then had real academic problems at both public and private schools.  From what we saw, "demonstrated mastery" on the Burgundy scale barely translated to a B minus on the public school scale.  One teacher would regularly lose control and chuck pencils at the children.  The first-name-basis barely masked a really hostile tone that we thought permeated the entire school.

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I really don't understand the incessant criticism of the Alexandria City public system.

We enrolled our child at two very well-known, and I think highly-regarded, private schools. We experienced invasive parents, truly weak academics, and Lord Of The Flies behavior even among the younger kids. We found private school heads to be behaviorally similar to legal recruiters.

We yanked our daughter out, in disgust, and sent her to an ACPS school (Charles Barrett) starting in third grade. It has been more wonderful than I imagined any school could be, especially once her very patient third grade teacher got her up to speed in math after very weak prior instruction. We know several private-school refugees in the ACPS system. We've toured GW, we know many GW parents and kids, and we've been to TC repeatedly. We know many recent grads, all of who have done genuinely well. The ACPS that has been described in these messages is completely unknown to us.

[b]We've heard only a few real ACPS horror stories, and they were molehills compared to what we've directly observed at private schools. And the vast majority of the area private schools basically do not accommodate more academically advanced students[/b].

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This says more about the poor quality of the privates in Alexandria than it does about ACPS, although I have def. heard good things about Barrett (which is the overflow school for Tucker and other schools that are getting too crowded now).

The issue in ACPS really isn't the elementaries anyway. It's the middle schools.

The[b] most popular privates (SSSA, Alexandria Country Day, Burgundy Farms, Browne, Ireton, Blessed Sac, Grace Episcopal, etc.) generally are a notch or three below the quality of comparable privates in the DC area.[/quote][/b]

what evidence do you have to support this statement?[/quote]

Purely anecdotal and based on perceptions. SSSA and Country Day aren't particularly selective. Burgundy Farms has a great experiential philosophy but is perceived to be academically week. The Catholics aren't particularly stellar. They're just fine, but nothing to write home about the way the more elite schools in this area are.[/quote]

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