Reply to Lee Montessori open slots for 1st and 2nd

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Lee is still going through its PK3 WL too. A friend just turned down a spot (but only because she got an offer for another nearby charter she wanted at the same time).[/quote]

The K waitlist started moving late August/early September but has stopped (both campuses). As a K parent, now I'm curious if there is more likely to be space next year for 1st given this situation. Some of the criticism worries me, but also my kid already knows how to read and loves math so it might not apply in our situation.[/quote]

I wonder if they'll just reduce the number of classrooms.

The question becomes, do you want your reading and math-doing child to be an outlier in their classroom, academically speaking?  And are you willing to waive this stuff away as a feature of Montessori, or does it say something about the quality of the teaching?  Because there are other Montessori schools that don't have test scores quite so bad.[/quote]

What makes you think that PP’s child won’t be an outlier in their underperforming IB?[/quote]

There's no need to go to an underperforming IB, then.  There are plenty of other neighborhood schools and charters that aren't too hard to get into for lower elementary grades.

Being an outlier in Montessori can be great when you're one of the youngest kids in the classroom, but to be an academically advanced 3rd grader in a room of mostly below grade level 1st and 2nd graders is... well, you'd have to really really love Montessori to be okay with that.[/quote]

PP here and right now we are at our "underperforming IB." I don't really consider it underperforming -- it serves a very high percentage of FARMS kids and they do a phenomenal job. But [b]they have a ton of attrition before the upper grades that leaves mostly below-grade level kids in the PARCC grades. We're part of a prisoner's dilemma because we love the school and want to stay but not if half my child's classmates are going to decamp for other schools in the next three years (which they almost certainly will, just like us).[/b]

Lee is not our first choice but it is something we are looking at. We don't mind "supplementing" (or whatever people want to call it, I don't care) as much as others seem to. I think probably because our child started in DCPS shortly after Covid and I feel like at this point we're just used to doing a lot more than we ever expected we'd need to do in order to get our kid educated. The main reason she knows how to read is because I taught her how.[/quote]

Dude, the exact same thing will happen at Lee!  That is why they have no waitlist and open seats in 1st and 2nd!  That is why their test scores are so low.  If you're comparing between Lee and your IB, the difference is that they both have bad PARCC scores but Lee has higher-income kids.  Lee is not winning that comparison.

If your IB is tolerable this year, I'd say hold out for something that actually is a top choice for you. [/quote]

PP and you aren't telling me something I don't already know, but Lee was on our lottery list this year which is why I am following this thread and curious about trends. In DC you don't automatically get a "top choice" so we gather info and make the best decision we can. We are not getting off the waitlist for Lee this year anyway so this is just info-gathering for next year. You can't know what makes the most sense for us since you don't know the full situation. But thanks for the advice.[/quote]

Don’t use dcum to gather info, use your neighbors or real people. DCUM people have an agenda.[/quote]

Disagree. I would do both. I would never publicly say negative things about my kids' current school to a random family considering it (in part because overall I love the school), but I would definitely fess up anonymously on DCUM to particular weaknesses, etc if someone asked about them. [/quote]

+1 I'm the PP collecting info and I learned a while ago you can't trust what other parents say, often. More than once we've had a parent praise our IB to the heavens and talk up all these different programs or explain how amazing the upper elementary teachers are, only for them to bail to another DCPS or charter in 2nd or 3rd and sheepish explain they were looking for a "better fit" for their kids. It took this happening twice for us to realize (sorry we are slow) that sometimes when people really talk up their current school to other parents, it's because they are actively trying to recruit you or get you to stay. Maybe because the school often hemorrhages families after ECE, maybe because they struck out on the lottery and they don't want to get left behind. But it's not always evidence that they love the school. They might love parts of it but it doesn't mean they aren't trying to go elsewhere.

Once we figured this out we vowed to NOT be those parents and we really try to be honest about our school when people ask. There's good and bad. I think the hardest thing is that it's a bit of a prisoner's dilemma -- one of the bad things about our school is that a lot of families leave by 3rd grade or so, which makes it hard to stay. But of course I can't really complain about that because we are thinking of leaving. But we also can't just commit to staying because if a significant portion of other parents leave (which they will) it will greatly impact our child's experience at the school. It's an impossible situation.

But people IRL rarely explain it that clearly. They use euphemisms or avoid the conversation altogether. People on DCUM are anonymous and you have to take what they say with a grain of salt, but they are also willing to write the stuff no one ever says out loud. For instance, Lee obviously loses families for some reason, but if you asked a current Lee family why, they are unlikely to be straightforward about it. On DCUM, people will address it directly.[/quote]

My IB is a title one that is praised in DCUM, but at least when talking to some parents IRL they were honest that they were leaving asap for the same reasons that you state in your post. You can look the numbers of % of IB people that attend each school and you can get a better feeling if people are leaving the school.[/quote]

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