Reply to Are the City of Alexandria public schools really that bad?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We heard every horror story in the book about ACPS.  We went straight to private; we didn't even bother looking at ACPS.  After four years at two privates, we had it, and we decided to simply try ACPS.  Our experiences to date (it's been five years) has been astounding, and essentially without material complaint, and we know literally dozens of parents in the same place as we are.  In fact, I don't know a solid ten ACPS families who really can't stand the system.  The first thing we learned about ACPS is that the academic program is more challenging than what most (not some -- most) of the private schools in this area offer.  The second was that the impression that we had of urban chaos was simply false.  The third is that the ACPS admins and central office are somehow low-performing.  If anything, Alexandria's problem is its deeply underqualified, inexpert school board.  The only caveat is that the ACPS elementaries are uneven.  Most parents love Barrett, Mason, MacArthur, Maury, and Lyles-Crouch.  Mount Vernon, Adams, Cora Kelly and Polk have very strong fan clubs.  Jefferson Houston, Ramsey, and Henry are not well regarded.  But internal transfers are available.  We also learned that the vocal full-time critics of ACPS typically are disgruntled annoyances who have lost suits against the city or are affiliated with the city teachers union.  You should make an appointment and tour the ACPS school where you would expect to enroll before you make any decisions.  But the knee-jerk "ACPS rots" reaction isn't accurate.  Good luck whatever you pick.  [/quote]

I see you've met our resident ACPS booster, OP. Her happy talk is really inconsistent with reality.

With the exception of the observation about the inept School Board, in general the Alexandria elementaries are better than they used to be. But middle schools is atrocious. And TC is just a bastion of problems, including a dropout rate of around 40% for Hispanics and a daycare center for the children of students, although it does offer a lot of classes, has some excellent faculty, and some upper middle class white kids do very well (and their parents cynically believe that this gives them a leg up on college admissions by virtue of "surviving" a poor school). SATs just came out and I think TC's was around 1,435 or something like that, nearly 300 points lower than the better Arlington and FFX high schools.

This is what I do know: The anxiety about ACPS is palpable in the parent community in Alexandria. It's a nearly nightly conversation for kids entering elementaries or families trying to decide about middle school. This type of anxiety simply doesn't exist in other school systems. They're not perfect, but no one frets about whether to send their children to their assigned school in the first place. That should tell you a lot.

The other thing is our pp booster notwithstanding, a lot of ACPS boosters have, in fact, never experienced anything else. So while they've rationalized their own situation, they don't know how much better things are elsewhere. More FLES in schools. More tech. Better teacher-administration relations. A college prep environment at the HS level rather than a "Yale or jail" atmosphere. More county-wide options (in ACPS there's only two mediocre middle schools and a single HS -- if it's a bad fit, you're kind of stuck).

So, I wouldn't dismiss it until you check it out. But as you talk to ACPS families, you also should reach out to those who've left ACPS and find out what they discovered they were missing.[/quote]

"And TC is just a bastion of problems, including a dropout rate of around 40% for Hispanics and a daycare center for the children of students.."

I don't even begin to understand this quote.  What is so atricous about keeping young girls in school?  Are we still sitgmatizing preganant female students, while the fathers get to stay in school and roam free of responsiblity.  What alternate universe is allowing this to go on?  Holy Crap - go back to your 1950s version of morality and ship these women off and send these kids for adoption - seriously?  [/quote]

Majority of the student pregnancies are among the Hispanic population and I believe that the fathers are often adults in the Hispanic community and not students. That being said, I support having a daycare in the school. The dropout rate for Hispanics is atrocious enough.
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