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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Congrats to PoP and family on having found a house they love in a welcoming neighborhood! Schools aside, with two kids under 4 years old it's best to love your house/condo/apartment because you may be spending a lot more time in it than you expected after 5pm. Living in car-optional, pedestrian-accessible parts of the city means you can push that time out to 7pm without needing a babysitter. :) With luck, PoP's first daughter will get into the PK-4 lottery for their IB school. If not, they have to wait another year until their DD#1 is admitted for kinder with possibly 30 kids in her class. DD#2 will also be guaranteed a spot in a 25+ student kinder class starting at age 5.

There's really no such thing as a "good school" in a relatively small city -- with no county or state resources -- that lacks stability in leadership, clarity of governance, and predictable paths for achievement in public education. Regardless of the school, DCPS is DCPS. Art, PE, and Music are 45 minutes a week (unless there is testing). Recess is 15 minutes a day. The Science standards for elementary are quite good, but DCPS does not include science teachers in staffing plans for elementary.

Any school that offers more than the basics of DCPS is either a Title I school with more than 30% of students from low-income families or WotP with PTAs that raise donations of more than 6-figures annually. Neither model can guarantee sustainable, high-quality resources. Like charters, these schools only offer admission before age 5 by lottery. Don't get me started on special education or dual-immersion.

The District is still very much in an experimental phase of education transformation. The only place with more kids in charter schools is post-Katrina New Orleans, and their superintendent has charter assignment authority.

So while moving IB for a WotP school might feel like a surer bet than lotteries, we must not assume that all of our kids will do well in a small number of schools.

It's all a crap shoot[/quote]

Great post, I concur from down here on Cap Hill, where our school funded its own PE and science teachers initially.  You nailed some of the most egregious shortcomings.

Foreign languages are also only taught 45 minutes a week in ES, if at all, other than at Janney, where parents pay for them to be taught two hours a week before and after school.  Don't get me started on dual-immersion either, the realm where DCPC sees no value in bringing in native speakers as native-speaking communities, and few DCPS ES Spanish immersion programs (the only kind on offer) feed into MS immersion programs.  As things stand, most of the immersion kids heading into the International Baccalaureate programs sprouting up like mushrooms in DC public seem unlikely to ace the Higher Level IB exams down the track, as they probably could if long-term immersion were an option.

With Deal forced to accommodate nearly 500 kids more than the building was built for this fall, even as DCPS tosses hundreds of millions of dollars at HS buildings serving under 1000 students, something's gotta give in the next few years.  When will voters demand more? [/quote]

Are the suburban schools better?  Could someone please break down what they offer in comparison?  [/quote]

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