Reply to Are charters keeping you in DC - or are they holding back your neighborhood DCPS?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "Are charters keeping you in DC - or are they holding back your neighborhood DCPS?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We're only in PreK3 right now, and I would absolutely pick our DCPS (West) if only they had Spanish. That is literally the only reason we are at our charter instead. Long term, I really think that DCPS schools are going to get better, and maybe that is a direct function of charter competition. [/quote]

Spanish immersion?  Or Spanish classes / exposure?[/quote]

Our daycare was immersion, and the charter is half day Spanish, half day English. Honestly, if West even had Spanish classes or as an aftercare thing, I would probably switch over in a second. I just don't want my kid to lose this while he's still so little, since we aren't native speakers and Spanish was a happy accident in the first place.[/quote]

Commitment to continuing language instruction (or Montessori) is definitely one of the benefits of a robust charter sector, particularly in DC. But for every one of you who would be willing to send a child to West but for this other priority you have, there are half a dozen people who will refer to their IB school (that they have usually never even set foot inside) as "not an option for us" without explaining what that means to them. That's the frustration that many are speaking to.

Longterm, I do think that the existence of charters will contribute to overall improvement in public schools in DC. Not because DCPS will step up its game because a charter comes to town, but because even DCPS can see that things like immersion, experiential learning, etc. are important to this cohort of parents in DC, along with test scores. Also, there will not be enough charter seats for everybody, but people will list some DCPS schools "as safeties" and then will not get in anywhere else. Obviously, some people will always move, but enrollment is up something like 10% from 4 years ago. Not all those people are going to move.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics