Anonymous wrote:My kid transferred and so I can compare. ATS doubles down on early literacy and do not let anybody fall behind in math or reading or writing. If they do, they are giving small group instruction, 1:1, ect even without a 504 and an IEP.

the new leadership is great; has the trust of the teachers and students. I was worried about the transition but it's been good.

you have a 4% chance of getting into the lottery so learn to love your home school.

I echo all this, except I don't know what the chance is, and it varies each year. Leadership transition was good, ATS doubles down and they are on top of the kids and parents. No grade level mastery=you will not proceed to the next grade. K-5th: all students participate in drama and put on a production each year. 4th and 5th: all students are in chorus and band or orchestra. All subjects are taught by your classroom teacher. All grades have homework, that incrementally increases over the years (but is very doable). Student body is truly diverse in every aspect.

My kid transferred and so I can compare. ATS doubles down on early literacy and do not let anybody fall behind in math or reading or writing. If they do, they are giving small group instruction, 1:1, ect even without a 504 and an IEP.

the new leadership is great; has the trust of the teachers and students. I was worried about the transition but it's been good.

you have a 4% chance of getting into the lottery so learn to love your home school.

The families I know who left ATS before graduation sent their kids to private or home schooled during covid. A couple had kids with IEPs who were having some problems keeping up. The grading scale is higher and I'm not sure of how supportive they are of kids who fall behind.

We were really happy there but my kid would have been fine anywhere. The teachers were mostly wonderful and the community spirit was strong. A lot of kids do rec sports and scouting. The PTA was active.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We attended ATS from the discovery boundary and one issue we had when my daughter went to middle school was that almost nobody from her middle school attended ATS. The parents from discovery, Jamestown, Nottingham, Taylor and tuckahoe don't really send their kids there. They don't really need to, as they spent a small fortune to buy homes in boundaries with schools they liked. You get a lot more kids from the schools in south Arlington and central Arlington. We liked ATS a lot, in part for its racial and economic diversity, because our home school doesn't have that.

ATS has changed a bit. New principal. New building. bigger building so they can admit more kids. But I imagine the mission is the same. Get kids reading. Emphasize the basics. Daily homework. International community.

+ 1 We recently left ATS, but this was exactly our experience as well.

Left ATS because your kids graduated or other reasons? Was surprised to learn some families leave before middle school, but that may have been partly due to the pandemic?

Anonymous wrote:We attended ATS from the discovery boundary and one issue we had when my daughter went to middle school was that almost nobody from her middle school attended ATS. The parents from discovery, Jamestown, Nottingham, Taylor and tuckahoe don't really send their kids there. They don't really need to, as they spent a small fortune to buy homes in boundaries with schools they liked. You get a lot more kids from the schools in south Arlington and central Arlington. We liked ATS a lot, in part for its racial and economic diversity, because our home school doesn't have that.

ATS has changed a bit. New principal. New building. bigger building so they can admit more kids. But I imagine the mission is the same. Get kids reading. Emphasize the basics. Daily homework. International community.

+ 1 We recently left ATS, but this was exactly our experience as well.

We attended ATS from the discovery boundary and one issue we had when my daughter went to middle school was that almost nobody from her middle school attended ATS. The parents from discovery, Jamestown, Nottingham, Taylor and tuckahoe don't really send their kids there. They don't really need to, as they spent a small fortune to buy homes in boundaries with schools they liked. You get a lot more kids from the schools in south Arlington and central Arlington. We liked ATS a lot, in part for its racial and economic diversity, because our home school doesn't have that.

ATS has changed a bit. New principal. New building. bigger building so they can admit more kids. But I imagine the mission is the same. Get kids reading. Emphasize the basics. Daily homework. International community.

The primary difference between ATS and other APS schools is that every single kid there has a parent who is savvy and informed enough to put their kid in the lottery. No one is there by default.

Anonymous wrote:When we visited a few years back they were proud of their use of worksheets in “hands on learning”. 😳 The students were cutting out words and gluing them on worksheets. That’s not hands on learning.

They also like to share their high reading scores. But they have a larger number of students come into Kindergarten on grade level with fewer English Learner and low income students. The bar is already higher on day 1.

It’s nothing special. It just a way for South Arlington families to not send their kids to Title I Schools neighborhood schools. If you look at the APS transfer report, you will see title I neighborhoods send the most kids to option schools.

The cutting out words and gluing them on worksheets was "Word Their Way," an (older) APS curriculum resource for tactile sorting of words based on spelling features.

And great projection in your post.

Anonymous wrote:When we visited a few years back they were proud of their use of worksheets in “hands on learning”. 😳 The students were cutting out words and gluing them on worksheets. That’s not hands on learning.

They also like to share their high reading scores. But they have a larger number of students come into Kindergarten on grade level with fewer English Learner and low income students. The bar is already higher on day 1.

It’s nothing special. It just a way for South Arlington families to not send their kids to Title I Schools neighborhood schools. If you look at the APS transfer report, you will see title I neighborhoods send the most kids to option schools.

LMAO completely untrue

http://schoolquality.virginia.gov/schools/arlington-traditional#fndtn-desktopTabs-enrollment

Title I Threshold is 40% FARMS.

Anonymous wrote:When we visited a few years back they were proud of their use of worksheets in “hands on learning”. 😳 The students were cutting out words and gluing them on worksheets. That’s not hands on learning.

They also like to share their high reading scores. But they have a larger number of students come into Kindergarten on grade level with fewer English Learner and low income students. The bar is already higher on day 1.

It’s nothing special. It just a way for South Arlington families to not send their kids to Title I Schools neighborhood schools. If you look at the APS transfer report, you will see title I neighborhoods send the most kids to option schools.

Incorrect. It’s majority N Arlington high SES schools that dominate the option schools. This is a rumor by parents angry about option schools.

When we visited a few years back they were proud of their use of worksheets in “hands on learning”. 😳 The students were cutting out words and gluing them on worksheets. That’s not hands on learning.

They also like to share their high reading scores. But they have a larger number of students come into Kindergarten on grade level with fewer English Learner and low income students. The bar is already higher on day 1.

It’s nothing special. It just a way for South Arlington families to not send their kids to Title I Schools neighborhood schools. If you look at the APS transfer report, you will see title I neighborhoods send the most kids to option schools.

Not all elementary schools in Arlington have homework. My 5th grader (who is at a neighborhood school) has been receiving homework for the first time this year.

We tried to get into ATS but didn’t end up very lucky with the lottery. They seem to have a stronger reading and writing program than our local neighborhood school.

ATS brings up a lot of emotions so be ready for some wide variances in opinions from this group. Good luck

Can you share your impressions about ATS today and how it has changed since covid and the new principal? Our family is new to Arlington and new to the option schools. We visited to learn about the lottery. The school leaders seemed warm and proud of their school. I was also surprised that the school is supposed to be such an outlier or special because nothing that they talked about seemed particularly innovative or different from what I would expect from a public school. I can see that homework for kindergarteners would not be popular, but other than that, required reading every night is something we would do already. I was surprised at the talk of iPads, the smart boards, and the use of cartoons during the school day. Two of the classrooms we visited saw the kids watching YouTube while getting ready for snack time. Is that pretty common for classroom management? The parents in both groups chatted afterwards that they were surprised that they would turn on a cartoon video on YouTube to get the kids to be quiet as part of transition time.Is this no big deal or changes due to covid and the new principals they find their way? Or have there been other recent changes?