The rockville elem schools are good: bealle, college gardens, ritchie park. Although I have heard terrible things about the principal at ritchie park. I know nothing about twinbrook, which is the other school in that cluster.

Anonymous wrote:Some good elementary schools in Silver Spring are Forest Knolls, Rosemary Hills, Highland View, Woodlin, Stonegate (although it is much further out than the others), Oakland Terrace.

and the brand new Flora Singer

Some good elementary schools in Silver Spring are Forest Knolls, Rosemary Hills, Highland View, Woodlin, Stonegate (although it is much further out than the others), Oakland Terrace.

My own sense is that it's not true that there are vast differences in schools in MoCo in terms of resources. MoCo actually limits to some degree the things that the PTA can pay for (so unlike DCPS, for example, parents can't decide to pay for a teacher's aide).

That's not to say that there aren't any differences, but as a general matter the biggest differences will be in the SES of the kids attending the school (which may or may not affect the education your kid gets in positive or negative ways). Although in some cases, title I schools (that is, lower SES, higher FARMS) will be given enough teachers to have a smaller class size.

I find the "school at a glance" posted on MCPS to be pretty helpful if you want to see things like racial and economic diversity or test scores (but I think test scores in ES are mostly a proxy for SES not for how good the school is at teaching any given kid).

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/

I think somewhere on the MCPS site are also the results of the occasional parent survey they send out, which will have questions like whether you think bullying is a problem at the school. Relatively few parents fill those out however, so I am not sure how useful they are.

We are looking to move to a neighborhood with a strong elementary school in Mont County. We can't afford Bethesda or Chevy Chase, so are thinking SS or Rockville. I've heard there are vast differences btwn schools in this area, especially in regards to resources. I'm starting to tour schools and am looking at the MCPS website. Do you know other ways I can tell its a good school?? what questions shoud I be asking the schools to give me hints (ie, parent involvement stats?). Any good websites you'd recommend? I feel frustrated bc I know there are differences but websites like greatschools.com are so generic and have good marks for almost all MCPS.
Any tips would be appreciated!