Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. It is Whitman. There are great teachers and plenty of opportunities for advanced classes, etc. Do wealthy kids hire tutors? Sure, they probably do. Doesn't change the fact that the school offers a great education to all its students.

Whitman is on par with all of the elite private schools in this area. In some areas it is better. Plain and simple.

Yeppers. Plain n' simple.

Why, MCPS takes pride in funneling all the best teachers and courses and facilities only to Whitman but not its other high schools. That's totally plausible.

OP, there is some crazy lady that keeps claiming all the good teachers go to Whitman. It is a flat out lie.

All the other feedback seems pretty good, this poster is obsessed.

Not sure OP wants to go from diverse to not at all either.

We too left JKLM for MOCO for greener pastures.

We did too and regret it for elementary school. Middle or high school may be different but JKLM was actually more academic advanced than MCPS. It may be 2.0 as old MCPS parents seem to be complaining as well. Math is frighteningly behind the rest of the school systems.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. It is Whitman. There are great teachers and plenty of opportunities for advanced classes, etc. Do wealthy kids hire tutors? Sure, they probably do. Doesn't change the fact that the school offers a great education to all its students.

Whitman is on par with all of the elite private schools in this area. In some areas it is better. Plain and simple.

Yeppers. Plain n' simple.

Why, MCPS takes pride in funneling all the best teachers and courses and facilities only to Whitman but not its other high schools. That's totally plausible.

NP here, and in the Whitman cluster. I agree that Whitman is great. But so are several other MCPS high schools. I laugh at the idea that the county funnels facilities to Whitman. The school is overcrowded (will likely be adding trailers next year). The building is old. Schools like Gaithersburg and Clarksburg and Blair have much nicer facilities. As to the teachers -I do think that good teachers seek out jobs at Whitman because you are teaching a group of engaged students. And there is very low teacher turnover. I don't think that's a function of county funneling.

That being said I agree that this is a cluster the OP should consider, along with some of the other close in schools (assuming that a move to the farther burbs will not be appealing to a city dweller).

What about BCC?

Yes OP, he was better supported at Deal even though academically behind. He won't ever be on grade level but the support system at Deal is much better than Pyle. They really push the kids and expect more from them while supporting them. Wilson scared us though and he has been doing great at Whitman. That is why I said I thought HS was were there is a big difference. I would put elementaries even (personally DCPS ahead, but has more to do with JKLMM), Deal ahead of Pyle and then Whitman hands down winner.

Anonymous wrote:No. It is Whitman. There are great teachers and plenty of opportunities for advanced classes, etc. Do wealthy kids hire tutors? Sure, they probably do. Doesn't change the fact that the school offers a great education to all its students.

Whitman is on par with all of the elite private schools in this area. In some areas it is better. Plain and simple.

Yeppers. Plain n' simple.

Why, MCPS takes pride in funneling all the best teachers and courses and facilities only to Whitman but not its other high schools. That's totally plausible.

No. It is Whitman. There are great teachers and plenty of opportunities for advanced classes, etc. Do wealthy kids hire tutors? Sure, they probably do. Doesn't change the fact that the school offers a great education to all its students.

Whitman is on par with all of the elite private schools in this area. In some areas it is better. Plain and simple.

Anonymous wrote:Go to a Whitman cluster school. Whitman is an excellent high school with a national reputation among colleges. Your child will get an excellent education. You won't regret it.

Kids with money will always have an advantage.

It's not Whitman; it's the money for tutors and for enrichment.

Don't fool yourself.

Go to a Whitman cluster school. Whitman is an excellent high school with a national reputation among colleges. Your child will get an excellent education. You won't regret it.

Anonymous wrote:We too left JKLM for MOCO for greener pastures. We did it with middle schooler and elementary. The elementary was fine. I thought it would be great but was disappointed at continual large class sizes and lack of community feeling. When we toured u got the feeling they were working on class sizes but two years later they have ready grown. Academically my kids were fine, never advanced in our DCPS but advanced in MOCO. I was pretty shocked at 4th grade math. It was definitely concepts my kids had mastered earlier but maybe it was the teacher. Huge difference in middle school though. Our oldest is special ed and a big reason we chose MOCO. He was definitely better served at Deal. It is probably out biggest regret which I find upsetting. He was behind academically at Deal but does just fine at Pyle. I think that comes with maturity though. But we moved on to HS and it has been fine. Overall it wasn't a big change for us. I think HS may be the only level where MOCO has an advantage. Well that and cheaper housing!

OP here, thanks to everyone for posting! I'm sorry, I am a little confused PP, did you mean to say that Deal was actually better for your special needs son? Even though he was academically behind there? I think I was just tripped up with the wording, but appreciate your thorough perspective.

As for the concern about social disruption, that I wonder about. Kids only in preschool now, but I wonder whether to "stretch it out" and stay in DCPS as long as humanly possible, or better to make the move sooner if we have the feeling we will want stronger, solid public high school experience. Seems like if it is really for the kids, stretching it out would be harder on them.

We too left JKLM for MOCO for greener pastures. We did it with middle schooler and elementary. The elementary was fine. I thought it would be great but was disappointed at continual large class sizes and lack of community feeling. When we toured u got the feeling they were working on class sizes but two years later they have ready grown. Academically my kids were fine, never advanced in our DCPS but advanced in MOCO. I was pretty shocked at 4th grade math. It was definitely concepts my kids had mastered earlier but maybe it was the teacher. Huge difference in middle school though. Our oldest is special ed and a big reason we chose MOCO. He was definitely better served at Deal. It is probably out biggest regret which I find upsetting. He was behind academically at Deal but does just fine at Pyle. I think that comes with maturity though. But we moved on to HS and it has been fine. Overall it wasn't a big change for us. I think HS may be the only level where MOCO has an advantage. Well that and cheaper housing!

Interesting. We left a JKLM for a bigger house in Betheada and are disappointed in the school here. Our JKLM had significantly smaller classes and more welcoming student/parent body. We often wonder if we made the right decision. I'm assuming the High School experience in MoCo will be significantly better than DC. But perhaps we should have waited till then to make te move. Hard to know as you don't want a move to be too socially disruptive for the kids.

Also moved from DCPS to MCPS. After 2nd grade it became very evident that the quality of teaching and expectations at our not-JKLM-but-close school was very low particularly vis-a-vis what we thought our DC needed.

Moved to MCPS and DC has attended magnet schools ever since. General education in the home school was much better than DCPS. Magnet education, while not 100% to my liking (too much pointless work and some needlessly stressful teachers), is still far and above anything DCPS could offer. Aside from the programmatic offering, the experience of being clustered with other magnet students changed DC's life.

Glad we made the move, because DC#2 turned out to need special ed. DCPS would never have been able to meet DC#2's needs. Even MCPS is having trouble with this, but it would have been a disaster in DCPS.

Too bad, because I loved my old Shaw neighborhood. But for the school situation, I would have raised my family in a row house way downtown somewhere. I am planning to move back downtown once the kids are in college.

Yes. Don't want to name the school. My kids started at a well-regarded JKLM elementary. We left b/c w/3 kids, we wanted great public schools through high school and in DC we only had an elementary option.
Moved kids during elementary so they wouldn't have to transition in middle school. So, so, so glad we did. My kids always did well in school, but DC is weak compared to MoCo. So, I know my kids would have been behind if they had entered middle school from our DC elementary. MoCo isn't perfect, but if your child is smart and works hard, you will get a great education on par with many of the best privates.

What school did you leave and is there a demonstrable improvement at your new school? And what is your new school? TIA!