Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 12:09     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Both LAMB and Mundo Verde are part of the DCI, which will cover middle and high school.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 12:07     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
I think that while it is generally true that high SES kids are going to do fine at Powell, or at Bancroft, despite general test scores---I think you have to look at other factors as well---such as---will your kid be challenged during the school day or bored to tears while the teacher tries to get the lower SES ESL population up to speed, and are you comfortable with the playdates/peer group?

Sorry I missed Spanish bi-lingual before in reading fast. With that, I think Oyster is your only real option unless you are willing to try for LAMB or Mundo Verde--both of which would require further planning efforts to address middle and high school needs.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 12:04     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:You might like living in the petworth neighborhood too as a NYer, as the pp mentioned upthread. However the school mentioned, Powell, is 99% poor children and only 45% of the kids can read (while 55% cannot). Same for Bancroft -- Brooklyn-looking neighborhood, and a school that is 77% poor students who really really struggle to do math or read at grade level (42% can read; the rest couldn't pass a simple standardized test).


Yeah, I love the people who talk down about Powell but talk up Bancroft. Powell has better test scores with poorer students. Which does a better job teaching, objectively, in that case?

Anyway, the basics are as follows, if you want English and Spanish bilingual:

1. Oyster is probably the most tried-and-true. Move inbounds if you want your child in. It is in the expensive, high-density Woodley Park area and a little bit of Adams Morgan.

2. LAMB (Brightwood), Mundo Verde (Truxton Circle?), and Stokes (Brookland) are pretty well-regarded but you only get in by an increasingly insane lottery. Due to demand, you can't count on getting your kid in at all. It would just be a stroke of luck. Mundo Verde sounds most like what you described as your children's current school, but it is oversubscribed, period.

3. DC Bilingual in Columbia Heights gets no respect here but good test scores, relatively speaking.

4. Bancroft has had a corps of middle class families in addition to the 3/4 of poorer families but this has not translated into any kind of test score improvement or anything people can use objectively to say that Bancroft does a good job.

5. The DCPS schools in neighborhood with Spanish speakers/dual language programs. Cleveland is in Shaw and in an area that is gentrifying but still drawing from a large poor population. Somehow it has done the perceived-impossible of having a very high poor student population and some of the very best test scores in the city. It is hard to get into under the lottery now, and some families still leave.
Powell is likely on the way up and has better scores than Bancroft even now, but its neighbors have looked down on it for a long, long time. It is in the growing northern Columbia Heights/southern 16th Street Heights/western Petworth area.
Bruce-Monroe is east of the growing Columbia Heights area in Park View and has a new facility but middle class parents are only now tentatively moving toward interest in Bruce-Monroe.
Marie Reed in Adams-Morgan has a Spanish program and is in a nice Adams Morgan neighborhood but seems to not do that well at attracting and keeping middle class families, and it lives under the shadow of Oyster, which has overlapping boundaries.
6. Tyler on Capitol Hill has a Spanish program. The Hill is already post-gentrification and will be expensive and there won’t be any real no-English-at-home Spanish speakers in the school.

As of now, you get your 6 DCPS lottery picks, rank-ordered, with getting into one knocking off all lower-ranked choices entirely.
For charters, they are still aligning applications, but you apply to each one, and it is relatively easy once you pick where you want to apply. Be warned about two: Yu Ying (the Chinese language charter) has a tiny lottery and a long wait list, and they order their waitlist by time of application, meaning that the only people with a shot at entry via wait list apply at the first moment application is possible.
Stokes, which has both Spanish-English and French-English tracks, has a website where you apply the same way, with a tiny lottery and long waitlist, and only those who apply within the first moments of application get a reasonable spot on the waitlist. Their application website crashed last year in the first minutes of application because everyone knew this was the only way to get a reasonable spot.

Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 11:39     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Anonymous wrote:Agree with pp - move within the boundaries of Oyster. The area itself is incredibly walkable, and you wouldn't need a car because it is well served by a subway stop and cabs. Visually it feels a little like parts of Brooklyn (all "brownstones" (row homes ) and apartments. ).

As well, oyster is just a much stronger school than all other dual language schools that you can attend as a matter of right (ie, not charter). Much higher test scores, engaged parent body, etc. It is bilingual by design, and not out of default due to the super high ESL population of the neighborhood

You might like living in the petworth neighborhood too as a NYer, as the pp mentioned upthread. However the school mentioned, Powell, is 99% poor children and only 45% of the kids can read (while 55% cannot). Same for Bancroft -- Brooklyn-looking neighborhood, and a school that is 77% poor students who really really struggle to do math or read at grade level (42% can read; the rest couldn't pass a simple standardized test).

Families try the preschool in both schools, but that is storytime and the alphabet so the stakes are low and it is ok to roll the dice. your kids are older and you may not wish to use them as guinea pigs in a struggling urban school.



My child attends a school whose test scores aren't that great but me as a parent high SES will ensure that my child does well.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 11:34     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Anonymous wrote:Agree with pp - move within the boundaries of Oyster. The area itself is incredibly walkable, and you wouldn't need a car because it is well served by a subway stop and cabs. Visually it feels a little like parts of Brooklyn (all "brownstones" (row homes ) and apartments. ).

As well, oyster is just a much stronger school than all other dual language schools that you can attend as a matter of right (ie, not charter). Much higher test scores, engaged parent body, etc. It is bilingual by design, and not out of default due to the super high ESL population of the neighborhood

You might like living in the petworth neighborhood too as a NYer, as the pp mentioned upthread. However the school mentioned, Powell, is 99% poor children and only 45% of the kids can read (while 55% cannot). Same for Bancroft -- Brooklyn-looking neighborhood, and a school that is 77% poor students who really really struggle to do math or read at grade level (42% can read; the rest couldn't pass a simple standardized test).

Families try the preschool in both schools, but that is storytime and the alphabet so the stakes are low and it is ok to roll the dice. your kids are older and you may not wish to use them as guinea pigs in a struggling urban school.



Wow the use of the word "Poor".....however these poor children are servicing what parents want in DC....learning Spanish. How dare these rich ppl kids interact with these poor kids to benefit them.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 11:18     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Anonymous wrote:OP---you've said your budget, but not the lifestyle you are looking for. That will help people break down the schools options for you. With that budget, you can definitely buy something in-bounds for Janney, Murch or Lafayette (and perhaps a smaller townhouse for Eaton in Cleveland Park). Janney, Murch or Lafayette are all much more suburban in feel (i.e., you will wind up driving a lot) even though in the city. Or, to be more precise, you have to look a lot harder to find housing that is within reasonable pedestrian distance from the commercial corridors of Wisconsin Avenue or Connecticut Avenue.

There are more typically "urban" (and by that I mean Brooklynesque---not Manhattan) neighborhoods---Capitol Hill, Mount Pleasant (feeds to Bancroft) and Woodley Park/Adams Morgan (portions feed to Oyster). But all of those (with exception of Oyster perhaps) have more complications with finding good schools. Not that it can't be done (my family does it) but it is more risky because of the lotteries.


Read. Spanish bilingual. Needed.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 11:17     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Anonymous wrote:Agree with pp - move within the boundaries of Oyster. The area itself is incredibly walkable, and you wouldn't need a car because it is well served by a subway stop and cabs. Visually it feels a little like parts of Brooklyn (all "brownstones" (row homes ) and apartments. ).

As well, oyster is just a much stronger school than all other dual language schools that you can attend as a matter of right (ie, not charter). Much higher test scores, engaged parent body, etc. It is bilingual by design, and not out of default due to the super high ESL population of the neighborhood

You might like living in the petworth neighborhood too as a NYer, as the pp mentioned upthread. However the school mentioned, Powell, is 99% poor children and only 45% of the kids can read (while 55% cannot). Same for Bancroft -- Brooklyn-looking neighborhood, and a school that is 77% poor students who really really struggle to do math or read at grade level (42% can read; the rest couldn't pass a simple standardized test).

Families try the preschool in both schools, but that is storytime and the alphabet so the stakes are low and it is ok to roll the dice. your kids are older and you may not wish to use them as guinea pigs in a struggling urban school.


I completely agree that OP should get IB for Oyster given his or her housing budget and desire for a dual language program, but to say that kids that the 55% of third-grade-and-up kids at Powell who did not score at grade level or higher on the reading CAS is complete baloney--they can read, just not at grade level. And I'm certain that the kids there who have parents like OP probably is (high SES, appropriately engaged, read a lot to their kids, etc.) are doing just fine.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 11:08     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
OP---you've said your budget, but not the lifestyle you are looking for. That will help people break down the schools options for you. With that budget, you can definitely buy something in-bounds for Janney, Murch or Lafayette (and perhaps a smaller townhouse for Eaton in Cleveland Park). Janney, Murch or Lafayette are all much more suburban in feel (i.e., you will wind up driving a lot) even though in the city. Or, to be more precise, you have to look a lot harder to find housing that is within reasonable pedestrian distance from the commercial corridors of Wisconsin Avenue or Connecticut Avenue.

There are more typically "urban" (and by that I mean Brooklynesque---not Manhattan) neighborhoods---Capitol Hill, Mount Pleasant (feeds to Bancroft) and Woodley Park/Adams Morgan (portions feed to Oyster). But all of those (with exception of Oyster perhaps) have more complications with finding good schools. Not that it can't be done (my family does it) but it is more risky because of the lotteries.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 10:45     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There is a woman in my neighborhood in Mount Vernon Triangle, who has this spreadsheet of all the charter schools, their deadlines, opening dates, websites and the lottery date for DCPS. For the price of a coffee last year, she sat and walked me through the whole process. I told her she should sell it, but she basically sends it to anyone who asks for it.


So, how do you get in contact with her? Or can you share the spreadsheet?


There is a secret handshake you need to know. Also, voodoo and horcruxes are involved.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 10:36     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There is a woman in my neighborhood in Mount Vernon Triangle, who has this spreadsheet of all the charter schools, their deadlines, opening dates, websites and the lottery date for DCPS. For the price of a coffee last year, she sat and walked me through the whole process. I told her she should sell it, but she basically sends it to anyone who asks for it.


So, how do you get in contact with her? Or can you share the spreadsheet?


I will email here and ask to her post here.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 10:12     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Anonymous wrote:There is a woman in my neighborhood in Mount Vernon Triangle, who has this spreadsheet of all the charter schools, their deadlines, opening dates, websites and the lottery date for DCPS. For the price of a coffee last year, she sat and walked me through the whole process. I told her she should sell it, but she basically sends it to anyone who asks for it.


So, how do you get in contact with her? Or can you share the spreadsheet?
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 09:33     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
There is a woman in my neighborhood in Mount Vernon Triangle, who has this spreadsheet of all the charter schools, their deadlines, opening dates, websites and the lottery date for DCPS. For the price of a coffee last year, she sat and walked me through the whole process. I told her she should sell it, but she basically sends it to anyone who asks for it.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 09:22     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Are you moving for the 2013 school year? Or are you looking a year out?
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 08:51     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Agree with pp - move within the boundaries of Oyster. The area itself is incredibly walkable, and you wouldn't need a car because it is well served by a subway stop and cabs. Visually it feels a little like parts of Brooklyn (all "brownstones" (row homes ) and apartments. ).

As well, oyster is just a much stronger school than all other dual language schools that you can attend as a matter of right (ie, not charter). Much higher test scores, engaged parent body, etc. It is bilingual by design, and not out of default due to the super high ESL population of the neighborhood

You might like living in the petworth neighborhood too as a NYer, as the pp mentioned upthread. However the school mentioned, Powell, is 99% poor children and only 45% of the kids can read (while 55% cannot). Same for Bancroft -- Brooklyn-looking neighborhood, and a school that is 77% poor students who really really struggle to do math or read at grade level (42% can read; the rest couldn't pass a simple standardized test).

Families try the preschool in both schools, but that is storytime and the alphabet so the stakes are low and it is ok to roll the dice. your kids are older and you may not wish to use them as guinea pigs in a struggling urban school.
Anonymous
Post 08/16/2013 06:56     Subject: Moving to DC. Need a DCPS tutorial.
Anonymous wrote:
dsmoves wrote:Got it. Thanks. IB for Oyster is Woodley Park, yes?


That's the general area where Oyster is IB for but there may be parts of Woodley Park not inbounds and other areas that are (parts of Kaloroma Triangle, for example) so you will need to go onto the DCPS school website and put in the address of any place you are considering to get confirmation of what school that address is zonedfor. Other schools where you can find houses for less the 900k and are considered the "best" are Janney, Lafayette, Murch and Mann. Key also but they school feeds to a middle school that is not as desirable.


Missed that you were looking for dual language though. Of the school above, only oyster fits that. A few of the other schools offer after school language programs but know that's not the same.