Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another question - last night they barely touched on math and science. How has instruction been in these areas? I know they are mixed with the general middle school population, but in practice do the magnet kids tend to be in higher level math and then are they grouped by grade level, so they end up together a lot?

While the magnet kids tend to take advanced math and science together, the math and science instruction at Eastern in general is not strong. My DC has very high grades in both classes all 3 years, yet feels her foundation is weak. Many Eastern students who do well in math end up having a difficult time with high school honors math.

I don't know 'many' Eastern graduates, but for the dozen I do know this is straight up BS.

This was my experience with my daughter, who went to Eastern and then returned back to her home high school. She ended up doing fine but we had to hire a math tutor. Her math foundation was not good. Nothing's perfect -- Eastern's a great humanities school.

The year my DD was at Eastern, the advanced math teacher taught the entire probability unit incorrectly, gave a quiz with incorrect answers. It was the end of the year and the teacher "fixed" the problem by giving everyone an A on the quiz but never acknowledging the error or re-teaching the unit. I always felt bad that all those kids went on to the next level of math not knowing what the hell they were doing.

I think this is more of an individual teacher thing rather than an Eastern thing. Our experience was at the HGC/elementary level in a west county cluster that teachers inside and outside of the magnet didn't really understand the math they were teaching. It was very formulaic and wrote with lots of mnemonics about how to solve problems and not much understanding, and I say that as someone who hates C2.0 because I do think at some level you have to memorize math algorithms.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another question - last night they barely touched on math and science. How has instruction been in these areas? I know they are mixed with the general middle school population, but in practice do the magnet kids tend to be in higher level math and then are they grouped by grade level, so they end up together a lot?

While the magnet kids tend to take advanced math and science together, the math and science instruction at Eastern in general is not strong. My DC has very high grades in both classes all 3 years, yet feels her foundation is weak. Many Eastern students who do well in math end up having a difficult time with high school honors math.

I don't know 'many' Eastern graduates, but for the dozen I do know this is straight up BS.

This was my experience with my daughter, who went to Eastern and then returned back to her home high school. She ended up doing fine but we had to hire a math tutor. Her math foundation was not good. Nothing's perfect -- Eastern's a great humanities school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have been talking to current magnet families to help us sort out whether the transportation is manageable - one child currently taking shuttle to long bus ride at end of day says they love the intense discussions that happen on the, yes, crowded, bus. Says it is social time with peers. I can see how this could be a plus or minus depending on your child.

Both our kids loved coming home on the afternoon bus. DD is still close with Eastern, Takoma md Blair kids from the neighborhood who all ride the same bus. Unsurprisingly, neither wanted to go on the AM bus because it was so early. We organized an AM carpool. Since MS starts at 8, it didn't really interfere with getting to work on time.

Didn't realize bus had high schoolers (Blair magnet) on it too. That would make for some fun arguments!

why arguments? all the kids get along really well.

lively informed discussions is what I meant!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have been talking to current magnet families to help us sort out whether the transportation is manageable - one child currently taking shuttle to long bus ride at end of day says they love the intense discussions that happen on the, yes, crowded, bus. Says it is social time with peers. I can see how this could be a plus or minus depending on your child.

Both our kids loved coming home on the afternoon bus. DD is still close with Eastern, Takoma md Blair kids from the neighborhood who all ride the same bus. Unsurprisingly, neither wanted to go on the AM bus because it was so early. We organized an AM carpool. Since MS starts at 8, it didn't really interfere with getting to work on time.

Didn't realize bus had high schoolers (Blair magnet) on it too. That would make for some fun arguments!

why arguments? all the kids get along really well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have been talking to current magnet families to help us sort out whether the transportation is manageable - one child currently taking shuttle to long bus ride at end of day says they love the intense discussions that happen on the, yes, crowded, bus. Says it is social time with peers. I can see how this could be a plus or minus depending on your child.

Both our kids loved coming home on the afternoon bus. DD is still close with Eastern, Takoma md Blair kids from the neighborhood who all ride the same bus. Unsurprisingly, neither wanted to go on the AM bus because it was so early. We organized an AM carpool. Since MS starts at 8, it didn't really interfere with getting to work on time.

Didn't realize bus had high schoolers (Blair magnet) on it too. That would make for some fun arguments!

Anonymous wrote:We have been talking to current magnet families to help us sort out whether the transportation is manageable - one child currently taking shuttle to long bus ride at end of day says they love the intense discussions that happen on the, yes, crowded, bus. Says it is social time with peers. I can see how this could be a plus or minus depending on your child.

Both our kids loved coming home on the afternoon bus. DD is still close with Eastern, Takoma md Blair kids from the neighborhood who all ride the same bus. Unsurprisingly, neither wanted to go on the AM bus because it was so early. We organized an AM carpool. Since MS starts at 8, it didn't really interfere with getting to work on time.

We have been talking to current magnet families to help us sort out whether the transportation is manageable - one child currently taking shuttle to long bus ride at end of day says they love the intense discussions that happen on the, yes, crowded, bus. Says it is social time with peers. I can see how this could be a plus or minus depending on your child.

We decided it wasn't worth it. It is a huge amount of time on a bus each day. It severely limits play time or other organized activities. Getting together with friends is much more difficult.

We were very comfortable with our home school - which is why we moved their to begin with - and didn't feel any marginal academic benefit was worth the other sacrifices.