That's how much homework I had and I'm old! I have a senior at another private and dc has anywhere from 2-4 hours as well. Kids just have a lot of homework at that age. There are assignments that are long term and short term, so depending on how you work there is always a lot of work to be done. Different kids will also approach the same workload differently. Junior year is the toughest year in school. That has always been true. High school is hard. Expectations are high throughout the city. It's the norm.

Sidwell's lower school seems great. However, our neighbor has a son in the eleventh grade there. I know it is a tough year for everyone, but he spends FOUR hours a night on homework with a pretty typical course load of honors and AP classes. He is athletic, but only plays for Sidwell teams and also plays in the orchestra. That seems like a LOT of homework, but maybe we are just old and not remembering how things were when we were young.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC needs more private schools because the public school choices range from OK to terrible. If you live in DC, and can afford it, you know you will have to send your kid to -private. We did. Kid didn't get off of GDS wait list fast enough, and we had already signed a contract for a MD private

This post is poorly informed and also in very poor taste. DCPS has some good schools. Ah, shucks, you didn't make it off the wait list. What a loss for us!

NP. DCPS has quite a few good elementary schools. However, I would only consider sending the kids to Deal for MS and Walls or Wilson for HS. Some of the better charter schools have English/Math proficiency % rates in the 40s. Some people are comfortable with that, I am not.

On last year's PARCC, according to myschoolsdc, Wilson's "met expectations" or better percentage was 22% for math and 54% for ELA.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC needs more private schools because the public school choices range from OK to terrible. If you live in DC, and can afford it, you know you will have to send your kid to -private. We did. Kid didn't get off of GDS wait list fast enough, and we had already signed a contract for a MD private

This post is poorly informed and also in very poor taste. DCPS has some good schools. Ah, shucks, you didn't make it off the wait list. What a loss for us!

NP. DCPS has quite a few good elementary schools. However, I would only consider sending the kids to Deal for MS and Walls or Wilson for HS. Some of the better charter schools have English/Math proficiency % rates in the 40s. Some people are comfortable with that, I am not.

I’d add Washington Latin to that list.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GDS parent here. Two years ago they showed at the State of the School some info about the number spots available over the number of applicants per grade. Contrary to what I thought, from all “entry grades”, Pre-K is the toughest grade to get in (10% or less), followed by K.

Thanks for this info -- what were the numbers for applicants to 3rd grade?

I am sorry, I do not remember the ratios for any other grade. I only remember the Pre-K / K data because it surprised me and, additionaly, a good friend was planning on a applying to Pre-K that Fall.