Former DCPS teacher here, DCPS does have foreign language in elementary but it's not really learning anything other than hola and adios. MCPS does dual language immersion very well for Mandarin, Spanish, and French by capturing actual strong native teachers and students. Students are immersed all day in the language and therefore are able to pick up on the language much faster and become partially fluent after about two years. MCPS is stronger in supporting special needs and gifted/talented students by creating enriching experiences. But even if you chose to APS, Fairfax, Loudon or Howard Co. they also have strong advanced academic or Gifted/Talented programs, this is where DCPS fails. They don't have anything for GT students or 2E (Twice Exceptional) students whose scores on CogAt or Inview show they are genius smart but struggle with organization or ADHD. The suburbans do these programs well because they have been doing it well for a long time and the parents have generally held them accountable much longer. DCPS is just starting to get families who hold them accountable, hence the school scandals cycle in and out of the news every 4 weeks. The latest scandals over a one year period: The DC chancellor used his position to have his daughter moved from one highly regarded school to another highly sought after school. Unfortunately, the chancellor had signed a bill prior which revoked DC personnel from making such moves. The chancellor resigned after much public outcry. (2) It was found DCPS Central Office was threatening principals and teachers to pass students who could barely read and pushing them to apply for college. It was found many of the students barely came to school with absences as high as 50 days. Such as Ballou where the reading proficiency and math is abysmal yet they had 100% college acceptance rate. (3) DC spent hundreds of millions to renovate Duke Ellington a school for arts for DC students yet many of the students come from MD. (4) Many of DCPS's students are in fact Maryland residents. It was found DCPS principals and police officers and some central office workers enrolled their children in DCPS for convience (4) DCPS admits to the rampant residency fraud but says it only has one residency fraud personnel worker for tens of thousands of students in DC. DC also admits many of the students formerly lived in DC but can no longer afford to do so and thereby have connections to their old community. Essentially telling homeowners of DC tough cookies because we have no intention of getting rid of MD students. This is likely because if DCPS really went after these MD students their enrollment numbers would sharply fall and so would funding. There aren't enough upper middle class families to carry DCPS. (5) DCPS claimed to have revised a policy that would not punish principals and teachers for failing a student who did not do the work or show up to school. WashPo discovered DCPS was deleting some of the absences of the students who missed a lot of school days. DCPS revised its policy again to say students who missed more than 30 days during the second semester of school would not graduate.

The school year has not yet ended so I expect another two scandals before summer break.

DCPS has foreign languange in ES. I don’t think MOCo has that until like middle school. Those two districts seem to really carve up the days and weeks differently.
I feel that DCPS is more similar to my public school days, which was before No Child Left Behind and Common Core teach to the test madness.

I have experience with both a JLKM and a Bethesda ES. Really both are very strong. If you have a typical learner, don't think there is a meaningful difference between them, though MCPS is stronger in SN and GT differentiated learning in ES. Most JLKM and Bethesda schools are very crowded. We decided to look into the few Bethesda schools that were smaller/less crowded and felt more comfortable with the MS and HS options. But they're all great schools, and we would have been fine with any of them.

One relevant factor for Chevy Chase Elementary is that it begins at grade 3. Your kid would get bused to Rosemary hills for K-2. Chevy Chase ES is also the site for the Center for Enriched Studies (aka the gifted program). DCPS doesn't have a gifted program if that matters to you.

Anonymous wrote:This makes me want to move from MCPS to DCPS. Three gym classes per week!!!

In middle school, on the other hand, MCPS kids take P.E. and arts every semester, whereas in DC the kids alternate.

Anonymous wrote:OK, if your kid is specials needs go to MCPS and get a 1:1 student:teacher ratio.

Otherwise, in the vast majority of the 50-60 ES, there is only 1 teacher per 22-28 students. And since OP is talking about Bethesda area, these are not Title 1 nor Darnestown, MD special needs programs.

Well, in my BCC cluster elementary school (not Bethesda Elementary School), there are two classes of the 4 in a grade with kids with 1:1 aides, so 50% of the classes have an aide full-time (although it's a rotating paraprofessional, not a full-time dedicated aide for one classroom). Bethesda elementary school is known for having a high number of special needs students, so there are multiple classes with aides (and sometimes classes with multiple aides.) I have friends at Bethesda Elementary who have confirmed that this is the case.

Correct, MCPS disallows PTA funds to hire an aide. DCPS allows it.

OK, if your kid is specials needs go to MCPS and get a 1:1 student:teacher ratio.

Otherwise, in the vast majority of the 50-60 ES, there is only 1 teacher per 22-28 students. And since OP is talking about Bethesda area, these are not Title 1 nor Darnestown, MD special needs programs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please explain to me the difference? Is one set actually superior to the other in terms of teachers, curriculum and facilities for a child that doesn't have any special needs? The PARCC scores look comparable. Class size looks to be similar +/- 5 kids depending on the school year. Diversity depends on the school in both areas. Thoughts on this?

I actually believe DCPS has a stronger ES curriculum and PTA has ability to make more of an impact (MCPS won't let PTAs hire teacher aides or para-aids).

Chevy Chase ES leads up to one of two MS (300 kids per grade), and then BCC which is a very good HS with the IB program. Urban, open lunches, more SES diversity given location and housing stock.

Other Bethesda HS (Whitman, Walter Johnson) are not IB, and have larger 600 kids per grade MS. SOmething to think about since your kid will be 12 and get bombarded by a high grade/huge school. Across the board, MCPS has HUGE populous HSs, with 600-1000 per grade. There are few public HS with smaller grades, unless you go private. The pros are you wlll find your people and be pushed appropriately, the cons are you will not make the cut in the play or team sport unless you are very good. I don't know that dynamic at Deal or WIlson, those are both improving vastly, JLKM already have.

This is key. If having more than one teacher in your young child's class is important to you do not go to MCPS. They forbid it unless it's an ESOL aide in a title one school with high FARMS or ESOL over 50%.
Meanwhile DCPS has two teachers per TItle 1 school or 1 teacher, 1 aide per non-Title 1 school. I believe the class room caps are less in DCPS than MCPS across the board (MCPS is 28 in ES, 32 in MS, and 35 in HS).

Not true. MCPS inclusion classrooms often have an aide. There is a kid with special needs in my K kid's class with a full-time aide. The aide is assigned to that kid, but helps other students when possible (since they do so much group work, the aide helps the group). According to my kid's K teacher, these aides are a big help.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Please explain to me the difference? Is one set actually superior to the other in terms of teachers, curriculum and facilities for a child that doesn't have any special needs? The PARCC scores look comparable. Class size looks to be similar +/- 5 kids depending on the school year. Diversity depends on the school in both areas. Thoughts on this?

I actually believe DCPS has a stronger ES curriculum and PTA has ability to make more of an impact (MCPS won't let PTAs hire teacher aides or para-aids).

Chevy Chase ES leads up to one of two MS (300 kids per grade), and then BCC which is a very good HS with the IB program. Urban, open lunches, more SES diversity given location and housing stock.

Other Bethesda HS (Whitman, Walter Johnson) are not IB, and have larger 600 kids per grade MS. SOmething to think about since your kid will be 12 and get bombarded by a high grade/huge school. Across the board, MCPS has HUGE populous HSs, with 600-1000 per grade. There are few public HS with smaller grades, unless you go private. The pros are you wlll find your people and be pushed appropriately, the cons are you will not make the cut in the play or team sport unless you are very good. I don't know that dynamic at Deal or WIlson, those are both improving vastly, JLKM already have.

This is key. If having more than one teacher in your young child's class is important to you do not go to MCPS. They forbid it unless it's an ESOL aide in a title one school with high FARMS or ESOL over 50%.
Meanwhile DCPS has two teachers per TItle 1 school or 1 teacher, 1 aide per non-Title 1 school. I believe the class room caps are less in DCPS than MCPS across the board (MCPS is 28 in ES, 32 in MS, and 35 in HS).

Anonymous wrote:This makes me want to move from MCPS to DCPS. Three gym classes per week!!!

read the study on MCPS only doing the Maryland bare minimum of 30, yes 30, minutes a week of PE class. DCPS has three of 45 minutes. But, a MD rep is lobbying the state to increase this, maybe there will be a result in a few years....

the kids that don't do sports practically have a meltdown come 6th grade in MS when they have PE 3x a week and can't catch a ball.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:11:59 yet again. Deal Middle in DC is huge, but well-regarded. No personal experience yet (oldest in early elem.) but my neighbors say it's fantastic. They say it doesn't feel too big due to smaller "teams" that the kids are on.

Its no bigger than the MoCo middle schools.

This was true until this year, when Silver Creek opened. Silver Creek (the school that CCES feeds to) will be a little less than 1/2 the size of Deal, and Westland (that Bethesda feeds to) only a little more than 1/2.

I'm not saying that should be a concern, I'll leave that up to OP to decide, but for future kids those two MoCo schools will indeed be smaller.

Anonymous wrote:This makes me want to move from MCPS to DCPS. Three gym classes per week!!!

Meh. Schools vary. My kid's MCPS K has 2 recesses a day (plus weekly gym). The DCPS we were inbounds for prior only had 1 recess a day.

This makes me want to move from MCPS to DCPS. Three gym classes per week!!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:11:59 yet again. Deal Middle in DC is huge, but well-regarded. No personal experience yet (oldest in early elem.) but my neighbors say it's fantastic. They say it doesn't feel too big due to smaller "teams" that the kids are on.

Its no bigger than the MoCo middle schools.

Deal's 90 kid team/pod system is highly effective at creating a community and doing ability tracking for key subjects. MCPS no longer does ability tracking (protests may bring it back some day or subject by subject slowly), and does not have an effective team structure - my neighbor's 6th grader has a different set of 30-35 kids in each of her 7 classes. And then within each of those class is is one-third above avg, avg, and below avg students so good luck finding your people every 50 minutes.

This may have been true previously, when Westland was the only middle school servicing the BCC district, but MoCo recently opened up Silver Creek Middle School and split up the Westland feeders. I believe both Westland and Silver Creek are smaller than Deal.

correct. anywyas, at Deal your kid will know 90 kids very well in 6th grade. and 120 kids very well in 7th. honors kicks in then so might be whole different set of kids. intramurals start then too.