School option that requires luck, persistence and patience, and may not work out after all that < School option that can be exercised at will.

Lottery = Lottery.

Anonymous wrote:

You're right, I did base my premise on the ability to move, but, IIRC, none of the responding parents said their reason for not going to a better district was the inability to move. Among the reasons were that they liked their neighborhood, they didn't want an hour commute (in all fairness, my friends' commute downtown increased by only 15mins - from 20 mins to 35), they were hoping to get in lotteries, or just didn't like the idea of living in the 'burbs. I know this is going to sound judgmental, but those don't seem like legitimate reasons to put a child in a bad school. I can understand, though, if they can't afford to move but didn't want to admit it to the OP, so they came up with other reasons. To be honest, I never considered Arlington schools until I looked at the test scores, a direct result of this thread. While Shepard is a solid school, I'd think that most parents would prefer a school that scores in the 90's vs the 60's. I agree with a pp who said that some parents have different priorities. They and their children have to live with their choices; I don't. So, to each his own.

Do you direct your judgment at follow suburbanites who live in PG county? How about Alexandria? How about South Arlington? Do people who live in all those places have "legitimate reasons to put a child in a bad school?" Or is this just a DC thing?

I can afford to move, but I like the charter we're in for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it's as good or better than many of the suburban schools we'd move to. And it may be at some point that we'll move because of schools - middle school is a likely time. But to assume that anyone who lives in the city is in a bad school is pretty silly, don't you think?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Someone upthread said that the advantage of DCPS over Arlington is that children have choices in form of charters and OOB. It seemed appropriate to me to point out that a) lottery-based options are not real options since they are a dice roll, and b) they cannot be legitimately called an advantage over Arlington because ACPS, too, has many lottery-based options. What objection can there be to these fact-based statements? I am not trashing DCPS wholesale, nor praising Arlington above others. I am pointing out what I see as a flaw in some poster's argument.

I don't get this at all - your position is that since there is no guarantee that a student will get onto a charter, it's not really an option? You require a guarantee of where your child will spends 14 years in school?

My position is that an option that depends on an element of luck must be a) recognized as such and not sold as a regularly available option, and ) not held as an advantage over a neighboring jurisdiction that employs an identical, lottery-based network of educational options in addition to IB schools.

Sweetheart, "luck" plays a roll in every aspect of one's life. Just because I put my kid in an Arlington county school doesn't mean they will be "lucky" enough to get a great teacher, or that they will be "lucky" and the neighborhood school will turn out to be a great fit for my child. I've read some of the Virginia threads. It's not all peaches and roses over their either. Our job as parents is to find the best school option for our child, whether it's through the lottery, the neighborhood school, or by going private (if that's something you can afford to do).

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you can get into a good school in DC if you're patient and persistent and perhaps willing to wait into October for a spot. There are some folk that don't have the stomach for this. I did and that's why all of my kids are at the same sought after school. I did my research and I was relentless. So it's not all luck. And even if it were all luck, you still have great schools and great options in DC that negate the OPs assertion that no school in DC is comparable to any school in Arlington.

Oh, and by the way, I did both a google search and a great schools search for public charter schools in Arlington, Virginia. No results. So name one.

If you're not trashing DC schools and praising Arlington schools above all others, then what is your point?

Anonymous wrote:I am not willing to gamble my child's life with a lottery for charter schools. How many of you won the mega millions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Someone upthread said that the advantage of DCPS over Arlington is that children have choices in form of charters and OOB. It seemed appropriate to me to point out that a) lottery-based options are not real options since they are a dice roll, and b) they cannot be legitimately called an advantage over Arlington because ACPS, too, has many lottery-based options. What objection can there be to these fact-based statements? I am not trashing DCPS wholesale, nor praising Arlington above others. I am pointing out what I see as a flaw in some poster's argument.

I don't get this at all - your position is that since there is no guarantee that a student will get onto a charter, it's not really an option? You require a guarantee of where your child will spends 14 years in school?

My position is that an option that depends on an element of luck must be a) recognized as such and not sold as a regularly available option, and ) not held as an advantage over a neighboring jurisdiction that employs an identical, lottery-based network of educational options in addition to IB schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Someone upthread said that the advantage of DCPS over Arlington is that children have choices in form of charters and OOB. It seemed appropriate to me to point out that a) lottery-based options are not real options since they are a dice roll, and b) they cannot be legitimately called an advantage over Arlington because ACPS, too, has many lottery-based options. What objection can there be to these fact-based statements? I am not trashing DCPS wholesale, nor praising Arlington above others. I am pointing out what I see as a flaw in some poster's argument.

I don't get this at all - your position is that since there is no guarantee that a student will get onto a charter, it's not really an option? You require a guarantee of where your child will spends 14 years in school?

Someone upthread said that the advantage of DCPS over Arlington is that children have choices in form of charters and OOB. It seemed appropriate to me to point out that a) lottery-based options are not real options since they are a dice roll, and b) they cannot be legitimately called an advantage over Arlington because ACPS, too, has many lottery-based options. What objection can there be to these fact-based statements? I am not trashing DCPS wholesale, nor praising Arlington above others. I am pointing out what I see as a flaw in some poster's argument.

Anonymous wrote:21:32 Since you like test scores so much, I would place a bet any day on a DCPS/Charter school kid from a HHI/highly educated family over a kid from Arlington with the same demographic background. As a PP said, talk to me about how the two systems compare when you have an actual head to head comparison.

Nobody on DCUM would send their kid to a "bad" school including those of us who live in the District. Contrary to your belief, you can get your kid into a good school in DC but you have to be persistant and patient because DC's schools are in the midst of a renaissance. The current system is not for the faint-hearted but the options are getting better every year.

If you are going to send your kid to a publicly funded school in DC you have to put some work into the process. You can look at test scores and make a determination about a school based on that factor alone, but that's a lazy way to assess shools, particularly in DC.

Our neighborhood school's test scores were abysmal, however when I went to the school to visit, the facility was beautiful, the kids were sweet, the atmosphere was great and the teachers seemed very good. The school had many ESL students and the test scores reflected the difficulty of getting those children up the learning curve. It was not a "bad" school. As a matter of fact, the parents there were happy and very proud of their school.

Be careful not to judge because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'd bet that there is a Virginia parent at GDS that thinks people who send their kids to Arlington county schools are abusive .

Ultimately, through research and relentlessness, I was able to secure a spot at a school that turned out to be a better fit. However, my kids would have been fine at our neighborhood school. There was no boogey man there.

Many of us District parents have done a lot of research on DC schools and have dug beneath the numbers. I made an educated and informed decision when I placed my children in their current public charter. It is obvious that you believe Arlington schools are better. That's fine. Please move there if you haven't already. You will be much happier. In the meantime, stop trying to push the idea that no DC school compares to the schools in Arlington.

You're right, I did base my premise on the ability to move, but, IIRC, none of the responding parents said their reason for not going to a better district was the inability to move. Among the reasons were that they liked their neighborhood, they didn't want an hour commute (in all fairness, my friends' commute downtown increased by only 15mins - from 20 mins to 35), they were hoping to get in lotteries, or just didn't like the idea of living in the 'burbs. I know this is going to sound judgmental, but those don't seem like legitimate reasons to put a child in a bad school. I can understand, though, if they can't afford to move but didn't want to admit it to the OP, so they came up with other reasons. To be honest, I never considered Arlington schools until I looked at the test scores, a direct result of this thread. While Shepard is a solid school, I'd think that most parents would prefer a school that scores in the 90's vs the 60's. I agree with a pp who said that some parents have different priorities. They and their children have to live with their choices; I don't. So, to each his own.