Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And when I say the NWDC ES PTAs are awesome it's compared to our also highly active former Bethesda ES. However in DC the PTA funds and usages are not throttled down by MCPS Central Office. If we don't like the class size, we hire an aide. This is in addition to the better curriculum and more dedicated subjects than MCPS had (mainly reading, math), full time music (2x/week), art (2x/week) and PE (3x a week) classes.

Sure, but you realize that allowing PTAs to hire aides not only perpetuates inequality, but also isn’t a sustainable source of funding for that aide. Let’s say your kid’s class could use an aide, so you pay for one. What happens when your kid graduates from the school? Do you keep paying for the aide, or does the aide lose his/her job because you don’t want to pay the salary anymore and the current PTA parents don’t see the need for one?

I totally agree MCPS has problems, but the solution isn’t having PTAs pay for things like that. The public school system needs to be the one to provide those things.

Also, if you look at the national rankings, DCPS schools still lag far behind MCPS, with the exception of 2-3 charter schools. Some DCUM posters love to act like DCPS is this wonderful place, but it’s just not.

Stop with the meaningless averages, standardized test rankings, and pretend teacher aides in high school BS. MCPS has big problems and not just for ESOL and FARM kids. It is failing its middle and top kids daily with a crap curriculum that mainly teaches math and english badly and skips out on teaching science, social studies, any arts, and gym. A huge bifurcated COUNTY-RUN school district like MCPS does not provide well. At all. You will be supplementing and supplementing for holes and missing subjects until high school. Then the robotic federal AP curriculum kicks in.

Go tour 3 Bethesda ESs and 3 NW DC ES (Janney, LaFayette, Mann) and report back on class size, hourly/weekly curriculum, extracurriculars, community involvement. If you have a choice, and are informed firsthand, you would not chose MCPS.

Central office MCPS policies, procedures, curriculum have annihilated the MoCo reputation. Just peel back the onion one layer.

Well for starters the Janney ES website looks awesome, had tons of info, and the class schedule seems to cover double the subject matter than MCPS ES classes. https://www.janneyschool.org/

Look, an 8:30am start time for all - now your kids don't have to climb all over the house from 6:30am to 9:25am when school finally starts!
And look, a Responsive Classroom teaching methodology for PK-2 - can't do that with only one teacher and 27 kiddos.
Designated Science and Math teachers in ES! They might actually know math themselves then!
Inexpensive french, spanish and mandarin available year-round before or after school at multiple levels: https://www.janneyschool.org/janneyplus/jelp/

Looks more transparent than the meaningless jumbo MCPS slaps up on its generic websites.

I love people who come here to be braggadocious about nothing. Please go to the DC public school forum. Really, you have nothing to prove here. People are on this forum because of MCPS, NOT DCPS. Clearly you've made your choice so just move along.

DP here

I don’t see it as bragging at all.

I see it more as showing parents that we should expect better from MCPS. And that it is CAN be done better. It’s providing an example of how things could be different in MCPS. I find it helpful.

I don't know, I looked at the janney website linked by the PP and I didn't get all that stuff he/she was saying from the website. Maybe it's true, maybe it's not, it's not what I was able to glean from the website, and it doesn't demonstrate to me that it CAN be done better. Certainly, if you allow PTAs to pay for staff positions, that is a difference. But it is a difference with significant pros and cons, and I think there are good reasons for MCPS's policy. I can see reasonable arguments on the other side too, but I don't think it's obvious that MCPS should be allowing PTAs to pay for staff/teachers/aides/positions. To me, that looks like the biggest difference between NW DC and MCPS.

Source: https://www.niche.com/k12/d/district-of-columbia-public-schools-dc/rankings/

And if you want to criticize Niche, give me concrete data to substantiate your claims that DCPS is superior.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And when I say the NWDC ES PTAs are awesome it's compared to our also highly active former Bethesda ES. However in DC the PTA funds and usages are not throttled down by MCPS Central Office. If we don't like the class size, we hire an aide. This is in addition to the better curriculum and more dedicated subjects than MCPS had (mainly reading, math), full time music (2x/week), art (2x/week) and PE (3x a week) classes.

Sure, but you realize that allowing PTAs to hire aides not only perpetuates inequality, but also isn’t a sustainable source of funding for that aide. Let’s say your kid’s class could use an aide, so you pay for one. What happens when your kid graduates from the school? Do you keep paying for the aide, or does the aide lose his/her job because you don’t want to pay the salary anymore and the current PTA parents don’t see the need for one?

I totally agree MCPS has problems, but the solution isn’t having PTAs pay for things like that. The public school system needs to be the one to provide those things.

Also, if you look at the national rankings, DCPS schools still lag far behind MCPS, with the exception of 2-3 charter schools. Some DCUM posters love to act like DCPS is this wonderful place, but it’s just not.

Stop with the meaningless averages, standardized test rankings, and pretend teacher aides in high school BS. MCPS has big problems and not just for ESOL and FARM kids. It is failing its middle and top kids daily with a crap curriculum that mainly teaches math and english badly and skips out on teaching science, social studies, any arts, and gym. A huge bifurcated COUNTY-RUN school district like MCPS does not provide well. At all. You will be supplementing and supplementing for holes and missing subjects until high school. Then the robotic federal AP curriculum kicks in.

Go tour 3 Bethesda ESs and 3 NW DC ES (Janney, LaFayette, Mann) and report back on class size, hourly/weekly curriculum, extracurriculars, community involvement. If you have a choice, and are informed firsthand, you would not chose MCPS.

Central office MCPS policies, procedures, curriculum have annihilated the MoCo reputation. Just peel back the onion one layer.

Well for starters the Janney ES website looks awesome, had tons of info, and the class schedule seems to cover double the subject matter than MCPS ES classes. https://www.janneyschool.org/

Look, an 8:30am start time for all - now your kids don't have to climb all over the house from 6:30am to 9:25am when school finally starts!
And look, a Responsive Classroom teaching methodology for PK-2 - can't do that with only one teacher and 27 kiddos.
Designated Science and Math teachers in ES! They might actually know math themselves then!
Inexpensive french, spanish and mandarin available year-round before or after school at multiple levels: https://www.janneyschool.org/janneyplus/jelp/

Looks more transparent than the meaningless jumbo MCPS slaps up on its generic websites.

I love people who come here to be braggadocious about nothing. Please go to the DC public school forum. Really, you have nothing to prove here. People are on this forum because of MCPS, NOT DCPS. Clearly you've made your choice so just move along.

DP here

I don’t see it as bragging at all.

I see it more as showing parents that we should expect better from MCPS. And that it is CAN be done better. It’s providing an example of how things could be different in MCPS. I find it helpful.

I want an explanation from the DCPS boosters as to why, despite all of DCPS’s apparent glory, it’s still ranked 5239 in the country, while MCPS is 661. In addition, why is a DCUM fav like Janney ranked 6973, while my kid’s MCPS school is 2506, despite having a much higher FARMS rate? You can say rankings have methodological problems, but those are huge differences.

Anonymous wrote:So what is the Root cause of issues at MOCO schools?

Seriously, it's a huge school system serving a wide range of communities that vary greatly in terms of socio-economic status and student/family backgrounds. It has over 160,000 students and is among the 15 largest systems in the country. I don't care how well resourced or managed a system is (and MoCo schools may be neither), that's of a scale that must be difficult to run and impossible to tailor to any individual student (which is, of course, what ever parent on DCUM wants).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And when I say the NWDC ES PTAs are awesome it's compared to our also highly active former Bethesda ES. However in DC the PTA funds and usages are not throttled down by MCPS Central Office. If we don't like the class size, we hire an aide. This is in addition to the better curriculum and more dedicated subjects than MCPS had (mainly reading, math), full time music (2x/week), art (2x/week) and PE (3x a week) classes.

Sure, but you realize that allowing PTAs to hire aides not only perpetuates inequality, but also isn’t a sustainable source of funding for that aide. Let’s say your kid’s class could use an aide, so you pay for one. What happens when your kid graduates from the school? Do you keep paying for the aide, or does the aide lose his/her job because you don’t want to pay the salary anymore and the current PTA parents don’t see the need for one?

I totally agree MCPS has problems, but the solution isn’t having PTAs pay for things like that. The public school system needs to be the one to provide those things.

Also, if you look at the national rankings, DCPS schools still lag far behind MCPS, with the exception of 2-3 charter schools. Some DCUM posters love to act like DCPS is this wonderful place, but it’s just not.

Stop with the meaningless averages, standardized test rankings, and pretend teacher aides in high school BS. MCPS has big problems and not just for ESOL and FARM kids. It is failing its middle and top kids daily with a crap curriculum that mainly teaches math and english badly and skips out on teaching science, social studies, any arts, and gym. A huge bifurcated COUNTY-RUN school district like MCPS does not provide well. At all. You will be supplementing and supplementing for holes and missing subjects until high school. Then the robotic federal AP curriculum kicks in.

Go tour 3 Bethesda ESs and 3 NW DC ES (Janney, LaFayette, Mann) and report back on class size, hourly/weekly curriculum, extracurriculars, community involvement. If you have a choice, and are informed firsthand, you would not chose MCPS.

Central office MCPS policies, procedures, curriculum have annihilated the MoCo reputation. Just peel back the onion one layer.

Well for starters the Janney ES website looks awesome, had tons of info, and the class schedule seems to cover double the subject matter than MCPS ES classes. https://www.janneyschool.org/

Look, an 8:30am start time for all - now your kids don't have to climb all over the house from 6:30am to 9:25am when school finally starts!
And look, a Responsive Classroom teaching methodology for PK-2 - can't do that with only one teacher and 27 kiddos.
Designated Science and Math teachers in ES! They might actually know math themselves then!
Inexpensive french, spanish and mandarin available year-round before or after school at multiple levels: https://www.janneyschool.org/janneyplus/jelp/

Looks more transparent than the meaningless jumbo MCPS slaps up on its generic websites.

I love people who come here to be braggadocious about nothing. Please go to the DC public school forum. Really, you have nothing to prove here. People are on this forum because of MCPS, NOT DCPS. Clearly you've made your choice so just move along.

DP here

I don’t see it as bragging at all.

I see it more as showing parents that we should expect better from MCPS. And that it is CAN be done better. It’s providing an example of how things could be different in MCPS. I find it helpful.

So what is the Root cause of issues at MOCO schools?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And when I say the NWDC ES PTAs are awesome it's compared to our also highly active former Bethesda ES. However in DC the PTA funds and usages are not throttled down by MCPS Central Office. If we don't like the class size, we hire an aide. This is in addition to the better curriculum and more dedicated subjects than MCPS had (mainly reading, math), full time music (2x/week), art (2x/week) and PE (3x a week) classes.

Sure, but you realize that allowing PTAs to hire aides not only perpetuates inequality, but also isn’t a sustainable source of funding for that aide. Let’s say your kid’s class could use an aide, so you pay for one. What happens when your kid graduates from the school? Do you keep paying for the aide, or does the aide lose his/her job because you don’t want to pay the salary anymore and the current PTA parents don’t see the need for one?

I totally agree MCPS has problems, but the solution isn’t having PTAs pay for things like that. The public school system needs to be the one to provide those things.

Also, if you look at the national rankings, DCPS schools still lag far behind MCPS, with the exception of 2-3 charter schools. Some DCUM posters love to act like DCPS is this wonderful place, but it’s just not.

Stop with the meaningless averages, standardized test rankings, and pretend teacher aides in high school BS. MCPS has big problems and not just for ESOL and FARM kids. It is failing its middle and top kids daily with a crap curriculum that mainly teaches math and english badly and skips out on teaching science, social studies, any arts, and gym. A huge bifurcated COUNTY-RUN school district like MCPS does not provide well. At all. You will be supplementing and supplementing for holes and missing subjects until high school. Then the robotic federal AP curriculum kicks in.

Go tour 3 Bethesda ESs and 3 NW DC ES (Janney, LaFayette, Mann) and report back on class size, hourly/weekly curriculum, extracurriculars, community involvement. If you have a choice, and are informed firsthand, you would not chose MCPS.

Central office MCPS policies, procedures, curriculum have annihilated the MoCo reputation. Just peel back the onion one layer.

Well for starters the Janney ES website looks awesome, had tons of info, and the class schedule seems to cover double the subject matter than MCPS ES classes. https://www.janneyschool.org/

Look, an 8:30am start time for all - now your kids don't have to climb all over the house from 6:30am to 9:25am when school finally starts!
And look, a Responsive Classroom teaching methodology for PK-2 - can't do that with only one teacher and 27 kiddos.
Designated Science and Math teachers in ES! They might actually know math themselves then!
Inexpensive french, spanish and mandarin available year-round before or after school at multiple levels: https://www.janneyschool.org/janneyplus/jelp/

Looks more transparent than the meaningless jumbo MCPS slaps up on its generic websites.

I love people who come here to be braggadocious about nothing. Please go to the DC public school forum. Really, you have nothing to prove here. People are on this forum because of MCPS, NOT DCPS. Clearly you've made your choice so just move along.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't DCPS have PK as well, for all students, not just Title 1?

No. It’s a lottery.

Correct, lots of seats but even more applicants. But it is a lotto, not based on your family's reportable income like in the handful of MCPS PK schools.


"Pre-K attendance is not compulsory in Washington DC, and DCPS does not guarantee spots in schools for all students. All interested students, no matter where they live, must enter the Pre-K lottery to obtain a Pre-K spot at Janney. Traditionally, demand for Pre-K spots exceeds available space at Janney. Janney uses the DCPS Pre-K lottery system to allocate available Pre-K spots. In recent history, all pre-K spots have gone to in-boundary families or students with siblings already enrolled at the school.

Registration for the Pre-K lottery will occur online in January/February each year. Please check the DCPS website for more details and exact dates. The actually lottery occurs in early March. Results are posted online and mailed to families. Families usually have until April 1 to accept their offer and until May 1 to register with the school if they wish to accept their lottery placement. Students who live in-boundary for Janney, students with siblings at Janney, and students who live within 3 blocks of Janney receive preference in the lottery – otherwise children are selected at random through an electronic system.

The number of slots available for enrollment will determine the number of children selected. If more than one child from a family is entered into a school’s lottery, each child is entered individually; hence, the lottery does not guarantee that all children from the same family will be selected.

In 2015-2016 there are 4 Pre-K classes at Janney (80 spaces). A child must be 4 years old on or before September 30th to enter Pre-Kindergarten."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trust me, I have huge problems with MCPS, but DCPS is just not this glorious heaven you’re making it out to be. Sure, there are some good elementary schools, but what about middle and high school?

Public education in the US is a crap show all over. Stop acting like DCPS is heavenly.

Also, if you don’t understand why it’s a problem for PTAs to fund aides, you’re an idiot. It’s simply not a sustainable source of funding, unless the PTA is committed to paying for that person for as long as he/she wants to work there and is performing well, even if that’s 25 years. How is that a good solution?

It will always be a good solution when your county-run school districts thinks kindergarten and 1st grade should have 24-28 five or six year olds all at different ability levels and only one teacher and all different ability levels. Your attempt arguing that PTAs aren't a reliable funding source or that the same aide is in the same school for two decades doesn't hold water.

Have you ever volunteered in your kids' K or 1st grade? It's like whack-a-mole. Hopefully something sticks! Our overstuffed ES has mothers and fathers taking OFF OF full-time jobs to volunteer as much as possible it is such a serious matter. Then working after 8pm to catch-up on office work.

And yes, DCPS has an excellent 20+ year track record of each class' K and 1st grade parents paying for an aide if the Central Office does not appoint one for ESOL/FARM/Poverty reasons. So now most K and grade 1 in DCPS have one teacher and one aide - the NW DC schools have that and the Title 1 schools have that.
Seems fair to millions of people and 1000s of public school districts who allow that.

WHY would anyone think it's better in ANY kindergarten classroom or 1st grade classroom in the country not to have an aide helping the teacher? What exactly is better about that? Please tell us more. Tell us what you really think this time.

I think school systems should be paying for these things rather than pushing the burden on parents. That’s what you all should be fighting for.

Yep, but MCPS wants to keep trying its 20 year long Achievement Gap Quest and keeps throwing the money there. All whilst hamstringing the rest of the county with rules, regs, restrictions, krap curriculum, 4 standardized tests a year, etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And when I say the NWDC ES PTAs are awesome it's compared to our also highly active former Bethesda ES. However in DC the PTA funds and usages are not throttled down by MCPS Central Office. If we don't like the class size, we hire an aide. This is in addition to the better curriculum and more dedicated subjects than MCPS had (mainly reading, math), full time music (2x/week), art (2x/week) and PE (3x a week) classes.

Sure, but you realize that allowing PTAs to hire aides not only perpetuates inequality, but also isn’t a sustainable source of funding for that aide. Let’s say your kid’s class could use an aide, so you pay for one. What happens when your kid graduates from the school? Do you keep paying for the aide, or does the aide lose his/her job because you don’t want to pay the salary anymore and the current PTA parents don’t see the need for one?

I totally agree MCPS has problems, but the solution isn’t having PTAs pay for things like that. The public school system needs to be the one to provide those things.

Also, if you look at the national rankings, DCPS schools still lag far behind MCPS, with the exception of 2-3 charter schools. Some DCUM posters love to act like DCPS is this wonderful place, but it’s just not.

Stop with the meaningless averages, standardized test rankings, and pretend teacher aides in high school BS. MCPS has big problems and not just for ESOL and FARM kids. It is failing its middle and top kids daily with a crap curriculum that mainly teaches math and english badly and skips out on teaching science, social studies, any arts, and gym. A huge bifurcated COUNTY-RUN school district like MCPS does not provide well. At all. You will be supplementing and supplementing for holes and missing subjects until high school. Then the robotic federal AP curriculum kicks in.

Go tour 3 Bethesda ESs and 3 NW DC ES (Janney, LaFayette, Mann) and report back on class size, hourly/weekly curriculum, extracurriculars, community involvement. If you have a choice, and are informed firsthand, you would not chose MCPS.

Central office MCPS policies, procedures, curriculum have annihilated the MoCo reputation. Just peel back the onion one layer.

Well for starters the Janney ES website looks awesome, had tons of info, and the class schedule seems to cover double the subject matter than MCPS ES classes. https://www.janneyschool.org/

Look, an 8:30am start time for all - now your kids don't have to climb all over the house from 6:30am to 9:25am when school finally starts!
And look, a Responsive Classroom teaching methodology for PK-2 - can't do that with only one teacher and 27 kiddos.
Designated Science and Math teachers in ES! They might actually know math themselves then!
Inexpensive french, spanish and mandarin available year-round before or after school at multiple levels: https://www.janneyschool.org/janneyplus/jelp/

Looks more transparent than the meaningless jumbo MCPS slaps up on its generic websites.

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't DCPS have PK as well, for all students, not just Title 1?

No. It’s a lottery.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Trust me, I have huge problems with MCPS, but DCPS is just not this glorious heaven you’re making it out to be. Sure, there are some good elementary schools, but what about middle and high school?

Public education in the US is a crap show all over. Stop acting like DCPS is heavenly.

Also, if you don’t understand why it’s a problem for PTAs to fund aides, you’re an idiot. It’s simply not a sustainable source of funding, unless the PTA is committed to paying for that person for as long as he/she wants to work there and is performing well, even if that’s 25 years. How is that a good solution?

It will always be a good solution when your county-run school districts thinks kindergarten and 1st grade should have 24-28 five or six year olds all at different ability levels and only one teacher and all different ability levels. Your attempt arguing that PTAs aren't a reliable funding source or that the same aide is in the same school for two decades doesn't hold water.

Have you ever volunteered in your kids' K or 1st grade? It's like whack-a-mole. Hopefully something sticks! Our overstuffed ES has mothers and fathers taking OFF OF full-time jobs to volunteer as much as possible it is such a serious matter. Then working after 8pm to catch-up on office work.

And yes, DCPS has an excellent 20+ year track record of each class' K and 1st grade parents paying for an aide if the Central Office does not appoint one for ESOL/FARM/Poverty reasons. So now most K and grade 1 in DCPS have one teacher and one aide - the NW DC schools have that and the Title 1 schools have that.
Seems fair to millions of people and 1000s of public school districts who allow that.

WHY would anyone think it's better in ANY kindergarten classroom or 1st grade classroom in the country not to have an aide helping the teacher? What exactly is better about that? Please tell us more. Tell us what you really think this time.

I think school systems should be paying for these things rather than pushing the burden on parents. That’s what you all should be fighting for.

Doesn't DCPS have PK as well, for all students, not just Title 1?

Anonymous wrote:Trust me, I have huge problems with MCPS, but DCPS is just not this glorious heaven you’re making it out to be. Sure, there are some good elementary schools, but what about middle and high school?

Public education in the US is a crap show all over. Stop acting like DCPS is heavenly.

Also, if you don’t understand why it’s a problem for PTAs to fund aides, you’re an idiot. It’s simply not a sustainable source of funding, unless the PTA is committed to paying for that person for as long as he/she wants to work there and is performing well, even if that’s 25 years. How is that a good solution?

It will always be a good solution when your county-run school districts thinks kindergarten and 1st grade should have 24-28 five or six year olds all at different ability levels and only one teacher and all different ability levels. Your attempt arguing that PTAs aren't a reliable funding source or that the same aide is in the same school for two decades doesn't hold water.

Have you ever volunteered in your kids' K or 1st grade? It's like whack-a-mole. Hopefully something sticks! Our overstuffed ES has mothers and fathers taking OFF OF full-time jobs to volunteer as much as possible it is such a serious matter. Then working after 8pm to catch-up on office work.

And yes, DCPS has an excellent 20+ year track record of each class' K and 1st grade parents paying for an aide if the Central Office does not appoint one for ESOL/FARM/Poverty reasons. So now most K and grade 1 in DCPS have one teacher and one aide - the NW DC schools have that and the Title 1 schools have that.
Seems fair to millions of people and 1000s of public school districts who allow that.

WHY would anyone think it's better in ANY kindergarten classroom or 1st grade classroom in the country not to have an aide helping the teacher? What exactly is better about that? Please tell us more. Tell us what you really think this time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Why isn't this posted on the MCPS website for OSSI??? Thank you DCUM.

Should I let them know that is how I found out who is for what school as of July 1st?

http://nebula.wsimg.com/d4573365c8dd4ed04eb1fb64adc7a3ff?AccessKeyId=AB71C8A62DC88BF7171E&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

http://nebula.wsimg.com/74e0a86a005e2fcbeff6d3d90835efb9?AccessKeyId=AB71C8A62DC88BF7171E&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

I was just at our area MCCPTA/MCPS meeting last night and the "new" directors were talking all about getting to know the community and being open to communication, etc. And yet the official website still lists the old director assignments http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/clusteradmin/school-assignments.aspx/ and the only reason any of us has access to the correct org chart is that someone on DCUM posted the link to where it lives on the internet on "nebula.wsing.com" whatever that is. And of course I wouldn't even know who to complain too...

Since the website isn’t updated yet also note that former director Greg Edmundson is now on special assignment to the Office of the Superintendent to do Compliance. So complain to him about stuff involving laws and ethics, I suppose. As for the website, not sure who you’d complain to. I actually don’t mind the website and think it’s an improvement (once updated). I find the colors jarring though. Teal and an ugly dark color and a horrible shade of pink. Would have liked a different palette better !

Oops means to put that on website thread...