Anonymous
Post 05/05/2019 07:56     Subject: Best elementary school for a STEM gifted child?
Anonymous wrote:OP here. See I’m glad I asked! I have no idea about all this magnet stuff. Good thing my husband grew up in MiCo. He’ll have a better idea. But great to know the regular schools aren’t going to cut it. And when I mentioned he was gifted,
I’m just saying it’s his strong point. Very strong. But not trying to suggest there aren’t plenty of gifted children out there!


If you’re going to live here, you’re going to have to get used to people taking any opportunity to tell you that their child is gifted. Even if your child’s is already gifted and especially if your child is in some way learning disabled.
Anonymous
Post 05/03/2019 12:33     Subject: Re:Best elementary school for a STEM gifted child?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Back on topic, one of the reasons we elected to buy in Takoma Park was the schools. We were relocating from the Bay Area where real estate is more expensive than DC so we had the ability to buy anywhere. We looked at Arlington and Bethesda but didn't find either that compelling.

TPES: Only elementary magnet w/ small classes. math enrichment and dedicated STEM teacher
PBES: local CES program, smaller class sizes, math enrichment, dedicated science teacher
TPMS: Middle school stem magnet with an in-boundary set-aside.
Blair: SMCS & CAP magnets, although there's no set-aside TPMS, prepare kids for this, also magnet classes are available to everyone


Unfortunately, the info on PBES is not really accurateently. anymore. There is no math enrichment in 3rd grade, and the only enriched math classes for 4th and 5th are if your child is selected for 4/5 and 5/6, which is the same at most other elementary schools. Also, we heard they will be losing their science/STEM teacher due to funding cuts. Sigh. Still, TPES is a great school and does do math enrichment very well, and the local set aside for TPMS is also a plus.


I’m not sure that’s completely accurate. My 3rd grader’s class at PBES has several math groups that vary, but DC’s group picked up where the enriched math at TPES left off. Last quarter they were working on long division and adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators. I think they’ve been going over order of operations recently. One days their group doesn’t meet they’ve been reading BA comics and working through the problems there.