Anonymous wrote:What are serious music lessons?

Serious: across several years, no cancelations or rescheduling by teacher or family, high expectations of daily practice which parents put energy into enforcing, theory course in parallel, recitals, juries, and after some consistent years of hard work, competitions.

Better than travel: just get out of the house. High income high travel families end up missing days and weeks of school for travel, and it doesn't help their lazy kid believe that their school is important.

Be draconian about screen EXCEPT for whatever the best online programs are right now in maths and sciences, and documentaries.


So, don't make them miss school, don't let them become a youtube videogame vegetable.

As noted above, it is easier to supplement in elementary. Regular trips to pick up books from the library and look at the free programs being offered by DCPL; Khan Academy, Russian School of Math or Mathnasium and/ or workbooks/programs for math; museums; art and music programs such as Sitar Center, which has a sliding scale for participation, could be great. Look at taking your child to the Family Programs at the Kennedy Center for younger kids ($20/each) and they also have a special program for older students to obtain discounted tickets with ID. Good luck!

Hard because so much busy work homework even with mediocre content

Second Khan!! Try Beast Academy or Zearn for math.

To put the supplementing vs. moving thing in perspective, my sister lives in a wealthy suburb nationally known for its excellent public schools. Parents there still do things like Kumon and Mathnasium. My sis and niece make fun of them for that, but there you go.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seems like people offer answers like move because they want to comment but don’t have sophisticated answers tailored to the requestor’s topic.

Well, it's not a very specific question. Sub-par in what way, and what is the parent's goal? Some people don't care about accelerated math, some people do.

This is fair. OP doesn't even say the grade level. A sub-par elementary is not that hard to compensate for if you fill your home with books/reading and do some math supplementing. Unless the school is very disorganized or dangerous, in which case it could cause enough stress to make even that level supplementing hard. Compensating for a bad MS is harder, a bad HS is honestly basically impossible unless you are ready to homeschool.

We are at a Title 1 school in DC that is subpar in some ways (a lot of kids below grade level, poor facilities, the specials are not good, admin is weak). But the interesting thing is that the academics are great and my above grade level kid has had nothing but phenomenal teachers. I think basically to survive there as a teacher, you have to have great classroom control and excellent teaching technique, plus they get a compensation boost for title 1 status that I think helps attract more experienced teachers.

MS/HS is a harder solve for us unless we can get into a better feed by then. If not, we will move. Like OP, we can't afford the close in suburbs with good schools. We are looking at places like Howard or AA county. Long commutes but if we could live close to the school and get some work flexibility, we could make it work.

Anonymous wrote:Seems like people offer answers like move because they want to comment but don’t have sophisticated answers tailored to the requestor’s topic.

Well, it's not a very specific question. Sub-par in what way, and what is the parent's goal? Some people don't care about accelerated math, some people do.

Seems like people offer answers like move because they want to comment but don’t have sophisticated answers tailored to the requestor’s topic.

Not so knee jerk.

It's always funny that both the DCPS defenders and critics both knee-jerk to MOVE at this question.

Anonymous wrote:Move.

This is the answer.

Move.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CTY camps, you can get high school credits for some of them.

You need to be 98th percentile (on PARCC or SAT relative to your age group) to access those CTY camps. Great option for very high achievers.

(But not necessarily a solution to a subpar middle school unless you are at that level)

They have some options that don't require test scores. I suggest CTY mainly to get the Geometry credit if your middle school doesn't offer it.

How do you get DCPS to give you credit for a CTY class?

https://dcps.dc.gov/publication/transfer-of-credit-policy

CTY gives you a transcript.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CTY camps, you can get high school credits for some of them.

You need to be 98th percentile (on PARCC or SAT relative to your age group) to access those CTY camps. Great option for very high achievers.

(But not necessarily a solution to a subpar middle school unless you are at that level)

They have some options that don't require test scores. I suggest CTY mainly to get the Geometry credit if your middle school doesn't offer it.

How do you get DCPS to give you credit for a CTY class?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:CTY camps, you can get high school credits for some of them.

You need to be 98th percentile (on PARCC or SAT relative to your age group) to access those CTY camps. Great option for very high achievers.

(But not necessarily a solution to a subpar middle school unless you are at that level)

They have some options that don't require test scores. I suggest CTY mainly to get the Geometry credit if your middle school doesn't offer it.