Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread kind of makes me jealous of the vast majority of American parents who just enroll their kids in their suburban boundary school because that’s what’s available to them. Though I realize it’s a double edge sword, if those schools don’t work for their kid, most parents do not have another option. Moving or private school aren’t realistic to most of our country, where in the DC UMC it seems almost like a given if things aren’t working out.

it is extremely coming throughout the rest of the country for parents to choose where they live specifically for the school their home is zoned for. Yes, they just send their kid to the local school, but they didn’t randomly end up where they did.

DC seems to be full of more oblivious parents who wake up one day and realize the house they bought with the great walk to all the bars and coffee shops is zoned for a terrible school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread kind of makes me jealous of the vast majority of American parents who just enroll their kids in their suburban boundary school because that’s what’s available to them. Though I realize it’s a double edge sword, if those schools don’t work for their kid, most parents do not have another option. Moving or private school aren’t realistic to most of our country, where in the DC UMC it seems almost like a given if things aren’t working out.

it is extremely coming throughout the rest of the country for parents to choose where they live specifically for the school their home is zoned for. Yes, they just send their kid to the local school, but they didn’t randomly end up where they did.

DC seems to be full of more oblivious parents who wake up one day and realize the house they bought with the great walk to all the bars and coffee shops is zoned for a terrible school.

I see the oblivion in the context of crime too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread kind of makes me jealous of the vast majority of American parents who just enroll their kids in their suburban boundary school because that’s what’s available to them. Though I realize it’s a double edge sword, if those schools don’t work for their kid, most parents do not have another option. Moving or private school aren’t realistic to most of our country, where in the DC UMC it seems almost like a given if things aren’t working out.

it is extremely coming throughout the rest of the country for parents to choose where they live specifically for the school their home is zoned for. Yes, they just send their kid to the local school, but they didn’t randomly end up where they did.

DC seems to be full of more oblivious parents who wake up one day and realize the house they bought with the great walk to all the bars and coffee shops is zoned for a terrible school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread kind of makes me jealous of the vast majority of American parents who just enroll their kids in their suburban boundary school because that’s what’s available to them. Though I realize it’s a double edge sword, if those schools don’t work for their kid, most parents do not have another option. Moving or private school aren’t realistic to most of our country, where in the DC UMC it seems almost like a given if things aren’t working out.

it is extremely coming throughout the rest of the country for parents to choose where they live specifically for the school their home is zoned for. Yes, they just send their kid to the local school, but they didn’t randomly end up where they did.

DC seems to be full of more oblivious parents who wake up one day and realize the house they bought with the great walk to all the bars and coffee shops is zoned for a terrible school.

I see this opinion on here often and I don't get it. In some cases good schools are "a great walk to all the bars and coffee shops." In other instances, people bought homes before they had kids or even knew if they wanted to have kids, so didn't prioritize schools (and didn't great metrics for evaluating them even if they did). Sometimes people buy homes believing the IB school to be good, only to attend for ECE and discover it's not at all right for their kid. Some people rent, and/or can't afford to live in-bound for better schools. Some people bought knowing the schools were bad but believed they would be able to move before it was an issue, only to run into issues (a job loss, Covid, home not appreciating well while homes in more desired school boundaries shooting up in price, etc.).



I know you think you are really owning all the families in DC who have poor IB schools that happen to be near a coffee shop or bar they enjoy going too, but you just wind up coming off incredibly ignorant. You seem to think there are large numbers of people who can buy wherever they want but choose homes in "hip" neighborhoods with bad schools just because they are stupid and oblivious. It's not happening. In fact, one of the things that happens is that a bunch of people buy homes in "hip" neighborhoods and then the schools get a lot better -- see the aforementioned Ludlow Taylor, and Maury, among others.

I'm sorry your upper NW neighborhood or suburb has so few good businesses to walk to, but at least your schools are good.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread kind of makes me jealous of the vast majority of American parents who just enroll their kids in their suburban boundary school because that’s what’s available to them. Though I realize it’s a double edge sword, if those schools don’t work for their kid, most parents do not have another option. Moving or private school aren’t realistic to most of our country, where in the DC UMC it seems almost like a given if things aren’t working out.

it is extremely coming throughout the rest of the country for parents to choose where they live specifically for the school their home is zoned for. Yes, they just send their kid to the local school, but they didn’t randomly end up where they did.

DC seems to be full of more oblivious parents who wake up one day and realize the house they bought with the great walk to all the bars and coffee shops is zoned for a terrible school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread kind of makes me jealous of the vast majority of American parents who just enroll their kids in their suburban boundary school because that’s what’s available to them. Though I realize it’s a double edge sword, if those schools don’t work for their kid, most parents do not have another option. Moving or private school aren’t realistic to most of our country, where in the DC UMC it seems almost like a given if things aren’t working out.

it is extremely coming throughout the rest of the country for parents to choose where they live specifically for the school their home is zoned for. Yes, they just send their kid to the local school, but they didn’t randomly end up where they did.

DC seems to be full of more oblivious parents who wake up one day and realize the house they bought with the great walk to all the bars and coffee shops is zoned for a terrible school.

Anonymous wrote:This thread kind of makes me jealous of the vast majority of American parents who just enroll their kids in their suburban boundary school because that’s what’s available to them. Though I realize it’s a double edge sword, if those schools don’t work for their kid, most parents do not have another option. Moving or private school aren’t realistic to most of our country, where in the DC UMC it seems almost like a given if things aren’t working out.

Anonymous wrote:Your kid is 15 months old — how do you know your kid won’t be the one who is below grade level? I suggest enjoying your 1 year and worrying about this later.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in DC (Capitol Hill area) and are the parents of a 15 month old. We won't be able to enter the PK3 lottery until 2025, so this is still some time off for us, but the big question that I have been wondering about as we look at DC public schools and decide whether we should stay or move to the suburbs is this--

How much does it really matter what percentage of a school's students are at grade level for reading/math?

I ask because I noticed that even the better schools in DC have large percentages of students not at grade level. We are in-bound to Ludlow-Taylor which has maybe 40-60% at grade level. Nearby Maury seems to be at about 75% I might be off somewhat with the precise percentages but the point is that these are not the 90-95%+ figures at a number of schools in the suburbs.

I've taught, though only at the college level, and even then it was pretty difficult for me to manage dealing with a class that not had obviously bright students but also students who obviously lacked the foundation to be in college (and mixing them together wasn't good for anyone). I know primary/secondary education is not college. I know that tracking is bad for students who are then stuck in the lower tracks (and in my own experience attending a racially mixed school district in suburban NJ, the higher tracks were almost all white while the lower tracks were almost all minorities, which was also not good).

I've also seen various articles/studies saying that it doesn't really matter where one goes to college. Taking my home state of NJ, there was once a study showing that controlling for SAT scores, etc., folks who went to Rutgers earned just as much as those who went to Princeton. I wonder if the same is true for elementary schools through high schools generally (controlling for all factors that schools can't control such as socioeconomic factors, the parents' degree of education, etc., etc.).

Putting my question again--how much is it going to matter if my child goes to a school in DC where say 50% are at grade level vs. a school in the suburbs where 95% are at grade level?

I know socioeconomic factors is the big elephant in the room, and I should also mention that in addition to having our child having solid academics, we also want him to learn from a wide diversity of folks from all sorts of backgrounds (he is himself a mixed kid, and his mother is an immigrant).

Thanks for any thoughts/comments you can share!

Oh honey. You can accept it now or sacrifice years of your child’s early education years to try to “be the change.” Either way you will end up like almost everyone I know: moving to a better school district or going private.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We were on the Hill with a toddler and moved to the burbs because we didn't want to have to play a lottery to get into reasonable schools. It was just too much uncertainty with kids draining out of neighborhood schools as early as 4th grade.

We're now in Arlington and our kids walk to elementary school with 98% of their classmates, a situation very similar to what they had on the Hill. But the difference is that we already know that they can also walk to middle and high school. No treks across the city. No uncertainty. No disruption of friend groups, though still student mixing as elementary and middle schools combine.

I won't say it's perfect, but we just couldn't bring ourselves to commit to a neighborhood where the schools wouldn't commit to us. (See DC lottery losers who have to move quickly to another house outside the Hill in time for middle school.)

Where are you in Arlington where you can walk to elementary, middle and high school?

Anonymous wrote:We were on the Hill with a toddler and moved to the burbs because we didn't want to have to play a lottery to get into reasonable schools. It was just too much uncertainty with kids draining out of neighborhood schools as early as 4th grade.

We're now in Arlington and our kids walk to elementary school with 98% of their classmates, a situation very similar to what they had on the Hill. But the difference is that we already know that they can also walk to middle and high school. No treks across the city. No uncertainty. No disruption of friend groups, though still student mixing as elementary and middle schools combine.

I won't say it's perfect, but we just couldn't bring ourselves to commit to a neighborhood where the schools wouldn't commit to us. (See DC lottery losers who have to move quickly to another house outside the Hill in time for middle school.)

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP. My children are at L-T. They are well above grade level. Only the older one has had to do standardized testing, but they have never tested below 90% nationwide when such data were indicated, and are typically around 96-98%. They have many peers in the school and are not academically bored. Perhaps most importantly they have strong, stimulating friendships.

For Pre-K I wouldn't even give the matter a second thought, assuming you can get in. For elementary, in the earlier grades I've sometimes had questions whether they were going fast enough for them not to be bored. But just seeing the level that my kids are at right now, despite Covid, removed those questions for me entirely.

There might be a critical mass below which some opportunities are missing, but if so the current L-T student-group is not close to it. (Indeed, I would be more worried about L-T if your kid had learning needs, per the discussion in a different thread.)

Dial it down. You have bright kids testing above grade level, sounds like everything is fine but maybe just dial it down a little bit. Your kids would probably be considered middle of the pack at most high SES suburban schools, and a lot of your perception that they are "way" above grade level stems from being in a school where only 40-60% of kids are at or above grade level. Yes, that's excellent for DCPS and especially for a school that still has a sizable FARMS population. L-T has every reason to be proud. But please understand your kids aren't like super outlier geniuses. It's just that the bar in DCPS is crazy low. Your frame of reference is skewed by the generally low academic standards overall in the district.

WTF. She literally said her kids weren’t outliers at the school. Also, they absolutely would not be middle of the pack at a suburban school; that’s absurd. In an AAP program? Perhaps. But OP has a 15 month old who has absolutely no idea whether her kids will be AAP types or not.

This can’t be true though. You can have kids that are “well above grade level” at a school like L-T and then say that they don’t stand out at all and that they have many peers doing as well. Statistically, this doesn’t work. About half of L-T students test below grade level. About half are at or above grade level. If the PP’s kids are WELL above grade level, they are doing better than the vast majority of their classmates. Based on PARCC scores.

So either the PP is overestimating her kid’s abilities (which is ok, lots of people view their children through rose-colored glasses) or she is overestimating the percentage of the rest of the class who is at the same level. Either way, it’s not that useful if a data point.

I would say that in the average non-5th grade class, about 75-80% of kids are at or above grade level for reading and 50% for math. The kids who peel off are non-randomly distributed UMC-wise and same with new kids who come each year, so 3-5 results only tell part of the story & 5th in particular is not really reflective of the school as a whole.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We live in DC (Capitol Hill area) and are the parents of a 15 month old. We won't be able to enter the PK3 lottery until 2025, so this is still some time off for us, but the big question that I have been wondering about as we look at DC public schools and decide whether we should stay or move to the suburbs is this--

How much does it really matter what percentage of a school's students are at grade level for reading/math?

I ask because I noticed that even the better schools in DC have large percentages of students not at grade level. We are in-bound to Ludlow-Taylor which has maybe 40-60% at grade level. Nearby Maury seems to be at about 75% I might be off somewhat with the precise percentages but the point is that these are not the 90-95%+ figures at a number of schools in the suburbs.

I've taught, though only at the college level, and even then it was pretty difficult for me to manage dealing with a class that not had obviously bright students but also students who obviously lacked the foundation to be in college (and mixing them together wasn't good for anyone). I know primary/secondary education is not college. I know that tracking is bad for students who are then stuck in the lower tracks (and in my own experience attending a racially mixed school district in suburban NJ, the higher tracks were almost all white while the lower tracks were almost all minorities, which was also not good).

I've also seen various articles/studies saying that it doesn't really matter where one goes to college. Taking my home state of NJ, there was once a study showing that controlling for SAT scores, etc., folks who went to Rutgers earned just as much as those who went to Princeton. I wonder if the same is true for elementary schools through high schools generally (controlling for all factors that schools can't control such as socioeconomic factors, the parents' degree of education, etc., etc.).

Putting my question again--how much is it going to matter if my child goes to a school in DC where say 50% are at grade level vs. a school in the suburbs where 95% are at grade level?

I know socioeconomic factors is the big elephant in the room, and I should also mention that in addition to having our child having solid academics, we also want him to learn from a wide diversity of folks from all sorts of backgrounds (he is himself a mixed kid, and his mother is an immigrant).

Thanks for any thoughts/comments you can share!

Oh honey. You can accept it now or sacrifice years of your child’s early education years to try to “be the change.” Either way you will end up like almost everyone I know: moving to a better school district or going private.

We're on the Hill with older (HS/MS) kids and yes, we know plenty of people who have gone private or moved to the suburbs, but a majority of our kids' classmates (with educated parents) from early elementary did neither: They either went to charters for MS/HS (that includes us) or went to Stuart Hobson and then application high schools.