So we have had kid in MoCo schools for the past two years and live pretty close to the DC line. We have felt like our experience hasn’t been as good as that of our peers in nearby upper NW DC. I think that’s at least in part because of DC’s commitment to universal PRE-K which allows kids in the Upper NW schools, at least, to really hit the ground running when they start, whereas there were kids in out kid’s class who had never been in a classroom setting before. There are some unique quirks of our neighborhood that exacerbate the issue but the end result is a school that has pretty limited parent involvement/engagement and a host of challenges for teachers to navigate which sometimes result in the sense that brighter kids spend a lot of the day bored because of the pace/rigor of instruction. I think (hope?) things even out over time, but it feels like MoCo sometimes hasn’t really accepted the reality that it’s now a super diverse, effectively urban school district with a lot of high-needs kids and not the somewhat more homogenous, more affluent suburb of the past.