Assessing move to Cambridge Mass

[Sansolo101]

Wow.

Interesting take. I know immersion programs are "trendy" right now so I am pretty critical of quality. Cambridge seemed to have the only bilingual school with high test results. Which is why it appealed. we are not necessarily married to Cambridge due to the lottery and the fact that my wife is a certified interpretor/translator so we can get by at home.

Somerville seemed to have a few good neighbor school options. A friend emailed me today and suggested that I look into Waltham as well. I'll be working right down by the Boston harbor. Basically it seems like my budget will go a bit farther in the surrounding areas for quality neighborhood and neighborhood school?

[jellybean23]

I live in Cambridge and it's a great place. Unfortunately though, your son is not going to get into the Amigos School. That is probably the single hardest program to get into from the lottery, and you have missed it for Jr K and K, which is when basically all the spots are taken. I have heard (this is heresay though) that for students coming in after the lottery, you will probably be given the option of Kennedy, King Open (which is under construction for the next few years), or maybe MLK.

Cambridge publishes lottery data each year so you can see where people are applying for their kids. You can see here how insanely difficult it is to get into Amigos even if you are able to enter the lottery.
http://www.cpsd.us/UserFiles/Servers...rojections.pdf

[porterhouse]

Originally Posted by jellybean23

I live in Cambridge and it's a great place. Unfortunately though, your son is not going to get into the Amigos School. That is probably the single hardest program to get into from the lottery, and you have missed it for Jr K and K, which is when basically all the spots are taken. I have heard (this is heresay though) that for students coming in after the lottery, you will probably be given the option of Kennedy, King Open (which is under construction for the next few years), or maybe MLK.

Jelly is correct about Amigos. As for the rest, school popularity and enrollment trends do vary from year to year. However my observations living here are that you can work your way into almost school other than Amigos or Tobin (Montessori) if you are committed to it. In addition to being the toughest to get into, these 2 schools do not offer preferential entry to proximity students. The advantage you have by not knowing where you will live yet is that for the rest of the schools, you can pretty much guarantee your child a spot by moving to a location where that school is one of the 2 closest to your address. Anything anecdotal I or anyone else can tell you should be taken with a grain of salt.

Your first step should be contacting the Family Resource Center - Cambridge Public Schools . They can help to separate myth from reality, though they do tend to be understandably conservative in there advice on school placement. After that, go tour some schools. The lottery really isn't a wall to ending up at a school of your liking if living in Cambridge. It does take some parental effort to navigte however

Good luck!

[semiurbanite]

You can't really measure Spanish immersion classes based on test scores. In general, Spanish immersion often translates to students from lower income households and therefore lower standardizes test scores. You would want to see test scores for the non-economically disadvantaged households in these programs. Not sure if you can get that slice of the data but in Cambridge and Somerville those students tend to thrive.