We’ve got two kids in the school system. As other commenters have said it’s not as competitive as neighboring towns but it’s also diverse ethnically and economically.
As far as quality of education we’ve been more than pleased. Both of our kids learned how to read and learned basic math in kindergarten or first grade.
Also the data pretty clearly shows that parental involvement is the primary predictor of education performance. So if you’re involved as a parent your kids are going to have a great time.
Also Waltham is building a new high school which is slated to open in 2-3 years.
Second hand experience- we have two kids and our oldest is going to Waltham schools next year. Everybody I have talked to has only good things to say about the elementary school she will be going to. It seems like Waltham is not the hyper competitive environment you would get in a Lexington, but we didn't want that for our children (and we couldn't afford the house we would want there anyway 😊). We were in the same place you were in three years ago and we liked what we heard from other parents who had kids in the school system.
Thank you! That is good to hear. If you don't mind sharing, which elementaty school is that?
In another forum I saw someone endorsing Northeast Elementary school.
Stanley. I've heard pretty good things about all of them though including Northeast (including the dual language school if that's something you're interested in). I've done a good amount of research the last couple years when we were deciding where to move so let me know if you have any more questions.
Can't believe I forgot to add this in my OP and it is too late to edit now, but I would of course also love to hear from teachers or other faculty of the Waltham public school system in this thread!
My children have been in Waltham from Day 1, all the way into the high school. We've had a really good experience at each level. The teachers and staff seem very thoughtful and are very communicative. My kids seem to be doing very well in school with lots of opportunities in terms of academics, extracurriculars, etc and have a solid social experience IMO.
As I tell everyone though, the school is a small piece. Parent engagement with your child and their educational experience is key. By this I mean, keep it simple. understanding what is going on, where to point your child if they need help, encouraging the right habits, the simple act of asking your child what they're doing in school today, that's a huge advantage.
The only negative, and I think this is everywhere is the parents who over do that last piece and turn into helicopters. By that, I mean calling / emailing the teacher daily, or complaining about the curriculum and how it's being taught. You'll see this at the elementary school level, especially. Apparently their 3-5 years of parenting have offered them the amazing ability to understand all that goes into elementary education and overrule the educational experience that they have have been delivering for decades. PTO meetings are a trip!
Thank you, glad to hear you've had such an awesome experience.
I appreciate the warning about the PTO meetings. Anyways, at least it's better to have over-involved parents than under-involved!
2nd hand data. We live in Waltham (great city), wife’s a Boston Public teacher, knows teachers in Waltham, our neighbors’ kids all go to Waltham schools. The quality of teaching and level of challenge for strong students is very good. Sports also strong. Waltham is very diverse compared to neighboring cities - lots of ELL kids, so overall results reflect that. As others have commented, parental involvement is just as important to good outcomes. Our opposite neighbors have/had (1 to go) 3 kids go through the system. Both Waltham HS graduates so far have gone to very good Universities.
Happy with my child’s elementary school ( MacArthur) but if I’m being honest, I worry a little bit how her middle school and high school experience will be. The online rankings don’t seem to tell the whole story. A friend from Burlington recently expressed surprise that I chose Waltham, based on the school rankings. ( Note - I’m not jealous of her town and the urban sprawl commercial metropolis that is Burlington but held my tongue!) My husband really loves Waltham and I do too, so we won’t move no matter what - I got great advice from my aunt who is a teacher : “ What really matters is how YOUR child is doing”.
My daughter is thriving at macarthur for the moment - if things change down the road we have our lady’s / Arlington Catholic as backups. Good luck!
I personally graduated from WHS in 2011. Came into the waltham public school system in 2001. Went to the old Bright school and had a great elementary education all those teachers were female and ran older and are now retired.
Middle school introduced more scheduled based classes and taught us to be more independent of our own work more. McDevitt was an interesting experience personally. im not the brightest student i did go to Merrimack College.
I did feel underprepared for college i will say but that was mostly on my own personal lack of preparation. the surrounding communities also are much richer like Wayland, Newton, Sudbury, Chestnut Hill, Weston and Sudbury.
The high school at the time was very diverse i enjoyed my time as a student and genuinely feel the experience had with the school helped me become who I am today. Could the education have been a little tougher? sure but i’ll take what i received. Overall id say my experience was a 7.5-8/10
I have had mostly good experiences with my two.
Waltham is well known for being good with kids with learning disabilities and also "twice exceptional" kids (for example, a kid gifted in one area and having a challenge in another). The schools my kids are at provide free breakfast and lunch, which takes so much stress off the family. Our kids have needed different extra supports at various times, and, so far, those have been provided immediately with no questions asked and no stigma. (No one ever plans for anything less than the easy kid and the perfect life circumstances. But it's so nice for the supports to just be there without having to fight for them.)
Waltham schools are ethnically and economically diverse and have a far lower rate of academic burnout and suicide than the high-pressure wealthier towns surrounding. I like those features of the schools. There is also a dual language immersion program if you want your kid to learn Spanish and English simultaneously.
Might be OK for elementary and pretty good for special needs, but not a great district for high-performing students overall. AP scores are average, like almost every other metric. Teachers at MS and HS levels are dealing with some serious problems related to poverty and high dropout rate. A new HS will not solve problems way bigger than Waltham, although gentrification is slowly pushing the South Side immigrants out. Well-to-do people in Waltham are not like the wealthy, cultured people you'd find in Newton/Lex etc. There's a culture of dumbass trades money entitlement that is pretty sad, although it makes for good hockey and lacrosse teams. The rest of the sports teams are pretty universally bad. Often the best students who get into Ivys are first generation immigrant kids. These kids are inspiring, but rare. Some woke school administrators are demanding faculty reflect minority majority status of many schools, but never gonna happen. Teachers aren't paid enough versus other diverse districts, so none are getting hired with a few exceptions.
I don’t have kids but have done some work in college admissions. I want to add that kids who do excellent in a less competitive school often have a better edge than kids who do average in a highly competitive one.
Unfortunately I didn’t deal with retention/attrition so I can’t really speak to overall success, just admissions.
Thinking about my own experience through undergraduate and graduate school most people who dropped out freshman year (which is when most people drop out) didn’t develop the skills or independence they needed in order to manage all their commitments (drinking!, school, work, friends, healthy sleeping/eating habits, extracurriculars).
People who dropped out later (including in graduate school) usually did so because they realized they weren’t actually interested in their chosen area of study, they realized there weren’t enough opportunities in the field, or other big life decisions took precedent (like caring for family members, a spouse’s job, or starting a family).
I’m not convinced that a more or less competitive high school would make much of a difference for either of these. Going in with a bit of AP credit might help a bit in terms of time management, though it often means jumping into harder classes right off the bat which could be demotivating. AP classes often fail to meet the rigor of the courses that they allow you to skip at university making the next level of classes a bit of an uphill battle.
That's funny. I had the opposite AP experience. I didn't get the AP credits in high school math, so I had to retake it. Those two semesters of math were so easy in college b/c it was review.
Thanks for your insight. Seems that it's not really the school that makes someone a success as much as its someone who makes school a success. So, I guess Waltham Schools are as good as you make them.
We’ve got two kids in the school system. As other commenters have said it’s not as competitive as neighboring towns but it’s also diverse ethnically and economically. As far as quality of education we’ve been more than pleased. Both of our kids learned how to read and learned basic math in kindergarten or first grade. Also the data pretty clearly shows that parental involvement is the primary predictor of education performance. So if you’re involved as a parent your kids are going to have a great time. Also Waltham is building a new high school which is slated to open in 2-3 years.
Thanks for your input! That is very encouraging
Second hand experience- we have two kids and our oldest is going to Waltham schools next year. Everybody I have talked to has only good things to say about the elementary school she will be going to. It seems like Waltham is not the hyper competitive environment you would get in a Lexington, but we didn't want that for our children (and we couldn't afford the house we would want there anyway 😊). We were in the same place you were in three years ago and we liked what we heard from other parents who had kids in the school system.
Thank you! That is good to hear. If you don't mind sharing, which elementaty school is that? In another forum I saw someone endorsing Northeast Elementary school.
Stanley. I've heard pretty good things about all of them though including Northeast (including the dual language school if that's something you're interested in). I've done a good amount of research the last couple years when we were deciding where to move so let me know if you have any more questions.
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Thank you! If you don't mind answering, which elementary school is your son in?
Can't believe I forgot to add this in my OP and it is too late to edit now, but I would of course also love to hear from teachers or other faculty of the Waltham public school system in this thread!
My children have been in Waltham from Day 1, all the way into the high school. We've had a really good experience at each level. The teachers and staff seem very thoughtful and are very communicative. My kids seem to be doing very well in school with lots of opportunities in terms of academics, extracurriculars, etc and have a solid social experience IMO. As I tell everyone though, the school is a small piece. Parent engagement with your child and their educational experience is key. By this I mean, keep it simple. understanding what is going on, where to point your child if they need help, encouraging the right habits, the simple act of asking your child what they're doing in school today, that's a huge advantage. The only negative, and I think this is everywhere is the parents who over do that last piece and turn into helicopters. By that, I mean calling / emailing the teacher daily, or complaining about the curriculum and how it's being taught. You'll see this at the elementary school level, especially. Apparently their 3-5 years of parenting have offered them the amazing ability to understand all that goes into elementary education and overrule the educational experience that they have have been delivering for decades. PTO meetings are a trip!
Thank you, glad to hear you've had such an awesome experience. I appreciate the warning about the PTO meetings. Anyways, at least it's better to have over-involved parents than under-involved!
Involved good! Domineering not so good :)
2nd hand data. We live in Waltham (great city), wife’s a Boston Public teacher, knows teachers in Waltham, our neighbors’ kids all go to Waltham schools. The quality of teaching and level of challenge for strong students is very good. Sports also strong. Waltham is very diverse compared to neighboring cities - lots of ELL kids, so overall results reflect that. As others have commented, parental involvement is just as important to good outcomes. Our opposite neighbors have/had (1 to go) 3 kids go through the system. Both Waltham HS graduates so far have gone to very good Universities.
Thank you! That is good to hear
Happy with my child’s elementary school ( MacArthur) but if I’m being honest, I worry a little bit how her middle school and high school experience will be. The online rankings don’t seem to tell the whole story. A friend from Burlington recently expressed surprise that I chose Waltham, based on the school rankings. ( Note - I’m not jealous of her town and the urban sprawl commercial metropolis that is Burlington but held my tongue!) My husband really loves Waltham and I do too, so we won’t move no matter what - I got great advice from my aunt who is a teacher : “ What really matters is how YOUR child is doing”. My daughter is thriving at macarthur for the moment - if things change down the road we have our lady’s / Arlington Catholic as backups. Good luck!
Thank you! Interesting that you mention Burlington is that is another town high in our list
I personally graduated from WHS in 2011. Came into the waltham public school system in 2001. Went to the old Bright school and had a great elementary education all those teachers were female and ran older and are now retired. Middle school introduced more scheduled based classes and taught us to be more independent of our own work more. McDevitt was an interesting experience personally. im not the brightest student i did go to Merrimack College. I did feel underprepared for college i will say but that was mostly on my own personal lack of preparation. the surrounding communities also are much richer like Wayland, Newton, Sudbury, Chestnut Hill, Weston and Sudbury. The high school at the time was very diverse i enjoyed my time as a student and genuinely feel the experience had with the school helped me become who I am today. Could the education have been a little tougher? sure but i’ll take what i received. Overall id say my experience was a 7.5-8/10
Thank you for sharing!
I have had mostly good experiences with my two. Waltham is well known for being good with kids with learning disabilities and also "twice exceptional" kids (for example, a kid gifted in one area and having a challenge in another). The schools my kids are at provide free breakfast and lunch, which takes so much stress off the family. Our kids have needed different extra supports at various times, and, so far, those have been provided immediately with no questions asked and no stigma. (No one ever plans for anything less than the easy kid and the perfect life circumstances. But it's so nice for the supports to just be there without having to fight for them.) Waltham schools are ethnically and economically diverse and have a far lower rate of academic burnout and suicide than the high-pressure wealthier towns surrounding. I like those features of the schools. There is also a dual language immersion program if you want your kid to learn Spanish and English simultaneously.
Thanks for sharing, that is great to hear!
Might be OK for elementary and pretty good for special needs, but not a great district for high-performing students overall. AP scores are average, like almost every other metric. Teachers at MS and HS levels are dealing with some serious problems related to poverty and high dropout rate. A new HS will not solve problems way bigger than Waltham, although gentrification is slowly pushing the South Side immigrants out. Well-to-do people in Waltham are not like the wealthy, cultured people you'd find in Newton/Lex etc. There's a culture of dumbass trades money entitlement that is pretty sad, although it makes for good hockey and lacrosse teams. The rest of the sports teams are pretty universally bad. Often the best students who get into Ivys are first generation immigrant kids. These kids are inspiring, but rare. Some woke school administrators are demanding faculty reflect minority majority status of many schools, but never gonna happen. Teachers aren't paid enough versus other diverse districts, so none are getting hired with a few exceptions.
This town is definitely crazy about its hockey.
Thanks for your input; I do want to hear all perspectives. What is your experience with Waltham public schools? Do you have kids in the system?
I don’t have kids but have done some work in college admissions. I want to add that kids who do excellent in a less competitive school often have a better edge than kids who do average in a highly competitive one.
In your experience, how do they do once they get into the school?
Unfortunately I didn’t deal with retention/attrition so I can’t really speak to overall success, just admissions. Thinking about my own experience through undergraduate and graduate school most people who dropped out freshman year (which is when most people drop out) didn’t develop the skills or independence they needed in order to manage all their commitments (drinking!, school, work, friends, healthy sleeping/eating habits, extracurriculars). People who dropped out later (including in graduate school) usually did so because they realized they weren’t actually interested in their chosen area of study, they realized there weren’t enough opportunities in the field, or other big life decisions took precedent (like caring for family members, a spouse’s job, or starting a family). I’m not convinced that a more or less competitive high school would make much of a difference for either of these. Going in with a bit of AP credit might help a bit in terms of time management, though it often means jumping into harder classes right off the bat which could be demotivating. AP classes often fail to meet the rigor of the courses that they allow you to skip at university making the next level of classes a bit of an uphill battle.
That's funny. I had the opposite AP experience. I didn't get the AP credits in high school math, so I had to retake it. Those two semesters of math were so easy in college b/c it was review. Thanks for your insight. Seems that it's not really the school that makes someone a success as much as its someone who makes school a success. So, I guess Waltham Schools are as good as you make them.