This past week, Derek and I attended an open house at one of the two Montessori pre-schools in Arlington County that offers all-day programs. The program will only accept children between the ages of 2.5 and 3.5 years old and asks that parents keep them in the program for three years to receive the maximum benefit - even if it means they miss their Kindergarten year. The truth is we did not know much about the Montessori philosophy until a couple months ago, but once we learned more about the program and how children learn autonomy and independence among other things, we knew this is what we wanted for Greta.Even though Greta cannot matriculate until AT LEAST TWO years from now, we are putting our application and non-refundable fee into the school now. They do not use a traditional wait list but rather look at the gaps in the classroom for that school year (ie. ages and gender) and fill on those basis.
I did some research and discovered that of the 206,000 folks living in Arlington county, 35,000 of them are children. Of that, an estimated 25% are under the age of six. That means that nearly 9,000 children will need either organized day care or nannies since the stay-at-home mom figure is so low in this area due to the high cost of living. The school we visited accomodates a maximum of 28 children. I am not that good at math, so will some one tell me what the odds are that Greta will actually matriculate into this program given the numbers?
I did some research and discovered that of the 206,000 folks living in Arlington county, 35,000 of them are children. Of that, an estimated 25% are under the age of six. That means that nearly 9,000 children will need either organized day care or nannies since the stay-at-home mom figure is so low in this area due to the high cost of living. The school we visited accomodates a maximum of 28 children. I am not that good at math, so will some one tell me what the odds are that Greta will actually matriculate into this program given the numbers?
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2 comments:
You've got problems with your assumptions, not the least of which is that although 25% of those 35,000 may be under 6 that means everyone from 0 to 5.99, but you only care about kids from 2.5 to 3.5, 1/6th of that group.
Assuming a random distribution in those numbers, that means there's only 1458.3 kids in that range (and that 1/3 of a kid will probably be homeschooled).
However the 2006 census data here (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/51/51013.html) claims an Arlington population of 199,776 with 6.7% under 5, or 13,384.992. 1/5th of that population is 2676.998
There's more detailed stats here http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/states/51/51013.html and among them is the fact that about 7% of those people are below the poverty line, so you can assume they're not going after a Montessori education. We don't know if the poor have more or less children from this data, but if we just use the 7% number uncritically the competition is for sure under 2,500 people.
Or you could assume that the people who are below the median combined household income of 66,000 aren't going after the slots and just assume half of 2676 are possible.
I don't really think any of that is useful. You have to know how many people actually apply for slots to have any idea. You can assume, though, that if people follow the suggestion of being in the program for 3 years then that means 1/3 of the class leaves and creates a vacancy every year, which with 28 kids total is 9 openings.
Just my point... Don didn't you attend a Montessori pre-school?!?! We want to raise a smarty pants like you :)
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