| Washington International School aka WIS | |
|---|---|
| Location | |
| Washington, DC, USA | |
| Information | |
| Type | Independent |
| Established | 1966 |
| Head of school | Clayton Lewis |
| Faculty | 90 full-time, 14 part-time |
| Enrollment | 890 day |
| Student to teacher ratio | 8.2:1 |
| Campus | Primary School 1690 36th Street NW Washington DC 20007 Tregaron |
| Website | www.wis.edu |
Washington International School (also known as Washington International or simply WIS) is a coeducational international school for day students in grades pre-Kindergarten through 12. The school is located in northwest Washington, DC.
Established in 1966, WIS was the first school in the Washington area to offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) program.
The school has two campuses: the primary school (grades PK-5) in Georgetown, and the upper school (grades 6-12) in Cleveland Park. The upper school’s campus is located on the grounds of Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Tregaron (estate).
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Washington International School was founded in 1966 by Dorothy Goodman to meet the educational needs of Washington’s international community and American families seeking a rigorous international education.
In the post-World War II years, international schools were established throughout the world to serve the growing number of families, mostly from developed countries, posted abroad by governments and commercial firms. These schools usually were founded by a community of families of a particular nationality and followed the educational system and curriculum of their country. They were international primarily in the sense that they accepted children of other nationalities.
When Goodman founded WIS with three pre-school students in the basement of a Washington, DC house, she had a clear vision for the school. Informed by scientific research on the capacity of the human brain to acquire multiple languages, especially in the early years, and marketing research that focused on the educational needs of international families in Washington, she imagined a school in which children could become functionally multilingual and at the same time well informed about world history, geography, literature, and cultures.
From the beginning, WIS has offered a range of subjects for study within a common curriculum. The school aims for high academic standards and enables students to master at least two major modern languages. The program equips students to enter university in their own country or any country of their choice.
The school’s founding was followed shortly by the incorporation of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), which itself grew from International School efforts to establish a common curriculum and university entry credential for geographically mobile students. WIS was among the first 60 schools to adopt the IB Diploma curriculum.
In 1969, with financial assistance from the Ford Foundation, WIS purchased the Wendell Phillips School building on Olive Street in Georgetown. The Olive Street campus served the school for 29 years, first as a space for the whole of the school, and, in subsequent years, as its Lower School site. In 1998, the lower grades moved into a newly-built facility at Reservoir Road and 36th Street NW. For the first time, this location enabled Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 5 to be in the same Primary School Campus. The Tregaron Campus, acquired with assistance of the Ford Foundation in 1980, is the site of the Middle School (Grades 6 through 8) and the Upper School (Grades 9 through 12).
The Washington International School has a strong athletic program and has excelled in the Potomac Valley Athletic Conference (PVAC) for many years. WIS competes in a variety of sports such as Basketball, Soccer, Volleyball, Swimming (club), Softball, Baseball, Track and Field, as well as Cross Country running.
Due to the strong international background of the students, WIS usually has a strong soccer program and has won the PVAC league banner and tournament trophy many times. Two years ago, WIS won the regular season banner and beat the Field School in the tournament final. Last year, WIS was able to derail Sandy Spring Friends School's unbeaten run in the finals of the PVAC tournament in a 2-0 win.[1] However, this year they lost to Sandy Spring in the final 3-1.
Furthermore, in 2008, the WIS basketball team upset Jewish Day School to win the PVAC basketball championship.
Their soccer successes in the PVAC are:
For nearly a decade Washington International School has enjoyed an affiliation with KIS International School in Thailand. Sharing a vision and philosophy, and with identical mission statements, WIS and KIS maintain an active and mutually rewarding relationship with frequent visits and consultations.
In addition, WIS is affiliated with the National Association of Independent Schools, the Council of International Schools, and the European Council of International Schools.
http://www.wis.edu/academics/university-counseling/colleges-of-wis-graduates/index.aspx Universities in italics indicate a destination for at least one member of the Class of 2011; the numbers in parentheses show how many WIS graduates (Class of 2008 through Class of 2011) matriculated at a given school.
University of Virginia (11) University of Michigan (9) University of Maryland at College Park (8) University of Pennsylvania (8) University of Southern California (8) Columbia University (6) University of Chicago (5) Boston University (4) Carleton College (4) College of William and Mary (4) Princeton University (4) University of California at Berkeley (4) Virginia Polytechnic University (4) Yale University (4) Bard College (3) Brown University (3) Georgetown University (3) Haverford College (3) James Madison University (3) New York University (3) Tufts University (3) University of Colorado at Boulder (3) Boston College (2) Carnegie Mellon University (2) Colgate University (2) Drexel University (2) Duke University (2) Emory University (2) Franklin and Marshall College (2) Grinnell College (2) Oberlin College (2) Parsons School for Design (2) Pratt Institute (2) Rhode Island School of Design (2) St. Mary's College of Maryland (2) Swarthmore College (2) University of Miami (2) University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2) University of Wisconsin at Madison (2) Amherst College (1) Barry University (1) Colorado College (1) Cooper Union (1) Dartmouth College (1) Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (1) George Mason University (1) George Washington University (1) Indiana University at Bloomington (1) Johns Hopkins University (1) Lehigh University (1) Lewis & Clark College (1) Maryland Institute College of Art (1) Middlebury College (1) Morgan State University (1) Muhlenberg College (1) Northeastern University (1) Northwestern University (1) Pennsylvania State University (1) Reed College (1) Skidmore College (1) Smith College (1) St. John's University (1) Stanford University (1) University of Arizona (1) University of Delaware (1) University of Mary Washington (1) University of Vermont (1) University of Washington (1) Vanderbilt University (1)Universiteit Maastricht (2) Universiteit Utrecht (2) Eindhoven University of Technology (1) Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (1) Leiden University (1) Universiteit van Amsterdam (1) Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (1) Vassar College (1) Washington University in St. Louis (1) Wesleyan University (1) University of Melbourne (1) Ghent University (1) McGill University (15) University of Toronto (9) University of British Columbia (5) Universidad de Navarra (1) University of St. Andrews (9) University of Sussex (3) University of Edinburgh (2) University of Cambridge (2) University of Manchester (2) University of Oxford (2) Durham University (2) University of Bristol (1) Loughborough University (1) University of Nottingham (1) Peninsula Medical School (1) University of Reading (1)
Queen's University (2) Ontario College of Art & Design (1) Ryerson University(1) Ecole Nationale d'Architecture de Paris (1) Keio University (1)