How did Herndon/Westfield HS go from top to bottom?

[Anonymous]

Herndon / Westfield seemed to be highly regarded high schools. Back when I was in high school @ Westfield 15 years ago, Everyone fought like hell to not get redistricting to the poor performing ghetto known as South Lakes. Now South Lakes has higher test scores than both Herndon/South Lakes? What happened?

[Anonymous]

Herndon/Westfield ^ correction

[Anonymous]

Herndon was never good. Westfield was shiny and new for a while but that wore off. A chunk of Vienna was redistricted to South Lakes and they are one of the few schools that has done well with the IB program.

[Anonymous]

When I was in high school in the 90s, Starter was an expensive streetwear brand and now it’s sold exclusively at Walmart.

Times change

[Anonymous]

They redistricted certain areas out of Westfield to save South Lakes' ass. It worked, at least on paper.

[Anonymous]

Look at the demographics at Herndon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Look at the demographics at Herndon.

+31 kids since September. That is an extraordinary amount of growth and i suspect they are coming from outside the US.

[Anonymous]

Based on your question, it's clear you've arrived to your ranking of schools by judging the success of ESOL students. Frankly, the majority of posters here don't care about the success of ESOL students, so I don't understand why that metric is used so often to compare schools.

We need a better way to know how the actual teachers and administration are performing in order to rank the actual schools, not the ESOL kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Based on your question, it's clear you've arrived to your ranking of schools by judging the success of ESOL students. Frankly, the majority of posters here don't care about the success of ESOL students, so I don't understand why that metric is used so often to compare schools.

We need a better way to know how the actual teachers and administration are performing in order to rank the actual schools, not the ESOL kids.

You are so right. We really do need a better metric than ratings based on test scores. I would be much more interested in something like satisfaction surveys, where the parents, students, and teachers are widely polled. I'd also be interested to hear what students who have graduated say a year later about how well prepared they were. People's real experiences would be much more useful than statistical data that doesn't really have any qualitative information.

[Anonymous]

The reality is that there are not many kids who can handle rigor at Herndon. Therefore, there are not as many AP classes and not as much variety to boot. Less clubs, weaker athletics. It is an unfortunate reality and FCPS should really consider boundary changes that help with equity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that there are not many kids who can handle rigor at Herndon. Therefore, there are not as many AP classes and not as much variety to boot. Less clubs, weaker athletics. It is an unfortunate reality and FCPS should really consider boundary changes that help with equity.

Could you explain why boundary changes would help with equity?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that there are not many kids who can handle rigor at Herndon. Therefore, there are not as many AP classes and not as much variety to boot. Less clubs, weaker athletics. It is an unfortunate reality and FCPS should really consider boundary changes that help with equity.

Could you explain why boundary changes would help with equity?

Good question.
1. It is not going to make lower achieving kids achieve more.
2. It is going to make the School Board happy because it will cover up the problems.

It is true that more AP classes can be offered where there are more high achieving students. However, I would like someone to show me where Herndon does not have enough AP classes. Pretty sure they have plenty of them.

FWIW, just because a school offers more AP classes does not mean that every kid who wants to take AP Basket Weaving can get into that class. It might be full.
Different schools offer different world languages for different reasons. All languages are not offered at any one school. Some may have more choices than others, but they may not have the one your child desires to take.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that there are not many kids who can handle rigor at Herndon. Therefore, there are not as many AP classes and not as much variety to boot. Less clubs, weaker athletics. It is an unfortunate reality and FCPS should really consider boundary changes that help with equity.

Could you explain why boundary changes would help with equity?

Good question.
1. It is not going to make lower achieving kids achieve more.
2. It is going to make the School Board happy because it will cover up the problems.

It is true that more AP classes can be offered where there are more high achieving students. However, I would like someone to show me where Herndon does not have enough AP classes. Pretty sure they have plenty of them.

FWIW, just because a school offers more AP classes does not mean that every kid who wants to take AP Basket Weaving can get into that class. It might be full.
Different schools offer different world languages for different reasons. All languages are not offered at any one school. Some may have more choices than others, but they may not have the one your child desires to take.

The School Board hasn’t made a boundary change to “help with equity” since 2008.

They have made multiple changes since then that increased the disparities among neighboring schools.

People moving to Loudoun for cheaper, bigger houses probably accounts for most of the changes at Herndon and Westfield.

[Anonymous]

Equity is a term used to mask the fact that some families do not support their childrens education as much as others. Moving kids around isn’t going to fix parents who won’t invest the time into their childrens success.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that there are not many kids who can handle rigor at Herndon. Therefore, there are not as many AP classes and not as much variety to boot. Less clubs, weaker athletics. It is an unfortunate reality and FCPS should really consider boundary changes that help with equity.

Could you explain why boundary changes would help with equity?

Good question.
1. It is not going to make lower achieving kids achieve more.
2. It is going to make the School Board happy because it will cover up the problems.

It is true that more AP classes can be offered where there are more high achieving students. However, I would like someone to show me where Herndon does not have enough AP classes. Pretty sure they have plenty of them.

FWIW, just because a school offers more AP classes does not mean that every kid who wants to take AP Basket Weaving can get into that class. It might be full.
Different schools offer different world languages for different reasons. All languages are not offered at any one school. Some may have more choices than others, but they may not have the one your child desires to take.

Don’t let the course catalog on the Herndon High website fool you. If only 10 kids want to take a class, they will drop it. Also, if a small number of kids want a class, there may only be one offered at a specific time that may conflict with another important class. Less variation, less options. Evening out the FARMs kids would help everyone.