Does the school pyramid really make a difference in the long run?

[Anonymous]

And the Oakton kids/families are kinda racists. Even though we're white, it's not an ideal place to be when you're trying to raise an anti-racist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The real world bears very little resemblance to the population of most “preferred“ pyramids in northern Virginia. My personal opinion is that kids benefit more from exposure to those who are different (both racially/ethnically and socio-economically) than they do from exposure to those who are the same.

I would agree with this poster. My sister and I went to a not so great high school. Only 10% of the kids in my graduating class went to college. My sister and I were both smart and there was huge value in learning to work with and get along with those form different racial and socio economically backgrounds. This skill set has served both of us well in our careers.

There’s literally no one coming to DCUM with questions who wants to send their kids to a school where only 10% of the students go to college. You can find SES diversity at every high school in APS and over 90% of the schools in FCPS.

Not really. Roughly 30% of FCPS is economically disadvantaged. Please name a highly-rated school that approximates this percentage. Certainly not McLean.
Marshall probably comes closest, but even there only 17% of students are FARMs.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:12:58 here again,

Just re-read your question in the title of this thread.

I guess my answer to "does the school pyramid really make a difference in the long run?" is:

Maybe. It depends on your kid.

Many people think of it like an insurance policy -- they buy in the best zone they can afford so that they know they've done all they can do for the kid to succeed. Whatever happens from there is on the kid.

This.

I went to a TERRIBLE high school, as did my brother (middle school). There were routine knife fights in my school, and my brother was relentlessly bullied. As recent immigrants, we didn’t have options. Nor did our parents understand that there could be options. We kept our head down, and nose in the books. My brother tested into a really good high school (he didn’t even tell the family about the test. Or the bullying), a horrible commute away, but made it work. My partial college scholarships were insufficient for me to go to private college, so I went to a local one. Then went to a top tier grad school, while working 3 jobs to make it work. We have both done well in life. My brother just made partner, and I am immensely proud of how far we have both come.

TL;DR A really good work ethic, and family support, goes a long way in life. People with options wouldn’t want to put their children through that.

Give me a break. There are no schools in Fairfax or Arlington counties with "routine knife fights".

Where did I say that I went to school around here? I went to school in NYC.

Not the point. Your experience in a New York school with routine knife fights is irrelevant to OP’s question about schools in northern Virginia. Of course people with options wouldn’t choose an unsafe school, but there are no unsafe schools in NoVA.

Parents who’ve pulled their kids out of middle schools like Sandberg and Glasgow might beg to disagree.

How quickly they forget! Remember the gym locker room taser torture at Oakton HS?

That was a one-off incident and you know it. The reason why it was featured so much is because that type of incident is so unusual at Oakton. But say what you want to feel better about being with the poor people.

Ahhmmm... sexual assault on the band bus?

Oakton has a nasty case if affluenza. The Administration there needs to stop kowtowing to parents and start dealing with the bullies and LAX Bros.

I went to a crummy high school. Band bus was full of sexual misconduct. It happens anywhere you have band b/c both genders on long bus rides.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m only the parent of a 10 year old and younger kids but from what I’ve read the answer is no. Our child goes to a Title I School. The school has a GT magnet program, arts and music and media, newly renovated, diverse, safe decent testing scores for all races. We wanted our kids to be comfortable with all kinds of people and also to go to a neighborhood school. I have never regretted our choice. DH and I are both employed and went to college and have friends in the school district who are both more and less educated than we are.

I don’t have a link but I think parent education level and resources are the biggest predictors of a child’s level of academic achievement.

Have you really met people uncomfortable to work or interact with people of different socioeconomic backgrounds? How is this a thing that is fixed by going to a struggling high school? OP, as a college age engineer do you regularly hang out with electricians or plumbers that aren’t your neighbors?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The real world bears very little resemblance to the population of most “preferred“ pyramids in northern Virginia. My personal opinion is that kids benefit more from exposure to those who are different (both racially/ethnically and socio-economically) than they do from exposure to those who are the same.

I would agree with this poster. My sister and I went to a not so great high school. Only 10% of the kids in my graduating class went to college. My sister and I were both smart and there was huge value in learning to work with and get along with those form different racial and socio economically backgrounds. This skill set has served both of us well in our careers.

There’s literally no one coming to DCUM with questions who wants to send their kids to a school where only 10% of the students go to college. You can find SES diversity at every high school in APS and over 90% of the schools in FCPS.

Not really. Roughly 30% of FCPS is economically disadvantaged. Please name a highly-rated school that approximates this percentage. Certainly not McLean.
Marshall probably comes closest, but even there only 17% of students are FARMs.

So diversity only exists if a school replicates the county’s demographics? Sounds like a logic fail, but if that’s what you want Fairfax HS probably comes closest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:OP everyone seems obsessed with “outcomes”. I’m not sure how bad your high school was if you didn’t consider this: I went from a crummy high school with 2 AP courses taught very very badly, admin was focused on football and trying to stem teen pregnancy.

I did excellent in high school, it was laughably easy for me, did pretty good on SAT and ended up at an elite university.

And almost flunked out. It was like whiplash, going from a non-academics high school where I was the blue whale in a koi pond, to barely able to finish basic freshman math or history classes. For the kids from elite public and private schools, college was actually way easier, so they had the luxury of developing new interests and friendship (which translates to later networking of course), while I spent hours trying to study enough to make up for my academic deficiency.

Now maybe folks will pipe up that curriculum is the same across FCPS, but I think for quality of education versus topics covered you will see a spectrum between schools.

It can be said that every high school in FCPS offers either a large number of AP classes or a large number of IB classes. Some of the IB schools also offer a handful of AP courses, but not the full array. In terms of electives, it's already been shown there are differences among the schools.

There are also demonstrable differences in the percentages of kids at different schools both taking and passing the AP/IB exams. Some will ascribe that to income, as if income alone explains all the variations. If one were looking for other correlations, they can be found. Labeling a course "AP" or "IB" doesn't necessarily mean that all students are getting the same education, if they have different levels of preparedness when they take those courses as sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

Income is a proxy for so many things. Higher-income families are more likely to pay big bucks for tutoring and test-prep. Higher-income kids are also more likely to have special accommodations that allow them more time on their tests. Keeping-up-with-the-Jones pressure is real in these pyramids. It also results in more stressed out kids.

People invariably suggest the temperature of the porridge at their school is just right, and too hot or too cold everywhere else. There is a whole vocabulary to accompany it. For every "stressed-out" kid at an alleged "pressure cooker," there is an unmotivated "slacker" at a "low-performing" school.

There really isn't any way to challenge the competing assertions, other than to ask how many of the assertions are likely based on experience and how many on envy.

Exactly. Do you. Stop labeling other people's experiences that they enjoy and think are right for their kids. Some people want their kids more relaxed for a variety of reasons and some people want a more competitive school for the same wide variety of reasons. They can both be good experiences.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP everyone seems obsessed with “outcomes”. I’m not sure how bad your high school was if you didn’t consider this: I went from a crummy high school with 2 AP courses taught very very badly, admin was focused on football and trying to stem teen pregnancy.

I did excellent in high school, it was laughably easy for me, did pretty good on SAT and ended up at an elite university.

And almost flunked out. It was like whiplash, going from a non-academics high school where I was the blue whale in a koi pond, to barely able to finish basic freshman math or history classes. For the kids from elite public and private schools, college was actually way easier, so they had the luxury of developing new interests and friendship (which translates to later networking of course), while I spent hours trying to study enough to make up for my academic deficiency.

Now maybe folks will pipe up that curriculum is the same across FCPS, but I think for quality of education versus topics covered you will see a spectrum between schools.

It can be said that every high school in FCPS offers either a large number of AP classes or a large number of IB classes. Some of the IB schools also offer a handful of AP courses, but not the full array. In terms of electives, it's already been shown there are differences among the schools.

There are also demonstrable differences in the percentages of kids at different schools both taking and passing the AP/IB exams. Some will ascribe that to income, as if income alone explains all the variations. If one were looking for other correlations, they can be found. Labeling a course "AP" or "IB" doesn't necessarily mean that all students are getting the same education, if they have different levels of preparedness when they take those courses as sophomores, juniors, and seniors.

Income is a proxy for so many things. Higher-income families are more likely to pay big bucks for tutoring and test-prep. Higher-income kids are also more likely to have special accommodations that allow them more time on their tests. Keeping-up-with-the-Jones pressure is real in these pyramids. It also results in more stressed out kids.

People invariably suggest the temperature of the porridge at their school is just right, and too hot or too cold everywhere else. There is a whole vocabulary to accompany it. For every "stressed-out" kid at an alleged "pressure cooker," there is an unmotivated "slacker" at a "low-performing" school.

There really isn't any way to challenge the competing assertions, other than to ask how many of the assertions are likely based on experience and how many on envy.

Exactly. Do you. Stop labeling other people's experiences that they enjoy and think are right for their kids. Some people want their kids more relaxed for a variety of reasons and some people want a more competitive school for the same wide variety of reasons. They can both be good experiences.

This.

[Anonymous]

Most people buy into the best pyramid they can afford consistent with their budget and commute.

[Anonymous]

My kids attended a Title I ES where white kids were a minority of students, but the school feeds into a less diverse middle and high school regarded as top 2 or 3 in FCPS. i would not have traded their elementary school experience, with small classes and kids from more than 50 countries in the school. Their LLIV classes were also diverse. What they got to MS, they found that some kids who had attended other elementary schools had a negative view of the Title I school that seemed to be based on race, which I guess they learned from their parents.

I would be lying if I didn't say I also valued the high percentage of high achieving students in their MS and HS. My kids are fairly bright but not highly motivated or competitive by nature so they were in no danger of feeling over-pressured. The environment kept them from slacking off too much. They were well-prepared for MS despite attending a lower-performing ES and never had any tutoring.

[Anonymous]

One of the things we struggle with as parents is that we don't want to send the kids to MS and HS where they wouldn't run into or be friends with kids like we were. Both of us are from working class families- but because we grew up in a smaller cities, by the time you got to HS the whole school district was lumped together (municipal level vs county) and being not as pop. dense that meant that the kids from all sides of the tracks were together. Your exposure to kids who had nothing and kids who had new SUVs was all mixed together. Homogeneity is a turn off for us because we were the kids others might be trying to avoid, maybe not FARMS, but not much more in terms of resources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m only the parent of a 10 year old and younger kids but from what I’ve read the answer is no. Our child goes to a Title I School. The school has a GT magnet program, arts and music and media, newly renovated, diverse, safe decent testing scores for all races. We wanted our kids to be comfortable with all kinds of people and also to go to a neighborhood school. I have never regretted our choice. DH and I are both employed and went to college and have friends in the school district who are both more and less educated than we are.

I don’t have a link but I think parent education level and resources are the biggest predictors of a child’s level of academic achievement.

Have you really met people uncomfortable to work or interact with people of different socioeconomic backgrounds? How is this a thing that is fixed by going to a struggling high school? OP, as a college age engineer do you regularly hang out with electricians or plumbers that aren’t your neighbors?

Holy shit, yes. I have. They don't think of themselves this way but they are the people who don't know what code-switching means, or that huge swaths of people do it. There are some very good-hearted but clueless people out there and they don't even see their blinders bc everyone in their family and circle of friends are basically the same- college, white collar, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not really. A student at one of the worst high schools in our county got accepted to Columbia.

It's more about the student than the schools.

One actually has a better chance at ivies, et al - coming from "bad" school systems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not really. A student at one of the worst high schools in our county got accepted to Columbia.

It's more about the student than the schools.

One actually has a better chance at ivies, et al - coming from "bad" school systems.

Suburban myth. And even if it were true, who'd want to show up at an Ivy ill-prepared compared to kids coming from Sidwell, TJ, Walt Whitman, W-L, McLean, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not really. A student at one of the worst high schools in our county got accepted to Columbia.

It's more about the student than the schools.

One actually has a better chance at ivies, et al - coming from "bad" school systems.

Suburban myth. And even if it were true, who'd want to show up at an Ivy ill-prepared compared to kids coming from Sidwell, TJ, Walt Whitman, W-L, McLean, etc.

Suburban myth. Kids admitted to ivies from FCPS are well-prepared regardless of their school of origin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not really. A student at one of the worst high schools in our county got accepted to Columbia.

It's more about the student than the schools.

One actually has a better chance at ivies, et al - coming from "bad" school systems.

Suburban myth. And even if it were true, who'd want to show up at an Ivy ill-prepared compared to kids coming from Sidwell, TJ, Walt Whitman, W-L, McLean, etc.

Suburban myth. Kids admitted to ivies from FCPS are well-prepared regardless of their school of origin.

Graduated from FCPS (not TJ), went to an Ivy, was given the option to graduate in three years, turned it down to take more courses, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.