WJ, Blair, RM, and BCC for Middle Eastern kids?

[Anonymous]

I would go with Richard Montgomery. It is not only diverse but you can observe a lot of the kids socializing across racial, ethnic and religious lines outside of school. For example, stop by Rockville Town Center after school. I've always been really impressed with the diversity and cross section of friends gathering there.

We are African American and at Wootton. If I had to do it over again, I would have purchased a home that feeds to Richard Montgomery, where the diversity is a lot more even and there are more Latino families as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My white-asian kid went to WJ. Personally, coming from Europe, we didn't care at all what the high school racial make-up was. We cared about school achievement and safety. If you care about those too, I wouldn't choose Blair, because outside the magnet, it's not very good. Same thing for RM. The others are great.

Due to previous redlining and de-facto segregation, wealthy neighborhoods tend to have fewer Blacks and Hispanics, and lower-income neighborhoods tend to have more. There are many different nationalities enrolled everywhere, but you may not see them on paper, since they're all lumped into "white". And since we're in the suburbs of the DC area, everyone here is pretty liberal and your Middle-Eastern kids won't be out of place anywhere. We live on a street in Bethesda that had residents from Scandinavian countries and the Middle East, as well as from Asia. Lots of Americans here work with foreigners from the NIH, the World Bank, the Embassies, etc. No worries, OP!

If you really want more socio-economic diversity but in a nice area, your best bet is BCC in downtown Bethesda.

OP here. Glad to hear you kids fit in well at WJ. We really like that area and all the development going around it, as well as the diversity the school offers. BCC is also high on our list as far MCPS schools/areas go. Another reason schools

When I was a student at Whitman, I had some friends from Silver Spring who attended Blair, and I knew some kids from RM through doing SGA/MCR, and they were non-magnet. All of them are just as successful as me, some of them even more so actually lol. RM always ranks in the top 10 in the state, so I would assume that the non-magnet students are doing really well there as well. Although magnets can increase test scores or ratings, they won't bring a school up to the top 10 in Maryland unless the non-magnet kids are also doing really well. Blair is also a really good school. I've seen the aggregated test scores by demographic groups at the school, and all the student groups do very very well there relative to the average MCPS. The rankings will be skewed cause they use overall data rather than aggregated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My white-asian kid went to WJ. Personally, coming from Europe, we didn't care at all what the high school racial make-up was. We cared about school achievement and safety. If you care about those too, I wouldn't choose Blair, because outside the magnet, it's not very good. Same thing for RM. The others are great.

Due to previous redlining and de-facto segregation, wealthy neighborhoods tend to have fewer Blacks and Hispanics, and lower-income neighborhoods tend to have more. There are many different nationalities enrolled everywhere, but you may not see them on paper, since they're all lumped into "white". And since we're in the suburbs of the DC area, everyone here is pretty liberal and your Middle-Eastern kids won't be out of place anywhere. We live on a street in Bethesda that had residents from Scandinavian countries and the Middle East, as well as from Asia. Lots of Americans here work with foreigners from the NIH, the World Bank, the Embassies, etc. No worries, OP!

If you really want more socio-economic diversity but in a nice area, your best bet is BCC in downtown Bethesda.

OP here. Glad to hear you kids fit in well at WJ. We really like that area and all the development going around it, as well as the diversity the school offers. BCC is also high on our list as far MCPS schools/areas go. Another reason schools

When I was a student at Whitman, I had some friends from Silver Spring who attended Blair, and I knew some kids from RM through doing SGA/MCR, and they were non-magnet. All of them are just as successful as me, some of them even more so actually lol. RM always ranks in the top 10 in the state, so I would assume that the non-magnet students are doing really well there as well. Although magnets can increase test scores or ratings, they won't bring a school up to the top 10 in Maryland unless the non-magnet kids are also doing really well. Blair is also a really good school. I've seen the aggregated test scores by demographic groups at the school, and all the student groups do very very well there relative to the average MCPS. The rankings will be skewed cause they use overall data rather than aggregated.

Another reason schools like B-CC/RM/WJ interest us is because the kids have open lunch, which is something I certainly wish I had and want my kids to have if they can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would go with Richard Montgomery. It is not only diverse but you can observe a lot of the kids socializing across racial, ethnic and religious lines outside of school. For example, stop by Rockville Town Center after school. I've always been really impressed with the diversity and cross section of friends gathering there.

We are African American and at Wootton. If I had to do it over again, I would have purchased a home that feeds to Richard Montgomery, where the diversity is a lot more even and there are more Latino families as well.

OP here. Thanks so much for your insight. Yes, RM seems to have everything: strong academics, a wonderful setting, and a very diverse student body.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have Middle Eastern kids and these are the schools I'd be looking at in MoCo. Just as a preface, I personally attended Walt Whitman HS, and although there's a good amount of Middle Eastern families in Whitman, I don't want my kids to go to a school that is <5% Black and I want them to be exposed to all kinds of diversity. That means no Whitman and no Churchill for us. WJ, Blair, BCC, and RM appear to be academically strong schools in the area with a much better diversity than Whitman and Churchill. I know buying in WJ/BCC would add in the possibility of my kids going to Woodward, but I'd assume that the demographics would be the same, if not even more diverse, since Woodward is primarily pulling from WJ anyways, as well as the DCC. It's hard to quantify the amount of Middle Eastern families in a school given their census classification as "white," so I'm just wondering if my kids would find many others like themselves at these schools or not.

You have kids whose other parent is an immigrant from a country in the Middle East?

My kids are 75% Middle Eastern and 25% European. I'm half Middle Eastern, my husband is fully middle eastern.

[Anonymous]

I would go with whichever community you like best. Your kids will get a fine education at any of these schools.