Thinking of moving to VA. Tell me more about the high schools in FCPS.
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
| “Thinking about moving to VA” means you don’t have to. I would suggest waiting until kids are through with school. Why rip them from their routines and already formed friendships. We moved within FCPS when one of my kids was that age and kid found it stressful, hard to make new friends. Many people will suspect you are a troll because most people aren’t looking to move to a HCOL, uproot teenage kids and pick 1 county as the place to go. |
Anonymous
|
Find an area with houses that you can afford and then compare HS. There are a lot of good HS in FCPS. All of them offer AP/IB. Some offer STEM pathways (Chantilly and Edison come to mind). Some have better test scores than others but that tends to be based on the wealth of the school. There are plenty of parents who are happy with the AP or IB offerings at some of the poorer schools in the county.
|
Anonymous
| Troll |
Anonymous
+1 An opportunity to glorify or demean certain schools. |
Anonymous
| I always wish we had not moved here. It’s too late now, but it’s so competitive and intense. I feel like we don’t get to enjoy life. I wish we had gone where the schools weren’t so highly ranked and life was smaller and slower. I would do it differently if I could. |
Anonymous
|
OP here. I'm not a troll. We are in MCPS where the CO is doing a big change and watering down all the magnet programs and proposing 6 regional magnets in 2027. We will no longer have access to Richard Montgomery or Blair. We live in a region where our school does not have the advanced classes. This will be a problem for one of my kids who is STEM focused.
Good to know about Chantilly and Edison. I will look into those. We are also considering renting before buying. Both of us WFH so commute is not a factor. |
Anonymous
OP. But what does your kid think about it? Is he/she stressed out by the competition? Which high school does your kid go to where you feel it is very intense? |
Anonymous
|
If they are self motivated, any shcool will be fine.
If they are a little bit lazy or eazy to be influenced by others, find one with better scores. |
Anonymous
| Langley or Mclean pyramids . The rest are bad |
Anonymous
| Think about your commute and go from there. Every high school will have something for your kids. |
Anonymous
And now you understand the parents of FCPS. |
Anonymous
There’s a poster who’ll come on here and say crap like this, most likely to get a counter-reaction. You have to take most of what gets posted on this forum with a big grain of salt. |
Anonymous
I have 5 kids aged 20-15. They agree. They regularly remark how they won’t be chosen or recognized because of where we are. My oldest is a literal math genius and thought she was below average until she went to college because everyone talks about how high their scores are and how much better they are than each other. My kids work really hard and take private lessons at their “things” and that is all just to get into the things- not to be on top. It’s a race to misery. Not a race to success. We’re in the Robinson/LBSS/WSHS area. |
Anonymous
Look also into North Arlington as a place to live and APS as a school system. Arlington County also sends kids to TJ every year. (FCPS merely operates TJ, which is a Virginia Governor's School serving multiple NoVA localities.) APS also has the Arlington Tech STEM option HS, which is not competing Blair/TJ but is college prep (rather than the 1950s vocational type HS). The N Arlington geographic HS is academically solid with a wide range of AP offerings. Worth at least a look-see. Start with the APS web site for more. |
Anonymous
|
What’s happening in MCPS is interesting, but I thought they promised everyone would have access to AP? The changes will actually make it more like FCPS. So before you move, I would consider what you are looking for. With an sea change in student body composition, all of the schools will change as well.
Your magnet programs are a bit different than FCPS so it’s not quite analogous. With the consortium in MCPS, HSs had a lot of flexibility to specialize. In FCPS most kids go to their base HS. There are a few academies that run all 4 years (including an engineering one at Edison if that’s of interest to your STEM kid) and some academies in trades that run 2 years. There is also the STEM governor’s school, Thomas Jefferson, that has a very competitive admissions process. All base HSs have honors and AP or IB classes. They all have opportunities for kids to specialize and excel. There are plenty of snobs on this forum who will tell you that your socioeconomic demographic at certain schools equates to better education. Don’t believe them. There are great schools at all socioeconomic levels in FCPS. If you’re running from MCPS because your base HS has been high poverty, that will look really different once the consortium is disbanded. IME engaged parents matter much more than anything else. There are opportunities to participate in sports and clubs at your base HS in MoCo that might have been prohibitive in a wealthier school. I say this as relatively well off parent that stuck with our local HS in FCPS that has a high FARMS rate. My kids have played on all the teams they’ve wanted to, gotten to do academic and social clubs and have leadership roles, and have had an excellent education in the IB program. |