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Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)
Recent ranking of elementray schools for Va, especially Northern Va?
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Anonymous
Interesting. I looked up a number of number of schools and it appears that some of the highest-scoring GT centers, which also have the highest proportion of GT to non-GT kids, also have the most crowded classrooms (30+). Does that mean that parents following the highest scores as a guide to the highest performing schools/ GT centers to which to send their kids just pile on in a given neighborhood and drive up class size? And since the non-GT and GT scores aren't disaggregated, the higher scores just result from the higher proportion of GT kids in those schools? I would love to get some feedback on this, since that will impact where we decide to buy. I'd like to pay for real quality, not higher class size... |
Anonymous
| But isn't that exactly the fact and the reason these test results are of little use? Many high-scoring schools on this list are GT centers (in FX, Churchill Rd and Louise Archer, for example) and they also have the high class sizes. It is what it is. Look at the nation's top-rated public HS (magnet): TJ. I've heard that TJ has 50+ kids in freshman classes and the worst physical buildings of almost any FCPS high school -- and people clamor to get their kids accepted -- because it's just that good. Can't always judge a book by its cover, or class size, or test scores. |
Anonymous
Well the difference is that there is only one TJ, but lots of GT centers. If there were mutliple high school magnets of TJ's caliber with different class sizes, people would chose the less crowded ones. If the higher test scores at Churchill Road or Archer or Haycock are simply due to the fact that they have a huge GT population, and they become overcrowded because people can't tell the difference, why pay the premium to live in those neighborhoods AND deal with the overcrowding, to boot? That may not be beneficial to a kid in GT, and downright harmful to a kid in the regular program. Too bad FCPS doesn't publish separate test scores for the different tracks. |
Anonymous
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The problem with the list is that the GT classes in the school drive up the test scores of the school overall. Then more people move to that boundary to get into the school because it's perceived to be better than the non-GT center schools. But if your kid is in a regular (non-GT) class the school's test scores are less meaningful.
Look, I think Louise Archer would be a good school without the GT center, would it be better than all of the other schools in Vienna without it? No way. Think about it - all of the GT kids from Stenwood, Vienna Elementary, Cunningham Park, and Freedom Hill go there. Some of the GT kids from Flint Hill, Wolftrap, and Westbriar also go there (did I miss any?). Take the best 10-20 3rd graders from 7 other schools, add them to your school, and of course your scores will go up dramatically, while simultaneously lowering the scores of the sending schools. |
Anonymous
Exactly. |
Anonymous
what does it mean if ur elementary school is not on the top 100 list? does that mean it sucks? |
Anonymous
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How about a rating system that only compares like against like? ESOL students against other ESOL students. G/T against G/T. And something that controls for income.
Now THAT would be truly useful. |
Anonymous
Absolutely not. And this ranking only ranks schools according to the numbers of students who scored at the "advanced" level. The list is almost four years old now, and school demographics change over time. I'm sure that some schools that were not on that list in '08 would definitely qualify today. |
Anonymous
It sure would! |
Anonymous
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The one thing is not all esol are created equal. The problem with the testing metrics is they are really measuring the demographics of the school, and not what the kids are learning in school.
It seems to me the issue at hand is not ranking the schools, but what to rank. I would be more interested in ranking the schools based on improvement during the year: how much did an individual learn. But that is hard to measure, so instead we get these useless measures. |
Anonymous
The lists are based on test scores ad possibly pupil-teacher ratios. I clicked on the one in VA beach-32% poverty but it is a magnet school for gifted children. FCPS has high actual class sizes for schools without specific numbers of FRPM, LEP, etc. The Dranesville district schools [except for some in Herndon] are the FX version of DC's Horace Mann. However they are larger with bigger class sizes. All the FCPS schools that did not yet have full day kindergarten were among the top academic performers. SOL's are minimum competency tests not SAT's. |
Anonymous
This has everything to do with the socioeconomics of these schools, as the schools that were half-day were the richest with the least ESOL kids. Oddly, I found that these also were the most affordable single family homes in my general area. It made househunting so much easier for us when they all went full-day. We're moving into a former half-day school district in a few weeks, and we are so incredibly happy that we were able to open up our neighborhood options for our rising kindergartener. |
Anonymous
You're not from here are you? McKinley draws from a very nice neighborhood. |
Anonymous
| Please check www.schooldigger.com. The new ranking comes out for year 2011. |